Tiger, Tiger

I

THE tiger of Indo-China is a large, long-limbed, short-haired animal, very much like the Bengal tiger, but lighter-colored. In different parts of the country slight differences in shape, coloring, and length of hair can be detected — due, I suppose, to climatic conditions and environment.

The weight of a full-grown animal may be anything between 350 and 600 pounds, although exceptionally big beasts will weigh even more. Two tigers of apparently the same size may show a difference in weight of over one hundred pounds, and compared with other animals they are very heavy for their size. I once shot one which four strong men, with poles, could not lift clear of the ground.

A very large tiger will measure three feet ten at the shoulder, with a length of about ten feet and a half from nose to tip of tail. Larger ones have been shot, but any sportsman who kills one with a length of nine feet and a half can boast of having got a fine trophy indeed.

The largest are found in the big plains of tall grass surrounded by thick jungle, where game, water, and cover are plentiful. Their hair is short but fine, and the ground color varies from very light yellow to a reddish brown. The markings also show much diversity. Those living in the swampy jungles near the sea are smaller and thinner; their fur is poor and often mangy or scarred. Since game is scarce, their main food consists of monkeys, wild pigs, and occasionally fish.

Some tigers have broad and welldefined black stripes; others have thin marks close together with some white hairs sprinkled into them. The belly is sometimes pure snow-white, sometimes a dirty-looking sort of whitish gray. I once shot a tiger whose ground color was a bright golden yellow; the belly was pure white and the marking very black and sharp. It was one of the finest skins I ever saw. As a rule the tigress has a finer fur, both in color and length of hair.

With the exception of the more settled places near the larger towns, tigers are distributed all over Indo-China.

In the Lagna plains, owing to the abundance of game, cover, and water, the number of tigers is great. In the dry season, when the grass is short, they are occasionally seen in the daytime roaming about or lying in the cool mud at the edges of the pools. In the higher country, where there are plenty of clearings interspersed with small woods and patches of thick brush, they are also fairly numerous; but in the wide forests of tall timber they are very rare because game is scarce there. On mountains like the Dalat plateau or the Darlac range, there is a good number of tigers; these mountains have many grassy slopes where deer of all kinds are plentiful; and where there is game there is tiger. The thickly wooded mountain ranges contain nothing but monkeys and snakes, and consequently no tigers; in the grassy valleys between the ranges, teeming with wild life, they are certain to be found.

But they are generally shy of man and give him the right of way. That is why one sees so many tracks and so seldom meets the animals. Now and then, to prove the rule by exception, they are very bold and will attack cattle in the daytime, right in front of the herders; they will come in to the villages, notwithstanding fires, dogs, or noise, and try to snatch a pig or a goat. When a tiger loses his natural fear of man to such an extent, he will eventually turn into a man-eater.

A strong, healthy, active tiger will seldom touch cattle where game is plentiful. In the Lagna plains, where tame buffaloes belonging to Mois wander all day long, it is very rare that even a calf is killed. But when a tiger does take to cattle killing, he becomes a nuisance and must be got rid of.

A few years ago a French lumberman came to me complaining that a tiger had killed five of his best buffaloes in a week, with the result that his work was almost at a standstill. In the forests of Indo-China buffaloes are used to haul timber and they work in teams of five or six pairs. The lumberman asked me to try to get the brute, so I went to his place and found three buffaloes killed outright; two more had been wounded and were dying. I sat all night over one of the kills and the tiger came and fed on it the whole night. But clouds obscured the moon so that I was not able to get a shot, and just before dawn the tiger dragged the remains into a small thick wood. As soon as there was light enough to see my sights, I followed. As I stepped quietly into the wood I caught a glimpse of a huge striped body sneaking away through the bushes, but I could not fire. However, something had to be done, so I went back to the camp and secured a small piece of fresh meat, poisoned it, and put it on the carcass. The next morning that piece of meat was gone, although the carcass remained untouched. With two Mois I followed the spoor for a short time, but lost it on hard ground in thick brush. We beat the bushes for two hours without result. That tiger was never heard of again, nor were the cattle touched after, so I suppose he died in a secluded spot. I do not like using poison, but a man-eater or cattle-killer must be considered as vermin and destroyed by any means, fair or foul.

