ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[peter]

*This image is copyright of its original author

HICKS

This was a man loaded with experience. For nine or ten months of the year or more, for many years, he was in the forests. This was in a time in which humans and wild animals still hadn't quite finished the battle for territory in many parts of India. The word 'battle' isn't a result of an exaggeration. In those days (1850-1900), many thousands were killed by wild animals every year. This, of course, is without the thousands who perished as a result of disease. Malaria, cholera, outbreaks of unknown types of flu and many other diseases were quite common. And there were no cures back then.

Hicks thought a European in his prime needed about fifteen years to adjust to the conditions in India (...). When you had survived for that period of time, you stood a decent chance to add another fifteen. More exaggerations? Not quite. If you had survived the most common diseases, like malaria and cholera, as well as work, there always was 'sports'. And Europeans in particular indulged in it.

Hicks, when on his horse after a wild boar (there he is again), was seriously wounded when the boar turned the tables on his pursuers and killed his horse (...). Hicks next became a pilot without a licence and paid in that his knees were so badly damaged, the doctor ordered a two-year break. A two-year break in those days meant it was a bloody serious injury indeed.

When he returned to India some years later (he didn't like Australia one bit), he continued with 'work' and 'sport'. When he had survived countless more close calls with dangerous animals, he started suffering from overconfidence. One day, instead of waiting for reinforcements, he decided to follow the tigress he had wounded on his own. On foot. She surprised him, shook him like a rat and then continued on his hips and left hand. When he woke as a result of a strange kind of pressure on his chest some minutes later, he found the tigress lying on his chest. Quite dead, she was, but he wasn't that far away either. 

More dead than alive, but with (what remained of) his left hand, he had to stay in bed for nine months (...). He never completely recovered and was in pain for the rest of his days, especially in bad weather. He felt 'it' coming long before it started, that is. That was without the pain his liver abscess caused, of course. A result of malaria. But Hicks had been lucky, very lucky, and he knew it.

Was he the only one then, perhaps? Not quite. Not that far away, another Forest Officer had to take a very long break as well. He also was mauled by a tigress. Others in the Central Provinces had not been that lucky. Some got killed and others were killed first and eaten later. And more often than not, it was them bloody tigresses.

How to survive India would have been a decent title for his book, but he settled for 'Forty years among the wild animals of India, from Mysore to the Himalayas'. Hicks, apart from learning a whole lot the very hard way, was a lucky man indeed. And he was as happy as they come, for he was doing exactly what he wanted to do. I have to admit I felt a wee bit of envy right there.

And what did Hicks learn in India when he was in the Forest Service? This post has a number of insights, ideas and views I consider very interesting. Here we go.


EUROPEAN HUNTERS AND TIGERS

Hicks found a way to avoid saying most European hunters knew next to nothing about tigers and tiger beating, but he did say they hadn't quite prepared themselves. The result was they were tricked, used, opposed, ridiculed and, of course, robbed: " ... He (the European hunter) knows of no system to work on (regarding beating and shooting a tiger) and consequently is obliged to place himself blindfolded into the hands of a native shikari (a), and is entirely ignorant of the enormous amount of secret opposition which meets every outside sportsman in pratically every district of India (b) ... (pp. 17). 


THE BEAT OF A TIGER

Those who have read books written by J. Corbett, K. Anderson and others who hunted man-eating tigers, know tigers, man-eaters included, have a 'beat' in a more or less circular shape. Every part of the beat is visited every one, two or three weeks. Hicks offered an explanation for this habit:

" ... In my opinion, as a general rule a tiger does not kill more than once in about five days; that is to say, he arrives in a fresh locality, takes one of the animals here unawares, kills and eats of it on the first and second, and even third day; this lasts him through the fourth and fifth days, after which he begins to feel the pangs of hunger, but finding that the animals here are now all on the look out for him, he marches clean away, in one night often going for twenty miles without stopping. He then kills again, and the performance is repeated, after which he moves to a third place - moving generally somewhat in a circle. By this time the first place has had a rest of some ten or fifteen days or more, according to the luck he has had elsewhere; so he again visits the first place, and so on, round and round on a regular beat goes the tiger. These beats range from eight to twenty miles in length by eight to ten miles in width, according to the seasons of the year and the strength of the individual tiger in command, so that the extent and durations of the tiger's peregrinations usually become well known to the jungle tribes and local villagers ... " (pp. 43). 


