The Wildest Sport of All

By Prakash Singh

'I saw the grass shake and barely caught a glimpse of something yellow, a different shade than the dried clumped grass stems, that moved unmistakably towards me...'

Before tiger hunting was officially banned in the 1970s, the great jungles of India swarmed with shikaris indulging in what was once considered a popular 'sport'. The Wildest Sport of All offers a first-hand account of the sport of tiger hunting in India. Narrated in the voice of an expert shikari, it takes the reader on an adventurous journey through the forests of the Kumaon and Garhwal mountains in north India.Vivid descriptions of pastures and ponds, the cacophony of wild animals and the eerie silence of lonely nights come together to evoke the tiger as a creature of dread and deification in these regions. Featuring stories of narrow escapes, unsolved mysteries, patient wait for the sighting of tigers, and clever ways of conquering the regal beast, The Wildest Sport of All sets out not to glorify hunting but to recreate a time of lawful, discriminatory shikar that brought the shikari close to nature. Its gripping yet sensitive style, together with the ability to inspire visceral feelings without resorting to cheap thrills, make it stand out in the long and august tradition of shikar stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9789351770558

Prakash Singh

Prakash Singh was born in Kursela in the Katihar district of Bihar in 1951. He was educated in Patna and New Delhi and now lives where he was born. This is his first book.

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A storm rages down the craggy slopes of the Kumaon mountains, in the state of Uttarakhand in India, and with it a beautiful, lithe and powerful body quietly works its way down into the valleys of the Ramganga and Kosi rivers, impelled perhaps by the rushing wind and the forest canopy heaving above it. But the ferocity of the storm does not really disturb it. With characteristic feline grace, the tiger leaps nimbly into a ravine in its path and stands still for a moment, glaring. Its eyes sparkle, as an incredibly loud, blood-curdling roar that begins as a low growl bursts from it. It begins to trot and then races across the stony sand bed of the ravine. It leaps again with amazing agility across the ravine to the shelf-like bank on the other side and, like a bolt from the blue, vanishes into the shelter of the madly swaying trees.

The similarity between nature’s elemental fury and the regal tiger is too obvious to ignore. This magnificent hunting machine, made of sinew, blood and bone, this striped beast of prey, the tiger, is the thread that runs through my story.

The broad slopes are dense with leafy trees. Below, the ground is densely carpeted with the fallen foliage, as lantana grows profusely around the branches. The naturally knitted ceiling covers the cool pathways through the tangled undergrowth, providing a shade unbelievably cool even at midday. And the monarch, the tiger, prowls through this domain: big, strong and agile, yet like a wraith, now visible, then not, its stripes melting into the shadows. These forests are dreaded, and to get lost in them is to be lost in the tiger’s playground.

In these deep forests sprawled over the Garhwal-Kumaon mountains (also known as the great Patli Dun mountain range that lie between the white wall of the Greater Himalayas in the north and the wild grass farmlands in the south), the month of April is an unforgettable experience. It is a month of sheer contrasts. Winter still lingers in the late hours of the night that suddenly grow cold. A misty haze persists in the sloping hollows and glens at dawn, lifting a shade faster than in the deep winter morning to dissipate over the curiously lifeless foliage of trees that the strengthening April sun progressively robs of moisture. The outdoors become harsh soon after breakfast and by lunch, the first blasts of the dreaded wind, the searing ‘loo’, drive the not-so-adventurous firmly indoors. Work habits change in the villages; the citizens of overcrowded cities bear the changed season with a silent grimace as the more affluent make plans to escape to the cooler climes of the hill resorts.

The jungle, too, feels the deviant grip of this ethereal change in the seasons. Even though cooler than the bare harvested fields of the dusty plains, or the cement and steel structures of stony cities that relentlessly radiate the increasing heat, the lush stands of tall sal, shisham (Indian Rosewood), kikar (gum arabic), fir, pine and sagon (teak) trees shiver under the occasional blast of the withering. With the hot loo, the forest soil begins to get parched. Consequently, the sentinel stands of sal are largely mantled in golden-brown foliage, whilst a host of lesser trees, like kikar, along the steeper hillsides, begins to look devastated and tinder-dry. However, the evergreen shisham and wild jamun (Indian blackberry) provide cool, deep shades of soothing green, a necessary counterpoint to the gradually withering look of the forest.