Unlike the lion, the tiger is usually a very silent animal. The full roar close by in the thick jungle, or in the dark near the camp, is an intimidating sound, and, although a roaring tiger is very seldom dangerous, it is quite likely that the noise will upset the nerves of the novice. When a tiger means business, he comes silently.

Breeding time, between November and January, is about the only time when the tiger’s roar is really heard. The young are dropped usually between March and June. I do not know how many are born to a litter, but I have been told five or six. Personally I have never seen more than two or three cubs following a mother, and more often two than three. The cubs are dropped in a clump of thick tall grass or in bamboos, rattans, or rushes, always near some water. They are seldom found, but if one is lucky enough to get them when quite young they are easily reared by hand. Fresh goat’s milk is the best food for them, but condensed milk, though far from being as good, has been used with success. As soon as they can eat, finely chopped meat should be given them with a little salt added to it now and then.

A friend of mine, the owner of a small plantation in the Anloc territory, once kept two cubs for three months, and I must tell the story of their capture because it shows such pluck on the part of the Mois who caught them. Two of these men had gone into a swamp to cut rattans when a tigress came out of some thick bushes and charged them with a great show of ferocity, roaring and snarling. She did not push her charge home, however, and as soon as the men fell back she returned to the bushes. The two Mois then crept up slowly to try to discover what was the matter, and she came out just as before, only to retire again to the same bushes. The men ran back to their villages and, having gathered two or three of their fellows, returned to the swamp, armed with crossbows and arrows. As soon as they approached the spot where the tigress lay, out she came, looking nasty; but, seeing herself confronted by five men, she turned back again. As she did so one of the Mois fired an arrow, hitting her just beneath the tail; she faced round immediately and got another arrow in her chest. She then made a real but somewhat blind charge, though more than half the arrow in her chest was sticking out; as she came on she hit the end of that arrow on a small tree trunk so that it was entirely driven into her chest, reaching the heart. This took all the fight out of her, and turning tail she staggered back into the bushes, pursued by two or three more arrows. After waiting a little the Mois followed her, and once inside the thicket one of them caught sight of something yellowish moving under some rattan palms. He fired an arrow at it and a squeal was heard; at the same time another man saw the tigress lying near by, quite dead. So they walked boldly on and found that what they had seen under the palms was a litter of three cubs lying in a bunch. One of them was dead, transfixed by the arrow. They caught the two others and took the whole lot, dead and alive, to their master, who reared the live cubs on condensed milk diluted with boned water. He kept them for three months and then sold them to the Duke of Montpensier, but the Duke left them to the care of native servants at the hotel in Saigon and they got diarrhœa and died. The servants were probably careless about boiling the water used to dilute the milk.

II

I have already said that as a rule tigers are shy of man. Some experiences of my own will illustrate my point.

A few years ago I was using as a bait for tigers the carcass of an elephant which I had shot. Early one morning I was creeping past an ant hill toward the blind when a deep growl startled me, and there, on my left, not three yards away, was a big tiger facing me. I brought up my rifle at once, but the animal turned suddenly and with one jump was engulfed in the tall grass.

At another time, while hunting in the Lagna plains, I was coming back to the camp at eleven o’clock in the morning, following a small footpath skirting a large pool. As it was so late in the day, and as the camp was not over three hundred yards away, I did not keep a sharp lookout. In fact I was walking without looking ahead at all, but with my eyes on some waterfowl disporting themselves on the pond. Suddenly an angry snarl startled me, and right before my face rose the huge head and chest of a tiger, so close that I could have struck him with my fist. I jumped back immediately, keeping my face toward the brute and disengaging my gun, which was hanging from my shoulder by the strap. The tiger could have caught me by reaching out with his paws, but he also jumped back and started running away through a fairly open space. I fired then, and an angry growl told me that I had hit, but he went on and disappeared in a bamboo thicket. I came back to the spot in the afternoon with a party of Mois and we took the blood trail, but the tiger, after crossing the patch of bamboos, had got in a flooded jungle, and, the blood giving out, it was soon impossible to track him any farther.

