As we have nothing bigger than a red deer in a state of nature, all the big game has to be looked for abroad. There is really no country which can easily and quickly be reached where big game is to be shot. Somaliland and British East Africa probably afford the best chances for African species, Wyoming the best for wapiti in the United States. India and the adjoining countries is now, as it always has been, the greatest big-game shooting arena in the world. It might have been challenged by South Africa in the days of Gordon Cumming, but that district was soon shot out by the Boers. However, South Africa at that time will for ever remain a lesson to game preservers. It swarmed with an enormous variety of big game, against the increase of which the unmolested lions and other beasts of prey were powerless for harm. They had no effect whatever in restricting the increase of buffalo, antelopes, and zebra. Yet the fashion inclines to believe that a few peregrine falcons would seriously damage the stocks of grouse in Scotland and Yorkshire. Probably, if the truth were known, there were as many grouse in Scotland before anyone ever thought of killing vermin as there are now. It is very often forgotten that vermin eat vermin as well as other creatures.

The question of rifles for big game would occupy more space than the whole of these pages to treat of it adequately. Briefly, it may be said that for each animal there is a best rifle, and for hardly any two species is the same weapon the best. A compromise is effected by using different bullets for the same rifle, and the principle on which to choose weapons is to go for a thoroughly effective weapon for the most important species to be hunted, and by altering the bullet make it do moderately well for other less important beasts. In hunting for elephants and buffalo, it is necessary to be able to stop a charging beast with a temple hit. Both the elephant and the buffalo of Africa are particularly hard to bring down with a forehead shot, or they were before the days of high velocity rifles of from .500 to .600 bore. Those of .303 bore and less are not to be trusted unless they smash the brain, and themselves smash up in the brain, and not before or after piercing it. A No. 6 shot pellet is about one five-thousandth the weight of a partridge, and has no immediate effect on the bird unless it enters a vital spot. The 215 grain bullet of the .303 weighs about one two hundred-thousandth the weight of an elephant, and yet there have been those who advise the use of such bullets for these beasts. It appears to the author, who has never shot an elephant, but has listened to all views of those who have shot them, that the small-bore men trust a great deal to the natural timidity of the big beasts, and believe that they will not charge even if they are wounded. Of course elephants differ in temper at various times more than most animals, and a charging African elephant at close quarters is possible, to say the least.

The big bore solid bullet has been displaced to a great extent by high velocity bullets of less weight and diameter but more length. These bullets are trusted to pierce farther than the old 4 bore bullet, and to give as severe a shock. The object is to do as much damage within the head as possible, and not merely to pierce it. Expanding bullets are not to be trusted for this business, because the bone of an elephant’s head from the frontal shot makes all bullets tend to flatten up too much, unless they are very hard. In other words, for these hard-skinned, hard-boned animals the biggest bullet makes the biggest hole, and any expanding of the bullet tends to break it up and prevent an entry into the vitals. For soft-skinned animals it is very different. An expanding bullet is in every way preferable to a hard bullet, whether from big or small bore. The latter has a tendency to go through the animal and expend its energy on the other side, and the former tends to flatten out and smash up large portions of the internal organs and to remain in them.

But every prospective big-game hunter will be wise to go to some of those who make it a business and a specialty to fit out expeditions, and there he will not only hear the latest views of those who have returned from expeditions, but see the very latest designs for increasing the effectiveness of rifles. If the author were going for big game, and especially dangerous game, the first persons he would consult are Mr. Henry Holland (whose opportunities of hearing the latest views of sportsmen returned from expeditions are unique), Messrs. Rigby, Purdey, Westley Richards, and Gibbs of Bristol, for the last new thing, because rifles cannot be said to have reached finality, and are being evolved and improved every day, as is also the powder to be used with them.

There is at present considerable difference of opinion as to whether .450 high velocity rifles are equal to the task of dropping an African elephant by a frontal shot.

Mr. Naumann believes that they are equal to anything, and he has had experience; but then he may have been lucky in not having his bullet deflected from the brain by the mass of bone it has to break through. A great deal would certainly depend upon the angle at which the bullet first struck the bone. Steel cores to the bullets prevent expanding or breaking up of that part of the bullet, but not of the leaden covering, and this expansion necessarily would greatly retard the speed and distance of penetration.