Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier Part 15

A nearly similar case occurred to old Mr. C., one of the veteran sportsmen of Purneah. A tiger had bolted towards a small tank or pond, and though the line followed up in hot pursuit, the brute disappeared.

Old C., keener than the others, was loth to give up the pursuit, and presently discerned a yellowish reflection in the clear water. Peering more intently, he could discover the yellowish tawny outline of the cunning animal, totally immersed in the water, save its eyes, ears, and nose. He shot the tiger dead, and it sank to the bottom like a stone. So perfectly had it concealed itself, that the other sportsmen could not for the life of them imagine what old C. had fired at, till his mahout got down and began to haul the dead animal out of the water.

Tigers are not at all afraid of water, and are fast and powerful swimmers. They swim much after the fashion of a horse, only the head out of the water, and they make scarcely any ripple.

'In another case,' writes George, 'though not five yards from the elephant, and right under me, a tiger was swimming with so slight a ripple that I mistook it for a rat, until I saw the stripes emerge, when I perforated his jacket with a bullet.'

Only their head remaining out of water when they are swimming, they are very hard to hit, as shooting at an object on water is very deceptive work as to judging distance, and a tiger's head is but a small object to aim at when some little way off.

Old C. had another adventure with a cunning rogue, which all but ended disastrously. He was in hot pursuit of the tiger, and, finding no safety on land, it took to swimming in a broad unfordable piece of water, a sort of deep lagoon. Old C. procured a boat that was handy, and got a coolie to paddle him out after the tiger. He fired several shots at the exposed head of the brute, but missed. He thought he would wait till he got nearer and make a sure shot, as he had only one bullet left in the boat. Suddenly the tiger turned round, and made straight for the boat. Here was a quandary. Even if lie killed the tiger with his single bullet it might upset the boat; the lagoon was full of alligators, to say nothing of weeds, and there was no time to get his heavy boots off. He felt his life might depend on the accuracy of his aim. He fired, and killed the tiger stone dead within four or five yards of the boat.

On one occasion, when out with our worthy district magistrate, Mr. S., I came on the tracks of what to all appearance, was a very large tiger. They led over the sand close to the water's edge, and were very distinct. I could see no returning marks, so I judged that the tiger must have taken to the water. The stream was rapid and deep, and midway to the further bank was a big, oblong-shaped, sandy islet, some five or six hundred yards long, and having a few scrubby bushes growing spa.r.s.ely on it. We put our elephants into the rapid current, and got across. The river here was nearly a quarter of a mile wide on each side of the islet. As we emerged from the stream on to the island we found fresh tracks of the tiger. They led us completely round the circ.u.mference of the islet. The tiger had evidently been in quest of food. The prints were fresh and very well defined. Finding that all was barren on the sandy sh.o.r.e, he entered the current again, and following up we found his imprint once more on the further bank, several hundred yards down the stream.

One tiger was killed stone dead by a single bullet during one of our annual hunts, and falling back into the water, it sank to the bottom like lead. Being unable to find the animal, we beat all round the place, till I suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it might be still alive. We soon disabused his mind of that idea, and had the dead tiger hauled up to dry land.

Surprised by floods, a tiger has been known to remain for days on an ant-hill, and even to take refuge on the branch of some large tree, but he takes to water readily, and can swim for over a mile, and he has been known to remain for days in from two to three feet depth of water.

A time-honoured tiger story with old hands, used to tell how the Soonderbund tigers got carried out to sea. If the listener was a new arrival, or a _gobe mouche_, they would explain that the tigers in the Soonderbunds often get carried out to sea by the retiring tide. It would sweep them off as they were swimming from island to island in the vast delta of Father Ganges. Only the young ones, however, suffered this lamentable fate. The older and more wary fellows, taught perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing.

If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero of the song--

'Wait for the turn of the tide.'

Without venturing an opinion on this story, I may confidently a.s.sert, that the tiger, unlike his humble prototype the domestic cat, is not really afraid of water, but will take to it readily to escape a threatened danger, or if he can achieve any object by 'paddling his own canoe.'

