STALKING THE TIGER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

STALKING THE TIGER.

THE STRIPED LORD OF THE JUNGLE.

POWER AND SPEED PAST BELIEF.

A GRIM MASTER OF ART.

Tigers by the hundreds, tigers every two or three miles as I went through the jungle; their tracks by scores along the muddy water courses and sandy beaches of the Upper Irrawaddy River; tigers coming down to the fringes of civilisation from the vast Mongolian wilderness; huge striped tomcats of incredible strength and stealth; bold and cunning enough to slay bullocks in the back yards of dwellings, and to kill stock 011 peaceful farms and dairies without ever being seen; treacherous, fierce, subtle, patient; charging against all odds when wounded and sometimes even attacking man just because they have been disturbed or because man, puny creature, has shown fear. Such are the great cats of a real tiger land from which I have just returned, a primitive but lovely section of Upper Burma, writes Hamilton M. Wright in the New York "Herald Tribune." There the "village tiger" prey 3 on the wild creatures of the jungle and takes a heavy toll of domestic stock. He is a gigantic creature of the Bengal type, somewhat stubbier, a little longer furred; stripes not so brilliant a red as the Bengal, and a little more of a Persian cat in beauty. But the "old man" tiger in his prime weighs between 500 and 600 pounds; he has a power to smash through bone and tissue that passes belief, and he is a master in the art of swift killing. I have had my chances with "Bagh," the striped lord of' the jungle. For eighteen nights, as a deathly chill swept down from the borders of Tibet, penetrating to my very bones, I sat up in blinds built in trees; for three other nights I sat in brush-covered pits that we dug near the tiger's kill—always fearing to move as'l crouched in my ambuscades, fearing even to rustle a leaf, and hoping constantly that Bagh would come to the kill or attack our staked bait. He did come; he came like a tornado, growling terribly as he rushed through the dark. Leaping for our. horse's throat, he caught the lower jaw instead, and crushed the heavy jawbone as though it had been an eggshell. Learning About Tigers. I, too, have come on Bagh by day. • I have come on him roaring his defiance in the tall, dence kaing grass, when my native hunters, sensing ths,t he would charge, took to trees like monkeys and left me alone on the ground in heavy boots that did not let me climb. ' - I have heard him approach my narrow pit built" into the ground like a ma'chine gun emplacement. I have come too near him, perhaps, as I wandered close to • the kill without a gun. A dozen times or more I have smelled the distinctive odour of Bagh, far more vile than the mild smell of the circus tiger. I have seen the deep scratches Bagh makes on trees when he cleans and sharpens his dirty claws —in one case they reached twenty inches above my head, and I am five feet ten inches tall. I have found his sleeping places in the grass. I have examined hundreds of his footprints. I have him roar and growl and snarl, both by Tiight and by day. I have seen him kill. And yet I have not "got my tiger." I have no pelt to show, though I believe it's a fifty-fifty- chance . that somewhere in the jungle the vultures have feasted on tiger meat as the result of my failure to deliver a knockout shot. My, bad luck is not without its sunny side. Had I "got my tiger" I should not have kept after him night and day for so many long, feverish, hectic. weeks. I would know much less about tigers than I know now. I should not have sat up through the long nights in jungle trees, chilled by the cold wind that .drives down from Tibet and by the, penetrating night fog of the dank, aromatic jungle. I learned of Bagh's power in a dozen ways. I saw a "kill," a heavy native bullock, about the size of a large Jersey bull, that an "old man" tiger, had ■„ dragged for 125 feet thrpngh dense brush, knocking down the heavy bushes as though they had teen feathers. I learned, too, of his stealth. 1 thought the jungle was the place for tigers. I found they go everywhere—on lofty mountains, along well-travelled roads at night, around farms, in dense jungles, across rivers—a tiger was even found, it is credibly said, in a paddle box of one of the Irrawaddy River steamers. British army officers, with thirty years' experience in hunting tigers, tell me that Bagh is an incomprehensible cat. He exists in contact with a degree of civilisation where animals like the grizzly bear and lion would be (and have been) exterminated. Not only is he extremely wary but he is an individualist. No two tigers can be expected to act alike in similar circumstances. Many tiger hunters lay stress on the silent approach of this giant feline, whose paws are padded heavily to deaden sound. Yet I have heard Bagh stride through the jungle at night in the dry season with a mighty crackling of brittle grass, walking in pride as my lord the tiger, master of the jungle, should walk. Funeral Rites. I was fired with enthusiasm by the tiger tales recalled for my benefit. In one case a tiger had killed a mule on a military parade ground a few minutes after the soldiers had left the field. In another a native was nearing a village on a road north-west of Myitkyina when he looked back and saw a tiger following him. When he paused to watch the tiger, the tiger- also stopped. When he proceeded, the tiger followed: at the same pace. But the man got rattled. As he turned the corner of the road into a village he broke into a run. The tiger leaped after him, knocked him down, and then raced to safety in the jungle amid the shouts of the astonished villagers and' members of the military police who had witnessed the whole incident. In still another case two tigers had killed nine people in a village on the other side of the Irrawaddy several years before. Two British officers, who were experienced hunters, came and shot the tigers, whereupon the villagers held a funeral ceremony over the bodies of the brutes in lieu of the rites they would otherwise have held for the nine deceased natives. It sounded like a grand tiger place. But an officer who had resided in Upper . Burma for nearly thirty years had sat k up many nights at tiger kills and had neve*- ~sn seen a tiger.

