The Wildest Sport of All Read online

  The strength of the tiger is unknown. If we could measure its power by means of a mechanical device, it might be easier to explain the energy of the royal beast. Consider this one fact, although an understatement as far as our extraordinary subject is concerned: in one swift wrench, the tiger can break both the thoracic and the cervical vertebrae located in the thick juncture of the shoulder and neck of a fully grown bull or buffalo bait. More conclusions can be drawn from the following example.

  Once a bait was tied out in the scoured bed of a dry nullah or ravine. A tiger killed it and dragged the dead bulk up the nullah. While being hauled in the tiger’s jaw, the dangling horns of the lifeless, heavy buffalo were caught between the forked trunk of a tree growing below the nullah’s banks. The tree stood firmly rooted, as its trunk was about a foot in diameter. But the tiger pulled on the buffalo to free it from where it was stuck, wrenching out the tree in the process and uprooting it entirely, while continuing to drag its kill to a safer place. Another time, I have seen a tiger with a dead buffalo calf, weighing between two-and-a-half to three quintals, clamped in its jaws take a twelve-foot leap upwards from the channel of a ravine to its embankment. The fact that it could clear the vertical leap effortlessly, in spite of being weighed down with the ‘kill’, is another aspect of its phenomenal strength. Some of you might doubt the truth of what I have personally witnessed and stated. Other hunters have claimed that the tiger cannot leap more than eight feet vertically, but jumps great lengths horizontally. Shikaris other than me have seen sights to the contrary. A wounded tiger, bent on revenge, or an angry tiger, disturbed by being fired upon, might indeed jump great vertical heights, if necessary. In Halduparao in Sonanadi wildlife sanctuary, which is part of the Corbett Tiger Reserve, forest guards still point out a certain tree from whose branches a tiger had pulled down an ambitious, though luckless, memsahib, leaping up twenty-two feet to vent its vindictive fury.

  Personally, I had a chance to witness this controversial leaping ability of the monarch of the jungle. Once, in the forest along the Kosi river close to the Garjiya Devi temple, I was up on a fifteen-feet-high machaan, waiting for the tiger to come to its natural kill. Instead, there came a sudden downpour of chilling, torrential rain. Soaked to the bone, I abandoned my risky perch, gave up the idea of waiting for the tiger in my bedraggled state, and went back to our camp.

  The next day, the weather lifted and freshened by the deluge, the fragrant jungle fairly sparkled. Being curious about the tiger’s whereabouts, I returned to the area where I had sat up the night before. Upon reaching the spot curiously transformed by the rain, I saw the machaan dangled brokenly, hanging from one end of the tree. Perplexed, I thought the rain had caused the damage. But then, I suddenly remembered there had been no high winds accompanying the rain and a sneaky doubt began to worry me.

  My mahout, the elephant driver, and I closely examined the hanging machaan and the branches it had been tied to. The bark had been clawed away in two places on the branch, which stood at level with the suspended, swaying machaan. The cot-like structure itself, smashed from one edge, was slashed and tattered along its centre. Bringing down a fifteen-feet-high machaan would seem to be the work of a wild elephant. Strange as it was, those clear claw marks pointed it to be the deed of a tiger. As I stood there thanking my lucky stars, I could perceive with that eerie clarity that deadly danger induces how events must have occurred after my unplanned departure the night before. The tiger, coming to the ‘kill’ after the rain, had sensed danger from the empty machaan. Angered, it had charged at this annoying structure and, on reaching it in repeated jumps, had demolished it. Perhaps some hunters were not wrong in underestimating the tiger’s ability to jump perpendicularly. The diverse topography, climate and habitat of southeast Asia and Assam could influence those tigers’ habits and capabilities though these are certainly different in the north and other parts of India.

  The impact of a casual blow from the forepaw of the Royal Bengal tiger in the Sunderbans, in the lower delta region of Bengal, is reputed to weigh anywhere between ten to fourteen pounds. Hence, fibreglass suits are designed to protect the workers involved in Project Tiger in the region.3 One hunter was hit across his legs by a tiger’s tail. Even though this occurred during the tiger’s dying rush, the hunter felt as if a stout stave wielded by some hearty rustic had struck him that numbing blow.