CHAPTER XX.

No regular breeding season.--Beliefs and prejudices of the natives about tigers.--Bravery of the 'gwalla,' or cowherd caste.--Clawmarks on trees.--Fondness for particular localities.--Tiger in Mr. F.'s howdah.--Springing powers of tigers.--Lying close in cover.--Incident.

--Tiger shot with No. 4 shot.--Man clawed by a tiger.--Knocked its eye out with a sickle.--Same tiger subsequently shot in same place.--Tigers easily killed.--Instances.--Effect of sh.e.l.ls on tiger and buffalo.--Best weapon and bullets for tiger.--Poisoning tigers denounced.--Natives p.r.o.ne to exaggerate in giving news of tiger.--Anecdote.--Beating for tiger.--Line of elephants.--Padding dead game.--Line of seventy-six elephants.--Captain of the hunt.--Flags for signals in the line.

--'Naka,' or scout ahead.--Usual time for tiger shooting on the Koosee.--Firing the jungle.--The line of fire at night.--Foolish to shoot at moving jungle.--Never shoot down the line.--Motions of different animals in the gra.s.s.

Tigers seem to have no regular breeding season. As a rule the male and female come together in the autumn and winter, and the young ones are born in the spring and summer. All the young tigers I have ever heard of have been found in March, April, and May, and so on through the rains.

The natives have many singular beliefs and prejudices about tigers, and they are very often averse to give the slightest information as to their whereabouts. To a stranger they will either give no information at all, pleading entire ignorance, or they will wilfully mislead him, putting him on a totally wrong track. If you are well known to the villagers, and if they have confidence in your nerve and aim, they will eagerly tell you everything they know, and will accompany you on your elephant, to point out the exact spot where the tiger was last seen. In the event of a 'find' they always look for _backsheesh_, even though your exertions may have rid their neighbourhood of an acknowledged scourge.

The _gwalla_, or cowherd caste, seem to know the habits of the yellow striped robber very accurately. Accompanied by their herd they will venture into the thickest jungle, even though they know that it is infested by one or more tigers. If any member of the herd is attacked, it is quite common for the _gwalla_ to rush up, and by shouts and even blows try to make the robber yield up his prey. This is no exaggeration, but a simple fact. A cowherd attacked by a tiger has been known to call up his herd by cries, and they have succeeded in driving off his fierce a.s.sailant. No tiger will willingly face a herd of buffaloes or cattle united for mutual defence. Surrounded by his trusty herd, the _gwalla_ traverses the densest jungle and most tiger-infested thickets without fear.

They believe that to rub the fat of the tiger on the loins, and to eat a piece of the tongue or flesh, will cure impotency; and tiger fat, rubbed on a painful part of the body, is an accepted specific for rheumatic affections. It is a firmly settled belief, that the whiskers and teeth, worn on the body, will act as a charm, making the wearer proof against the attacks of tigers. The collar-bone too, is eagerly coveted for the same reason.

During the rains tigers are sometimes forced, like others of the cat tribe, to take to trees. A Mr. McI. shot two large full grown, tigers in a tree at Gunghara, and a Baboo of my acquaintance bagged no less than eight in trees during one rainy season at Rampoor.

Tigers generally prefer remaining near water, and drink a great deal, the quant.i.ty of raw meat they devour being no doubt provocative of thirst.

The marks of their claws are often seen on trees in the vicinity of their haunts, and from this fact many ridiculous stories have got abroad regarding their habits. It has even been regarded by some writers as a sort of rude test, by which to arrive at an approximate estimate of the tiger's size. A tiger can stretch himself out some two or two and a half feet more than his measurable length. You have doubtless often seen a domestic cat whetting its claws on the mat, or scratching some rough substance, such as the bark of a tree; this is often done to clean the claws, and to get rid of chipped and ragged pieces, and it is sometimes mere playfulness. It is the same with the tiger, the scratching on the trees is frequently done in the mere wantonness of sport, but it is often resorted to to clear the claws from pieces of flesh, that may have adhered to them during a meal on some poor slaughtered bullock. These marks on the trees are a valuable sign for the hunter, as by their appearance, whether fresh or old, he can often tell the whereabouts of his quarry, and a good tracker will even be able to make a rough guess at its probable size and disposition.

