Antelope shooting is unattended with danger, and yet antelopes afford if anything better sport than any of the dangerous game-beasts found in Africa. Creatures such as rhinos, buffaloes, and elephants have not so many enemies as the antelopes, and can therefore afford to be far less watchful than these beasts, whose natural shyness and marvellously developed senses test the stalker’s skill to the very utmost. If, as it seems to me, sport should be measured not so much by the amount of danger incurred as by the degree of skill required, there is more sport to be had in outwitting the ever-watchful oryx or wildebeest or eland than in killing either a rhinoceros or buffalo--beasts peculiarly easy to stalk unless accompanied by birds, as already described. In antelope stalking, from the beginning to the end of the business the greatest care has to be exercised, lest an incautious movement, either of the stalker or the gun-bearer who crawls behind him, should alarm the watchful game; and the anxiety lest something of this kind should occur, coupled with the physical strain in crawling on the hands and knees or flat upon the stomach during a long stalk, intensifies the satisfaction when the hunter does succeed in outwitting them. At certain seasons of the year, when the grass has grown 18 ins. or 2 ft. high, stalking is comparatively easy even in the open plains, and requires then nothing but endurance on the stalker’s part to enable him to succeed. But stalking is a very different business when the grass has been burnt and there is no covert except a few skeleton bushes and small ant-heaps, or a few patches of grass which have escaped the fire. But perhaps the accompanying diagrams of three stalks which I made myself will give a better idea of the way to take advantage of very scanty covert than any written advice.