Shikar Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  It is not often that one of these animals is taken by surprise, as both their marvellous powers of sight and hearing keep them amply warned, but very occasionally one might be seen sitting on a hill-top whence he can watch the surrounding country, or keep an eye on a flock of goats grazing near his domain, or some luckless village dog. Of course, he is a past master in the art of camouflage, and his spotted coat is admirably adapted for the purpose.

  He does not need heavy jungle to hide him. A couple of bushes, and the light and shade from surrounding trees is quite enough to make him practically invisible and woe betide the individual who thinks he can follow up a wounded beast without taking every precaution.

  The methods employed of shooting them is legion, but the most common is to sit up either over a kill or a live bait. Beating for him in the Punjab is usually most unsatisfactory, as one wants really experienced beaters to drive old "spots" out of his lair and thereafter conduct him to where the gun is waiting. The number of times he breaks back or slinks past some of the "stops" is incredible.

  Leopards in love go out of their way to attract attention to themselves and seem to lose all sense of self-preservation, as the following little episode will show.

  A man arrived one afternoon with the information that two panthers were fighting quite close to my house. Armed with a rifle I went off with him, and not a quarter of a mile away met a number of people standing on the road, a fairly well frequented road at that, looking at something up the hill. On one side there were 30 to 40 cattle grazing and just beyond a flock of sheep. "Here is the place" announced the Guddi who came with the information, and hardly had he spoken when somebody said "look, Sahib, look!" I looked and at that moment a panther sprang from a rock and disappeared into a cave, and was followed by a frightful hullabaloo inside. "They have been going on like this all day" remarked one of the onlookers.

  They were not fifty yards above the road where the crowd (some 15 or 20 men and women) was standing. I climbed up the spur and took up a position some 20 yards from the cave and straight opposite it, among some boulders, and had not to wait five minutes before one animal appeared a few yards below the cave and jumped on to a bolder in plain view. I fired and it toppled over into the rocks below without a sound. I waited for half an hour or so for the other but he did not put in an appearance, so leaving a couple of men to watch I went home to have some tea, and thereafter returned to see if I could make better acquaintance with the gentleman in the cave, and waited for an hour or so after sending away the men. He showed up but not till the light had almost gone and I could not make him out over the sights of my rifle as he blended so beautifully with the fallen oak leaves. After two or three vain efforts to pick out his head and neck from the leaves and rocks, he saw me and sprang clear into some brushwood and was gone.

  The advent of the Kangra Valley Railway and the influx of sportsmen into this peaceful vale will, in time, bring peace to the Guddi and his flocks, but it will be a long time ere panthers are reduced to any appreciable extent in this land of forests and rocks which supply such excellent cover for the wily pard.

  (1928)

  Indian Lions

  By C.A. Kincaid

  he Indian lion should be one of the unhappiest beasts alive! It is the firm belief of every Englishman, impressed on him in the nurseries of England, that the Indian lion is a mangy, maneless brute; and as he rarely sees one he dies with this belief firmly implanted in his breast. This belief is the grossest of libels upon the animal in question. It in no way differs from its cousin of North Africa. It is, it is true, smaller than the lion of South Africa, an immense beast, but it is every bit as big as the Somali lion and has a splendid mane. This hirsute decoration is often combed off if its owner lives in the forest; but the same fate happens to the African lion. Put both in captivity and the Indian will grow as big a mane as any lion of East or West Africa. Fortunately gross although the libel be, the Indian lion knows nothing of it and is thus saved from much mental pain and misery.

  The Indian lion once roamed over the whole of India. In the early Sanskrit fables we hear a great deal about ions but nothing about tigers. The reason is that the tiger is a new-comer. Its home was in Manchuria and there it grew and still grows a fine thick fur. Like the Mongols, its neighbours, the tiger cast an envious look on the rich plains of India and descended on them. It drove the lion completely out of Bengal and then out of northern and southern India. When the English came, the lion was still holding out against the invader in central India, Guzarat and Kathiawar; but the English completed the lion's defeat. It was exterminated in the two former provinces and its only refuge left is in Junagadh, a State in Kathiawar, where there are no tigers and where H.H. the Nawab preserves the lion against English sportsmen.

  I have not visited the Gir forest for more than twenty years, so I do not know what its present boundaries are. I believe a good deal of it has since then been cut down but twenty-five years ago it was a very extensive reserve. It began less than twelve miles from the seaport of Verawal and stretched northward to within a few miles of Junagadh. It was full of sambhur, chital and panther and it sheltered about a hundred and fifty lions. As there was not enough game to keep these lions fed, they preyed on the cultivator's cattle and goats and not infrequently on the cultivators themselves. They had no fear of man; for they saw the foresters move through the forest every day and they were never hunted save when His Highness wished to entertain a Viceroy or a Governor of Bombay or when they had developed too violent a passion for human flesh. They were extraordinarily long lived. They lived usually forty years and some were even believed to live to the age of seventy; as they were prolific, they would rapidly have spread over the countryside but for certain causes. If any lion strayed outside Junagadh limits, it was at the mercy of any chief or sahib who came to hear of it. The foresters, whenever they came across a brood of lion cubs unattended by their parents, invariably attacked them with axes. Lastly, the Junagadh State needed a constant supply of young lion cubs for its fine zoological gardens. My first experience of the Indian lion was in those gardens. I went with other English visitors into a square, around which were small cages such as are still seen in travelling circuses. These were filled with lions and as it was just before their dinner hour, they were making the most awful noise. I was feeling rather frightened when an Indian gentleman said to me that the cages had been recently reported to be unsafe. I was seized with a wild panic and would gladly have run out of the grounds; fortunately the presence of other visitors restrained me and in time I got quite accustomed to the noise. The lions in the 'zoo' were mostly friendly; their keeper had taught them various tricks which they like to practise. But there were two male lions that were divided by an inextinguishable hatred. They had been friends and had been brought up in the same cage. A certain day—it was probably a hot and liverish day—one of the lions could no longer stand the angle at which the other carried its tail. It went up to its companion and without warning bit its tail off. The tail—I saw part of the incident myself—lay long and stiff on the floor of the cage, while all round it the tailless one and the wicked one fought a fearful battle. They were separated with the greatest difficulty and forced into separate cages; but they never forgot their hatred and whenever one caught the other's eye it would roar volley after volley of leonine abuse at it.

  Another lion had had an interesting experience; it had escaped from its cage a year or two before I saw it. Now, the young lion has to learn its lesson just like young Englishmen or young Indians. Unless it is taught by its mother to stalk and kill game it never knows how to do so. The lion of which I am writing had been caught when quite tiny and had never learnt how to procure its food. When it escaped from the Junagadh gardens it took by instinct the road to the Gir forest, but once in the shelter of the woods it had no idea what to do. Dinner hour passed but no kindly keeper brought dinner. It tried to stalk a sambhur but its clumsy efforts only excited the stag's contempt. It tried to seize a goat but the
herdsmen drove it off with stones. At the same time its feet were getting dreadfully sore. Its pads had only been used to the smooth bottom of its cage; they were cut to pieces by the stones of the road and the thorns of the forest. It would have very soon died of starvation. Fortunately the keeper of the zoological gardens was experienced in recovering runaways. He put a portable cage on a bullock cart and with it and two bullocks he set out into the jungle. When he entered it, he began calling to the lion in a way that he had previously done when bringing its dinner. The joyful sound came to the fugitive's ears, just as it was about to give up hope, and gave it new strength. Pulling itself together, it ran towards the keeper. Seeing the cage that reminded it of the flesh pots of Egypt, it had no thought of attacking the bullocks. With a roar of thanksgiving it leapt through the open door of the cage and threw itself on the meat that lay inside all ready for it. While it was so engaged the keeper shut the door and turning the bullock cart brought back the runaway in triumph to Junagadh. The lion when I saw it seemed greatly attached to the keeper and probably never again longed for freedom.

