by Jim Corbett
After having skinned the tigress I bathed and dressed, and though my face was swollen and painful and I had twenty miles of rough going before me, I left Chuka walking on air, while the thousands of men in and around the valley were peacefully sleeping.
I have come to the end of the jungle stories I set out to tell you and I have also come near the end of my man-eater hunting career.
I have had a long spell and count myself fortunate in having walked out on my own feet and not been carried out on a cradle in the manner and condition of the man of Thak.
There have been occasions when life has hung by a thread and others when a light purse and disease resulting from exposure and strain have made the going difficult, but for all these occasions I am amply rewarded if my hunting has resulted in saving one human life.
APPENDIX
Corbett on Photographing Tigers
I think that all sportsmen who have had the opportunity of indulging in the twin sports of shooting tigers with a camera and shooting them with a rifle will agree with me that the difference between these two forms of sport is as great, if not greater, than the taking of a trout on light tackle in a snow-fed mountain stream, and the killing of a fish on a fixed rod on the sun-baked bank of a tank.
Apart from the difference in cost between shooting with a camera and shooting with a rifle, and the beneficial effect it has on our rapidly decreasing stock of tigers, the taking of a good photograph gives far more pleasure to the sportsman than the acquisition of a trophy; and further, while the photograph is of interest to all lovers of wild life, the trophy is only of interest to the individual who acquired it. As an illustration, I would instance Fred Champion. Had Champion shot his tigers with a rifle instead of with a camera his trophies would long since have lost their hair and been consigned to the dustbin, whereas the records made by his camera are a constant source of pleasure to him, and are of interest to sportsmen in all parts of the world.
It was looking at the photographs in Champion’s book With a Camera in Tiger-Land that first gave me the idea of taking photographs of tigers. Champion’s photographs were taken with a still camera by flashlight and I decided to go one better and try to take tiger pictures with a ciné-camera by daylight. The gift by a very generous friend of a Bell and Howell 16-mm camera put just the weapon I needed into my hands, and the ‘Freedom of the Forests’ which I enjoy enabled me to roam at large over a very wide field. For ten years I stalked through many hundreds of miles of tiger country, at times being seen off by tigers that resented my approaching their kills, and at other times being shooed out of the jungle by tigresses that objected to my going near their cubs. During this period I learnt a little more about the habits and ways of tigers, and though I saw tigers on, possibly, two hundred occasions I did not succeed in getting one satisfactory picture. I exposed films on many occasions, but the results were disappointing owing either to overexposure, underexposure, obstruction of grass or leaves or cobwebs on the lens; and in one case owing to the emulsion on the film having been melted while being processed.
Finally in 1938 I decided to devote the whole winter to making one last effort to get a good picture. Having learnt by experience that it was not possible to get a haphazard picture of a tiger, my first consideration was to find a suitable site, and I eventually selected an open ravine fifty yards wide, with a tiny stream flowing down the centre of it, and flanked on either side by dense tree and scrub jungle. To deaden the sound of my camera when taking pictures at close range I blocked the stream in several places, making miniature waterfalls a few inches high. I then cast round for my tigers, and having located seven, in three widely separated areas, started to draw them a few yards at a time to my jungle studio. This was a long and a difficult job, with many set-backs and disappointments, for the area in which I was operating is heavily shot over, and it was only by keeping my tigers out of sight that I eventually got them to the exact spot where I wanted them. One of the tigers for some reason unknown to me left the day after her arrival, but not before I had taken a picture of her; the other six I kept together and I exposed a thousand feet of film on them. Unfortunately it was one of the wettest winters we have ever had and several hundred feet of the film were ruined through moisture on the lens, underexposure, and packing of the film inside the camera due to hurried and careless threading. But, even so, I have got approximately six hundred feet of film of which I am inordinately proud, for it is a living record of six full grown tigers – four males, two of which are over ten feet, and two females, one of which is a white tigress – filmed in daylight, at ranges varying from ten to sixty feet.
The whole proceeding from start to finish took four and a half months, and during the countless hours I lay near the tiny stream and my miniature waterfalls, not one of the tigers ever saw me.
The stalking to within a few feet of six tigers in daylight would have been an impossible feat, so they were stalked in the very early hours of the morning, before night had gone and daylight come – the heavy winter dew making this possible – and were filmed as light, and opportunity, offered.
