My brother was lately big game shooting in East Africa and had very good sport with the camera, living in the wilds, and tracking and stalking and finally snap-shotting elephants, rhinoceros and other big animals.
One day he had crept up near to an elephant and had set up his camera and had got his head under the cloth focussing it, when his native cried, "Look out, sir!" and started to run. My brother poked his head out from under the cloth and found a great elephant coming for him, only a few yards off. So he just pressed the button, and then lit out and ran too. The elephant rushed up to the camera, stopped, and seemed to recognise that it was only a camera after all and smiling at his own irritability lurched off into the jungle again.
Mr. Schillings' book "With Flashlight and Rifle in Africa" is a most interesting collection of instantaneous photos of wild animals, most of them taken by night by means of flashlight, which was set going by the animals themselves striking against wires which he had put out for the purpose. He got splendid photos of lions, hyænas, deer of all sorts, zebras, and other beasts. There is one of a lion actually in the air springing on to a buck.
The boar is certainly the bravest of all animals; he is the real "King of Jungle," and the other animals all know it. If you watch a drinking pool in the jungle at night, you will see the animals that come to it all creeping down nervously, looking out in every direction for hidden enemies. But when the boar comes he simply swaggers down with his great head and its shiny tusks swinging from side to side: he cares for nobody, but everybody cares for him; even a tiger drinking at the pool will give a snarl and sneak quickly out of sight.
I have often lain out on moonlight nights to watch the animals, especially wild boars, in the jungle; and it is just as good fun as merely going after them to kill them.
And I have caught and kept a young wild boar and a young panther, and found them most amusing and interesting little beggars. The boar used to live in my garden, and he never became really tame though I got him as a baby.
He would come to me when I called him—but very warily; he would never come to a stranger, and a native he would "go for" and try and cut him with his little tusks.
He used to practise the use of his tusks while turning at full speed round on old tree stump in the garden, and he would gallop at this and round it in a figure-of-eight continuously for over five minutes at a time, and then fling himself down on his side, panting with his exertions.
My panther was also a beautiful and delightfully playful beast, and used to go about with me like a dog; but he was very uncertain with his dealings with strangers.
I think one gets to know more about animals and to understand them better by keeping them as pets at first, and then going and watching them in their wild natural life.