  My first meeting with a wild lion was in 1902 when I was spending the hot weather at Verawal; I had got leave to shoot panther in the Gir from His Highness the then Nawab and khabar of panther at Tellala was brought to me when I was in tents on the seashore of that charming little Junagadh port. I sent my tents to Tellala, a little village on the banks of the Hiran river and one of the most beautiful spots I have seen. The Hiran river was, during the hot weather, full of water partly because of the low dam at Verawal and partly because of a strange natural phenomenon, which so far as I know was unique At the end of every monsoon the sea threw up a barrier of sand that blocked the mouth of the Hiran river three miles from Verawal. The result was that during eight months of the year a fresh water lake was formed on the very edge of the sea and the Hiran river bed all through the hot weather was full of water. The first day that I arrived at Tellala I went out with a shikari and sat until dark on a tree waiting in vain for the panther to be tempted by my bait. When I could no longer see my foresight I told the shikari that it was useless to wait any more; we climbed down and started for Tellala. About a mile from the camp, we were suddenly aware that a band of lions (I counted four, my shikari counted six) was walking towards us up the high road. We stopped at a loss what to do. The lions came towards us, apparently for some time unaware of us. When they saw us they stopped also; and then we stood looking at each other, both sides evidently disconcerted. I could not shoot, as I had promised not to kill a lion unless absolutely forced to in self-defence. The lions evidently thought that I and the shikari and our two or three beaters were too big a party to attack. I do not know how long we stood face to face. It seemed a very long time to me, but was probably not more than ten minutes. Then we heard shouts and saw torches, moving towards us. The lions did not like the situation. They got restive and I thought that they were going to charge us and I got ready to shoot. But they slowly moved off the road into the jungle. As they did so my servants and several vi lagers came up shouting and carrying torches and joined us. We could see the lions a few yards off the road and we walked past them, glad at having out-manoeuvred them. Had not my servants and the villagers very pluckily taken the lions in the rear, we probably should have had to fight and the fight might well have gone against us. The lions were not satisfied with the result. Two nights later the same band came close to my tent and started roaring furiously. I had a pony with me and they hoped by roaring to frighten it and make it bolt into the jungle. Had it done so, they would soon have caught it up and eaten it; but it was an affectionate little Arab and so long as I sat by it and petted and stroked it, it felt sure that I would keep it safe against all the world. I stayed by it until three in the morning. By that time the lions had moved off and I was able to get a few hours' sleep.

  The Agent to the Governor, my old and valued friend Colonel Kennedy, C.S.I., had about the same time a curious experience. Going into the Gir not long after me, he was sitting over a goat in the hope of getting a panther, when a large maned lion came up to the "bait" and taking it in its mighty jaws walked off with it, much as a retriever does with a running pheasant. Colonel Kennedy shouted at the lion and threw branches at it, but it only snarled at him contemptuously and went its way, taking the Colonel's goat with it.

  I got my first chance at a lion three years later. In 1905, Lord Lamington, then Governor of Bombay, came to Rajkot on an official visit and afterwards went on the invitation of the Nawab of Junagadh to shoot in the Gir. His camp was at Shashan in the very heart of the Gir. The Governor and some of his staff went in one direction and his Private Secretary, Mr D—, a young soldier and Major Carnegy, the political officer, went in another. I saw poor Carnegy off at the station and was much concerned to hear him say that he had only a light sporting rifle. He, however, assured me that he did not mean to shoot. What led him to shoot in the end I do not know. An extra gun was probably needed; anyway he went out with the Private Secretary's party. Beats were organised and Mr D—wounded a lion as it passed him. Now, the rule of the jungle for all sportsmen is that wounded big game must be followed up and killed; otherwise they prey on the villagers. The three Englishmen followed the lion and came up with it. It charged and knocking down Carnegy bit his head and broke his skull. Mr D—killed the lion as it stood over its victim; but it was too late. Carnegy was already dead.

