There is a certain delicacy in this branch of sport that requires such exceptional temperament and nerve that the writer can hardly feel himself justified in recommending its practice, at all events to a novice in the art.

The remaining varieties of the bear family found in India are somewhat more rare than those already described. They are the Burmese bear (Ursus malayanus), the Beluchistan bear (Ursus gedrosianus), called by the natives ‘mamh,’ and a quaint looking piebald bear (Ailuropus melanoleucos), discovered in Eastern Thibet by the Abbé David. U. malayanus resembles the Himalayan black bear but is smaller, the white horse-shoe mark upon the chest of the Himalayan bear being prolonged in a white stripe down the belly of U. malayanus. U. gedrosianus also resembles, but is smaller than, the Himalayan, but in colour he is brownish instead of black.

Measurements

III. THE LION (Felis leo)

Native names: ‘Sher-babbar,’ ‘Singh,’ ‘Unthia Bagh’

The Indian lion differs little in appearance from the African variety, the males of both being furnished with manes, though a black mane is unknown in India.

Lions are almost extinct in India, though there are still a few left in Guzerat and Kutch, and natives occasionally bring in reports of them in Central India; but the writer has not heard of one being shot in the last district for many years. The lion is a less active animal than the tiger, and apparently not so powerful; in every case of a fight between the two occurring in a menagerie the tiger has invariably killed his opponent.

Essentially a wanderer, the Indian lion avoids heavy forest as a rule, preferring sandy hills covered with thin scrub and grass, and may be tracked and shot on foot in a way that it would be foolhardiness to attempt with a tiger. There is a capital account of the sport given in the ‘Oriental Sporting Magazine,’ July 1876. The narrator came across four males, shot one that charged him brilliantly, wounded and lost a second, and missed a third.

Native shikaris declare that lions always put up for the day under the same bushes, and that consequently if there is a lion about he is generally easily found. It would be curious if African sportsmen could corroborate this story.

Unlike tigers, there is a large preponderance of males to females among full-grown lions, which is supposed to be attributable to the mortality among female cubs in teething.

Measurements

IV. TIGER (Felis tigris)

The tiger is found throughout India wherever there is suitable jungle, and extends through Burmah to the Malayan Archipelago and China, but is not found in Ceylon. Sterndale says: ‘It has been found as far north as the island of Saghalien, which is bisected by N. L. 50°. This is its extreme north-eastern limit, the Caspian Sea[17] being its westerly boundary. From parallel 50° downwards it is found in many parts of the highlands of Central Asia.’

The biggest tigers the writer has heard of are one of 13 ft. that Sir Charles Reid quotes as having been shot by the late Sir Andrew Waugh,[18] and one of 12 ft. 4 ins. quoted in a letter by Mr. F. A. Shillingford to ‘The Asian’ as having been shot by Mr. C. A. Shillingford of Munshye in 1849; and Williamson, writing about the year 1805 of a tiger killed by Mr. Paul, the superintendent of the Elephant Establishment at Daudpore, says: ‘The tiger proved to be the largest ever killed on the Cossim Bazar island. The circumference of the joint at his wrist was 26 ins.; he was 13 ft. and a few inches from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, and in a right line, taken as he lay, from the sole of his forepaw to the tip of his withers, between the shoulders, gave very nearly 4 ft. for his height.’ As the old gentleman afterwards states that ‘nine in ten do not measure 10 ft.,’ it seems only fair to conclude that the above extraordinary measurements were honestly taken of the beast as he lay before being skinned.

Captain Forsyth’s division of tigers into three classes has been generally accepted by sportsmen as a correct definition of their habits. They are, as Sanderson writes: ‘Those which habitually prey upon cattle; those which live upon game alone; and the few dreaded individuals of their race that frequently prey upon human beings.’ None of these classes absolutely restrict themselves to one diet. The cattle-lifter will kill game occasionally, the game-killer does not despise a juicy young buffalo, nor does a man-eater live entirely on human flesh; but in broad terms the game-killer, who is in reality one of the villagers’ best friends in that he preys upon the wild pigs and deer that ravage his crops, is an active wandering beast which is proportionately hard to bring to bag, being generally met with by chance.