One day some natives came to tell me that one of their bullocks had just been killed. It was then three o’clock in the afternoon, and I went immediately to the spot, not over one mile from my house. There I found that the tiger had killed the bullock in a clearing and then dragged it into a thick wood near by. I followed up with five or six Mois and we discovered the carcass only a few yards inside the thicket. We pulled it back into the open and I remained sitting behind some bushes with one of the natives, having sent the others back, talking loudly as they went. Usually when a kill is dragged back into the open the tiger comes as soon as he thinks that the ground is clear, following the tracks made by the carcass, and I expected this one to do so. I was facing the direction from which I felt pretty certain he would come. Behind me and on both sides was grass about three feet high, so that with the bushes in front and grass all round I was well hidden when sitting on the ground. I had been in that position for about half an hour when some big black ants coming from a neighboring ant hill started crawling up my leggings. I stood up quietly to brush them off, leaning my rifle against the bush in front, when a deep growl coming from right behind my back made me turn round quickly, and there was the tiger — a big brute he was, too — standing not seven yards away, looking at me. I slowly reached down for my rifle, but with another angry snarl the animal went off at a gallop, and all I could see was his head showing up over the grass now and then as he made for the wood. I risked a shot, but it was hopeless. If I had not happened to get up to shake off the black ants, that tiger would have walked straight on top of me.

III

Man-eating tigers are not common in Indo-China, but they occur now and then. An old tiger, no longer active enough to catch game, will through pressure of hunger turn at last to man and, finding what easy prey a human being is, will keep on hunting him, sometimes with an appalling regularity. A tiger disabled by a severe wound, such as a broken leg, will also turn maneater. It is said that young tigers deprived of their mother before they are big enough to fare for themselves may turn man-eaters, and that they are the most terrible of all, as they lose their fear of man entirely, while their strength increases all the time.

In 1905, when the railroad between Saigon and Thanthiet was being built, a man-eating tiger effectually stopped work for nearly three weeks at the point where Suôi-Kiêt station now stands. During that time twenty-two men were killed, most of them being carried off and devoured. The brute was very bold and at night would break through the huts where the coolies slept. He attacked also in broad daylight while the men were at work, with the result that nearly all of them ran away, leaving only the French staff on that section of the line. Breaking into a small hut one night, he caught one coolie sleeping, and at the same time unknowingly stepped on another. He carried off the first man, and in the morning the second one was found dead on the floor, with just one claw mark on his neck, where the artery had been cut, probably when the tiger stepped on him to snatch his other victim.

Another time he tried to break into the house of one of the French surveyors. This man was a big fat fellow and not by any means a tiger hunter. His wife, a big fat lady, was with him. For two hours the tiger walked up and down the verandah, sniffing at the doors and trying to break in here and there, while husband and wife, scared to death, kept him off by shouting and lighting all the lamps and candles they could lay their hands on. They also called to the native servants, who were in an outhouse near by, to come and drive the brute away. But the servants did not care for that kind of sport. At last the tiger turned toward the outhouse, which was much more lightly built than the house itself. A dreadful scream was heard and then all was quiet. When morning came two of the three servants were found shivering on the roof; the third was gone. Some blood and his brains spread on the ground showed that his head had been crushed in the tiger’s grip. The next day the surveyor went back to Saigon and applied to his chief to be removed to another spot — a request which was granted.

A few years later another man-eater made his appearance in the vicinity of a large Moi village, Vô Dat, near the Lagna plains. That tiger killed eighteen of the villagers in less than one month. He caught some of them at night, breaking into the houses, but the greater number were seized while on the trails or at work in the fields. A woman was killed while she was walking behind a bullock cart loaded with paddy. She had her baby strapped across her back, Moi fashion, with a blanket loosely tied in front. The tiger jumped on her and she fell, but the blanket got loose and the baby rolled on the ground. The mother was carried off, but the child was found, unhurt, by a party of men who came up a few minutes later. The bullock-cart driver had not seen or heard anything. The baby was brought back to the village and he is a big, strong boy now; he can boast of having had a narrow escape indeed.

