United States or Cook Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the absence of any elephant, the pursuit of a wounded tiger by following up the blood-track on foot is a work of extreme danger. The native shikaris generally exhibit considerable hardihood, and, confident in their activity, they ascend trees from which they have a clear view in front for some 30 or 40 yards.
They were a hardy race of Kaffirs, sort of far-away cousins to the Zulu, and till the mines were opened they had behaved well enough. They had arms, which we had never dared to take away, but they kept quiet and paid their hut-taxes like men. I got to know many of the chiefs, and liked them, for they were upstanding fellows to look at and heavenborn shikaris.
"This my first chance at lion, I seized my rifle, mounted a pony, without stopping to dress, and, followed by Abdi Dereh and another shikari, dashed away behind the messenger at my pony's best pace. Arrived, I found the Sahib and about a dozen men, shikaris and pony men, surrounding a dense mimosa thicket no more than thirty or forty yards in diameter.
The former said that visiting these caves is dangerous even by daytime; because all the neighborhood is full of beasts of prey and of tigers, who, I concluded, are like the Bengali Babus, to be met with everywhere in India. Before venturing into these caves, you must send a reconnoitring party of torch-bearers and armed shikaris.
The natives assured me that during fourteen years it had been the common object of pursuit, both by officers, civilians, and by their own shikaris, but as the tiger was possessed by the devil it was quite impossible to destroy it.
The native shikaris now assured me in the most positive manner that the tiger would certainly advance along the nullah, and would pass immediately beneath the tree upon which my mucharn of yesterday was placed.
There was a considerable difference between the attack upon defenceless villagers, who fled before it in hopeless panic, and a stand-up fight with two experienced European shikaris armed with the best rifles; the terror of the district quickly showed its appreciation of discretion, and, badly wounded, it retreated through the forest, well followed by the determined hunters.
We took our places, and I was assured by the shikaris that the tiger would probably break covert exactly in my front. It is most uncomfortable for a European to remain squatted in a mucharn for any length of time; the limbs become stiffened, and the cramped position renders good shooting anything but certain.
As long ago as 1879 we read that "The great demand for the brilliant skins of the moonal that has existed for many years has led to their almost total extermination in some parts of the hills, as the native shikaris shoot and snare for the pot as well as for skins, and kill as many females as males. On the other hand, though for nearly thirty years my friend Mr.
The old Indian sportsman above alluded to told me of a case where a tiger had been marked down by native shikaris, and where they afterwards found wild dogs eating the carcase of the tiger, which they had presumably killed, but I cannot find any account of the dogs having been seen in the act of killing a tiger, though I can easily conceive that a hungry tiger, and an equally hungry pack of wild dogs may have come into collision over a newly killed animal, and that the dogs may then in desperation have killed the tiger.
Word Of The Day