The cattle-lifter is generally a stay-at-home old gentleman, averse to travel, who takes two or three villages under his protection, and lives, as far as they will allow him, on good terms with the people, simply taking a cow, or a donkey, as his droit du seigneur every four or five days. Occasionally he may contract the wasteful habit of knocking over two or three animals at a time out of a herd; but this, as Sanderson points out, is the result of continual ill-judged interference on the part of the cowherds. Buffaloes in a herd he is too wary to meddle with, as he knows they will not hesitate to charge him, and the small boys who pretend to look after them traverse the tiger’s domain in perfect safety if mounted on the broad back of one of their charges. In reality the buffaloes are sent out to look after the children, and there is no better nursemaid than an old cow buffalo, who combines perambulator and guardian in one.

Seldom do these tigers attack a man wantonly, and though when they increase in numbers their system of taxation becomes oppressive, the damage they do is often overrated. Forsyth gives the alarming figures of 325l. to 650l. worth per annum for each tiger, but Sanderson more justly cuts the estimate down to about 70l. He adds, ‘The tiger might in turn justly present his little account for services rendered in keeping down wild animals which destroy crops,’ and gives many excellent arguments in favour of tigers.

The gravest charge against cattle-lifters is that they occasionally turn man-eaters; the game-killer, according to Sanderson, never does. As regards man-eaters, the crafty she-devils—they are generally tigresses—often bring up their cubs to the same way of living. They roam over a considerable tract of country, rarely staying long enough in one place to afford a chance of beating them out like ordinary tigers, killing perhaps on successive days at villages ten miles apart, rendering the whole district helpless from terror. These are the hardest brutes of all to destroy. The sportsman can get no help from the natives, he can gain no knowledge of the brute’s conduct to assist him in the pursuit; ceaseless hunting at all hours and in every method available, hoping that luck may favour him at last, is his only chance of ridding the country of its scourge. Even if he succeeds in killing every tiger he finds in the district, he can never be sure of having destroyed the real culprit; he may have driven it away only to return after his departure. There may be more than one man-eater at work, or it may very possibly be a panther that is doing the real damage, which he might refrain from firing at, like Sterndale, for fear of spoiling his chance of a tiger. Unless the beast is caught red-handed, time alone will prove its destruction.

Well may the unhappy villagers attribute to it supernatural powers, declaring that the spirits of its victims ride on its forehead, and that even, as Forsyth relates, a corpse raises its arm to warn the tiger of the hidden shikari. Well may they magnify its size, declaring it has a white moon on its forehead, and its belly sweeps the ground. Till all killing has ceased for some months no man dare pursue his usual avocation or travel to the nearest village alone.

Tiger shooting may be broadly divided into three classes, viz.: shooting from elephants; driving with beaters to guns posted in trees; sitting up over kills. The first method is that usually employed in the high grass jungles of the Terai. The ordinary plan, if a tiger is marked down into a particular patch of grass, is to send one or two guns ahead to prevent the creature slinking out, and these guns should, if possible, be posted in trees, as the restless movements of the elephants will almost invariably head the tiger back, and the elephant is better employed with the line. Of course, if it is considered desirable to hem the tiger in till the line gets up, elephants should be posted ahead, but a man in a tree will as a rule get a better chance than if he were on an elephant. The forward guns being posted, the line beats up to them with guns on the flanks and the pad elephants in the centre; if there are more than two guns with the line, the remainder distribute themselves along it. The elephants should not, if possible, be more than twelve yards apart at starting, and if a tiger is wounded should be closed up till they almost touch one another, as the elephants and their mahouts will gain confidence, and the formidable aspect of the close line will prevent most tigers from attempting to charge home; short half-hearted attacks he may make, but the line will stand firm, for the mahouts are under too close supervision and have hardly room to turn their elephants round; the guns on the flanks are also close enough to protect the whole line.