  In India tiger shooting had been the favourite pastime of kings, rajas and the warlike since time immemorial. Killing tigers with swords and spears, as was done in the olden days, was indeed a matter of great bravery and valour. With the change in times, simpler and easier methods of hunting the tiger, requiring less courage but more intelligence, came into vogue. Improved firearms contributed much to this change in the methods of shikar in more recent times.

  Before we move on, let me add one important and unusual fact I have omitted while describing the sophisticated hunting techniques of the tiger. I had pointed out that the king of the jungle knows fully well that deer, whom it usually hunts for food, relies completely on its sense of smell to escape danger. And, as I have already recounted, the tiger uses this nervous vitality of the deer to its own advantage. In preparation to spring on its prey, the tiger first psychologically confuses the deer by the sheer power of its earthshaking roars which reverberate through the forest, without disclosing its exact position to the deer, crouched downwind as it is from its prey. The unusual fact is – if you can trust me enough to believe it! – sometimes this master hunter, the tiger, practices pure deception to lull an alert stag’s suddenly aroused suspicions. In exact imitation of a sambar’s call, the tiger bellows from under cover. The sharp, nasal call it produces is so distinctly like the sambar’s that it is unnerving to imagine it having come from the tiger’s throat. No wonder the legends of forest-dwellers attribute the king of the jungle with preternatural powers commensurate with the devil.

  1 In hunting terminology haaka is a method of bringing out game within the sportsman’s range by driving the animals ahead of a line of noisily advancing men, known as ‘beaters’, towards the waiting guns.

  2 A machaan is a small camouflaged platform, usually on a tree and about eighteen feet from the ground, a height generally considered safe from the tiger’s attack.

  3 Project Tiger is a much needed campaign launched by the Government of India in 1973 to study and protect this magnificent, unique creature of the jungle.

  This story is about my nephew’s miraculous escape from the jaws of a wounded tiger, and how the animal redoubled its ferocity and strength after being hit by bullet.

  We were camped at Pipal-pardau, in the Haldwani division.1 Located in the terai region at the foothills of Nainital, it is a beautiful place and at that time of the year, it seemed even more so, mantled as it was with the last of the departing spring’s chimerical glories. Densely forested and crisscrossed with many streams, this particular jungle abounded with big and small game. For many days at the beginning of the shoot we had encountered a spell of poor luck. Not a single one of the dozen baits that had been tied at different likely places in the jungle was taken by a tiger. On the sixth day our luck changed, inexplicably. Our shikaris brought the good news that during the night, two of the baits had been killed by two different tigers. One kill was close to the rest house where we were camped and the other one was at a distance of six kilometres. We finished breakfast early and left quickly for the place that was farther to us. Scouts and elephants had been sent there in the early morning, immediately after receiving news of the kills and their locations. We decided to negotiate the kill nearest our camp on our return.

  We reached the spot at about eight in the morning. The plan was to ‘beat’ the stretch of forest in which the tiger was lying sated with meat after eating the kill. Our shikaris, according to the method adopted in the beat, had arranged two machaans within a hundred metres of each other on a dry riverbed. The stretch of lush jungle in which the tiger was lying in now was between this river, over whic
h our machaans had been built, and another stream beyond which the ground was devoid of forest, or cover, of any sort, making it impossible for the tiger to break out and go in that direction. ‘Stops’, or rather men, were placed on treetops at strategic points, from where they must divert the tiger towards the machaans by softly clapping their hands or gently knocking once or twice on the tree’s trunk, all for the tiger’s extraordinarily keen sense of hearing. They were not required towards the barren riverside since there was no cause to anticipate the tiger’s emergence there. They had been methodically arranged in the trees of the very jungle between the two rivers, and in line with the tiger’s expected path of flight, so that they could perfectly turn it towards the machaans. The beat was begun in an opposite direction from the stops. I remember we were using only two elephants on that shoot. These two elephants, abreast but a little distant from each other, were made to move through the jungle with much shouting and trampling of the undergrowth in an effort to rouse the tiger. At this crucial moment, an overpowering feeling of raw fear gripped the bravest hearts in the beat as our efforts could easily activate the tiger into fierce retaliation.

