The Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett

Author:Jim Corbett [Corbett, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rupa Publications India
Published: 2016-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

III

To assist us in our campaign against the man-eater, and to try to prevent further loss of human life, six young male buffaloes had been sent up from Tanakpur in advance of us, to be used as bait for the tiger. On our arrival at Chuka we were told that the buffaloes had been tied out for three nights, and that though a tiger’s pugmarks had been seen near several of them, none had been killed. During the next four days we visited the buffaloes in the early morning; tried to get in touch with the tiger during the day, and in the evening accompanied the men engaged in tying out the buffaloes. On the fifth morning we found that a buffalo we had tied up at Thak, at the edge of the jungle in which the two boys had lost their lives, had been killed and carried off by a tiger. Instead of taking its kill into the dense jungle as we had expected, the tiger had taken it across an open patch of ground, and up on to a rocky knoll. This it had evidently done to avoid passing near a machan from which it had been fired at—and quite possibly wounded—on two previous occasions. After the buffalo had been dragged for a short distance its horns got jammed between two rocks, and being unable to free it, the tiger had eaten a few pounds of flesh from the hindquarters of the kill and then left it. In casting round to see in which direction the tiger had gone, we found its pugmarks in a buffalo wallow, between the kill and the jungle. These pugmarks showed that the killer of the buffalo was a big male tiger.

It was generally believed by the District Officials—on what authority I do not know—that the man-eater was a tigress. On showing them the tracks in the buffalo wallow we were told by the villagers that they could not distinguish between the pugmarks of different tigers and that they did not know whether the man-eater was male or female, but that they did know it had a broken tooth. In all the kills, human as well as animal, that had taken place near their village they had noticed that one of the tiger’s teeth only bruised the skin and did not penetrate it. From this they concluded that one of the man-eater’s canine teeth was broken.

Twenty yards from the kill there was a jamun tree. After we had dragged the kill out from between the rocks we sent a man up the tree to break a few twigs that were obstructing a view of the kill from the only branch of the tree in which it was possible to sit. This isolated tree on the top of the knoll was in full view of the surrounding jungle, and though the man climbed it and broke the twigs with the utmost care, I am inclined to think he was seen by the tiger.

It was now 11 a.

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