To hear of tigers making good their charges and springing on to elephants’ heads sounds very nice and exciting, but nothing is more demoralising to the elephants, especially at the beginning of a trip, and every precaution should be taken to save your elephants from getting mauled; for, if injured, many of them never recover confidence, and become absolutely worthless for tiger shooting afterwards. Forsyth mentions an instance of an elephant dying of wounds received from a tiger. It is all very fine for the sportsman to take a charge, standing in a howdah perched on the back of a large tusker; but it is a very different thing for the opium-sodden nerves of an unarmed mahout riding a small timid pad elephant. Close order is the only safe formation for pad elephants, and should invariably be adopted. If the tiger is marked into a particular bush, the line may be halted, and the howdah elephants alone be taken up to engage him; but until the mahouts have thorough confidence in the guns a fight is better avoided.

It is a good plan to reward all the mahouts engaged after a successful hunt, and the douceur should be bestowed on the spot, or at latest the same evening on return to camp; any mahout misconducting himself of course forfeits the reward. A wounded tiger rarely goes far before lying up, and there is really less chance of a close line missing him than an extended one, as with the latter he may crouch and be passed over.

Ringing tigers with a large number of elephants, as practised in the Nepal Terai, is merely a variation of the ordinary method, and is thus described by Sir E. Durand:

The second way of hunting tigers by beating them out is that generally practised in Central India, Bombay, and Madras; here, though a few elephants may be employed as they are in Central India, their chief use is for following up wounded animals, and not for obtaining the first shots. The circumstances of tiger hunting in these two districts are entirely different.

Instead of the seas of high grass in which tigers are found in the Terai, the usual beats in Central and Southern India are densely wooded ravines, often with precipitous banks. The modes of hunting vary slightly in different districts, but the method perfected by the Central India Horse parties is the one generally adopted. It is as follows: a line of country for the party is decided upon, and the camp is preceded by three or four pairs of shikaris, who practically form a line of scouts ten or twelve miles ahead of the camp. These men visit all the known tiger nullahs, and on obtaining information from the villagers tie up young male buffaloes (the cheapest animals that can be bought, as they are of little use except to train as pack animals, and even then are not as good as bullocks for the purpose) as baits in all the likely spots within reach of the village; the baits are visited next morning, and reports of kills sent in to headquarters. The head of the party, after receiving the reports from all the country round, is then able to decide on his plan of operations, selects one or more beats for the day’s work, and orders the remainder of the shikaris to keep on tying up. The shikaris of the beat selected assemble the beaters, sixty or a hundred men being engaged according to the ground. Operations begin about noon, when the tigers are pretty sure to be lying up. The guns, usually four in number, as there is rarely room for more, draw lots for their trees (this is generally done for each beat), and take up their positions as quietly as possible. Each gun is accompanied by his gun-carrier, and is provided with a leather bottle of water and a stout leather cushion two feet square, with eyelet-holes at the corners and ropes to sling it.