In the days before tiger hunting was banned, I hunted the animal religiously. Not long after that, in the 1970s, tiger became a protected species. The years of unrestricted shikar were full of excitement. Later, as legal regulations came into force, hunting permits could be obtained by application to the chief wildlife warden, sixty days previous to the date for which the permit was wanted. These permits were issued for the last fortnight of every month of the shooting season. In India, the hunting season used to start from 15 October and continued till 15 June, except for some animals and birds, for which it ended on 15 May. Shikar is now fully banned and what you will read in this book are only my memories of an era that has ended and is in peril of being forgotten. Far from romanticizing those momentous times over the past hundred years or so, the events in this book were told to the author, Prakash Singh, my elder son-in-law, when nostalgia overcame me. The focus of this book is more on the tiger than on hunting.

The best season for hunting big game was in April and May, simply because most of the water resources available to the animals become dry during these months which usher in summer. With limited supply of water, the flora and fauna of the jungle are inevitably drawn to the vicinity of these patches. And so it became easy at this time to locate these few areas where water is certain to be pooled, and shikar became relatively simpler.

Irresponsible hunting by unscrupulous shikaris, driven by sheer vanity, led to the massacre of the animal population. Hunting small game, like deer and fowl, served to make these ‘hunters’ not seasoned and wise, but simply trigger-happy. Undoubtedly, this development has led to a burning controversy regarding hunters and hunting. To my mind, the ostracism of the hunting community is unfair. If at all it is justified, it certainly should not be a generalized accusation leveled against all hunters, especially at those who have hunted tigers. In my opinion, the fascination with forest sojourns, camp life and big and small game hunting existed because of a love of nature. The obsession with rampant shikar leading to needless slaughter was evidently a degraded form of this love for nature. Conservation and lawless poaching are both aspects of this fascination that human beings have had with flora and fauna during the natural history of life’s survival on Earth. In fact, the thing is quite the opposite with shikaris and those possessed of the all-important drive known as the ‘sporting spirit’. We hunters are not insensitive. To my mind, nothing so much moves many hunters as having seen once, and never forgotten, the sight of a tiger bounding headlong or broadside, forward or sideways, a dozen metres or so with each great leap; or simply lifting like a swift, light and tense bird, as it comes charging, perchance, towards you.

Tiger shikar was certainly the wildest of all known sports. The tiger is far superior to the man hunting it or to the man-made methods employed in its hunt. Too many times has it proved to be so, much to the chagrin of hunters. What, though, did account for the good luck and success of a few conscientious shikaris? Here, then, came in the compulsive addiction of the tiger shikari, seeking to hunt the royal quarry, thereby assiduously avoiding the meaningless slaughter of small game.

Despite the ease with which one could shoot in April, a great deal of experience and courage was required to hunt big game in its natural territory. For human beings are, in many ways, total strangers to the devious designs of nature in the forest, and to the habits of its denizens. Nature has generously endowed animals with survival instincts that help them keep alive in the face of continuous danger from more powerful beasts and shikaris. For instance, one had to be very careful about the direction in which the wind blew whilst out hunting, especially in a tiger shoot. When approaching a ‘kill’ made by a tiger, a shikari had to be against the wind that might have been blowing towards the tiger on the ‘kill’. In spite of the well-known fact that the tiger has a poor sense of smell, it was certain to sense the approaching hunter even if the man was upwind, or against the direction of the wind. Such is man’s position, disadvantageously placed, when he is amongst animals in their natural habitat.

In a famous poem, the celebrated American poet and critic, Robert Frost, wrote: ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep….’ This description aptly depicts a stretch of suburban woodland in the US which is undoubtedly verse-inspiring, but probably without any dangerous animal such as the ones dealt with in this book. North Indian forests, where I have largely hunted, offer many a beautiful sight and scene to the romantic as well as the realist. The eye meets with scenes of phenomenal and unbelievable beauty, bewitching enough to forever separate the beholder from his fellows and tempt him to muse in solitude. Yet, it must not be forgotten, these forests are the home to tigers, leopards, elephants and rhinoceros; its rivers the habitat of crocodiles and alligators. Human beings, considerably more evolved today, are, paradoxically, no match for such animals when confronted with them in the forest and without the tools and technologies devised by their intelligence.

The jungles of the north Indian Kumaon and Garhwal mountains and foothills that I so fondly remember hunting and living in with my two elder brothers, family retainers, friends and guests, were indeed spectacular. One of my earliest memories of our expeditions to those forests is of meeting the legendary hunter, Colonel Jim Corbett. He had visited our camp to meet my father, Raja Chaitendra Singh, whom Corbett Sahib knew from earlier times, my father having camped and shot, year after year, on the Sahib’s home ground on the banks of the Kosi and Ramganga rivers around Kaladhungi in Nainital. Even though my memories go back to my childhood, I can still picture his stature: his lean figure and his bleak, immeasurably patient, hunter’s eyes, especially the oddity of his right eye, the one he aimed so unerringly with. It seemed drawn down in a perpetual squint and was a shade smaller than the other eye! The jungles Jim Corbett hunted in, and I too was fortunate enough to see and experience, are still there.

