The Wildest Sport of All Read online

  Not wishing to lose this golden opportunity, Mr Rana hurriedly readied his rifle and followed the villager into the forest. The ‘kill’ was about half-a-mile away and speed was of the essence. Intent on caching the feasting animal, they rushed through the carpet of strewn leaves in the sal forests bordering the stream beyond which the kill lay. The following events might never have occurred if they had made less noise going through that sal jungle. However, it is precisely on such small details that destiny hinges, especially in the jungle.

  They were unaware that the rogue tiger was close to them. Thirsty from the afternoon heat and with a partly full stomach, it had left the unfinished kill and come down to the stream to drink. Mr Rana and the villager came rushing through the trees on the opposite bank. Disturbed, the tiger changed his mind about drinking and, unperturbed, began to walk boldly away along the open bank just as the hunters emerged from the trees. Rana quickly realized the tiger had sensed danger and would now avoid going back to his kill. Aiming carefully, because of the long range, he fired at the sauntering beast.

  The killer beast flinched, turned towards the trees, and bounding into the cover without so much as a growl was swiftly gone. Mr Rana knew that he had wounded the tiger and with dusk coming on, he retraced his way back to the farmhouse, planning all the while to track it to its death the next day.

  Morning found him eagerly taking up the tiger’s blood trail, his trusty rifle in his hands and a servant with a loaded shotgun following a few paces behind. Tracking a tiger on foot is by no means an easy feat. A hunter ambitious enough to set out by foot should have a good knowledge of the jungle, a keen sense of the wind direction, an ability to shoot straight and quickly even under stress, and a good idea of what the tiger might do after being hit.

  Mr Rana saw that the blood trail led into a dense area of briar and lantana bush, which the fallen leaves from the giant sal trees above had almost covered, rendering the deep shade below the undergrowth ideal for the wounded tiger to lie sheltered in. Full of apprehension, and with a silent prayer, he pushed aside the first of the bushes as he followed the blood trail. With an immense roar the tiger charged at him from the dark of the undergrowth. Bringing up the rifle,

  Mr Rana stumbled back from the brush and a split second later fired at the wide-open, long-fanged mouth of the horribly snarling tiger, a mere five paces from him. Undeterred, the tiger leapt at him and

  Mr Rana emptied his second barrel, but the beast reached him, collided with him and knocked him down. Scrambling to his feet, he looked wildly around for his gun-boy and the extra shotgun, but the grim emptiness surrounding him said the boy had abandoned him and run for dear life.

  The nightmare had only just begun. A raking blow knocked the empty rifle aside and laid open Mr Rana’s forearm from elbow to wrist. The shock and his imminent death mercifully blacked out

  Mr Rana. A moment later his pain-befuddled senses found something heavy pinning him down. As his eyes flew open, he saw the tiger was straddling him. The wide open jaws dripped with blood and foam, inches from his face. The dancing orbs of the tiger’s eyes pierced his own, and those fiendish growls from deep within the massive chest all but made him unconscious again. Sudden slashing blows to his shoulder and chest revived him. Mr Rana saw that the tiger crouched above him, supported on its right foreleg, even as it hit out at his torn chest and shoulders with its left foreleg. In those fleeting, ghastly moments Mr Rana luckily realized that the tiger’s left leg, still trying to split him open, seemed weak and badly hurt and that the blood from the tiger’s mouth was not his, but from the animal’s shattered lower jaw caused by his first shot. Encouraged at the sight of the tiger’s wounds, Mr Rana wormed his way out from under the animal and, standing up, tried to run.

  With incredible speed, the tiger lunged after him to sink its upper fangs into the back of one thigh. Mr Rana wrenched his leg out from the tiger’s injured mouth and reeled a few paces further where he fell, and then, on elbows and knees, he began to drag himself away from the monster. The pain of his lacerated chest and the burning hole in his thigh seemed to keep him cruelly, but fortunately, coherent and hastened his escape. But when he looked back, the tiger, equally determined, was crawling along the ground towards him. As

  Mr Rana recalls, there was a searing, questing intensity in the tiger’s eyes which transformed itself into an expression of triumphant joy as it caught up once again with the fallen hunter. The bloodied, leering jaws seemed to laugh in euphoric conquest as the fangs stabbed down at Mr Rana’s dodging face in an effort to catch and crush his head. The tiger’s shattered lower jaw saved Rana’s life for he managed to evade the stabbing canines of the upper jaws. Thus saved from the coup-de-grâce, he crawled out once again from under the tiger.