The cushion is lashed up in the tree so that the sportsman’s left shoulder is towards the beat; loops of rope are arranged as stirrups to prevent an attack of pins and needles in his legs, and another loop should be passed loosely round his body and fastened to the trunk or to a strong bough, so that he can lean well over without fear of falling; the small boughs that would interfere with his shooting are cut away as noiselessly as possible with a green-wood saw. The gun-carrier is sent to another tree, about a hundred yards in rear; the sportsman takes a good pull at his water-bottle and sits, slowly frying in the sun, till the beat strikes up. He will now appreciate the precautions he has taken of wearing a good big hat, a thick cummerbund round his waist, and a cotton quilt down his back. In the meantime men have been posted as stops along the flanks of the beat and in places where the tiger may break out; these are of course either up trees or on high rocks, and their orders are merely to clap their hands if the tiger tries to break out. The slightest noise ahead will suffice to turn a tiger. As a rule the guns are not allowed to smoke, and this, not so much from fear lest he should wind the tobacco, as because, if he hears a match struck, he will perhaps crouch till the beaters come up to him, and then dash back through them. The beaters form line under the direction of all the available shikaris (the four or five elephants that may be out being distributed along the line), and advance towards the guns making all the noise they can with tomtoms, horns, rattles and their own sweet voices. If matters go smoothly the tiger will walk with long swinging strides close past one of the guns, and be either dropped on the spot, the point of the shoulder being the place to aim at, or will dash on with a loud ‘wough’ towards the gun-carrier in rear, who should be able to mark him down. He may, however, particularly if he has been driven before, creep on just ahead of the beaters, hide before he reaches the guns till the last moment, and then come out at a gallop. If he has to cross an open glade, he will almost invariably bound across, pulling up to a walk in the cover of the far side.

Probably the first things that the sportsman will see will be a herd of chital trooping quietly past his tree, or he will hear an irresolute tread among the dry leaves coming closer and closer, till the head of a peacock peers round a bush, instantly detects him—for no man ever yet hid from a peacock—and the bird scurries off with a squawk. A bear may come shambling by, or a panther walk right under his tree, but the first shot must be reserved for the tiger; when that is fired anyone may take his choice. The sure signs of either a tiger or panther being in the beat are when the monkeys begin swearing or peafowl get up with a peculiar ‘kok-kok.’ Monkeys running along the ground is a bad sign for sport, but not an absolute guide.

As soon as the first shot is fired the beaters are stopped, and either sent up trees or collected in masses on rocks or high ground. The elephants come up to the guns, and the head of the party details one or two guns to get round the wounded tiger and force him back up to the other guns, who remain in their trees—this is when the fun begins. The tiger’s every move will be probably observed by some of the men in the trees; he can hardly get away, and has every inducement to show fight.

If a tiger is killing near camp, there is a good deal of sport to be had by going round the baits in the morning oneself. If one of them is taken, a wide circuit should be made round the cover with a good tracker to ensure the tiger being at home. An inner circuit may be then made to determine his approximate position, and to do this well without disturbing him requires great care and skill; but the knowledge so gained is invaluable in beating for him afterwards.

In Bombay and Madras elephants are not generally used, and, instead of the square cushions to sit on, light bamboo ladders are carried and set up against trees or clumps of bamboo where cushions could not be slung, the top of the ladder being lashed to the tree or bush, and the sportsman seating himself on one of the rungs. Many sportsmen praise these highly, as being easier to erect and giving more choice of position; but, on the other hand, they entail an extra man to accompany the sportsman to his tree, and are more conspicuous. Accidents of course happen equally to both; men have been taken out of their cushions, and ladders have been upset. The district in which the sportsman has received his training usually decides his choice of gear. The want of elephants, however, in Bombay and Madras obliges the guns to follow up their wounded tigers on foot. The orthodox procedure is to form a picked force of beaters and shikaris into a solid triangle, the apex and flanks being formed by the guns. Every man should provide himself before starting with all the stones he can carry; the wounded tiger is generally given a considerable time to stiffen—two hours if they can be spared may well be spent thus. The trail is then followed at a slow pace, every bush being well stoned before it is approached, far more passed; at every tree the party is halted and a man sent up to look, and if a tracker is necessary, he moves close under the guns of the two sportsmen who form the apex. If the natives can only be persuaded to keep together, with cool guns and fairly open ground like the bamboo jungles of Southern India, there is no excessive danger; but the writer’s experience of the work was that for the first hundred yards the men kept together pretty well, but would go too fast; then they became careless, and as the danger really increased began to straggle. Being single-handed, though there was another party working parallel to him at about fifty yards distance, the writer was unable to keep his men in order, and by the time the tiger was found, luckily dead, by the other party, his followers were all over the place.

