…tiger shooting was often risky, if only because the big cat is so hard to kill. There is the story of the British hunter, G.P. Sanderson, who in 1870, was called to deal with a pair of Mysore tigers. Some villagers had surrounded the animals with nets in a thicket. Sanderson managed to get bullets into both tigers after five days of what you could call mouse-and-cat tactics. It took him ten days to drive them into the open, where he shot them. The weather was hot. The tigers had no water and had been seriously wounded for five days. But at their death they were active and dangerous.
Thomas Daniell. Tiger Hunting in the East Indies. 1798. WIKI
The disparity between peaceful landscape and ferocious cat was even more noticeable in southern India before the tiger was wiped out there. Great parklike landscapes in Mysore sheltered the tiger, and winding rivers were shadowed by dense strands of beech. Everything was serene except for the tiger. He was driven into narrowing net traps, the night bright with blazing torches, until he was caught in a thicket, nets all around him. Then, usually a group of around twenty men, accompanied by guardian spearmen, entered the netted thicket and macheted a wide path through it. The English hunter had a clear line of fire. When the tiger leaped from one side of the thicket to another, a .570 caliber soft-nosed bullet was on its way.
—The Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII (centre), posing with the first tiger he ever shot on his tour of Nepal, India, 18th December 1921.
(Source: gettyimages.com)—
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…The King was passionate about shooting. After the Coronation Durbar in Delhi, he was looking forward to spending as much time as possible big-game shooting in Nepal. During his previous visit to India as Prince of Wales in 1905-1906, his planned shooting trip at the invitation of the Maharaja of Nepal had been cancelled due to an outbreak of cholera in the region. Before his 1911 visit, Maharaja Chandra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana, Prime Minister and ruler of Nepal from 1901-1929, had again invited him for a shoot in the Tarai region. Nepal’s political power was held by the Rana family, which had instituted a system of hereditary Prime Ministers in the mid-19th century. The King of Nepal, who only held an honorary position, died a few days before King George V’s planned trip, but had insisted before his death that the visit should not be cancelled.
The King travelled by train to Bhikna Thori in India, a few hundred metres from the border with Nepal. He proceeded by motor car to the first day’s shooting ground. After about 20 kilometres, they reached the valley of the Rui river, from where they mounted elephants and proceeded into the forest. The king shot his first tiger while it leapt a small stream. That day the party killed four tigers and three rhinoceroses. The camp for the next five days was at Sukhibar, on a bend of the Rapti river, with the forest behind. “The river flowed past the camp in a broad and placid stream, forming a splendid foreground to the open jungle on the other bank, while occasionally in the distance a view could be caught of the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas.” (Historical record of the Imperial visit to India, 1911, p.230)
On 23 December, the camp moved to Kasra, eight miles farther up the river Rapti. The Maharaja’s entourage, who were in a separate camp further along the river, numbered 14,000 including 2000 elephant attendants. After Divine Service on Sunday 24 December 1911, the Maharaja presented the King with a collection of over seventy varieties of animals indigenous to Nepal. During the hunting that followed Divine Service on 25 December, nearly 600 elephants formed the “ring”. The King shot the largest tiger of the expedition on that day. On the last day of the visit, 28 December, the King reviewed a Brigade of four Nepalese regiments on his way to the hunting ground. The total number of animals killed during the hunting trip was 39 tigers, 18 rhinoceroses, and 4 bears. (Historical record of the Imperial visit to India, 1911, p.231-233) Read More:http://anulib.anu.edu.au/subjects/ap/digilib/tig/
COMMENTS
