Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1884 — Elk-Hunting. [ARTICLE]

Elk-Hunting.

Ceylon hds long been celebrated as the best place in all Southern Asia for good all-round sport, but the descriptions most usually given of sporting tours in the island are rather calculated to inspire a belief that the rifle and shot-gun are the chief instruments used in the pursuit of game. A correspondent of the Madras Times puts a different complexion on the matter in his account of elk-hunting, to which he refers as being admittedly the best sport known in Ceylon. The hills on which this fine quarry is pursued stand five thousand feet to seven thousand feet above the sea level, and the district is free from those rftks Of fever and dysentery which are to be feared on the low-lying plains. It is conducted with the aid of a rather heterogeneous pack that would sadly scandalize any of the great foresters of the Scotch Highlands, but which, nevertheless, contrives to do its business in a masterly style. The first of its component parts includes four or five couple of imported foxhounds. These are the animals upon which dependence is placed for the scent and for “music.” Then come three couple of hounds of mixed breed, faster in pace than the true-bred foxhound, and capable, when the scent iA good, of bustling the quarry along at a-great speed. Lastly there are three or four couple of “seizers,” including a thoroughbred deerhound or two from Scotland, a strong greyhound with thick limbs, perhaps a kangaroohound from Australia, and crosses of these Jjreeils with mastiff and -bloodhound. After an elk has been found the run is very fast, and it is generally impossible to keep near up with the hounds. Occasionally one of these is snapped up by a leopard lurking on the hillside. When at last the elk comes to bay, it is generally in a strong-flowing watercourse, and the seizers then rush in, aided by the hunting men, whose only weapon appears to be the knife, with which the quarry is stabbed as he faces his-four-legged foes. The elk weighs sometimes as much as twenty-eight stone clear, and is a pleasant reward for a run which lasts usually two hours or more.— The Giobe.