The subjoined account by Captain Lamb gives a good idea of what may be expected to take place without trained men:

The worst part of getting a native hurt is, that though it almost invariably happens through his own wilful disobedience of orders, the news spreads like wildfire through the district, and makes it very hard for the party to procure beaters. Rustum Ali, the villagers argue, was a brave man; he didn’t fear tigers, we have seen him throw stones at tigers, and he went out with those sahibs and got killed—the said Rustum having met with his death by getting out of his tree and going to get a drink of water while the guns were following up a wounded tiger, or some equally nonsensical breach of orders. Accidents of course do happen, even when all precautions are observed, but the majority of them are occasioned by the natives’ own carelessness.

Natives are often very unwilling to give information about tigers, partly from fear of being turned out to beat, and partly from the universal idea that the tiger, if he escapes, or his mate, if he is killed, will take vengeance on them. They often also consider it unlucky to mention his name, and talk of him as a jackal, precisely as in Sweden a bear is never talked of as such.

Sitting up for a tiger over a kill or bait is the least amusing and least certain of any method of hunting him, but often in large forests which cannot be beaten, or where the sportsman is single-handed and without elephants, it is the only way to get a shot.

The erection of the platform, or ‘machan,’ too frequently disturbs the tiger and drives him away. If the sportsman can procure baits, a good plan is to select a good place for a machan before tying up; tether lightly so that the tiger may drag the carcase away. Make the machan when the first bait is taken, tie up again till he kills again in the same place, and about three days after the second kill tie up again and sit over it. The best machan is a cot with low rails round the edge, fitted with ropes to sling it in a tree. The sportsman’s blankets and pillows can be spread in it, he himself can lie comfortably at full length watching the bait or kill, there are no sticks to crackle and make a noise; and when the moon goes down or he has had his shot, he can turn round and sleep as one only sleeps in the open. The sportsman should be at his post by four o’clock in the afternoon, as if the tiger means coming he will probably come early. Sanderson says he enjoys the sport; it’s pleasant enough if the tiger comes soon, but if he puts off his visit to 3 a.m., as happened to the writer, who was at that hour peacefully sleeping and never woke up, the entertainment is mediocre. Allowing a native to perch on the same tree is ruination to sport: cough he must; besides, the jungle man is unsavoury, and the evening air seems to make him smell worse than usual. If a kill is found in the jungle and the sportsman decides to sit over it, General Macintyre’s plan is worth trying; i.e. take some men up to the tree, let them talk loudly, or shout while the machan is being prepared, and then retire talking or shouting, according as the tiger is supposed to be bold or timid. He will very likely come at once, as their voices die away, not to eat, but to see if they have removed the kill. This often succeeds where professional skinners are in the habit of saving what they can of the hides of kills. Lieutenant-Colonel Fife Cookson, in his book ‘Tiger Shooting in the Doon and Ulwar,’ gives a curious account of a tiger stalking a bait:

Williamson describes another variety of sitting up, the sportsman being enclosed in a strong bamboo cage and playing the part of bait himself, being armed with two or three spears:

The writer heard of an instance of this being tried by a European, with a cage made of iron. Unfortunately the bars were set too far apart, and the tiger got his paw through and slew that adventurer.

Williamson also narrates the old story—possibly it was taken from his book—of tigers being caught by covering leaves with birdlime; it was told him by a Mahommedan gentleman of the Court of the Nabob Vizier of Oude. Sanderson gives a capital account of tiger-netting, as practised in Mysore, and describes the various traps occasionally used by natives. The late Maharajah of Patiala, about 1872, had a tiger that had been trapped in the hills turned out on the plain outside the town, he and his guests being mounted on elephants. Of course the whole of the populace assembled to see the fun, forming a large circle round the plain. The tiger, on being released where there was not sufficient cover for a quail, selected as his point of exit the buggy of a native gentleman, who sought refuge between the wheels; his groom, being unfortunately in the way as the tiger cleared the conveyance, was knocked over, but luckily more frightened than hurt. The tiger then took refuge in a garden, pursued by the elephants. On their arrival at the spot the gardener was found placidly pursuing his avocation, and, on being asked if he had seen the beast, imprudently pointed him out. The tiger at once sprang on the man, upset him and bolted; but as he was now heading for the English doctor’s stables he was considered to be becoming dangerous, and was cleverly shot by the Maharajah.

