The Wildest Sport of All Page 11

  While tigers in the jungles of the plains invariably become bold enough, due to their proximity to humans, to turn into arrogant cattle-lifters, tigers in the often inaccessible hills are more mindful of their surroundings and more alert to a sense of danger and consequently most roguish in their cunning. While being tracked, one tiger that had become aware of being pursued was found to have negotiated a narrow defile or ravine in its path by pressing the paws of all its four legs against the sheer opposing walls of the narrow nullah, like a lizard or an expert mountaineer, thus getting clean away without leaving any marks anywhere on the ground for its trackers to follow. Were it not for the element of luck that largely makes for a successful shikari, most tigers would certainly outwit man’s sincerest efforts at hunting them.

  It was in the Adhnala range that I came across one such especially cunning tiger. Calves, as bait, were tied out as usual at the commencement of this particular camp. Shikaris, who had been out inspecting the baits since early in the day, came back with the heartening news that one of the baits had been taken by a tiger. But one fact had completely stumped the shikari who made the discovery and now it left us dumbfounded. The tiger that had taken the bait was now untraceable, for while carrying off its kill, it had left not the slightest trace of a dragmark upon the ground. It seemed to have vanished into thin air with the dead calf. When questioned closely and rather impatiently about how much time he had spent around the position of the missing bait and about how thoroughly he’d looked and searched for signs before coming to such an outlandish conclusion, the shikari sank down tiredly and pointed dejectedly to the sun, long past lunch time, and let the ensuing silence speak for itself. But he was not to know rest for another hour or so as all afire at the prospect of the tiger getting away and a good opportunity lost, we all but dragged him back to where the bait had been tied. It did not take too long to confirm his story. We scouted around for the dragmarks, casting all about the area where the signs indicated that the tiger had made its kill, but the undergrowth about us was undisturbed and the ground devoid of any tell-tale signs.

  Indeed, it did seem the tiger had vanished with the dead calf into thin air! Another bait was tied out along the tiger’s beat on the next day. On the morning of the fourth day, the tiger was found to have carried off the buffalo calf. As before, it had left no dragmark on the ground. Despite a sense of dread at such an uncanny turn of events, our curiosity got the better of us and yet another bait was staked out. This too was lost to the tiger in the same inexplicable manner. To keep on supplying calves to the tiger now became a real problem, but to soothe our ruffled vanity as tiger slayers, a pressing necessity as well. We then decided to sit up over a live bait. Our chances were bright as the wily beast had begun to take calves tied out along the game trail as a matter of course.

  A well-camouflaged machaan was constructed overlooking a likely enough place and a gun-boy and I seated ourselves on it with a bait tied before it. This was at about four in the afternoon; well before the time the tiger commenced prowling. Evening gave way to the indistinct light of the dusk and we waited patiently with birdsong all about us. Darkness came, and with it, a distinctly eerie stillness. Then, about two hundred metres behind the machaan, from the darkness of a forested hillock, a spotted deer began to call. When it continued to call repeatedly for another half-hour through the deepening dark, it was certain warning of some carnivore’s dreaded presence. The machaan we were stationed atop was strategically placed directly above two game trails. The first ran from the hillock to our rear, passing under our machaan and stretching out ahead. The second trail crossed this first one below the machaan. Almost simultaneously with the mounting intensity of the spotted deer’s calls of alarm, the heifer serving as the bait turned squarely and defensively towards the hillock, sniffing and snorting nervously.

  I shifted my position upon the machaan and now faced the direction the bait had turned towards, from where the deer’s alarm was still sounding. Then the sharp strident calls stopped, but the bait continued fidgeting and moving about on the tethering rope and snorting in the direction of the hillocks for another hour. Motionless on the machaan with our nerves keyed up and eyes peeled, we waited on tenterhooks, almost certain of the approaching tiger’s appearance. A tense fifteen minutes elapsed. Then another. The deathly silence seemed to visibly palpitate and my heart thudded away like a metronome marking the seconds and minutes until the tiger appeared. After a full hour my ears picked up the barely perceptible sounds of softly breaking twigs and leaves dryly rustling under some careful yet heavy body about a hundred metres away along the game trail that came down from the hillock and ran on directly under the machaan. Then all noises ceased abruptly. The heifer below us continued to snort and sniff, adding to the excitement that preceded the tiger’s coming, with the air already heightened by the care and time the tiger was taking to stalk and come upon its prey. After half an hour the bait quietened down, relaxing and browsing before complacently sitting down. With the safety catch of the .475 rifle in the off position I continued waiting, anxious for the tiger to emerge. Straining my ears for the slightest sound, I waited thus through the long hours of the starkly silent, starlit night.

  At about four o’clock in the pitch dark before dawn, a sambar bellowed from far away in the forest and in the opposite direction from where the spotted deer’s alarm calls had come earlier in the uneventful night. Then silence returned. I sighed wearily at another night wasted, for the sambar had certainly signalled our elusive tiger’s retreat from the area. Soon morning came and in the rapidly increasing light we climbed down and went into the jungle from where we had heard the promising sounds of twigs breaking and leaves being trod upon so briefly in the night. There we found the tiger’s pugmarks clearly imprinted on the ground. Also visible was the large smear of trampled grass and brush in the dust made by the tiger’s belly and chest on the ground where it had sat warily as it confirmed its suspicions about something amiss with the prospective prey ahead of it. The tiger had definitely sensed us. We found, much to our disappointment, that it had circled around our bait and the machaan, then soundlessly crossed the trail behind us, making off towards a densely jungled valley from where the sambar had called in alarm before the night ended.

  While returning to our camp, I marvelled at the tiger’s cunning. Even when it was approaching the bait, the tiger had come soundlessly, giving us just the briefest hint of its presence and when sensing danger, it changed its mind about attacking the bait. As it circled around the machaan in the total darkness, going through the thickest, driest undergrowth possible, our straining ears caught not a sound of its ghostly passage. A tiger that was cunning enough to not leave a dragmark after killing an unmanned live bait and carrying it away, nor attack a manned live bait in the night and then travel so noiselessly through dry undergrowth, might prove really difficult to capture. The established opinion about the tiger’s uncanny prowess as a nocturnal hunter is based largely on the fact that being a cat, genetically, the tiger’s eyes dilate in the dark, allowing it infallible vision at night. Yet others say that in addition to its acutely developed vision and sense of hearing, its whiskers act as tactile sensors, enabling the tiger to move stealthily towards its prey whilst stalking and to move soundlessly even in the pitch dark around loose rocks, twigs, bushes and any obstruction that could give it away. Whatever the explanation, the nape of my neck still prickles at the thought of a huge, heavy body like the tiger’s as it circumvented the machaan that night, completely fooling me with its sinister stealth.

  Back at the camp, I found the government guard in charge of this forest block anxiously awaiting my return. Eager as he was to learn of the result of my nightly vigil, he recognized the obvious disappointment writ large on my crestfallen features, haggard from the lack of sleep. Smiling wryly, he joined me where the cooks were laying out breakfast. He told me to stop wasting my time and money over this particular tiger and proceeded to inform me of the tiger’s exploits. In addition
to the half-dozen baits it had robbed me of, it had tricked two or three dozen more buffaloes from other shikaris and even from the conservator of forests himself, vanishing with their baits without leaving any dragmarks and stubbornly refusing to come anywhere near a bait that had a hunter concealed on a tree above it. The forest guard further informed me that the tiger’s formidable cunning had earned it the name of shaitan, or the devil, among the local people. It seems strange indeed that so wily a beast could be shot so effortlessly, as it was, only a few days later.

  The forest guard’s grim words and the disappointment of my recent experience in seeking to bag the phantom tiger finally dissuaded us from going after it again. Plans were made to move on to another shooting block six or seven kilometres further into the forest’s depths. This was all tiger country and our chances of coming across one were fair.

