American Big-Game Hunting: The Book of the Boone and Crockett ClubBoone and Crockett Club
General
American Big-Game Hunting: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club
Boone and Crockett Club
Big game hunting -- United States
The next morning the rain kept us from making an early start, and we did
not leave camp until eight. Now and then a drizzle fell from the mist,
and the banks of clouds were still driving across the higher peaks, but
during the day the sun slowly got the better of them. Again we saw a
solitary goat, this time far below down the ridge we had chosen. Like
the sheep, these animals watch the valley. There is no use in attempting
to hunt them from there. Their eyes are watchful and keen, and the
chances are that if you are working up from below and see a goat on the
hill, he will have been looking at you for some time. Once he is
alarmed, ten minutes will be enough for him to put a good many hours of
climbing between himself and you. His favorite trick is to remain
stock-still, watching you till you pass out of his sight behind
something, and then he makes off so energetically that when you see him
next he will be on some totally new mountain. But his intelligence does
not seem to grasp more than the danger from below. While he is
steadfastly on the alert against this, it apparently does not occur to
him that anything can come down upon him. Consequently from above you
may get very near before you are noticed. The chief difficulty is the
noise of falling stones your descent is almost sure to make. The
character of these mountain-sides is such that even with the greatest
care in stepping we sent a shower rattling down from time to time. We
had a viciously bad climb. We went down through tilted funnels of crag,
avoiding jumping off places by crossing slides of brittle slate and
shale, hailing a dead tree as an oasis. And then we lost count, and
T---- came unexpectedly on the goat, which was up and away and was shot
by T---- before I could get a sight of him. I had been behind some
twenty yards, both of us supposing we had to go considerably further.
T---- was highly disgusted. "To think of me managing such a botch as
that," he said, "when you've come so far"; and he wanted me to tell the
people that I had shot the goat myself. He really cared more than I did.
This goat was also a billy, and larger than the first. We sat skinning
him where he had fallen at the edge of a grove of tamarack, and T----
conversed about the royal family of England. He remarked that he had
always rather liked "that chap Lorne."
I explained to him that "that chap Lorne" had made himself ridiculous
forever at the Queen's Jubilee. Then, as T---- did not know, I told him
how the marquis had insisted on riding in the procession upon a horse,
against which the Prince of Wales, aware of the tame extent of his
horsemanship, had warned him. In the middle of the pageant, the Queen in
her carriage, the crowned heads of Europe escorting her on horseback,
and the whole world looking on--at this picturesque moment, Lorne fell
off. I was not sure that T---- felt fully how inappropriate a time this
was for a marquis to tumble from his steed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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