Hunting a Panther

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 36, 5 September 1907, Page 33

Hunting a Panther

Hunting big game in India should be preceded by some training of the eye to see things where they are. The author of ' Thirty Years of Shikar ' tells how he received this training rather late . in his course. Shikar is the East Indian' word for sport, and sport in that part of the world begins "with panthers and ends with tigers. ' Wfien I reached the ground the panther was still there, and a keen-eyed native pointed it out to me.

' " Hftherwarcl is its head," said the nan, "thitherward its tail. Doesn't the sahib see it ? There,' there! " and he pointed to a spot about three yards off.

' But I didn't -see the panther — either its head' or tail or anything thai, was its. I only saw a mass of light and shade under a dense overgrowth of greenery, dead leaves and grass, that were yellowish where the pencils of light broke in upon the, gloom, and, otherwise, they were mysterious shadows that told nothing to my unaccustomed eye. ' All that I looked upon in that greenwood tangle was equally panther. I could' pick- out no particular patch as being any more pantherisb. than the rest. Of head or tail I made out nothing where all was equally one or the other— 'and still that native of keeinest vision besought me to see the panther's head and tail and right forefoot, , and ''many other detail^ of its anatomy. '' Then there came a roar put of the thicket, and a rush which was like the volcanic upheaval of the ground at my feet, and, as it- seemed, several tons of upheaved matter Hit ire on the chest, and I was bowled over on to the broad of my back a yard or two from where I' had stood. -

' That upheaval was the panther. The brute had not had the patience to wait until I saw him, or the modesty to take himself off .peaceably in some other direction. He, had resented lry staring his way, even though I saw him not, and so had emerged from his lair like an animal rocket and had knocked me down in his flight.

' As he failed to claw me, I came oft scatheless ; but not so my attendant, who foolishly eir.braced the panther with a. view to arresting his flight.- He got himself rather badly mauled, and did not come, out of the hospital for some weeks. ' That was my disastrous commencement with panthers.'