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Rumesh and our client with the Sambhar deer and the leopard .
What a marvellous day ! We secured not one trophy , but two before sundown. One was a large Sambhar deer . The other was a massive leopard. Not only did we secure a leopard , but what was more impressive was that , even the leopard , after getting wounded , did not manage to trouble us much . Surely , fortune had smiled upon us that day. After cutting the leopard open , we discovered that only one of the eight LG pellets had penetrated the brain of the leopard. Two were found inside the cavity of his nose . The rest had flattened against the skull of the leopard.
The Winchester silver tip bullet had done devastating damage to his brain. The very first Winchester silver tip bullet had only ruptured a single lung.
I certainly liked the feel of that Astra 12 bore . It was a very comfortable shot-gun to use and the recoil of the gun ( which weighed upwards of seven pounds ) was in no way , unpleasant . My client would have a bigger in my life fifty years later. That client was Don Fernando Delgado. I never saw Fernando again after that Shikar . However , fifty years later , we would run in to each other again , in the strangest of circumstances.
In 2019 , his grandson , a member of these forums known as Hoss Delgado , would write a post which mentioned my former Shikar partner , the late Karim Chowdhury by name . It was through pure good fortune that l would find this forum on the internet one day when l was doing a search on the internet about Kynoch lethal ball cartridges ( to see if they were being manufactured anymore ) . For fifty years , l did not have any contact with the international hunting world anymore. But in 2019 , l am proud that l have become a member of African Hunting forums .
And that , dear readers concludes another account. My next article will be slightly different. If anyone has any questions about Shikar in India from 1950 to 1970 , then please let me know. I will compile a separate article to answer each and every curious reader's questions in a chronological manner. I hope that this account has proved enjoyable . Someday , l hope l see another Astra side by side shot-gun again , although l am curious as to why that barrel had bulged in the first place.