The Sauk Centre herald., 1909-06-03


are getting near the end; the trackers
take of their sandals and tuck up
their loin-cloths under their belts, lest
Q corner. Tapping in the wind should
scare the lion. For the first time you
take your rife from the native who
has had charge of it, and, with your
head shikari carrying second rife,
steal forward until the lion Is sighted
or ringed in small clump of bush.
Then, when all is over, and the skin
is being taken OF, how pleasant 1t Is
to sit in the shade, listening to the
excited talk of the natives. and let
ting your nerves quiet down again
after the hopes and fears of the morn
ing. You ride home to camp with the
lion skin behind your saddle, while
one of your men after another gives
his version of the mornings proceed.
ings in hunting song. On the other
hand, when you get a shot, and miss
after long and difficult track, It
seems as If any number of lions killed
in the future will never make up for
the loss of this one, which is always
the biggest lion, carrying the finest
name you have ever seen. The ride
home to camp is then q silent one, as
no lion means no sheep for the men.
and they are correspondingly down.
hearted.
The first thing to be done in track.
ing. is to find fresh spoor. Natives
will often bring news of spoor, but
unluckily the average villagers idea
of q fresh track Is rather hazy.
have several times gone a long way
to find at the end track several days
old. On one occasion two natives
arrived, saying there were fresh lion
tracks in river-bed, luckily not more
that half mile from camp, but when
We got there the fresh lion tracks
turned out to be the spoor of two by.
enas. at least week old.
The spoor of the large spotted
hyena is not unlike that of ioness
on certain ground, but the difference
can easily be told, because a hyena
has claws like dog, whereas the re-
tractive claws of a lion are always
sheathed and leave no mark. The best
way to find spoor Is to look for IL
yourself with good trackers. Should
there be any villages near camp
which lions have been in the habit
of raiding it is very necessary to get
there as early as possible in the
morning. If once the large flocks Of
sheep and goats and herds of camels
which have been shut uD in the vii.
lagos all right are let out, the ground
all about is a mass of indistinguish.
able footprints, and every Path from
the village is choked with long strings
of beasts going off to their feeding
grounds. Hitting of a lions spoof
under these circumstances is almost
impossible, and the dust raised by the
herds is very disagreeable.
Besides villages, any well in the
neighborhood is good place to look
for spoor If a lion is about there
ought to be no difficulty in picking up
his spoor within day or two. I
Battling Ways of the Jungle, Folk
Rather curious condolences are
sometimes brought to light by spoor.
| Not very long after the date of the
| story just related. one of our party
went to a place where two lions had
been killing regularly, and sat up two
nights for them with donkey as bait
The lions must have left the district
for q day or two while he was there,
as there were no fresh tracks to be
found anywhere about. The day after
he came back to camp I happened ia
ride out in that direction. Soon after
we started We came on the spoor oil
two lions, which led US along a path
till We came to the shooting zereba
The night after he had left, the lions
had walked over the very spot where
his donkey had been tied up in the
middle of the path.
A little later. again, l happened to
be at place where he had camped
few days before. A lion roared near
my camp several times in the night
and next morning l heard he had
taken a sheep from village close by.
We picked up his spoor in river
bed near the camp, and after follow
ing 1t for some distance came to some
wells. The lion had drunk twice, and
between the drinks had laid down
under the fence of a shooting zereba,
which had been made to watch the
water. After drinking the second
time he bad gone away.
Now and then when tracking you
come across places where lions have
killed, and II it is on sand or bare
soil, you can tell everything that has
happened almost as well as IL you
had seen it. We were camped once
on the edge of river-bed and thich
covert ran right down to the back oi
the camp. One night there was Q
tremendous scufiing in these bushes.
SO in the morning I went out to see
what had been going on, and found
that two lions had been chasing q
warthog, which had Just saved ita
bacon by getting underground. Il
must have been a very near thing.
as the lions had ploughed great fur.
rows in the sand at the mouth Of the
hole, showing they had pulled up pret.
ty sharp. Warthogs generally 90 to
ground when pursued, and as there is
no second opening to the burrows, and
presumably no chamber at the end
where they can turn, they always 20
IN backwards. This has actually been
seen by sportsmen who have been