In three days , we had set off to the Agargao stream which ran into the Buri Ganga river . It was a beautiful water body where teal ducks and geese could always be found. With us , was Rishi , our loyal Gurkha coolie who carried a large rucksack full of shot-gun cartridges . Karim and l carried our own Ishapore 12 bore shot-guns slung on our back , while holding our client’s William Wellington Greener shot-guns in our hands. We offered our services to the clients as their loading servants . However , they politely declined , saying that they were accustomed to loading their own arms and they just wanted us to enjoy “ the show “ . This , Karim and l looked forward to. I was most curious to see how these removable choke shot-guns would work. To put it in a straight forward manner , the results were shocking in a most positive way. The brothers were excellent bird shooters and in half an hour , no less than 24 Indian teals had fallen to their shot-guns with number 1 cartridges. However , the brothers were only getting started. They changed the choke in their shot-guns and loaded them with BB cartridges. They were going to go after geese.
If only my students today in Bangladesh Shooting Federation would see what those 70 millimeter cartridges can do. The brothers were blowing those geese out of the sky with clear effortlessness. No less than eleven geese had been blown out of the sky and fallen into Agargao. However , the fun was over and now . Karim , Rishi and l had the arduous task of going into the water to collect our client’s fallen geese . This was a fairly simple task , but there were some risks in this work. You see , as l had previously mentioned , Agargao stream runs into the Buri Ganga river and occasionally a gui shaap would get into the stream. These loathsome creatures can either be described as an extremely large lizard or a fairly small crocodile and while not as dangerous as their larger cousins , they were known to cause extreme infections with their bites . I removed my satchel from my side and removed my wallet , compass and Imperial Schrade pocket knife from the pockets of my pleated cotton poplin trousers. I left my wallet and compass inside the satchel and put the pocket knife in the pocket of my cotton poplin half sleeve shirt. I also took four AAA cartridges from the satchel and put them into my shirt pocket , because the cartridges were made from paper and could not be allowed to get wet. With two more AAA cartridges loaded into my shot-gun , l followed Karim and Rishi , waist deep into the water as they collected the fallen teals and geese . For killing gui shaap , AAA cartridges were the best size and those 44 pellets would make short work of them ( the subject of a future story ) . However , today was uneventful and we all gathered the downed birds and got them back to our clients.
At night , when l returned home to change my wet clothes , l was terrified to see that three ugly , filthy Jhog ( leeches ) were clinging to my legs. The sight is fairly nauseating , but baba ( father ) was easily able to remove them from me by using tobacco juice. There were few men like father . He was my role model and he was always there for me , even in adulthood. After graduating college with a degree in Economics , when l had told my father that l did not want to work in a boring bank by wearing a neck tie , but rather wanted to be a professional Shikari , he did not refuse even once. While my mother initially had some reservations , due to the risks involved ( no mother would want her son to be eaten alive by a Royal Bengal tiger) , it was my father who convinced her to let me live my life on my own terms. But enough reminiscing. Let us proceed to the leopard Shikar.