  Fifty metres from where the beat had begun, the tiger concealed among dense bushes near the kill was first sensed by one of the two elephants. Trumpeting in alarm, she came to a dead halt, fidgeting about in nervous agitation, a sure indication of the tiger’s nearness. The undergrowth rustled and shook as the tiger began moving through the jungle and towards the stops. The men on the elephants now lost sight of the tiger as it moved further away from them. Long before reaching the stops, the tiger turned towards the dry river where stood the machaans. At the very edge of the forest on the bank of the riverbed, it stopped to survey the scene before crossing over to the jungle on the other side of the bare, sanded expanse. The paws of its front legs were now visible to my elder brother, who had been sitting on the machaan that was almost opposite the point from which the tiger would emerge any moment. The tiger waited for quite some time, its stout forepaws still visible through the maze of bushes to my brother who had by now readied himself for an unhurried shot at the animal. Fate, though, had willed otherwise.

  Around the time the tiger had turned away from the thick jungle and come towards the river, our cook, who was doubling as a stop, had paused to light a bidi. What he had unfortunately missed seeing was the beehive teeming with the deadliest wild bees suspended from the branches a little above him. Disturbed by the bidi smoke, which he must have been puffing out in clouds, the bees took off and swarmed down upon him, stinging him in a dozen places. The man, forgetting all about the tiger, slithered down the tree in pain. Unmindful of the danger he ran, in utter panic, through the tiger’s jungle towards my brother’s machaan. Yelling and shouting for help as he waved his scrawny arms about his head to ward off the angry bees, he reached the machaan and huddled under it as a refuge against his buzzing tormentors. By the time my exasperated elder brother could glean the reason for the unexpected noise and commotion from the cook, some of the bees reached the machaan and my brother too suffered a few stings. Thinking that the entire hive would soon be upon him, he too raised an alarm much louder than the cook’s.

  We were on the elephants being used in the beat and hearing the noise, abandoned our quest and moved to the comparative openness of the riverbed. The tiger had, of course, made off by then. We picked up my elder brother and went down the watercourse to collect the occupants of the second machaan. On the back of the other elephant, a shikari attended to the cook’s agony. We deeply regretted having missed such a good chance. The tiger, which would have emerged directly in front of the machaan, must have been greatly alarmed seeing the lanky, gangly cook screaming in terror. It could not possibly remain in that stretch of jungle after being so disturbed. But, despite the dejection all of us felt that moment, fate gave us another opportunity. Back we went to camp and, after a hurried lunch, left for the nearby spot where a second tiger had killed a bait.

  It was getting on to midday and the wind blew strongly through the jungle, kicking up enough flurries of the brown dust to make it look like a storm. This is usual for late April, but greatly handicaps efforts to beat the forest and drive out the tiger. Our tireless shikaris, for want of a better method, had arranged another beat to where we now proceeded. Two machaans had been set up, one being occupied by my two elder brothers and the other by my friend Mr Mukherjee and me. The jungle, mostly elephant grass and lantana bush, covered a large area with the tiger’s kill somewhere in its midst. Our shikaris had put up the machaans with the utmost caution and minimum noise. My machaan was only about 200 metres from the kill, with the tiger resting up close in its vicinity.

  The bearers lined up on both sides of the elephants being used in the ploy, and the beat began. The moment the pachyderm entered the tall, choking grass and lantana undergrowth, a jungle fowl, still some way ahead of the oncoming beat, crowed in alarm, a distinct staccato clucking, and flew up from the ground onto a treetop. At once I knew that the tiger had got up from its rest and was now moving towards the machaan. Suddenly the silence was thick around us. We became suitably alert.

  About two hundred metres from the machaan and ahead of the sounds from the approaching beat, I saw the grass shake and barely caught a glimpse of something yellow, a different shade from the dried clumped grass stems, that moved unmistakably towards me. It could only be the tiger. Suddenly, it became important to be sure. Lining up my rifle on the tiger, I tried to follow its movements through the grass. But the wind moved strongly and the tall grass danced. Try as I might, I was unable to distinguish between the tiger’s movements through the grass and the shaking of the yellowish stems because of the wind. Getting a lead on the tiger became impossible.

