BIG GAME HUNTING WITHOUT TEARS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10779, 30 May 1911, Page 2

BIG GAME HUNTING WITHOUT TEARS.

The epoch-making discovery of Bobo, the son of a swineherd—who, when lie burned down his father's house, found (as Charles Lamb relates m "The Essays of Elia") the unheard-ot delights of roast pork—pales before an invention chronicled in the Evening Standard. , It is a. new way to catch lions; and the secret is—fly-papers 1 The discoverer was a huntsman, but part of the credit, at least, is due to the Maharajah Scindia of Gwahor (salute of twenty-one guns). Things were getting tame m the jungle at Gwalior. All the lions had been exterminated, and the natives no longer had the pleasurable excitement of dodging man-eaters on their way home from work. So the Maharajah, ever anxious for the welfare of-his-sub-jects, determined to bring the old-time Arcadian joys back again. He imported eight line lively young lions from Somaliland. They were put into a compound to recover from the effects of the voyage, and fed on meat. But the lions had too easy a time m their compound. They were no longer obliged to pounce on their next meal and lay v it out with a stroke of the paw. It came over the compound wall, clean and dressed. All they had to do was to lie down comfortably and chew it. The lions got out oFtraiuing. Also, they saw a good deal of men, and — familiarity breeds contempt—came to the conclusion that they were not so fearsome as they had believed m tbr old. Somaliland days. Accordingly, when four lions were lc loose into the jungle as an experiment, they came to the conclusion that hunting* natives was a far better game than chasing other beasts, who might have teeth in fairly good order. ' At the luncheon hour they trotted onto the nearest village—killed twentynine natives —the others did not care to wait —and proceeded to make themselves comfortable in two commodious mud-huts. Naturally the Maharajah Scindia was aniioved. He was in Calcutta when the news came, and he telegraphed to his head shikari to take the lions back to their compound at once. This was fairly easy work for the Maharajah Scindia, who, as has been stated, was in Qalcutta. But the task did not look' quite so easy to the head shikari. Therefore he sat down and thought and watched the lions —from a distance, which lent a degree of enchantment -to the view.

The great idea of his lifetime struck Lim -' when lie saw them contentedly curling tLemselves up in their mud huts for the spell of rest and meditation that is so comfortable after a, heavy meal, and when they were fast asleep he and his men crept up and clapped two stout,barricades across the doors of the huts.

Then there began such a search for fly-papers as Las not been known since the plague in Egypt. Hundreds of them—the stickiest which India could produced—poured into Gwalior, and at the end of a fortnight the head shikari spread .them out in front of the two mud huts —a nice white parade ground of thousands of fly-papers. An under-shikari—with a very long string—-.pulled away the barriers and made himself as scarce as a trained sprinter could. Then the lions came out. They wore a look expressive of the feeling, "It is time wo had a snack."

They put their paws down and raised them up. TJp, came a fly-paper on each paw. Each tried rubbing the fly-papers off with their noses.

Each got several square feet of flypaper mixed up with his whiskers and mane. -

Filially, with many angry mutterings, they lay down and rolled _ in the flypapers. In about five minutes they looked as if they had been going to a -fancy dress hall costumed as Egyptian lion mummies. They could not walk, they could not see, they could not smell, they could not oven roar for flypapers: ■'■' . This was the head shikari's cue. He and his men rushed forward and lassoed the beasts, bound them, and took them hack to- the compound, where, from a safe distance, the process of removing the decora tions_ was proceeded with-by means of hose-pipes. The Maharajah Scindia of Gwalior was. needless to say, delighted. The natives—those of them who had not lost any relations that matteredf-were also pleased. The head shikari.-.;.the inventor- of -this newest method of capture, was quite proud/ But there comes from the compound, it is said, a- noisa; which signifies that the lions consider themselves worsted. They liked, their, brief outing, and they liked the meal of twenty-nine natives, but they did not like the fly-paper tablecloth.