THE big, thick flakes of snow drifted quietly down, covering my jaeger (guide) and I as we stood tense and immobile behind the great pines of the Austrian alps. It was early morning and the forest lay silent, not the slightest breath of air to ruffle the snow-laden branches or betray our presence.
We stopped briefly on the top of a pine-covered ridge that fell away steeply for a thousand metres. The snow that had been falling lightly since early morning was getting heavier, and the shadowed sides of the high Austrian alps made it impossible to see well enough to shoot. My guide hurried me along to reach one of the log cabins that dotted the region to provide hunters with shelter when the weather gets too bad and they’d have to stay overnight on the mountain.
We sat on one of the bunks to eat lunch and wait out the snow storm. Our luck was in. The storm ended after about an hour and a half and the sun came out. We emerged from the hut into bright sunlight and glassed the opposite ridge, which had offered almost perfect concealment to the chamois we were hunting. Earlier, their deep black-brown winter pelage had blended into the black-green areas of rocky crags and pines, making them hard for us to see. Now the sun seemed to have brought them all out, for the slope looked alive with the nimble , as
