I think of earthly situations I would choose that for the location of my happy hunting-ground where life throbs and quickens in the keen air, and where, in the shelter of the black forest of antarctic beech-trees, one can hear the wind from the snows moaning and crying among the tree-tops, and dropping the leaves, painted with red and yellow, upon the soft mossy mid-forest carpet.
While on Mount Frias my attention was drawn away from the cattle by what I took to be an instance of albinism in the guanaco. There was an immense herd of five hundred or perhaps more in an open hollow, and among them I observed a very white specimen, but on looking at it through the glasses it proved to be piebald rather than truly white.
My next excursion was made on much lower ground in the direction of Lake Rica. We had observed some spots to which a herd returned night after night.[24] The success with which the herds can pick their way over bad ground such as this and through trees, and most of all across the giant trunks, decaying and rotten, many of which must have fallen years ago, is extraordinary. Had it not been for the openings broken by the passage of the cattle, we should have been unable to penetrate the denser parts of the woods without axes. In spite of his being such a heavy brute, a bull can always overtake a horse in these spongy swamps, or indeed in most cases over very bad ground.
In the winter, which was now only too quickly coming upon us, wild-cattle shooting becomes, as does the shooting of all game in Patagonia, much easier than it ever is during the rest of the year. The herds descend to the low ground, being driven downwards by degrees while the snows creep day by day lower on the mountain-sides. As they desert the heights the area in which one may expect to meet them naturally becomes smaller, and on the more level country they can be followed with less trouble. The hunting in this big forest was quite different to that on Punta Bandera, the sole method here being to find comparatively fresh tracks and follow them up, there being no possibility among that dense growth of spying animals from a distance.
One day I had entered an extremely wet and boggy strip of forest and came upon new tracks, which I followed in and out among the trees for some hours. At length they led me up another hill into another belt of forest. I remember that under the hill I took a "spell," and at that moment, although I could not see them, the cattle were within one hundred and fifty yards of me. Fortunately I was very quiet and did not light my pipe, but presently went on. Arrived at the top of the hill, I peered through the branches and saw a fine brindled bull just in the act of rising to his feet. One of the outlying cows had winded me and had given the alarm. My bull was off at a gallop, and there was nothing to do but to send the heavy Paradox bullet into the only part of him that was visible as he dashed away. The shot took effect, he staggered but the second barrel brought him down in good earnest. A third hit him in the centre of the forehead, which is a deadly shot indeed, but with a smallbore rifle one must be careful to place one's bullet clear of the shaggy curl. The first shot had, I discovered, gone forward and upward, touching the backbone; the second was a fair behind the shoulder shot. I write this to illustrate the amount of shooting that a wild bull will sometimes take.
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
There are few higher joys in a sportsman's life than the pipe which he smokes after a successful shot, but the skinning of the quarry that comes later is a very different matter. This is especially the case when the animal has dropped in such a spot that one cannot turn it over owing to its weight.