This essay was published in 1946, eight years after Jim retired from shooting man-eating tigers.
Also published by Merlin Unwin Books
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The Yellow Earl Douglas Sutherland
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The Gamekeeper’s Dog John Cowan
Vintage Guns for the Modern Shot Diggory Hadoke
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Hammer Guns Diggory Hadoke
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And Miles to Go Before I Sleep Hugh Cran
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Fishing with Harry Tony Baws
Moonlighting Michael Brown
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The Airgun Hunter’s Year Ian Barnett
Private Thoughts from a Small Shoot
Flyfishing for Coarse Fish Dominic Garnett
The Secret Carp Chris Yates
Going Fishing Negley Farson
Saddletramp Jeremy James
Vagabond Jeremy James
Promises to Keep Hugh Cran
The Stalking Party D.P. Hart-Davis
Fishing on the Frontline Nick Sawyer
The Yellow Earl Douglas Sutherland
Advice from a Gamekeeper John Cowan
Raymond Sheppard, RA
1913–1958
Raymond Sheppard was born in London in 1913. He was educated at Christ’s College, Finchley and went on to study art at the School of Photo-Engraving and Lithography, Bolt Court, under S.G. Boxsius.
He illustrated many books, studying birds and animals from life, often at Regents Park Zoo. He was made a Fellow of the Zoological Society in 1949.
A founder member of the Wapping Arts Group, he served in the RAF photographic section during WW2. After the war he suffered prolonged ill health but remained prolific. His artistic legacy bears testimony to his diverse talent as a master draughtsman, illustrator, and landscape and wildlife artist.
All the illustrations in this book are published by kind permission of the artist’s daughter Christine Sheppard.
Glossary
anna 16th part of a rupee
babbler long-legged thrush
&n
bsp; basonta bushes
belled, belling – the warning ‘honk’ made by a sambur
Bhutia man from across the border
charpoy Indian bedstead
chital spotted deer
chowkidar watchman
chukor hill partridge
cooee signal call used in the bush
dandy Himalayan hammock-like litter
dak relay of men for post or transport
dak bungalow an inn for travellers on a dak route
drag the trail, line of scent
durbar public audience or levee
Garhwali – ethno-linguistic group who live in the Garhwal Himalayas of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand
ghat landing-place, passage down to a river
ghooral mountain goat
godown a warehouse or goods store
gur crude sugar
jaggery a coarse brown sugar made from palm sap
kalij Indian pheasant
kakar barking deer
karphal a tree producing sweet berries
khud (side), ravine, precipice
langur a long-tail monkey
machan a platform in a tree, used for observation
mahseer large Indian freshwater fish
mugger broad-nosed crocodile
nullah a stream, river-bed, watercourse
paddy field rice field
Patwari village registrar or accountant
pea-fowl pea-cock, pea-hen
pipal-tree the sacred fig of India
pug footprint
pugrees turban
ringals stunted bamboos, hill bamboos
‘Ram nam sat hai’ ‘The name of Rama is true’
rowkah dry watercourse
sadhu a Hindu ascetic or holy man
sahib ‘Sir’; also, an Englishman or European
sal a valuable timber tree
sambur deer
sari a long garment of cloth or silk worn by Indian women
‘Satya bol gat hai’ ‘In truth lies salvation’
scree heap of stones, or rocky debris
semul-tree silk cotton-tree Bombax
malabaricum
serow Asiatic antelope
shaitan devil, evil spirit
shikar, shikari hunting, hunter’s guide
tahr large wild goat
Tahsildar chief revenue officer
terai a belt of marshy land between the foot-hills of the Himalayas and the plains
zamindar landowner paying the government a fixed revenue
Pegs and curves: measuring tigers
Peg placed in ground at front part of breastbone, another against the ischium or bone that is felt on each side below the tail: the distance is the length of the body when measuring a tiger. Curves measures the contours of the body to get a measurement of girth/bulk as well.
First published in Great Britain by Merlin Unwin Books, 2017
First published in India by Oxford University Press, 1944
This ebook edition published in 2017
All rights reserved
Text © Jim Corbett 1944
Illustrations © the Estate of Raymond Sheppard
The right of Jim Corbett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook edition is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. All enquiries should be addressed to the publishers Merlin Unwin Books.
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