  It was a dreadful tragedy but it did me a good turn. Realising that after this accident the Gir lions would be rather unpopular, I ventured a month later to ask His Highness if I might shoot a lion before saying good-bye to Kathiawar, which I was likely to leave shortly. To my delight the reply was in the affirmative. My wife and I went to Verawal to spend the hot weather. At Easter we took our tents to Tellala. As it happened, one of the lions there had become a bad man-eater and I was especially asked to kill it, if I could. The Gir foresters' method of marking down a lion is worthy of record. They know as a rule all the lions in their part of the forest and their habits. When they are required to produce one, they follow it about all night presenting it from either eating or killing. In the morning it is exhausted and crawls into a thicket to sleep through the day. The foresters then hoist a cot to the top of a tree and a quarter a mile away surround the thicket on all sides except one, send for the favoured hunter, and when he is seated in his cot, drive the lion past him. The object of the cot is not to conceal the hunter, but to give him a good view of the jungle near him and keep him out of the way of the lion. A lion like other beasts of prey is not an "anthropos" and therefore does not look upwards unless it is Wounded. Were the hunter on foot and blocking the lion's exit he would certainly be charged. In a tree the lion takes no notice of him.

  On arrival at Tellala I showed my "parwana" or permit to the head forester, who at once made his dispositions to get me a lion. He did not know where the man-eater was for the moment but he knew of two full-grown lions close to our camp. He followed them all that night. We got no news next morning and we were beginning to fear we should get no shooting that day. At midday, to our delight, a man came with news that the lions had been marked down about two miles from Tellala. We were to set out a little before two o'clock.

  About 1-45, my wife, who refused to be left behind, and I mounted our horses and followed our guide through the most lovely forest scenery that I have ever seen. A quarter of a mile from our station, the head forester met us and bade us dismount and follow him. We did so and walked through glades and rides until we came to the tree where the cot had been hoisted. My wife, the head forester and I got into it, and a man was sent to start the beat. About half an hour, we knew by the sound of distant shouting that the beat had begun. It came nearer and nearer in an infernal crescendo. Just when it seemed as if Hell itself had been let loose, I saw what seemed a shadow flit through some bushes thirty yards off. My wife saw it too and touched my arm. A second later a splendid lioness walked out of the cover, as angry as any beast that I have ever seen
. Her tail stood out behind as stiff as a ramrod and her eyes had a most unpleasant expression. I did not fire as she came towards the tree for if I had only wounded her, she would have seen us on the cot and she could easily have leapt up and swept us off with a blow of her paw. When she had passed, I fired behind her shoulder. The high velocity bullet hit her a little low. She fell down twisted round and struggled to her feet. I fired again into her back and hit her spine. She rolled into a bush and just then the beaters came up. The male lion had broken back and they thought that I had fired at it. They began saying what a pity it was. I reassured them, however, as to my skill as a marksman and told them in Guzarati that a wounded lioness was lying close to their feet. On hearing this, they stood not upon the order of their going, they went at once. And, in a moment every tree in the neighbourhood bore its load of agonised beaters, who were striving to reach the summit.

  On returning to camp I sent a letter to His Highness the Nawab informing him that I had shot a lioness and that my wife had gone with me to the shoot and thanking him for the very great pleasure that we owed to his kindness. Early next morning I got the most delightful telegram that I have ever received "Take lioness for Madam Sahib, get lion for yourself." I showed it to the head forester who at once set about getting me a male lion. By a stroke of fortune, he was able to locate the bad man-eater, who was said to have accounted for no less than twenty-eight herdsmen and cultivators. The forester followed him up all that night and next day about noon we received word that the man-eating lion had been marked down about six miles away. A good road ran most of the distance, so my wife and I drove very comfortably through beautiful woods until we were met by the head forester. He made us, as before, walk for about a quarter of a mile until we came to where our cot awaited us. We climbed into it and the beat began as before. When the beaters had come near us, there suddenly rushed out of cover three quarter grown lion cubs. They were the most ridiculous objects imaginable; they rolled over each other playing like bull-terrier puppies. I got so excited that I would have shot one, only the head forester restrained me. After staying under my tree for a minute or so they scampered off; then at the last moment the man-eater sprang out of cover and dashed across in open space. It was a wily old campaigner and had evidently sent out its four young ones to draw the fire of any lurking enemies. I took rather rashly a snapshot at it, as it galloped past. A lucky shot broke its spine and it collapsed. It was a noble beast but its canine teeth had been broken and it was that misfortune probably that had led it to take exclusively to human diet.