Tiger-shooting in India differs a trifle from the tame pursuit of game in England—a very different thing indeed from the miserable amusement of the battue, in which hundreds of defenceless creatures are shot down without any chance of danger to the shooter. To go out tiger-shooting is to run the risk of encountering a deadly enemy, which on grounds of public policy it is of importance to destroy. So much as a preliminary observation.

The danger connected with tiger-shooting varies very much in proportion to the conditions under which it is prosecuted. Thus a man on foot following the fresh tracks of a tiger up to his lair, and shooting him as he lies, or following him up on foot when wounded, incurs the maximum risk. In all cases, after being wounded, ungovernable fury and a fierce longing for revenge take the place of that instinctive fear or shyness of man which tigers share with all other wild animals. This instinctive dread of man is so well known to the tribes who inhabit the forests of India, that even solitary individuals will hail the prospect of suddenly encountering a tiger, provided, of course, that he is not a man-eater. They know their safety at such a moment lies in preserving a composed attitude and demeanour. The tiger will often yield the right of way; but if the human subject finds it necessary to set that example in the way of politeness, he knows it to be absolutely essential to the preservation of his life that he should do so with every appearance of self-possession, and without any signs of fear or precipitancy. A passage in King Richard III. accurately reflects the line of conduct which should be observed, holding good as it does equally with reference to the tiger:

In proportion to the successful days, the number of blank days in tiger-shooting is extraordinarily large, as the experience of most shikarees will confirm. This is owing to ‘hanks’ or beats being so often badly planned or mismanaged; through which tigers escape which might otherwise have easily been brought to book. The dry and denuded state of an Indian jungle during the hot weather makes that the most fitting season for tiger-shooting. Indeed it is the only season in which the sport can be undertaken with a reasonable prospect of success. The available covers for a tiger are then much reduced in number and extent; and in the inverse ratio are the chances increased of the animal's not betaking himself to some distant locality before the plan of action which is intended to effect his destruction has had time to develop itself. In other words, any faint and accidental signs of a disturbance in a tiger's vicinity will rouse him from his lair, and drive him to green patch or snug retreat miles away, if the weather be cool and cover abundant; whereas with very hot weather and extensive denudation of shade, he will prefer remaining where he is until the sounds assume too decided a character to be mistaken; when the probabilities are that the sportsman will be perfectly ready on his making a move.

The great point to remember in arranging to hunt a tiger is that one of his most prominent characteristics is cunning—and that this must be met by cunning. This is not sufficiently studied, especially by beginners. Eager and enthusiastic for the fray, and for the thrill of satisfaction which the all-important moment of the actual kill inspires, the inexperienced sportsman is too apt to overlook those precautions and preparations which are essential aids to success; or he relies upon others for doing in the above respects what he should attend to himself. The first thing to be done on arriving at the ground where a tiger has safely been marked down by the early despatched scouts is to acquaint one's self thoroughly with its topography. The nature of the ground varies very much; consisting sometimes of a pile of rocks rising from a plain, of a confused mass of hills, or of a large single hill, a river or small water-course stocked with green bushes, and with level jungle or perhaps open ground bordering on both sides; and so on. On being roused from his lair in say a water-course by the beaters, a tiger is very likely to cross over into the jungle, especially if another ravine is not far off to which he can retire. He does so with the express object of getting rid of his disturbers as soon as possible; or let us say that instinct tells him that an entire change of locality is most conducive to his safety. On the other hand, if there be no adjoining cover, a tiger will keep to the same channel and steal along its course. The difference between the two cases represents the comparative prospect of a tiger being bagged. When a tiger is compelled to steal along the channel from which he has been roused, the prospect becomes nearly a certainty, assuming the ‘hank’ to be conducted in a correct manner.

