MAN-EATING LEOPARD

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 7 August 1926, Page 11

MAN-EATING LEOPARD

fANE of the most remarkable stories in the history of Indian shikar (big game hunting) is told by a Naini Tal correspondent in the Pioneer. The writer describes the killing of a leopard, which in the pa si seven years has killed 125 human beings, by Captain ,T. Corbett, of Guimey House, Naini Tal, with the co-operation of Mr A. W. Ibbotson, Deputy Commissioner of Garhwal. It roamed in an area of some 350 square miles of Western Garliwal, which included the .junction of the pilgrim routes to the holy shrines of Kidarnath and Badrinath.

The leopard did not often seize pilgrims, "who travel in bands of considerable size and are protected in their shelters by strong lights. Its victims were generaly snatched from inside houses or their entrance. The fear this aroused led the people to close up and barricade their small homes even in the stifling hot weather. Year after year all efforts to kill the leopard failed. Sixteen Indian shikaris paid by tho Government did not succeed; twice the leopard was caught, once in a trap and once in a cave only to escape. Gun traps, gin traps, the most careful tracking, sitting up over human kils, poisoning the kills with strychnine arsenic, and cyanide were of no avail. The country folk long ago decided that the man-eater had supernatural powers. Towards the end of April Captain Corbett sat up for ten nights on a machan, near a grass shelter where the leopard had killed three victims, without seeing anything of the boast. Below was a goat secured with a bell round its neck. On the eleventli night at 10 o’clock Captain Corbett heard something rush down the road, and by means of his electric torch was able to see a leopard springing. He fired without apparent result, and had to spend an anxious night aloft until daylight caine. He then found bloodtracks leading to the leopard, which lay dead

in a. hole into which it had fallen 50 yards down a ravine. The identification of the animal as the famous maneater is unquestionable. It was very old, and its length was 7ft lOin. Captain Corbett had spent ten weeks in the hunt.