  He started to drag himself away from the beast, blindly, desperately, as he now found it impossible to stand or lurch. But there was the tiger crouching once again behind him. There is something deadly and unnerving in such a relentless apparition and it had its effect on the hunted man. Weakened by the steady loss of blood from the gaping wound in his thigh, and the shock to his psyche which made him utterly despondent, Mr Rana lost consciousness. His gun-boy, overcome with fear at the sight and sound of the charging tiger on whom Mr Rana’s bullets had no apparent effect, had run away. However, also overcome with remorse and after a suitable length of time, he reached there with an armed party of labourers, fully intending to scare away the tiger and recover his master’s remains. Great was his surprise upon reaching the dreaded spot to find the tiger and Mr Rana lying close to each other, both seeming lifeless. They found Mr Rana still alive and timely medical attention revived him. Hit a shade behind the shoulder on the previous evening and later in the right foreleg and lower jaw, the tiger had died, almost as it commenced to maul the helpless Mr Rana for the third, and what might easily have been, the final time.

  A ferociously strong animal, the ‘king of the jungle’, when truly roused, proves wonderfully tenacious in the face of the most lethal bullets that could be hitting it from short ranges. It is generally, though wrongly, believed that carnivores do not eat the carcass of an animal that has died of natural causes. The following tale proves such a presumption untrue. In the Ramnagar forest division of Uttarakhand, I once had a buffalo calf tied in a watercourse to bait a tiger. For three days the bait remained safely tethered. Every morning we saw the tiger come very near the bait, circle it, but not kill it. The local forest officials told me that the tiger was a wily one and never killed tied bait. On the fourth day, when I visited the place to see whether the tiger had taken the bait, I found the calf to have died of exposure during the cold jungle night. Having no further use for it, I told one of my shikaris to let it be.

  I came to know it was difficult to procure live baits from local cattle herders who, for various reasons, were facing hard times. That night around the campfire our shikaris decided not to waste the dead calf I had abandoned. My shikari, the very next morning, went back to where we had abandoned the unfortunately dead calf, and tying together the front legs of the carcass, dragged it right across the watercourse and a kilometre further into the forest. He left it fastened to a tree in such a way that the tiger may not break the stout tethering rope and carry it away into deeper jungles where any attempts to trace it would not only be difficult but also serve to warn away the wily tiger. The shikari came back to the camp and told us that being unable to find another live bait, he had used the discarded carcass and tied it in another area through which the tiger also prowled. On the morning of the sixth day, we went to see the result of the shikari’s efforts and, to our great surprise, saw the pugmarks of a pair of tigers in the watercourse where the carcass had been abandoned at first. They led off into the jungle in the direction of the tree where our shikari had dragged the dead calf and left it tied. The pugmarks of the pair followed the drag for about half the way. Then the tigress, as the pugs indicated, veered away from the drag and only the male had followed it up to the tree
and the strongly tied carcass at its base. There it had made a good meal of the dead and foul animal.