This same man-eater was at last wounded by a party of Laotians who were hunting in the Lagna plains near that Moi village. Three of them were looking for deer; only one of them had a gun, an old muzzle-loading flintlock, and he shot a hog deer at the edge of a large pool. The two other men set about cutting up the deer, one of the two squatting and holding it on its back and the other one using the knife. The man with the gun was standing by with his piece unloaded. Suddenly a huge tiger came out of the belt of rushes surrounding the pool and seized the fellow squatting behind the deer; the man with the knife immediately stood up and with great courage planted his weapon between the tiger’s shoulders. Either the point of the knife was blunt or the blow was not hard enough, for it did not penetrate very deep. The tiger then hurled himself on the man who had wounded him, who struck again, but the knife glanced off the shoulder blade, making a long, shallow wound, and the poor fellow fell on the ground, where the brute made short work of him. The man with the gun ran away with his still-unloaded weapon, and that is how the story was known.

Fifteen days later I was hunting in that very spot and shot two wild buffaloes near the pool where the two Laotians had been killed. Returning there early next morning with some coolies to skin the dead buffaloes, I saw at a distance a big tiger feeding on one of the carcasses. Leaving the coolies behind, I crept up to within fifty yards and shot him. He was very large and his head was enormous, but he was thin and his wounds were in a very bad state and full of worms. The skin was covered with scars and the hair was falling off in patches. It was useless to try to save that skin, so I took the head and the claws and left the rest for the vultures. From that day to this no Moi has been killed by tigers in that village.

Natives have a great respect for the tiger at all times and will always call him ông (sir) when mentioning him. They have many superstitions connected with the animal. For instance, they believe that when asleep the tiger hears all that is said about him; therefore it behooves men not to say nasty things about the striped gentleman, or revenge may overtake the offenders. Luckily when the tiger wakes up he usually yawns and stretches his limbs, and in so doing forgets all he has heard in his sleep. The Mois also believe that a man-eater is not always a real tiger, but an old sorcerer from a hostile tribe who transforms himself to bring destruction upon them. They affirm that such a tiger will come at night outside the houses and, talking like a man, will lure the villagers out and kill them.

IV

There has been much controversy among sportsmen about the way a tiger kills his prey. Very few people have ever seen a tiger actually make his kill, and from an isolated instance it is impossible to infer that the thing is always done the same way. It depends, first, on the kind of animal the tiger has to deal with — whether it is a buffalo, a bullock, a deer, or a small beast such as a dog, a pig, or a goat; secondly, on the kind of ground — whether it is thick jungle, tall timber, thorny shrubs, open grass, hard ground, soft mud, or water; last, but not least, on the tiger himself — whether he is big, heavy, strong, full-grown, old, or young.

The old-time belief that the tiger springs from a distance, landing on top of his prey with a graceful trajectory, must be discarded. The usual method is to stalk an animal as close as possible, using any cover that may be handy, and then, with a final rush, seize it by the throat, or the fore quarters, or more often the hind quarters, and throw it down. The jaws are then fastened in the throat, if they are not already there, until death follows. But this method is not an absolute rule by any means; it differs greatly according to the kind of animal the tiger attacks. A small beast, such as a pig, dog, or goat, is usually seized by the nape of the neck, sometimes by the middle of the back.

I once lost three dogs out of four while hunting deer, and all of them had been bitten through the back. There were no claw marks on any of them, only the deep fang holes; the tiger must have caught them as a cat catches a mouse. In thick scrub the tiger will often seize a bullock or a cow by the hind quarters, grabbing the rump with his forepaws and biting through the spine, while his hind feet on the ground act as braces.

A long-horned animal like the buffalo is never attacked in front, but always from behind, the tiger seizing the rump or biting the hind legs to hamstring the animal. As soon as his victim is down, he always fastens his jaws in the throat.

I was once an eyewitness of a fight between a tiger and a buffalo on the edge of the Lagna plains, where, accompanied by three natives, I was looking for deer. A herd of tame buffaloes, under the care of some native boys, was grazing near a large swamp. Suddenly there was a commotion among the herd and the scattered buffaloes started running toward the plain, where they gathered in a bunch and stopped, looking toward the swamp. We then saw a big buffalo bull coming out of the rushes, followed by a large tiger who was biting his hind legs, for all the world like a dog biting a sheep. Every time the buffalo wheeled round to get at his enemy, the tiger turned with him, always keeping behind and tearing at the legs.

