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Updated: May 23, 2025
We came to the conclusion that we should beat our way towards home, carefully driving every jungle in that direction. During the last drive I had distinctly heard the bark of a sambur deer about half a mile in my rear, which would be between me and the direction we were about to take.
About a week afterwards a young doe sambur, which was being pursued by jungle dogs, rushed into one of the labourer's huts and was secured. It was then resolved to keep the deer as a companion for the bison, and the two were kept together, though they were never shut up. They were first of all fed on milk, and then allowed to graze, and soon became quite inseparable companions.
It struck me that the sambur had got the wind of an enemy, otherwise she would not have rushed back in such sudden haste; she could not have scented me, as I was 10 or 12 feet above the ground, and the breeze was aslant . . . . Then, if a tiger were in the jungle, why should she dash back into the same covert ?
It is difficult to believe that big game in remote spots can perceive whether a man means to harm them or not, but it is remarkable that when on his way to the jungle alluded to, the photographer passed two sambur deer in the long grass, and at no great distance away, and saw them still lying there on his return.
The surface of the barren, all along the edge of the grass land, had given way beneath the weight of the sambur herds, and the front ranks were being engulfed with frantic snortings and awful groans, in what looked like a dense, blackish, glistening ooze.
As the beat was drawing to a close, I heard a sambur deer belling at the head of a ravine, about a few hundred yards from the termination of the jungle we were beating. As I thought I might get a shot at it, I went across the grassland in the direction of the sound, and up to within about ten yards of the edge of the jungle, the fringe of which at that point projected a little.
This was a wrong system of beating. I was second in the line of six guns, the Rajah Suchi Khan upon my left; we presently skirted the foot of a range of low forest-covered hills, and after a rush in the high reeds I observed a couple of sambur deer, including a stag, trotting up the hill through the open forest, all of which had been recently cleared by fire.
They had no dogs and were armed with crossbows, antiquated guns, and bows and arrows, but they showed us the skins of two sambur in proof of their ability to secure game. Like most of the other natives, with the exception of the Mosos on the Snow Mountain, these men had no definite plan in hunting. The first day I went out with them they indicated that we were to drive a hill not far from camp.
The sambur had been hit only once but the powerful Savage bullet had crashed through the shoulder into the lungs; it was quite sufficient to do the work even on such a huge animal and the deer had run less than one hundred yards from the place where it had been shot. It was a splendid male, carrying a magnificent pair of antlers which measured twenty-seven inches in length.
The first layer of material was the soft but thick buff leather of sambur deer. This entirely covered the head, and was laced beneath the throat; at the same time it was secured by a broad leather strap and buckle around the neck. A covering for about three feet from the base of the trunk descended from the face and was also secured by lacing.
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