  One of my associates happened to witness a rare sight as he sat up one evening for tiger. His scouts had pointed the exact spot where they expected the tiger to appear. Let me mention that this was possible only in the formerly private game reserves of erstwhile royalty where animals were sometimes lucky enough to be left undisturbed. When the tiger did not appear as expected, the gentleman continued to sit up on the platform on the tree, as it was a long summer’s evening and shikar quite an obsessive hobby with him. He sat there admiring the haunting beauty of the low wooded ridge that rose up from the game trail below his tree and the golden, mellow light as it struck full upon the rocky slope. A cave clearly visible below a crag held his attention. The very next moment a tiger stepped around a nest of boulders and into the clearing before the cave. It was the tiger he had been expectantly waiting for and it took him a few moments to recover from his surprise. The tiger let out a series of low growls. The gentleman put down his rifle when two cubs came out of the cave’s yawning mouth. Like overgrown kittens, they lolled around in the clearing while the tigress licked first one, then the other. Then she did a most surprising thing. Tucking her head into her shoulders as her spine arched and her hind-quarters bunched, she regurgitated fairly large pieces of undigested meat which the cubs began to eat. Stretched out in the clearing the tigress contentedly watched her cubs, after they had eaten, frolicking about a puddle. The cubs swiped at the frogs in the weeds around the water and with their forepaws tried to bat at their leaping and jumping shapes. Unable to bring himself to take a long shot at the tigress and to unfeelingly ruin the pretty harmony of the domestic scene, the hunter continued to observe the tigress and her cubs till darkness fell and his men came to fetch him.

  The tiger’s method of making a natural prey may be divided into three categories. First, by stalking. Next, by ambush, lying in wait at watering holes frequented by deer, wild boar and sambar stag and doe. Finally, by ‘beat’ or ‘haaka’, as known in local parlance.1 Each category needs elaboration.

  The tiger is a master at the art of stalking prey. It makes no sound on the brittle leaves littering the forest floor as it moves forward after locating an animal or a human being to kill. Head pushed down and thrust forward, the tiger glides with a flattened body from bush to bush to its quarry, often for considerable distances, completely unnerving the hunted animal by its maddening persistence. It comes noiselessly within springing distance of its prey. Flat on the ground behind a bush, with its gaze relentlessly fixed on the target, a tremor runs through its body to the tip of its tail, primed for the death-dealing spring. The muscles of its legs become taut for the jump and, in one mighty bound, the tiger leaps on its victim with unerring accuracy, closing its giant jaws over the neck or head, breaking it and snuffing out its life. The victim, no matter how alert or agile, is often completely unaware of its doom until the moment the tiger finally strikes it down.

  When stalking its prey, the tiger may see a herd of deer or cattle from a distance and approach it against the wind, as the prey is unusually quick to detect its scent on the breeze. Hiding and camouflaging itself in the natural cover it creeps patiently, silently and stealthily. When absolutely sure of its range, it pounces on the prey, catching the back of its neck in its jaws, breaking the thoracic vertebrae with a tremendous jerk. Keeping its teeth clamped to the felled animal’s neck, it sucks the blood from the severed jugular until the animal’s convulsions cease.

  While lying in wait for prey at a waterhole, the tiger keeps itself completely out of sight. When a herd of cattle or deer turns up to drink, the killer furtively shifts its position until it is downwind, or in the direction of the wind, from them. As the animals begin to busily slake their thirst, the tiger approaches to within leaping distance and pouncing on any one animal, kills it. Not too sensitive in their olfactory senses, tigers are only too well aware of their quarry’s keen sense of smell. Some healthy, but mostly very old and loose-limbed, tigers kill in another manner. They conceal themselves near a herd and from a convenient distance roar loudly from downwind of their prey. The wind dissipates those terrible echoing roars and the stag or deer are all of a sudden unable to perceive where in the jungle the dreaded hunter hides. When the herd, confused by the disembodied roars and further disoriented by the fact that they cannot catch the tiger’s scent (the animal being further downwind of them), unsuspectingly draws near, the tiger, who has been waiting for them to get close enough, launches its attack and kills the closest or weakest one with ease.

  The third method by which the tiger kills is an interesting one. This is executed by a pair, a male and a female together, and strangely enough, never by two tigers or two tigresses. Detecting their quarry, the hunters separate, and one of them, usually the tigress, begins roaring and growling from close behind the herd, or simply approaches the herd aggressively, thus frightening the animals and causing them to flee in panic and terror towards the tiger who has cleverly positioned itself to pounce on one of their numbers as they rush by.

  These examples make it quite clear that the tiger’s method of hunting is the same as, though even surer than, the tactic employed by human beings. The tiger’s determination and its confident strategy, coupled with its Herculean strength, is such that once it assaults an animal, it is sure to kill it.