We started running toward the spot, which was about three or four hundred yards from us, but the tiger saw us and left his victim, which by that time had fallen to its knees. The little boy herders were yelling for all they were worth. When we got near the buffalo, we saw that the hamstring had been almost severed, but there were no other marks of any kind on the body. The poor beast tried to get up, but could hardly move. When the owner arrived I asked him to let me shoot it and use it as bait, but he would not hear of it; he thought that he might save his buffalo, but I knew it was hopeless. He and a few other natives dragged the animal to a small pool near by, and left it in the water while a little boy was sent to cut some grass to feed it.

The following night the tiger came back and walked up and down the mud bank of the pool for a long time, as the tracks showed the next morning, but he did not dare to attack the buffalo in the water. He did the same thing on the second night, and the next day the buffalo died. The third night the tiger dragged the carcass to the bank and devoured part of it. The nearest cover was over three hundred yards away and I went there in the morning, hoping to see the tiger in the daytime and to be able to crawl within reasonable shooting distance while he was feeding. He came back three times, but I was unable to get near enough without being detected. When night came I tried to get him with the headlight, but he was too smart for me. The following day I decided to try a shot at three hundred yards, and I took my 250-3000 Savage rifle, which has a very high velocity and a very flat trajectory. At about nine o’clock the tiger showed up and, coming to the kill, sat down on his haunches like a dog, looking slowly round and facing my way. Lying down, I aimed carefully for the chest and knocked him over.

A man walking is nearly always caught from behind, and instantly killed, the neck being broken or the head crushed with one bite of the powerful jaws. Men lying round a camp fire or in huts may be seized by any part of the body; some, alive and screaming, have been dragged away by a leg or a shoulder. The tiger kills them as soon as he thinks himself at a safe distance.

Tigers are not invariably victors in their attacks on strong animals. Some have been known to be killed by buffaloes or sladangs, and others have been ripped open by wild boars. An old boar is an ugly customer when enraged or fighting for its life.

A tiger always drags his prey under cover if he can do so, and sometimes to a considerable distance from where he killed it. Even a buffalo weighing nearly a ton is pulled through thick, thorny brush, over logs, down and up the banks of deep ravines.

In the case of a heavy kill, such as a cow, a horse, or a buffalo, the tiger pulls it stepping backward. A deer or a calf is pulled alongside the tiger as he walks through the jungle. A small animal, such as a goat, a pig, or a dog, is carried in very much the same manner as a rat is carried by a cat. I have never seen a tiger carrying his victim on his back and I do not see how he could do so without its falling at every step. Many and careful observations of the spoors have never indicated that this manner of carrying prey has been used by the tigers in Indo-China.

V

It has been said, and I think it is a widespread belief, that a tiger always eats his meat when high and not before. But if a tiger happens to stumble on the bait when it is still fresh, he will start on it without waiting five minutes.

A tiger almost invariably starts feeding on the hind quarters of his kill, and very seldom, if ever, touches the entrails. A leopard, on the contrary, tears the belly open and starts on the guts. It is therefore easy to guess what kind of cat the killer is, even when the telltale pad marks are not visible on the ground.

Another of the tiger’s traits is his wonderful cleverness at hiding. A tiger’s skin made into a carpet seems gaudy enough, and one would think that the bright yellow, black, and white would be very showy. Yet they blend so well in the jungle that a tiger standing motionless in a bush so thin that one could see a squirrel in it is almost impossible to detect. The only thing that betrays him sometimes is the slow waving of his black-andwhite tail.

Once I was tracking a big banting bull, and the spoor was just skirting a bit of jungle about thirty yards wide when I felt a slight touch on my shoulder. The Moi walking behind me had caught sight of a large tiger standing in that jungle not fifteen yards away. I looked in the direction in which he was pointing, but could not see anything; my eyes, scanning every bush, passed two or three times over what I took for a dead rattan palm, to which I did not pay any attention. The Moi was getting excited. ‘There! There!’ he whispered. ‘He is looking at us.’ But still I could not make out anything. At last I caught sight of a black-and-white thing moving slowly to and fro. It was the tail of the tiger; then, of course, I saw the outline of the body, and the whole animal was soon clearly defined, and I realized that the dry rattan palm was nothing less than the tiger himself.

The wounds inflicted by tigers are always dangerous. A mere scratch can bring death in a short time. The reason for this is that the tiger is a dirty feeder, eating his kill as long as it lasts, even when it is in the last stage of putrefaction, filling his claws with a poison of the most virulent form. I have seen buffaloes die in twenty-four hours from a very slight wound.

One of the men wounded by the maneater of Suôi Kiêt had only one bite, in the thigh, and that not very deep. I saw him waiting for the train to go to the hospital. He was joking and laughing with some other coolies and he told me that he did not feel any pain. His wound had been disinfected and bandaged by one of the French surveyors and he could walk easily without help. Yet he died in the afternoon of the next day, a few hours after his arrival in the hospital.

A Frenchman was terribly mauled in the leg and foot by a wounded tiger and it was necessary to cut his leg off at the knee. Two months later all seemed well and he was sent back to France. But on arriving at Marseilles blood poisoning set in and his whole thigh had to be amputated quickly. He lived, but was a helpless cripple for life.

When hunting tigers it is well always to have iodine or some other strong disinfectant handy, and one must not be afraid of enlarging the wound if necessary —when the thing is possible, of course.

VI

To hunt tigers with any hope of success it is essential to know something about the habits of the animals. A raw hand can get deer or wild pigs by just walking through the jungle; he might even stumble on bantings, sladangs, or elephants, although this does not occur often; but he will probably never see a tiger, at least in such a way as to get a shot.

It is by taking advantage of some of the tiger’s habits that it is possible to circumvent him, and to do so is not so difficult as one might imagine. For instance, it is a well-known fact that a tiger will come to feed on a dead animal in the jungle if he can find it. Out of that knowledge sprang the method of shooting tigers by putting out dead baits in likely spots. This is a very successful method and almost the only one used in Indo-China. After a likely place has been chosen, the bait, usually an old bullock or a buffalo, is killed and fastened by the neck to a tree trunk with a thick wire, or, better, a steel cable. The bait should always be placed in fairly thick jungle where the trees give good cover overhead. This is to prevent the vultures from seeing and spoiling it. Also plenty of cover all round gives the tiger more confidence, and he will come more readily in the daytime. A boma is then built at a short distance. The boma is a sort of cage about four feet high and large enough for one man to sit in comfortably. It is made of strong poles tied together with rattan. Four posts are driven into the ground and the poles, cut to the proper length, are then placed crossways at a distance of a few inches from each other. Then the whole thing is carefully camouflaged with palms and green branches in such a way that when it is completed it looks just like a dense bush. A small peephole is left in front to watch and shoot through, and a door at the back allows the hunter to crawl inside. The door is then shut and camouflaged as carefully as the rest. In the rainy season a roof can be built overhead. A small path is cut through the jungle, and the dry leaves and dead twigs are carefully brushed off to prevent any noise when one comes to visit the bait. At the end of the path, at about twenty yards from the kill, a blind is built to cover the hunter’s approach. Early every morning the bait is visited to see if it has been touched overnight. If by any chance a tiger is found still feeding on it, he is shot from the blind. If, on the other hand, the bait has been touched and the tiger has left, the hunter gets into the boma and stays there to wait for the animal to come back. A tiger nearly always visits the bait several times during the day, unless he suspects that a man is near by. It is useless to stay in the boma as long as the bait has not been touched. But when the smell is strong and carries at a good distance, it will pay sometimes to visit the kill in the evening, just before dark.

Dead elephants make splendid baits when shot in a good tiger country, even when shot in the open. In this case they should not be cut open, or the vultures will spoil them. Some people prefer a platform built on a tree to a boma on the ground. They feel safer there. They are safe, but a boma is much better for the shot and one is not so likely to be detected as on a platform. I have never heard of accidents happening in bomas.

Of course the best shot of all is from the blind as one comes up early in the morning and finds the tiger still feeding on the bait. There is nothing between the hunter and the animal but a flimsy bush, and the knowledge that there may be real danger appeals to a man’s sense of sportsmanship. Three things are necessary in hunting tigers: a bait, a rifle, and plenty of patience. A restless, nervous, impatient man had better give it up.

Another of the tiger’s habits is to use the trails, footpaths, and cart roads at night. Sitting in a tree alongside such a trail, night after night when the moon is bright, one may get a shot in the end, but it is weary work and the mosquitoes as well as the heavy dew make it unpleasant. Moreover shooting with a rifle by moonlight, almost straight down from a tree, is very unsatisfactory, and more tigers are missed or wounded than killed in that way.

In the Lagna plains, in the middle of the day when the sun is very hot, tigers may be seen lying on the cool mud at the edge of the pools. They even lie down in the water, with only their heads showing. By going slowly from one pool to another one can sometimes get a shot.

Sometimes live baits are used, as in some parts of India. A bullock, a cow, or a buffalo is tied up near a trail where tigers are known to pass at night, and a boma or a platform is built at a short distance. But this kind of sport is very disappointing in Indo-China, and one has to wait for a long time before a kill is made.

A certain number of tigers are shot at night by men using a headlight, a kind of searchlight, usually an acetylene lamp like a bicycle lantern, with a lens throwing a bright beam in front. This is fixed on a hat and worn on the head. It is used chiefly for hunting deer; the animals’ eyes reflect the light and shine like glowworms. All there is to do is to put a bullet between those two bright spots. Now and then a tiger may be shot that way, but not often. In twenty years I have killed only eight tigers while hunting with the searchlight, and except in two or three cases I did not even know I was firing at tigers until I saw the animals dead on the ground. It is hardly possible to tell the difference between sambhur eyes and tiger eyes at night. A remark in passing. It is commonly believed that the eyes of a tiger shine naturally in the dark. This is not so. No mammal has phosphorescent eyes. There must be some light reflected by the animal’s retina and this light must be behind the observer. When sitting by a camp fire one can occasionally see eyes shining in the dark if one is looking out in the direction away from the fire. It may be a tiger, but it may just as well be a dog or a civet cat or even one of the camp animals, — horse, mule, or bullock, — and one should be careful about shooting if one is not absolutely sure to what kind of animal those eyes belong. On a moonlit night animals’ eyes may shine faintly if the moon is behind the observer. The animals with the brightest eyes are the civet cats, mongooses, weasels, and others of the marten family.

When scouting for tiger signs one should not fail to look for ‘marked trees’ — that is, for trees slashed with claw marks. These marks are visible up to a height of from six to eight feet, thus giving an idea of the size of the tiger. The number and the different degrees of freshness of the marks show whether or not that particular spot is much or little frequented. Fallen trees may also be used by tigers to ‘sharpen’ their claws. I know a log near the Lagna River which the Mois call the ‘scratching log.’ It is entirely covered with claw marks; there is not the smallest space on it without a scratch.

Driving tigers with elephants is not practised in Indo-China. Tame elephants are very little used here and it would be impossible to collect a sufficient number of them to organize big drives like the tiger hunts of India.

A question often asked is, ‘What sort of rifle is best for tigers?’ My answer is, ‘Any modern high-power rifle.’ If you are a good shot and your nerves are steady, a small bore or a mediumsized bore is the best, as such a weapon is light, short, easily and quickly manageable. If you are an indifferent shot and subject to ‘ buck ague,’ use a heavy bore such as a .450 and trust to luck. Whatever the size of your gun, always remember that accuracy is the main thing and that the weapon which knocks down any animal, hit anywhere, has not yet been invented. From the boma, where you have plenty of time, and where the range is always short, take the head shot — between the eyes if the tiger is facing you; at the base of the ear if he is sideways. When it is not possible to take the head shot, or at long range, aim for the middle of the neck or the centre of the shoulder. Do not shoot behind the shoulder, for it is then five to one that you will hit too far back, your bullet passing through the stomach. Such a wound will enrage the tiger, and if he does not charge at once it will be very dangerous to follow him up in the thick cover where he always takes refuge. The vital parts are between the shoulders, and that is where the bullet must go. It should be remembered that even a shot through the heart seldom stops an animal on the spot. Tigers have been known to run over one hundred yards with their hearts torn to pieces. The same thing is true with deer, wild boars, and other animals. I remember the case of a young officer who was killed by a tiger he had shot through the heart, the brute dying across his

body. Take the head shot whenever you can do so, and never fire at a tiger until you are quite sure of the part of him you are shooting at. When a tiger falls instantly after the shot, or, when following up, you see him lying apparently dead, never rush blindly toward him. Walk slowly, with your rifle ready, and do not hesitate to put in another bullet if you see the slightest movement. It may save your life.