MACHAN

" ... More luxurious kinds of machans can of course be used, but they are a nuisance and cause too much noise in being put up. The most handy kind for beating purposes in the jungles is an ordinary ladder made of bamboo of twenty feet or more in length, with a stout cushion fixed on one of the rungs at a height of about sixteen feet from the ground ... " (pp. 63).


KILLS

" ... I have known tigers take their kill to a distance of over two miles from the spot where they killed it; but this is a rare occurence and happens only when the local cover had been bad, water too far away, or when the animal killed had been too small and light, though occasionally I have known a very large tiger to take even a large and heavy kill for over a mile ... " (pp. 70).


THE ATTITUDE OF ABORIGINALS TOWARDS MAN-KILLERS

" ... There are hundreds - I may say thousands - of places among the many thousands of square miles of forests that cover large tracts of India, where quite  unknown to the outside world the human inhabitants suffer terribly from the depredations of habitual man-killers of various kinds. In this category are sometimes wild boars, neilgai, bears, buffaloes, and, worst of all, man-killing leopards and tigers.

But so imbued are the benighted victims of these depredations, with datalism, that they generally make no effort at all on their own initiative to rid themselves of these scourges. In fact they often go to the other extreme, and having invested the object of their dread with supernatural attributes, try to propitiate it with prayers and offerings, and such cases generally do all they can to conceal the beast's existence from any sportsman that may happen at any time to come to the neighbourhood, thinking thereby to earn the gratitude of their pampered 'demon'. This is most of all true of the inhabitants that are of aboriginal origine, as they mostly are in the jungle tracks ... " (pp. 151).


SLOTH BEAR AND TIGER

a - " ... I was expecting her (the tigress in the beat) to appear every moment, when suddenly there was an uproar among the bambus, which I then perceived contained a large bear. Here these two beasts kept up a wrangling argument over the right of way for about ten minutes; but the bear stood his ground, and I could see him making short rushes in the direction where the tigress was answering him with snarls. I would hardly have believed it possible, but that bear drove the tigress back in this manner yard by yard, until she at last turned round and bolted, breaking away through the line of stops ... " (pp. 176).

b - In 1893, in the north-eastern corner of the Jubbulpore District (Central Provinces), Hicks followed the tracks of a large male tiger. The tiger had followed and killed a large male sloth bear: " ... The whole thing was perfectly clear: after a prolonged fight, the tiger had killed and eaten the (large male) bear ... " (pp. 505). 

Interested in the tiger, Hicks shot him in a beat. It was : " ... indeed an exceptionally dark-coloured tiger, very compactly and muscularly built, without an ounce of superfluous fat ... " (pp. 506). The tiger, torn all over but not seriously wounded, was a male known for his bad temper.


HOW THE NECK IS BROKEN

" ... If the tiger comes up with the fleeing animal, he springs on to it, and simultaneously fixing one paw on to the shoulder, his fangs in the back of the neck, with the other forepaw hooked round the nose of the animal, he draws the nose inwards, so that the neck is bent round in a curve. In the meanwhile, the tiger's hindfeet are employed in tripping up the legs of the animal. These actions, with the combined impetus and weight of both animals, acting in the same direction, bring the whole mass down with a tremendous force on to the already bent neck of the animal, whose nose and head being bent inwards strike the ground obliquely, and so become doubled up under pressure of  this enormous impetus and double weight. The result of this is obvious; the vertebrae of the neck is instantly snapped ... " (pp. 626).

Although tigers fight bears in a different way, V. Mazak's drawing of an Amur tiger attacking a brown bear is the only one that shows how a tiger comes up with a large animal and uses his initial advantage in the way described above:

*This image is copyright of its original author

In large herbivores, this, according to Hicks, is the usual result:

 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply