OLD SHIKHARI’S TALES
The reminiscences of Donald Anderson, son of author Kenneth Anderson, and one of the last hunters from India’s colonial past, make for fascinating reading. An excerpt on hunting a maneater
The joy of sitting in an Indian jungle is an indescribable feeling and if you truly love the wilderness and all its creatures, an evening can provide you more entertainment than any cinema... Like my dad, I too started to enjoy the thrill of doing this over time, and towards my last days of hunting, I never felt disappointed if I did not shoot anything... I have lived a decadent, selfish life, taking and doing what I wanted. It may sound as if I am gloating, but I am merely putting on record the way I lived my life — the rules I made for myself, the absolute lack of respect or concern I had for any other living creature other than myself. When I was out in the jungle with my rifle, I attained a state of nirvana, for I felt like God. I was so confident about my skill as a hunter that I knew no creature could ever hurt me, and I took some really extravagant risks... I have no explanation as to why I do not have even a scratch to show from those days... I will not defend my hunting some of the larger animals as some sort of service I did to protect people, but the truth of the matter is that tigers, panthers, and wild dogs were treated as vermin in those days, and hunters were rewarded for killing them...
Let me follow that up with the story of the first man-eating tiger I shot near the village of Gajnore... Even in those days, the land between Ubrani and Gajnore never held any thick forest, but was a desolate country filled with stunted bamboo, date palms, and thorn trees. The villages were few and were found mostly along the banks of a river that meandered through this area. The Mysore government had issued a notification and reward for hunters with licenses to kill the man-eater that had become a menace. It was supposed to be particularly cunning and had avoided the hunters at the expense of two of its brethren who had been mistakenly shot. Its modus operandi was to carry off travellers on the highway between Chitraldoorg and Shimoga town. The tiger never had the courage to charge a cart but would always sneak on these groups of people when they stopped for a break. Of course, stories are grossly exaggerated and it was not long before the rumour that it would jump on to bullock carts and carry away victims... practically brought all traffic to a standstill between dusk and dawn. On every occasion that it made a kill, it would leave the bullocks and only carry off humans, a frightening prospect, for, at minimal risk, it could have killed the tied bullock which would have given him a larger meal. Instead, it chose humans, making it a connoisseur of human flesh, and I wondered how I would ever get it, considering I had never done this sort of thing before. A long period of immunity had encouraged such confidence in the tiger that it even made occasional raids into the town...
I landed up at the travellers’ bungalow about ten miles from Gajnore... However, on two nights, I sat up on machans at likely places, yet no tiger came... It was frustrating. I had taken a week off, and my time there was drawing to a close. On Friday morning, the luck that had so far eluded me, changed. Unfortunately, it ended the life of a young man, who was taken from the field where he was working. If I could have convinced the distraught relatives to leave the body where it lay, I might have got a shot when the man-eater returned to complete his meal... I did not have such single-mindedness as to ask them to leave the body as bait...
By mid-day I knew why I had not seen the tiger that night. A mile away from the bungalow, it had killed a small girl who had gone to edge of the field to answer the call of nature. I was informed that the girl had been eaten completely so there was no point waiting for it there. Then, for the next two days, there were no kills, and I had to get back to Bangalore. The maneater then disappeared for a bit, and it was believed that it had wandered off or died, and people were relieved. Their joy was temporary, for within a month it struck again... sneaking up behind a bullock cart... carrying off the lone cart man... Perhaps it was fate, but I had decided to visit the place on the same weekend, and I had no sooner got off my bike than I was informed about the incident that had occurred that morning... I was sure that the tiger would return. Although the man had been killed on the main road, his body had been dragged for some distance into the undergrowth. It suited me fine, for I was able to find a ficus tree close to the spot and, with help from the locals, to put up a machan. There was no cadaver, and I had no choice but to get a buffalo to satiate the man-eater’s hunger... The machan was a small charpoy... fastened securely to the branches of a tree, and surrounded by a screen of boughs, while below me was the unfortunate bovine at a spot where two jungle paths intersected. Soon, the last rays of the day disappeared and the moon began to cast spectral shadows as it rose from the earth, bringing out the sandy road in pallid clearness amongst the shadows. It started to grow cold and quiet at the same time... Far away, I could hear the faint bark of the village dogs, and the only other sound was that made by the tree crickets. Soon it became so dark that I was resigned to spending the rest of the night dependent on my hearing, not my sight. I have neither acquired the patience my dad had nor his ability to stay awake through the night, and... after a while, I fell asleep. I got up with a start — a distant roar from the east had woken me up. I gripped my rifle, but there was silence, and then I heard it again, this time from a different and somewhat nearer point, and then again, betraying the tiger’s zigzag course. I was hoping that it would come on to either of the paths and see my buffalo... Judging from the last sound, it was still a furlong away, so I took a chance and shone my torch at the buffalo, and realised that it was fast asleep! It had not heard the roars, so it was either a heavy sleeper or tone deaf, and neither suited me. I wanted it to give itself away, so I used a rather unsporting method of throwing a couple of my cartridges at it, hoping to wake it up. I do not understand buffalo too well, but its low grunt in response seemed to say, “Just go back to sleep, you two-legged moron.”
Famous last words, for that perhaps betrayed its presence and in less than a minute came the sound of the tiger’s rush and then, in almost complete silence, it killed the buffalo... The day had not dawned, and my watch showed the time as 5:10... and then I heard the unmistakable sound of a heavy body being dragged along the forest floor. Under the trees, it would have remained veiled from my sight, and had it dragged the body in another direction it might have retreated into the jungle, but on the light-coloured mud road, there were no shadows, and the pre-dawn light gave me that one small window of opportunity to silhouette the tiger, and I did not miss. My perfect shot killed it on the spot, and soon, the glorious morning sun bathed my first man-eating tiger and me in soft light and created an unforgettable memory.