A very slight noise, such as slight coughing, will sometimes start a tiger; while he will at other times refuse to move, although even shots should be fired into the bush or among the rocks where he may be lying concealed. As Colonel Rice, late of the Bombay army, very justly remarks in his book entitled Tiger-shooting in India—and the writer's own experience is entirely corroborative of that statement—no two tigers can be depended on for behaving exactly alike under the same circumstances. An old tiger, and especially one which has been hunted before, is extremely wary, and very difficult to circumvent with even good management; while a young one readily falls a victim, like any other greenhorn. A tigress with young cubs is always very savage, and will sometimes charge anybody approaching her den or other resting-place before her own presence is at all suspected. Three men in the service of the writer were once obliged to take refuge on a rock only some six or seven feet high, where an angry tigress bayed them, and repeatedly threatened to charge home for at least two hours. One of the men was armed with a sword, and the other two had nothing but sticks in their hands. The tigress crouched at the very foot of the rock, which was small but flat-topped, over and over again. She there alternately blinked and glared at the unfortunate men, who only succeeded in keeping her off from actually springing on them by dint of vigorous and incessant shouting, and constantly changing front, according as the tigress herself kept moving from one side of the rock to another, and occasionally retiring a few paces, and then stealing forward and crouching again. The state of their throats and the terribly husky whisper to which their voices were in the end reduced, may easily be imagined. However, down to their humblest followers, hunters as a rule are a merry set, and directly actual danger has passed away the danger is forgotten.

In large covers there are often outlets and lines of exit, in addition to those guarded by a party of say four or five sportsmen, who post themselves at the most important points. These all require to be blocked up, so that a tiger, should he attempt to escape by any of them, may be readily turned on to a path which will draw him under fire. One of the covers in which the writer was fortunate enough to bag several tigers in different years, consisted of a river of about a hundred and fifty yards width, with ravines branching out at different points, and low hills bordering the banks. It was impracticable with fewer than a hundred men, and was best driven by elephants, in consequence of the thick and tangled state of the bushes. It was a piece of ground of the kind described above, offering numerous outlets, as the cover extended right under one of the banks, and ran for some distance along the length of the river; while the bank itself was of no great height, and might be ascended in a moment at any point. The method of blocking up the outlets which the sportsmen themselves cannot watch, is to place over them, on trees, the sharpest and most intelligent of the men that can be selected from among the beaters. They should be instructed to strike the tree with a stone taken up in the hand for that purpose, or to employ any other simple process of producing a noise, so that the tiger may be headed back the moment he is seen to be advancing, and his intention is unmistakable. A blank shot will be necessary to turn a rapidly advancing tiger; and a matchlock or spare gun in the hands of a competent person should in such cases be kept in reserve. Many of the rivers in India during the hunting season are perfectly dry beds, except as to a mere rill or narrow stream. The actual water's edge is, however, almost sure to be the tiger's position, if fringed by bushes sufficiently large to afford him shelter; for he delights in lapping the water frequently, and in laving his limbs during the hottest hours of the day.

With respect to the height a tiger will clear at a bound or series of bounds, some uncertainty seems to prevail. In Captain Shakspeare's Wild Sports of India, the author, when twelve feet up a tree, scarcely thought himself beyond the reach of the man-eater he was expecting, as he believed a tiger capable of springing over that height. In the book of Colonel Gordon Gumming (a brother of the African hunter), a sad case is recorded of his gun-bearer being pulled out of a tree and killed by a wounded tiger through incautiously standing only some eight feet above the ground. But points of this nature are altogether of a secondary character, the slightest vantage-ground being sufficient if the requisites are preserved of a cool head and steady hand to guide the management of an efficient weapon.

To the generality of tastes, the most satisfactory method of hunting tigers is with and upon a well-trained elephant. But when the arrangements are on a very extensive scale, they fail of anything like due effect. On special occasions, elephants have been employed in the hunting-field by the score, and also by the hundred, as in the case of the Prince of Wales's excursions in Nepaul. A cordon of eight hundred elephants was then employed to inclose a jungle and to drive the game on to a central point; but the bag, though good, was disproportionately small, looking to the means and labour employed. Better results might have been obtained if the ground had been traversed in sections with only a few elephants, though this would have required more time, which probably could not be spared. The great object to be kept in view in approaching a tiger for the purpose of obtaining a fair shot, is to do as little as possible towards startling the beast until within a few yards, even though obstructions such as bushes or rocks intervene; for when once a ‘scare’ is excited, a tiger will break through an inclosing line of elephants and probably escape altogether; whereas by being quietly followed up with scouts previously sent forward to note and telegraph his progress, the chances are all in favour of the sportsman.

In hilly tracts where the hills run in long ridges and are flanked or intersected by ravines, as in Rajpootana, tiger-shooting may at all times be conducted on foot with comparative safety. This was successfully done by Colonel (then Lieutenant) Rice from twenty to twenty-five years back. He never once employed an elephant, and treats the notion of doing so with a certain amount of disdain. Confessing to a desire to employ his rifle on the tigers in the island of Singapore, which is (or certainly was) very much infested by them, he remarks: ‘There the old notion prevails that without elephants tigers are best let alone.’ Evidently the Colonel does not consider the elephant a necessary adjunct to the sport, nor did he really find it so. There can, however, be no question that in large swamps and grass tracts, and in fact under all circumstances, an elephant is a most powerful auxiliary, whose importance cannot be over-rated. If trees and such positions are taken to meet the tiger when he first breaks, the advantage of afterwards following him up on an elephant if only wounded, is too obvious to need any comment. But it is of course absolutely necessary that the elephant should be one which can be depended on for making a firm stand before a tiger. The more steady the elephant, the better the aim that can be taken; but the uninitiated should know that there is always some slight oscillatory movement in an elephant, so that a small though perhaps an infinitesimal measure of calculation has to be applied in shooting from its back. From a neglect of this necessity, tigers are sometimes missed at absurdly close quarters, though there may be no actual change in the elephant's position to account for the circumstance, and to justify the miss. On the other hand, as sometimes happens, an elephant may very seriously incommode or perhaps precipitate his rider to the ground, by actually charging a tiger and dropping down on his knees, in order the better to crush the foe. At the same time, an elephant that bolts jeopardises his rider's life in a worse degree, by the reckless manner in which he pursues his flight. Should the jungle consist of trees, there is almost a certainty of the howdah being dashed up against them, or of its being swept off by some projecting bough, which affords a clear passage to the body of the elephant, but not to the howdah and those seated in it. The latter, therefore, run a serious risk of being badly injured or of losing their lives.

One important essential for the obtaining of sport is a liberal expenditure of money. It both sweetens labour and smooths the path to danger. To keep an elephant in prime hearty condition costs about fifteen pounds a month, and good elephants may occasionally be borrowed from native chiefs through the instrumentality of political officers; but unless one has influence enough to insure his being thus favoured, he should make up his mind to hunt on foot. Many men have done, and still do so with the most satisfactory results; while with respect to elephants, some special elements of risk exist, which prove fatal entirely from a want of common forethought. Thus, an unfortunate officer of one of Her Majesty's regiments serving in India ventured into a jungle after a tiger, seated merely on the pad on which a howdah is made to rest; he was thrown off, and fell into the jaws of the enraged beast. A person seated in this manner is at any moment liable to be thrown by a sudden swerve, and such an occurrence is extremely likely when a tiger charges, or suddenly appears before an elephant. The writer remembers an instance within his own experience of being mounted on an elephant off whose back at least a hundred tigers had at various times been killed, and which was therefore generally very staunch, and of there being a second and third elephant on each side of the first; yet on a panther very little bigger than a large cat charging from a bush, the three elephants together turned in an instant and ignominiously retreated for about a dozen yards. The shock of the movement was so great that he was forced back on the seat from which he had just risen the moment before, and must have infallibly been hurled to the ground had he been seated on a pad only. It should therefore be adopted as a rule never to be deviated from, that a tiger should not be approached on an elephant otherwise than in a properly constructed howdah.

But as a contrast to the behaviour of the panther above referred to, a large tiger will sometimes altogether refuse to face an elephant, and will retreat from point to point of a cover until he at last becomes an easy victim; which shews in what extremely opposite lights the subject requires to be looked at.

The duty of arranging a proper plan of attack upon a tiger in any known position is sometimes delegated by the English sportsman to his head native shikaree, who is qualified for that task both by a certain aptitude and a considerable amount of experience; but the best of such men are apt sometimes to fail, and close supervision of them is consequently always necessary. Besides, they are generally trained by those who have them in their service; and a long course of association and reciprocal action between master and servant is needed to produce an efficient henchman. It is therefore advisable for men who are about to begin tiger-shooting to take their initiatory lessons in jungle-craft under the guidance of some brother-sportsman, who can be looked on as a sort of distinguished professor who has already graduated with honours in his studies.