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 assailant 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 grass 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 ignoble
game. Extracting his bullets, he replaced them with No. 4 shot. In a
few minutes a peacock 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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