The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-07-14
AN ENoLlsHWoMAN WHO HUNTS
Big Game Has Fallen before Mrs. Gard
ner's Rifle in Many Parts of the World i

Perhaps the most enthusiastic snorts-
woman in England is Mrs. Gardner, wife,
of Col. Alan Gardner. She took to wild
game shooting shortly after her marriaged
nearly ten years ago, because she wante
to throw herself into the most absorbjno
interest of her husbands life. Her sue.
cess has been unusual, and the tales that
she tells of panthers, tigers, bears, lions,
stays, wild goats, and elk that have fallen
by her gun are thrilling enough to make
the average sportsman ashamed of his
hunting list. In 1889, according to the
Lady's Pictorial. Colonel and Mrs. Gard
ner went to New Zealand to visit the
formers sister, who is the wife of the
Earl of Onslow, the Governor of the is.
land. There Mrs. Gardner made her first
venture in the field, or, more properly
speaking, on the mountain tops, for she
said she intended to bring down a few
wild goats, which live on the almost in
accessible cliffs of the Great Barrier Island
and she was as good as her word. These
goats are exceedingly selusive, and seem to
smell gunpowder a mile away. To stalk
only great skill, but patience and deter
mination. But the Englishwoman was
qual to the occasion. 1t is just as hard
to recover the body of one Of these agile
animals after it receives death wound
as it is to kill it, for, nine times out of
ten, the goat bounds from the tiny shelf
or sharp declivity where it poised upon
being shot and, falling down, disappears
into the sea, where it is gobbled up by
sharks before the hunter can say cater
pillar. In this way Mrs. Gardner lost
all but two of the goats she shot. The
skins of these two adorn the walls of her
English country place.
AS the goat in its wild state is found in
only two Places Mrs. Gardner thought 1t
strange that the very next summer she
should happen to visit Null; where she
was able to follow the goat in it's native
haunts. The coast there is wild and rug
ged, but she did not find the sport so
rough as on the cliffs of South Island
She next spent two winters in India, one
up in Kashmir and the other on the from
tier. The first game that she brought
down there was the hungal, or Kashmir
stag, which is the same as the Scotch red
deer, and is called the barasingh or
twelve horns, in allusion to the twelve
points. She crossed the mountains from
the hill state Of Chamba at height of
IL, 600 feet in the dead of winter, and was
rewarded by getting her first shot at
leopard at Chamba. She went out after
q man eating leopard and after the Hima-
layan chamois, known as the gooral be-
sides bagging several big bears.
When in the salt ranges on the Jhelum
she went on many expeditions after wild
sheep, and as she and her husband jour
neyed southwark through some of the
principal Rajputana States they put in
their time pig sticking, panther spearing,
and bunting the neilghai, while occasion
back of an elephant. Sometimes when.
out for small game they came upon a
wild boar, and that was always the signal
for lively gallop. During her second
winter in India this ardent sportswoman
went in for fishing on the banks of the
Indus Her biggest catch was a thirty
FOUNDER. and her husband succeeded in
shooting huge crocodile, much to the
distress of the natives, who declared it
bore charmed life.
Besides the large game shooting in the
wilds of Africa and the jungles of India,
Mrs. Gardner has gone in for all kinds of
sport in Europe. Two years ago, while
in Spain, she visited Ell Coto, on the
Guadalquivir, where she shot the camel
in its wild state, and also the wild boar
and stag. From Heres she went out after
the bigger bustard, and another year she
and her husband were in Corsica, where
they had some most exciting experienc es
the moufflon. Next she pushed
up to Norway to try shot at the elk
and she returned home very recently with
q car load of trophies. She always camps
out on her expeditions, and her husband
says that she is a first class all round
sportswoman. When at home she follows
the hounds.