Great sweeps of mountain massifs, liberally studded with pine and fir, are the hunting grounds of the Himalayan red, black and brown bears. Within the dense ranks of coniferous trees are beautiful glens and rich alpine pastures, bound by great, craggy cliffs. The great horned sheep, the wild goat (the ibex and the markhor, the ghoral and bharal are their cousins of sorts) and the Himalayan tahr (antelope), browsed in these pastures, far from human reach and incredibly quick to take alarm at the approach of the cleverest of stalkers. Lower down on the mountain slopes a variety of big and small deer romp through the mighty sal and its scanty undergrowth, apparently unaware of death lurking in the denser lantana thickets, in that most terrible of its manifestations: the tiger! Vast jungles of mixed trees and undergrowth girdle the mountains where cool, coursing streams flow into the plains, forming a rich playground for all types of game. Much of what I have experienced has been transformed with the changing nature of the land and with time. The forests, now considerably damaged by the progress of human civilization, are no longer the same. Yet, a lot is still preserved and deserves to be seen and experienced.

Tiger shooting was a dangerous sport. Too often I witnessed the price of inexperienced carelessness ending up in death, or a mauling too horrible to be imagined, leaving the victim crippled for life, if

not dead.

A successful shikari needed to be experienced enough to know and learn thoroughly the nature and habits of his quarry. Animals follow certain patterns of search and migration governed by their environment and habitat. He had to keep in mind the various hours of the day or night when he could trace the tiger’s ‘kill’ safely, and most importantly, without disturbing the feasting king. What I shall now write may offer you a second-hand opportunity to closely observe the tiger, if nature and conservation interest you.

The best time to look for the ‘kill’ in the day is between eleven and four o’clock in summer, and between twelve and two in winter. The tiger feeds throughout the night and as day breaks, it shifts to a safer place, usually located in shady, thickly-carpeted remote ravines, far away from troublesome flies and from hunters or naturalists, of whose coming it is, more often than not, instinctively aware. Pooled or running water somewhere close by is also essential for the tiger when it wants to rest.

Tigers generally make a kill every ten or fifteen days. They prowl in search of prey at dusk and can travel twenty to thirty miles at night while hunting. When a tiger does kill, it tends to gorge itself, and so becomes sluggish and slow, frequently thirsty, hence its choice of resting places near water bodies. Between the days when resting from stalking, they satisfy themselves, for hours, by licking and chewing on a particular bone found in the upper part of both their front legs, a common anatomical feature in all big and small cats. In Urdu, known as the sabar haddi, it is ‘the bone of patience’, and is considered to be a good-luck charm by shikaris, who often refer to it as the ‘t-bone’. In earlier times, it was known, too, for its medicinal properties and was used as a curative for certain chronic diseases. It came to be mounted on gold-plated tie-pins and other showpieces by jewellers for distinguished clients worldwide. The tiger could go on without killing and eating for days together by patiently licking and tonguing this bone in its upper arm.

Nature made the tiger to be a winner. An extremely efficient fighting machine, the tiger rarely loses a battle in the jungle, which is its realm. With even wild beasts quailing before its roaring fury, what does it do to human beings? For an armed man, facing a charging tiger is, to say the least, a nerve-wracking experience. For an unarmed person, it is well nigh impossible to survive mentally, if not physically unscathed. Short-tempered, even under normal circumstances, the tiger becomes an entity of pure destruction when aroused, more so when wounded. It can bear severely crippling wounds uncaringly and will fight to kill its tormentors with its last fierce breath. Only when very fatally hit does the king of the jungle lose control of his murderous faculties. That is when, whether due to its vindictive nature or its instinct to not allow his enemies to have the satisfaction of killing him, his ferocity is focused on his own incapacitated body. The wounded tiger will bite and ruthlessly tear his own body to bits and so hasten the final surcease of extreme pain with which it cannot come to grips. Two chapters in this book describe encounters with wounded tigers. However, to whet your appetite for nature’s ways, I provide you with another tale here.

A close friend or ours, one Mr Rana, had a farm in the Terai-Bhabhar region nestled in the foothills of the Kumaon Himalayas. An avid shikari, he was well versed in jungle lore at the time this event occurred. A young male tiger had turned into a cattle-lifter and taken up his abode in the thick sal forests overgrowing the rugged terrain around Mr Rana’s farm. For over a week, the tiger had killed and eaten a draught bull and a milch cow belonging to the villagers from Jhirna, an area from where Mr Rana hired help for his farm. He had been out after the rogue tiger but with no luck. One day, while he sat on his verandah at tea, the lowering sun a disc of radiant hues between the sentinel sal trees at the edge of his land, a villager ran up to him in great agitation to say that the tiger had killed a cow in the forest nearby and was at that moment feeding on his victim.

Not wishing to lose this golden opportunity, Mr Rana hurriedly readied his rifle and followed the villager into the forest. The ‘kill’ was about half-a-mile away and speed was of the essence. Intent on caching the feasting animal, they rushed through the carpet of strewn leaves in the sal forests bordering the stream beyond which the kill lay. The following events might never have occurred if they had made less noise going through that sal jungle. However, it is precisely on such small details that destiny hinges, especially in the jungle.

They were unaware that the rogue tiger was close to them. Thirsty from the afternoon heat and with a partly full stomach, it had left the unfinished kill and come down to the stream to drink. Mr Rana and the villager came rushing through the trees on the opposite bank. Disturbed, the tiger changed his mind about drinking and, unperturbed, began to walk boldly away along the open bank just as the hunters emerged from the trees. Rana quickly realized the tiger had sensed danger and would now avoid going back to his kill. Aiming carefully, because of the long range, he fired at the sauntering beast.

The killer beast flinched, turned towards the trees, and bounding into the cover without so much as a growl was swiftly gone. Mr Rana knew that he had wounded the tiger and with dusk coming on, he retraced his way back to the farmhouse, planning all the while to track it to its death the next day.

Morning found him eagerly taking up the tiger’s blood trail, his trusty rifle in his hands and a servant with a loaded shotgun following a few paces behind. Tracking a tiger on foot is by no means an easy feat. A hunter ambitious enough to set out by foot should have a good knowledge of the jungle, a keen sense of the wind direction, an ability to shoot straight and quickly even under stress, and a good idea of what the tiger might do after being hit.

Mr Rana saw that the blood trail led into a dense area of briar and lantana bush, which the fallen leaves from the giant sal trees above had almost covered, rendering the deep shade below the undergrowth ideal for the wounded tiger to lie sheltered in. Full of apprehension, and with a silent prayer, he pushed aside the first of the bushes as he followed the blood trail. With an immense roar the tiger charged at him from the dark of the undergrowth. Bringing up the rifle,

Mr Rana stumbled back from the brush and a split second later fired at the wide-open, long-fanged mouth of the horribly snarling tiger, a mere five paces from him. Undeterred, the tiger leapt at him and

Mr Rana emptied his second barrel, but the beast reached him, collided with him and knocked him down. Scrambling to his feet, he looked wildly around for his gun-boy and the extra shotgun, but the grim emptiness surrounding him said the boy had abandoned him and run for dear life.

The nightmare had only just begun. A raking blow knocked the empty rifle aside and laid open Mr Rana’s forearm from elbow to wrist. The shock and his imminent death mercifully blacked out

Mr Rana. A moment later his pain-befuddled senses found something heavy pinning him down. As his eyes flew open, he saw the tiger was straddling him. The wide open jaws dripped with blood and foam, inches from his face. The dancing orbs of the tiger’s eyes pierced his own, and those fiendish growls from deep within the massive chest all but made him unconscious again. Sudden slashing blows to his shoulder and chest revived him. Mr Rana saw that the tiger crouched above him, supported on its right foreleg, even as it hit out at his torn chest and shoulders with its left foreleg. In those fleeting, ghastly moments Mr Rana luckily realized that the tiger’s left leg, still trying to split him open, seemed weak and badly hurt and that the blood from the tiger’s mouth was not his, but from the animal’s shattered lower jaw caused by his first shot. Encouraged at the sight of the tiger’s wounds, Mr Rana wormed his way out from under the animal and, standing up, tried to run.

With incredible speed, the tiger lunged after him to sink its upper fangs into the back of one thigh. Mr Rana wrenched his leg out from the tiger’s injured mouth and reeled a few paces further where he fell, and then, on elbows and knees, he began to drag himself away from the monster. The pain of his lacerated chest and the burning hole in his thigh seemed to keep him cruelly, but fortunately, coherent and hastened his escape. But when he looked back, the tiger, equally determined, was crawling along the ground towards him. As

Mr Rana recalls, there was a searing, questing intensity in the tiger’s eyes which transformed itself into an expression of triumphant joy as it caught up once again with the fallen hunter. The bloodied, leering jaws seemed to laugh in euphoric conquest as the fangs stabbed down at Mr Rana’s dodging face in an effort to catch