  The staccato music of partridge calling and fowls clucking far and wide as they greeted the new day had barely subsided when our party set off for the projected camp, mounted on two elephants. We came across a low hill beyond which lay the forest block we were headed for. While our elephants proceeded along a foot trail that circled around the hill’s craggy ramparts we would cross, I heard a very low, growling sound. It was low enough to be almost inaudible, coming from the jungle of wild cane profusely choking the ravine, which the path led into. My senses prickling with the unmistakable implications of the sinister growl, I took stock of our forbidding surroundings and quickly studied the terrain ahead.

  A dry watercourse came down the hill and radiated out at this point into a number of smaller ravines down which it ran, delta-like, into the plains and the open country beyond. The elephants could only proceed along one of the cane choked ravines through which the game trail led and from where I’d heard that low, sullen growl. It had seemed an ominous enough growl to me and now I asked the others with me if they too had detected any such sound. But they had not. After listening attentively to the faint jungle sounds about the halted elephants, our mahout even went so far as to declare my fears groundless, causally saying that I had mistaken the usual rumbling noises made by the elephants’ digestive system for a growl and we left it that. However, hardly had the elephants proceeded a dozen metres further into the cane break when the sound came again and this time a loud enough growl, voluble with menace. A singular stillness crept over us all and the dread certainty that a tiger, or a leopard, lay concealed in the cane close ahead. The elephants’ proximity had disturbed the carnivore and it had growled irritably, twice, even before the elephants could sense its presence. The tiger would not warn us again prior to launching an attack or before escaping altogether.

  The startled mahout turned our elephant around as we hastily sought positions to drive out the tiger and shoot it from. I directed a nephew of ours to sit up a tree at the junction of two of the three ravines that formed the delta-like outlet of the watercourse of the plain country, sloping away from the hill. The animal would probably make a run for the belts of grass growing over the open land beyond the tall, dense cane jungle that sprouted up amid the ravines, where we stood uncertainly on the elephants. Our nephew stood a fair chance of getting in a clear and steady shot into the escaping tiger as it started up, ahead of the beaters. Stops were placed alongside the hill to further ensure the success of the strategy. Once the young man was ensconced in the trees, the elephants were lined up close to each other and prodded to go into the cane and in the direction of the thickest growths from which the tiger had growled.

  As they moved deeper into the undergrowth, the elephants began to grow nervous under us. A sudden silence thick enough to feel had crept upon the jungle in the ravines and it took me a bit of conscious effort to overcome the tension that the nervously fidgeting bodies of the elephants had begun communicating to their riders. From the corner of my rapt gaze, I could see my elder brother settling down atop the other elephant, his rifle muzzle wavering uncertainly as the cane began to rustle and shake a good distance ahead of the elephants wading steadily into it. The disturbed animal was up and making to get away through the cane break. I brought my rifle to bear on the shaking strands of cane but before I could catch any hint of the tiger’s exact location, it was gone. We kept the elephants on the escaping animal’s trail, hoping to drive it towards the tree where it was certain to be shot.

  The tiger must then be crossing the open, sanded watercourse that the tree overlooked and an expectant hush fell on our high-strung nerves. The absence of the sound of a shot from our nephew’s rifle only added to the silence. Our elephants were almost out of the cane now and within hailing distance of the tree; but still no shot. When we reached the tree, my nephew indicated with nervous gestures that the animal had crossed the ravine below him and gone into another patch of cane further ahead. Upon closer questioning, he frankly admitted being scared out of his wits at the sheer size of the tiger and said that his eyes had practically closed at the sight. When I heard the tiger’s description my deflated spirits picked up. Luck seemed once again with us, as did the possibility now of bagging the devilish tiger that had been eluding us so mysteriously for the past few days. We had given up hopes of even coming across this tiger that had so depleted our pockets and patience. It had completely outwitted me on the one occasion I had sat up for it. Now luck had made our trails cross again. The young man’s inexperience had saved the day for us.

  The tiger, unaware of being hunted, could even now be lying up in the thick cane breaks ahead, for beyond lay comparatively open country. The only tree growing beside the cane break the tiger had entered was a short, stumpy one, and despite it being highly unsuitable for our purposes, it would have to suffice. We took an incalculable risk in selecting such a low perch, but only the next half hour would make that evident to us.