Like policemen, tigers stick to certain beats; even when disturbed, and forced to abandon a favourite spot, they frequently return to it; and although the jungle may be wholly destroyed, old tigers retain a partiality for the scenes of their youthful depredations; they are often shot in the most unlikely places, where there is little or no cover, and one would certainly never expect to find them; they migrate with the herds, and retire to the hills during the annual floods, always coming back to the same jungle when the rains are over.

Experienced shekarries know this trait of the tiger's character well, and can tell you minutely the colour and general appearance of the animals in any particular jungle; they are aware of any peculiarity, such as lameness, scars, &c., and their observations must be very keen indeed, and amazingly accurate, as I have never known them wrong when they committed themselves to a positive statement.

An old planter residing at Sultanpore, close on the Nepaul border, a noted sportsman and a crack shot, was charged on one occasion by a large tiger; the brute sprang right off the ground on to the elephant's head; his hind legs were completely off the ground, resting on the elephant's chest and neck; Mr. F. retained sufficient presence of mind to sit close down in his howdah; the tiger's forearm was extended completely over the front bar, and so close that it touched his hat. In this position he called out to his son who was on another elephant close by, to fire at the tiger; he was cool enough to warn him to take a careful aim, and not hit the elephant. His son acted gallantly up to his instructions, and shot the tiger through the heart, when it dropped down quite dead, to Mr. F.'s great relief.

Some sportsmen are of opinion, that the tiger when charging never springs clear from the ground, but only rears itself on its hind legs; this however is a mistake. I saw a tiger leap right off the ground, and spring on to the rump of an elephant carrying young Sam S. The elephant proved staunch, and remained quite quiet, and Sam, turning round in his howdah, shot his a.s.sailant through the head.

I may give another incident, to shew how closely tigers will sometimes stick to cover; they are sometimes as bad to dislodge as a quail or a hare; they will crouch down and conceal themselves till you almost trample on them. One day a party of the Purneah Club were out; they had shot two fine tigers out of several that had been seen; the others were known to have gone ahead into some jungle surrounded by water, and easy to beat. Before proceeding further it was proposed accordingly to have some refreshment. The _tiffin_ elephant was directed to a tree close by, beneath whose shade the hungry sportsmen were to plant themselves; the elephant had knelt down, one or two boxes had actually been removed, several of the servants were clearing away the dried gra.s.s and leaves. H.W.S. came up on the opposite side of the tree, and was in the act of leaping off his elephant, when an enormous tiger got up at his very feet, and before the astounded sportsmen could handle a gun, the formidable intruder had cleared the bushes with a bound, and disappeared in the thick jungle.

The following adventure bears me out in my remark, that tigers get attached to, and like to remain in, one place. Mr. F. Simpson, a thorough-going sportsman of the good old type, had been out one day in the Koosee derahs; he had had a long and unsuccessful beat for tiger, and had given up all hope of bagging one that day; he thought therefore that he might as well turn his attention to more ign.o.ble game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a few minutes a peac.o.c.k got up in front of him, and he fired. The report roused a very fine tiger right in front of his elephant; to make the best of a bad bargain, he gave the retreating animal the full benefit of his remaining charge of shot, and peppered it well. About a year after, close to this very place, C.A.S. bagged a fine tiger. On examination, the marks of a charge of shot were found in the flanks, and on removing the pads of the feet, numbers of pellets of No. 4 shot were found embedded in them. It was evidently the animal that had been peppered a year before, and the pellets had worked their way downwards to the feet.

On another occasion, a man came to the factory where George was then residing, to give information of a tiger. He bore on his back numerous bleeding scratches, ample evidence of the truth of his story. While cutting gra.s.s in the jungle, with a blanket on his back, the day being rainy, he had been attacked by a tiger from the rear. The blanket is generally folded several times, and worn over the head and back. It is a thick heavy covering, and in the first onset the tiger tore the blanket from the man's body, which was probably the means of saving his life. The man turned round, terribly scared, as may be imagined.

In desperation he struck at the tiger with his sickle, and according to his own account, he succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He said it was a young tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the persistency with which he stuck to his story, impressed George with the belief that he was telling the truth. A search for the tiger was made. The man's blanket was found, torn to shreds, but no tiger, although the footprints of one were plainly visible. But some months after, near the same spot, George shot a half grown tiger with one of its eyes gone, which had evidently been roughly torn from the socket.

This was doubtless the identical brute that had attacked the gra.s.s-cutter.

It is sometimes wonderful how easily a large and powerful tiger may be killed. The most vulnerable parts are the back of the head, through the neck, and broadside on the chest. The neck is the most deadly spot of all, and a shot behind the shoulder, or on the spine, is sure to bring the game to bag. I have seen several shot with a single bullet from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion, George tells me he saw a tigress killed with a single smooth-bore bullet at over a hundred yards. The bullet was a _ricochet_, and struck the tigress below the chest, and travelled towards the heart, but without touching it. She fell twenty yards from where she had been hit. Another, which on skinning we found had been shot through the heart, with a single smooth-bore bullet at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards, travelled for thirty yards before falling dead. Meiselback, a neighbour of mine, shot three tigers successively, on one occasion, with a No. 18 Joe Manton smooth-bore. Each of the three was killed by a single bullet, one in the head, one in the neck, and one through the heart, the bullet entering behind the shoulder.

On the other hand, I once fired no less than six Jacob's sh.e.l.ls into a tiger, all behind the shoulder, before I could stop him. The sh.e.l.ls seemed to explode on the surface the moment they came in contact with the body. There was a tremendous surface wound, big enough to put a pumpkin into, but very little internal hurt. On another occasion (April 4, 1874) during one of the most exciting and most glorious moments of my sporting life--buffaloes charging the line in all directions, burning jungle all around us, and bullets whistling on every side--I fired TWELVE sh.e.l.ls into a large bull before I killed him. As every sh.e.l.l hit him, I heard the sharp detonation, and saw the tiny puff of smoke curl outward from the ghastly wound. The poor maddened brute would drop on his knees, stagger again to his feet, and, game to the last, attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious really to test the effect of the Jacob's sh.e.l.l as against the solid conical bullet, and carefully watched the result of each shot. My weapon was a beautifully finished No. 12 smooth-bore, made expressly to order for an officer in the Royal Artillery, from whom I bought it.

From that day I never fired another Jacob's sh.e.l.l.

My remarks about the tiger springing clear off the ground when charging, are amply borne out by the experience of some of my sporting friends. I could quote pages, but will content myself with one extract. It is a point of some importance, as many good old sportsmen pooh-pooh the idea, and maintain that the tiger merely stretches himself out to his fullest length, and if he does leave the ground, it is by a purely physical effort, pulling himself up by his claws.

My friend George writes me: 'In several cases I have known and seen the tiger spring, and leave the ground. In one case the tiger sprang from fully five yards off. He crouched at the distance of a few paces, as if about to spring, and then sprang clean on to the head of Joe's _tusker_. An eight feet nine inch tigress once got on to the head of my elephant, which was ten feet seven inches in height. Every one present saw her leave the ground. Once, when after a tiger in small stubble, about six feet high, I saw one bound over a bush so clean that I could see every bit of him.' And so on.