  After sucking the blood of the prey until it is dead, the tiger drags the kill to a thicker jungle and there it makes a royal feast of it, often overeating in the process. It begins with the fleshier hind-quarters, gnawing through the bones until only the hooves of the hind legs remain. It leaves the other half usually for later, covering the remnants with leaves and forest refuse. Often, it digs the ground and tucks away the unfinished portions into the declivity. Aware of the tiger’s fearful presence, scavenging jackals and hyenas dare not come near the kill, but vultures and crows are unsparing, and it is against them that the tiger guards its unfinished meal so fiercely.

  If the place the tiger has eaten its kill is lonely and undisturbed, it remains within sight of its kill, taking rest at a height which overlooks the partially consumed carcass. However, if the place is close to a village or a regular route for cattle-herders, the tiger, after eating perfunctorily, conceals the remains and shifts to a denser thicket near a water body because it frequently needs a drink in its engorged state. It returns to the kill after eight o’ clock in the summers, once darkness has set in. In winter, it returns to eat again at about six, in the indistinct light of the Indian dusk, when darkness begins to shroud the jungle. Having eaten twice in the span of a day, the tiger finishes the entire kill, leaving but a few masticated bones that it comes back to chew on again. On a full stomach it moves heavily and is unable to kill again for a fortnight or so.

  Wild boar is a delicacy for the tiger. Marshy lands and elephant grass tracts, the usual habitat of the wild boar, are often far removed and out of reach from those cool, shaded, shallow ravines, carpeted with leaves, which the master of the jungle prefers to inhabit. It is only when a tiger prowls for long distances that it comes across wild boar. A wild boar never gives in without an all-out fight and proves such a difficult and tenacious opponent that the tiger is sometimes unable to kill it.

  At Chunakhan village in the Ramgarh division of what is now Uttarakhand, I once sat up over a tiger’s kill – a bait I had tied earlier. Around six in the evening, the barking of spotted deer and calls of alarm from monkeys and birds signalled the tiger’s presence. Suddenly the tiger let out a terrific roar, still at a distance, and simultaneously I heard the angry, aggressive grunts of a wild boar. I could judge from the sounds that a great battle was on between the two. This continued for about half an hour. For the combatants, this was a pretty long time to be so engaged in such a violent exertion. Then the commotion abruptly ceased. I presumed the tiger had killed the wild boar and in all probability would not come to the ‘kill’ I was sitting over. Yet I continued to wa
it on the treetop machaan till the next morning as my camp was at a considerable distance.2 The tiger did not turn up at all throughout the long hours of the night.

  With dawn came my elephant and I felt it was a good opportunity to investigate the hullabaloo of the night before. Going on elephant back, I was quite surprised to find the ground completely gouged and bloodied where the tiger and the wild boar must have fought it out. Unable to find the boar’s dead body in the vicinity, I concluded the tiger and the boar had both injured each other and that the tiger had been unable to kill the boar. The tiger must have been worse for the wear, as that accounted for the loss of its appetite and for me not having got the chance of taking a shot at it, despite my nightlong vigil. Despite being an appealing meal to the tiger, the wild boar is a tough fighter and is rarely killed and eaten by the tiger who covets its flesh. The wild boar’s ferocity is legendary and it has been known to charge an entire line of elephants on a beat.

  The tiger prefers sambar the most, but rarely gets to kill and eat this large deer. The reason for this is that the sambar is widely scattered over the forest, scarce to find, and difficult for the tiger to hunt and kill. Hence, despite its liking for boar and sambar, the tiger gets but sporadic occasions to make a meal of either. What the tiger easily obtains are the smaller species of deer, and much to the forest dwellers’ woe, their cattle. These cows, calves, buffaloes and draught oxen, often left grazing on the forest’s outskirts by lazy herders, prove easy prey for the hungry, hunting tiger. Deer, though swift and instinctively clever, are plentiful. Their habitat being the same as the tigers’, they make for easy and convenient killing. As a rule, tigers avoid hunting the really small animals for food, with the exception of the peacock, a meal they seem to relish.