Hunting and Shooting in India

By Read Books Ltd.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473353145

Book preview

ANECDOTES OF INDIAN SHOOTING

BY COLONEL H. WARD, C.I.E.

A LONG time ago, speaking of a book written by a friend of mine, ‘Wild Men and Wild Beasts,’ the ‘Saturday Review’ commented on the sameness of most books on Indian sport, and complained of the absence of variety. No doubt the bare chronicle of the deaths of, say, ten or twelve tigers would soon pall, for the circumstances attending the shooting of many must be more or less similar, although in all probability the incidents connected with each are exciting and varied enough to linger in the remembrance of the shikari himself for life. I will not, however, attempt to write an account of tiger shooting per se, but only give a few incidents that have befallen myself in a long life in India.

I was at one time stationed at Indore, a charming country within easy reach of the wildest parts of the Vindhya range, where game abounded in those days. These hills are mostly volcanic, and cannot compare in height or grandeur with the Himalayas; their highest peaks seldom touch 4,000 feet, while ordinarily they vary from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above sea level, but they are picturesque, and occasionally almost grotesque in shape and feature. Their formation of sandstone and trap lends itself wherever there is water to an abundant flora, so that the scenery, always wild, is varied, and occasionally very beautiful. Ferns abound, ranging from the smallest species of Adiantum to tree-ferns of all sizes, from three to twenty feet high; and here and there in some sheltered nook the shikari is surprised by a perfect dream of beauty in the midst of rugged and bare hillsides strewn with large boulders of black trap, looking as if they had been tossed about by primeval giants.

One such scene I will presently attempt to describe, though my skill in word-painting is not sufficient to enable me to do it justice. The place will remain in my recollection as long as memory lasts.

The only inhabitants were aboriginals, in the stage between the hunter and agriculturist; men whose lives were one continual struggle with the feræ naturæ, and whose precarious subsistence hinged on the many and ingenious devices with which they could protect their few acres of rice and millet, sown either in the warm ashes of the jungle fires on the hillsides or in the valleys near water. Each patch of cultivation was fenced, and in every gap either a heavy figure-of-four fall trap large enough to kill a deer or even a panther was placed, or a bamboo sharpened at the end till it was like the blade of a spear was bent down over a deer’s run and fastened with an ingenious device on bamboo fibres, so arranged that any animal coming into contact with it was speared by the bamboo as it flew back into position; or else, a live bamboo with a noose attached was bent down and fastened so as to spring back on the noose being drawn tight. To prevent an animal biting itself free, the fibres forming the noose were run through two or three short lengths of green bamboo; the cane selected for the noose was generally strong enough to lift the leg of the unfortunate animal caught, well off the ground, so that it was hardly capable of making any very violent effort to escape. The Bhils told me that even a tiger once caught in this noose had no chance of escape, and hung there till he died of starvation. I have never seen anything larger than a spotted deer so trapped, so cannot answer for the correctness of my information on this point.

The most effectual protection for their field is a stockade of sal (Shorea