  I concentrated my full attention and carefully scrutinized the area where I had last noticed the tiger. Too quickly, the tiger had not only crossed through the thickets of clumped grass ahead of me but also the narrow, previously cleared firing-line that was cut through the grass to accord better visibility and a clear shot. I tried to discern the tiger’s passage from the wind ruffling through the tall grass, but the animal had crossed the firing line which ran a narrow length below the machaan. I became aware of this fact quite accidentally, when looking down from sheer intuition, I saw the tiger entering the grass jungle behind us. It was immediately below and slightly to the right of our machaan. Switching the .475 rifle from my right to my left shoulder, I swung the heavy rifle and took a quick, and very difficult, shot at the fleeing animal. Its stride apparently unbroken, the tiger vanished immediately into the grass behind our machaan.

  On hearing the rifle’s report, the elephant with the beaters, hurrying alongside, drifted out of the jungle and gathered near our machaan. Anxious enquiries as to the result of my shot were directed at us. Personally, I did not for a moment believe that I had hit the tiger. Describing the difficulties in my way, I told them I had missed my aim. When I pointed out the place where I had seen the tiger fleetingly and fired at it, our expert shikari and tracker, Ram Singh, who had been up on the elephant in the beat, scrambled down to investigate. After carefully scrutinizing the place and the tiger’s paw-prints, he announced that the tiger had been wounded. Not being very hopeful of the shot I had taken, I inquired, trifle irritably, how he could be so sure. Ram Singh called me down from the machaan and pointed to the pugmarks, indicating the deeper gouged marks and a tangentially clawed indentation scratched out by the talons of the running tiger in the soft soil. The bullet had definitely hit, he said.

  Among others, one very important sign that shows a tiger to be wounded is this gouged mark on the ground. Ordinarily, if the tiger is not hit, its stride as shown by its pugmark will be normal and in appearance undisturbed. Its claws, habitually kept retracted in the pad of the paws, would have come out in reflex to grip and gouge the ground with the shock of the bullet’s impact. We agreed with Ram Singh’s deductions, but not without certain misgivings. Tiger are generally shy and avoid human bei
ngs as much as they can. It is only when they are disturbed, particularly when wounded, that they display the awe-inspiring qualities attributed to them by legends and stories in folklore or real life. A wounded tiger is a real tiger, in every sense of the term. The tiger seems possessed when bent on avenging its pains from ineffective bullet injuries with an unusually redoubled ferocity and with much more strength than its hard won feasts can impart. Such a tiger is quite something to see, feel and experience from up close, as we were all doing then.

  Evening was still a good two hours away and plans were hurriedly made to track and go after the beast. My two elder brothers – Kunwar K.S.I. Singh and Kunwar Rajendra Singh – Ram Singh, a young nephew of ours who we called Babboo and I mounted the elephant and entered the towering ranks of grass in the wake of the tiger. Roaming about in that jungle of grass we searched with bated breath for about half an hour, but in vain.

  In the very centre of this particular sea of grass lay a withered tree, the scrub exceedingly dense around the remains of its dried skeleton; its angularly projecting branches rendering the thicket almost impenetrable. It has been widely observed that a wounded animal hides usually itself in the densest part of the forest, wherein it can conceal itself easily and recuperate undisturbed. Thinking this fallen tree and the thicket around it to be a possible lair for the wounded tiger, I made the elephant approach the grimly silent place. The elephant was made to trample around the tree. Just when we had completed wading through about half of the circular area around the fallen tree, terrifyingly loud growling roars erupted out of the tangled grass and bush. These sounds were singular to a charging tiger and their ferocity cannot be actually imagined by the reader, unless he has personally had such an experience. Those terrific growls had come from the grass very close to our elephant and the tiger, which had been lying completely concealed in the thicket, suddenly appeared from nowhere and jumped at our elephant’s forehead. So quick was its appearance and so swift its leap that even to our watchful eyes the wounded tiger had seemed but a yellow apparition coming up from the ground towards us.