Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

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African Game Trails, the delightful book that showcases TR’s prowess (not only as a hunter but as a man of letters), is a nearly day-by-day account of his progress through eastern Africa. In it he recounts numerous kills he made, including those with the Holland &Holland. Here is his recounting of the first kill made with his “Big Stick”:

A Wakamba man came running up to tell us that there was a rhinoceros on the hill-side three-quarters of a mile away…I immediately rode in the direction given…In five minutes we had reached the opposite hill-crest…. The huge beast was standing in entirely open country, although there were a few scattered trees of no great size at some little distance from him…. I cannot say that we stalked him, for the approach was too easy. The wind blew from him to us, and a rhino’s eyesight is dull. Thirty yards from where he stood was a bush…it shielded us from the vision of his small, pig-like eyes as we advanced towards it, stooping and in single file, I leading. The big beast stood like an uncouth statue, his hide black in the sunlight; he seemed what he was, a monster surviving from the world’s past, from the days when the beasts of the prime ran riot in their strength…. So little did he dream of our presence that when we were a hundred yards off he actually lay down.