For long range shooting the rifle is doubtless the best weapon. The Express is the most deadly. The smooth-bore is the gun for downright honest sport. Sh.e.l.ls and hollow pointed bullets are the things, as one sportsman writes me, 'for mutilation and cowardly murder, and for spoiling the skin.' Poison is the resource of the poacher. No sportsman could descend so low. Grant that the tiger is a scourge, a pest, a nuisance, a cruel and implacable foe to man and beast; pile all the vilest epithets of your vocabulary on his head, and say that he deserves them all, still he is what opportunity and circ.u.mstance have made him. He is as nature fashioned him; and there are bold spirits, and keen sights, and steady nerves enough, G.o.d wot, among our Indian sportsmen, to cope with him on more equal and sportsmanlike terms than by poisoning him like a mangy dog. On this point, however, opinions differ. I do not envy the man who would prefer poisoning a tiger to the keen delight of patiently following him up, ousting him from cover to cover, watching his careful endeavours to elude your search; perhaps at the end of a long and fascinating beat, feeling the electric excitement thrill every nerve and fibre of your body, as the magnificent robber comes bounding down at the charge, the very embodiment of ferocity and strength, the perfection of symmetry, the acme of agility and grace.

Natives are such notorious perverters of the truth, and so often hide what little there may be in their communications under such floods of Oriental hyperbole and exaggeration, that you are often disappointed in going out on what you consider trustworthy and certain information.

They often remind me of the story of the Laird of Logan. He was riding slowly along a country road one day, when another equestrian joined him. Logan's eye fixed itself on a hole in the turf bank bounding the road, and with great gravity, and in trust-inspiring accents, he said, 'I saw a _tod_ (or fox) gang in there.'

'Did you, really;' cried the new comer.

'I did,' responded the laird.

'Will you hold my horse till I get a spade,' cried the now excited traveller.

The laird a.s.sented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with a spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his exertions. When at length it became plain that there was no fox there, he wiped his streaming brow, and rather crossly exclaimed, 'I'm afraid there's no tod here.'

'It would be a wonder if there was,' rejoined the laird, without the movement of a muscle, 'it's ten years since I saw him gang in there.'

So it is sometimes with a native. He will fire your ardour, by telling you of some enormous tiger, to be found in some jungle close by, but when you come to enquire minutely into his story, you find that the tiger was seen perhaps the year before last, or that it _used_ to be there, or that somebody else had told him of its being there.

Some tigers, too, are so cunning and wary, that they will make off long before the elephants have come near. I have seen others rise on their hind legs just like a hare or a kangaroo, and peer over the jungle trying to make out one's whereabouts. This is of course only in short light jungle.

The plan we generally adopt in beating for tiger on or near the Nepaul border, is to use a line of elephants to beat the cover. It is a fine sight to watch the long line of stately monsters moving slowly and steadily forward. Several howdahs tower high above the line, the polished barrels of guns and rifles glittering in the fierce rays of the burning and vertical sun. Some of the shooters wear huge hats made from the light pith of the solah plant, others have long blue or white puggrees wound round their heads in truly Oriental style. These are very comfortable to wear, but rather trying to the sight, as they afford no protection to the eyes. For riding they are to my mind the most comfortable head-dress that can be worn, and they are certainly more graceful than the stiff unsightly solah hat.

Between every two howdahs are four or five pad elephants. These beat up all the intervening bushes, and carry the game that may be shot.

When a pig, deer, tiger, or other animal has been shot, and has received its _coup de grace_, it is quickly bundled on to the pad, and there secured. The elephant kneels down to receive the load, and while game is being padded the whole line waits, till the operation is complete, as it is bad policy to leave blanks. Where this simple precaution is neglected, many a tiger will sneak through the opening left by the pad elephant, and so silently and cautiously can they steal through the dense cover, and so cunning are they and acute, that they will take advantage of the slightest gap, and the keenest and best trained eye will fail to detect them.

In most of our hunting parties on the Koosee, we had some twenty or thirty elephants, and frequently six or eight howdahs. These expeditions were very pleasant, and we lived luxuriously. For real sport ten elephants and two or three tried comrades--not more--is much better. With a short, easily-worked line, that can turn and double, and follow the tiger quickly, and dog his every movement, you can get far better sport, and bring more to bag, than with a long unwieldy line, that takes a considerable time to turn and wheel, and in whose onward march there is of necessity little of the silence and swiftness which are necessary elements in successful tiger shooting.