Tigers shot even through the heart have killed men; no animal is more expert in killing. A few years ago a tiger and tigress were confined in half of a large cage in an Indian zoo; the other half was occupied by a lion and, his consort. A steel partition separated the couples. It contained a door, that by some mischance was left unlocked. The tiger put his >paw into the opening and walked in to see the lioness. The lion, which had been dozing, leaped to avenge this temerity. In a flash the tigress joined her mate. There was a fearful scuffle, and in a little over a minute both lions lay dead —a most decisive comparison of the merits of the animals as killers. Incredibly Powerful. I took on hunts after tigers as rapidly as they were reported and sometimes had the choice of hunting several in a single night. I discovered their tracks by the score along the banks of Upper Irrawaddy River. The tigers were enormous beasts and incredibly powerful. I discovered the carcase of a huge water buffalo, which two tigers had killed on a beach of the Irrawaddy and dragged to the top of a steep sandy incline more than twentyfive feet above the beach, evidently so that they would have a clean getaway into the jungle in case they were disturbed while feasting. I doubt if a team of strong horses could have equalled their feat. Moreover, these- tigers were not only unbelievably strong, but there was nothing in the whole region that could match them in ferocity. Under the rays of a flashlight, as I sat in a machan waiting for a shot at Bagh, I saw a huge tiger leap for a horse's throat as the horse, a large pinto polo pony, raised upon its hind legs in panic. The tiger caught the horse by the head and pulled it to the ground, crushing the house's heavy jawbone as though it had been papier mache. I fired immediately at the tiger, but I could not see my front sigit and overshot. The tiger vanished, and when I turned to end the horse's suffering, it, too, had risen and fled. We attempted to trail the horse ourselves through the jungle by torchlight, expecting to find both the horse and the tiger, for the Subadar Major, who was with me on that hunt, had fired at Bagh immediately after my shot, and thought he had struck him. But we lost the trail. Subtle, Stealthy, and Patient. Bagh is not only a formidable enemy, lie is subtle, stealthy, and patient. I have known a tiger to loiter, secreted near a kill for two hours, before being finally satisfied it was safe to approach. So incredibly sly and educated against man is Bagh that in an area of tens of thousands of square miles only about a dozen tigers are killed each year. Yet there are thousands-'of tigers and a great many villages and native hunters in the section. Almost all hunting must be done at night over a kill, though I ran upon one tiger and came very close to another in broad daylight, and the hunters of my party ran on two asleep in the morning sun. You may conclude from all this that the "village tiger" is a cautious gentle-1 man and something of a coward. Cautious he is to the nth degree, fearful of ambuscades even at night. He has an amazing awareness of the presence of man. But he is no coward. Let Bagh be hit by a bullet and he charges to the death, a demon incarnate, j No odds are too great. Near one of my camps lived an "old man" tiger well known to the natives. The first night at this camp I tied out an old bullock, and the "old man" killed' it within an hour, dragging its huge carcase eighty feet through the scrub to hide it.. For two nights I sat -up in a pit near the kill. The second night Bagh came near, so close I could hear him. coughing, but not close enough for me to get the light on him. He approached twice, evidently fearing something- was wrong. Then the wary beast left the country for a full two weeks. I had gone far into the jungle when I learned that the "old man" had returned and killed a deer near the same spot.

The cunning "village tiger" seems to lead a charmed life.