  My elder brother found a place amidst the tree’s sparse foliage and we took the elephants into the cane belt that was presumably sheltering the huge, cunning tiger. By now our quarry should have sensed danger, as this was the second time in close succession that we were trying to drive it out with the aid of elephants. Unless I was mistaken, we would soon be up against it. Sure enough, the tiger broke out of the undergrowth a good bit ahead of the elephants and bounding out onto the sloping, open ground, began galloping away through the widely spaced clumps of grass, away from the gun on the tree and seeking the sheltering jungle in the distance ahead. My elder brother was quick to realize that the tiger would soon be lost to us, probably forever. Unmindful of the range, he aimed and took a shot at the galloping beast as it rapidly drew away from him. Then two things seemed to happen almost simultaneously. The rifle slug grazed the animal’s head, and with a short angry roar, the tiger sprang around. Then it charged, leaping and bounding towards the tree. I felt my fingers numbly gripping my rifle as I realized that the wounded tiger could clear the low tree and sweep through its patchy branches in one death-dealing leap! The stark realism of the next few seconds as the tiger came charging at the lone figure in the tree was paralyzing in its agonizing slowness, but the day belonged to my elder brother’s unerring marksmanship and iron nerve. He waited till the tiger was close enough to the tree and even as the awesome beast’s striped haunches convulsed, gathering to burst forward with redoubled energy for the killing leap, he shot it directly, and lethally through its large head. The tiger slowed to a stop and as its snarling jaws slumped over its extended forepaws with their deadly talons thrusting outward, it died silently.

  Had my brother’s aim failed him at that crucial moment, I dread to think of the truly gruesome finish that fate had in store for him. Nature has endowed the tiger with phenomenal strength and tenacity, which, when fully aroused by pain or hunger, serve to turn the beast into a killing machine of unsurpassed versatility.

  Let me relate a small but significant incident that illustrates well the tiger’s brute strength with which it attacks to kill, even while hunting normally. A relation of ours, when out camping in the forests near his home, at Rampur-Naikin in cen
tral India, came across the tracks of a large tiger which, as the signs showed, had taken to frequenting the wilds in the vicinity of a tribal village. The villagers too were aware of the marauder’s presence and had taken to husbanding their cattle and goats more closely, taking special care to return to the safety of the village’s confines from pastures in the forest well before dark. One afternoon, my relative was roused from his siesta by the plaintive bellowing of a domesticated buffalo from the direction of the village. He sent one of his men to find out what was amiss.

  The man returned after a half hour with the information that the bellowing was set up by one of the village buffaloes that had been unlucky enough to get bogged down in a truly bad patch of quicksand which bordered the stream behind the village. This had happened when the herd was being driven back from the forest after the day’s grazing. The buffalo’s calls had progressively become weaker and more resigned. When my relative asked his informant if there was any hope for the poor animal, the man simply shook his head saying that even its owners had abandoned it to its eventual death, after trying unsuccessfully to extricate it from the deadly hold of the treacherous mud. The buffalo was still moaning and calling an hour later and there was a note of dreadful finality in the doomed animal’s lowing as the swamp sucked it deeper in with each attempt that the buffalo must have made to escape the shifting mud’s deadly clutches.

  In a bid to escape the aura of maudlin death generated by the buffalo’s sad, prolonged end, my relative collected a few more men together, and with his rifle and shotguns, set out to shoot some meat for their dinner. At the back of his mind, of course, was the tiger whose tracks their party had frequently come across, often close to the village.

  Soon they had all but forgotten the sad plight of the trapped buffalo. Picking up partridge and jungle fowl on their way through a sizeable section of the forests, their party began to wend its way back to camp as dusk approached. They soon emerged onto the swampy glades that bordered both sides of the jungle stream where it cut in, flowing close to the tribal village. My relative pricked up his ears but a curious hush had descended upon the forests in which the drawn-out bellowing of the trapped buffalo was especially conspicuous by its absence. Before the little party of men could exchange notes on the buffalo’s sad fate, one of the men in the rear was pointing to the dust on the trail and excitedly whispering the magic words, ‘Tiger, sahib, tiger!’