Sanderson, in describing the way a tiger attacks and kills his prey, says that in attacking a bison his object is to get the latter to charge, and then, avoiding the rush, to follow on the instant and endeavour to emasculate the bull by striking him behind. In killing cattle he writes:

Sir S. Baker writes that while lions and cheetahs (Felis jubata) use their paws in striking down their prey at the moment of capture, tigers apparently never do. Sanderson points out that Forsyth, as also Captain Baldwin in his ‘Large and Small Game of Bengal,’ agree that tigers seize by the back of the neck, and then give the dislocating wrench. The writer noticed the fang-marks on a good many kills in Central India, and certainly they appeared from their position rather low down, apparently too much so to have been inflicted by a bite on the back of the neck—a tiger’s jaw is not very long—to entirely support Sanderson’s description. As regards a tiger’s powers of springing, Sanderson says he has often measured the bounds of tigers that have pursued deer, and found 15 ft. to be about the distance they usually spring.

The writer particularly noticed the way a tiger sprang at an elephant: he did not bound from a distance at all, but simply galloped up till he was just under the elephant’s ear-hole, and then sprang vertically upwards, placing his forepaws on the elephant’s head, and there he hung till the elephant shook him off. A tiger can with ease get his forepaws on to an object twelve to fifteen feet from the ground; but he seems clumsy in getting sufficient hold with his hind paws to enable him to proceed after his first spring. Sanderson says that tigresses do not breed at any fixed season. Sterndale states that they go with young for about fifteen weeks, and produce from two to five at a birth. Sanderson gives four as an unusually large number; the writer saw six taken out of a tigress, but probably these would not all have been born alive. He also saw a tigress with four cubs which must have been nearly a year old, one of them which was shot measuring 4 ft. 9 ins. Mr. Shillingford’s memorandum quoted by Sterndale is interesting:

When they reach three years of age they lose their ‘milk canines,’ which are replaced by permanent fangs, and at this period the mother leaves them to cater for themselves, the tigress breeding once in three years.

Mr. Shillingford also notes that out of 53 cubs (18 mothers) 29 were males, and 22 females, the sex of two cubs not being given. This tends to prove that there are an equal number of each sex born,[19] the marked preponderance of adult tigresses over tigers being accounted for by most writers by the native story that the male tigers kill the young male cubs. The writer offers another suggestion: may not the young male tigers as soon as they leave their mothers avoid the domains of the heavy old cattle-lifters, and taking to the hills and forest form the game-killing class, till they are powerful enough to succeed to the estates of their sires, either by force or by inheritance, owing to their sire having met with an accident when entertaining a sahib, and so settle down and take wives? The writer has no proof to give in support of this suggestion, but merely offers it for sportsmen to consider. With respect to the common native story that the age of tigers may be told by the number of lobes in their livers, the writer made the following observations in Central India: Tigress, 6 lobes; tiger, 8 lobes; tigress, 7 lobes; cub (male), 6 lobes; male panther, 7 lobes; tigress, 7 lobes; tiger, 8 lobes; tigress, 7 lobes; tigress (a very old light-coloured one), 7 lobes; tiger, 7 lobes.

Sanderson says he has shot tigers and panthers with from 9 to 15 lobes. An article on the age of tigers as shown by their length, written by Mr. F. A. Shillingford for ‘The Asian’ and copied in ‘Land and Water,’ August 30, 1890, appears to be worth quoting: