MAN-EATING LEOPARD

Evening Star, Issue 19198, 15 March 1926, Page 8

MAN-EATING LEOPARD

KILLED OVER 100 PEOPLE There is a man-eating leopard in the vicinity of Rudraprayug Gavhwal, in India, which is responsible lor killing over a hundred human beings. Many attempts have been made to destroy the monster, but they have hitherto been frustrated by its extreme cunning. _ The Government of the United Provinces recently issued extracts from letters describing the attempts of ono hunter to eliminate the pest. Tho main extract is as follows ; There is another long story of hairbreadth escapes of tho man-eater to be told. After the night lie described in tiie letter T sent on to you X rather lost sight of the brute for a Jew. days. Later bo discovered that in a village ■within four miles of Rudraprayag, where he had repeatedly inquired whether any goat or other animal had been killed, there had boon a cow kill; and tho villagers, instead of giving him information, had c-rectbd an enormous trap and put a leg of the cow in it, two panthers having been there quarrelling and snarling over the kill for lour consecutive nights. This shows the dilliculties under which anyone tries to hunt the man-ealcr. N tried that night, but it was then too late. Tlio male panther concerned may or may not have been the man-eater. On November 4 a cow kill was reported about five miles up the Alakuanda. X and I. wont, and lie sat ou the ground until 3. a,m. One has to be out iu the dark in the vicinity of this brute to realise the courage needed to sit for him on the ground. Jn tin's case there was no sign of a panther at all, and tho_ position of the cow killed rather indicated that the killer had been disturbed off it in the morning. We returned about 3 a.m. to Rudraprayag to hear at 9 that another cow had been killed right against the wall of a house within half a.'mile of X’s camp. This kill was very suggestive of the man-eater, as there bad been three nien and four buffaloes inside the house, and the voices of the men who_ talked about the scuffle they heard with the cow, but had not gone out, must have been audible to the killer. That day, November 5, it pelted with rain the whole day, and it was .still raining steadily at nightfall. X .said that no panther would come in the rain, and that, even if it cleared up towards morning, and it came, the certainty would be all the greater of getting ‘it the next night. Accordingly, we ordered the building to be left emptv and did not sit up. The weather “cleared about 3 a.m., the' panther came, opened the door, ami spent' a part of the night inside the house

among the inhabitants’ brass vessels, etc., and had a feed. A PANTHER TRAPPHD. The next night, November G, X and I both sat on a straw stack in a tree for tho whole nigh;.. Tim panther came soon alter it was pitch-dark, barely looked at the kill, and spout throe or four hours patrolling the surrounding country. Wo did not know for certain whether ho was about or not in the pitch-darkness, but comparing notes' in the morning made us both almost certain that at. one stage ho came np into tho lower fork of the tree wo were sitting in. Anyway, we did not get a shot. The next evening wo set an enormous rat-trap, scut up there by the inspector-general of police, on the path tho panther had come by, and again sat np tho tree. By 7.30 he was in tho trap, and we climbed down and finished him off by lantern light. There were great rejoicings, and everyone agreed that it was almost certainly the man-eater; possibly there may have been two, and this one of them. Next morning, at daybreak, news came that a woman had been killed on November 5, thirty-six hours previously, on the other side of tho river twelve _ miles away. X and I set out immediately, and reached the place about 1 p.m., the trap following ns. Wo sot tho trap beside the corpse, and ourselves sat on a tree (a very low one about 80yds away, so that our breathing should not put tho beast off, and so that we could get down quickly and finish him off if he got in the trap. Immediately after it was really dark we heard tho panther come towards tho corpse, and then lie came straight away to the vicinity of our tree, and came and went from near the corpse to near ns for the next two hours. It was absolutely pitch dark, and v.c sat like figures” in a penny-dreadful picture with our fingers on the triggers. About 9.30 pan. X decided that, as he had found us, he would not go near the corpse until we left the vicinity, so we lighted a, petrol lantern and got down the tree and started for the village, which was about a. mile off. When we bad gone about 30yds the lantern crashed against a rock, and we did the rest of the journey in darkness.

The remainder of the night was spent in an open, verandah with a couple_ of dogs doing low growls at something unseen every few minutes. You may imagine wo" hardly got the sleep we hoped for. UNCANNY CAUTION.

Next morning wo heard that in the dusk before tho panther came to the corpse he had killed a cow on the opposite hillside. Wo examined this kill and decided that he was now likely to abandon the corpse and lecd off the cow. We therefore left tho rorpso well poisoned and concentrated on the cow.

We again set the trap. and. this time sat 400yds away behind a ridge so as to arouse no suspicion whatever, the birds, etc., gave us notice au dusk that the panther was moving to the cow. Nothing else happened till dawn, when wo again went to the kill., it was absolutely astounding to see row the panther had put. one loot plump on the innocuous spring of the tiap, and three pug marks each within hah nu inch of the plate which u touched would have let off the trap, the pug marks being in such positions teat he obviously knew exactly what place uas dangerous and what was not. ino whole area in which he had stood was made earth, the trap being, of course., carefully buried, and how he c.ccidcci which was the dangerous portion and which. not is beyond our comprehension. Anyhow, lie did decide, and pushed through thick thorns' to take the cow by the nose, dragged her right down tile hill, and there had his loon, Ho was still on or near the kill, m thick bush, when we arrived in. the vicinity at dawn, and we stalked him for about on hour, but without getting a sight of him.- The place was an impossible one to beat for a panther, so it had to be left for another try next right. POISON FAILS. It was now impossible _ lor. me to stay any longer, and I lett. X to vhe next night’s operations. He po soned the kill, set the trap again, and himself sat on a tree about 100yds away. Tile panther came, did not get into the trap, and X, gallant fellow, to avoid disturbing it from its poison by lighting a torch, got down limn Ins tree and walked to the village m darkness with a single attendant. Morning showed that the panther had paddied along the path behind them and scratched his contempt .in the earth around the house in which X retired. Ho seems then to have returned to the kill and taken a good feed, including the poison. The poison is, unfortunately, perchloric!© of mercury, the

beast having apparently convinced my predecessor that he knew all there was to know about strychnine and arsenic. X says that if the panther had absorbed one-tenth of the dose of strychnine that he took of perchloride he would have remained dead on the kill. They made a great .search for his body in the morning, but found nothing. The civil -surgeon now tells me that this perchloride, though it has been the means of killing two man-eating tigers, does not really poison_ the animal finally, but only Venders it very sick, and gives a chance to a rifle in the morning to finish the job. The hope of having killed the panther in this case is therefore not great, —The ‘Pioneer.’