Jim Corbett’s adventures with man-eating tigers have made his name famous in tiny villages of the Kumaon Hills in India.
The man-eater is the rare tiger, usually one so weakened by old age or wounds that it cannot do its usual hunting and is forced to prey on human beings. However, once a tiger gets a taste for man, it becomes a deadly menace. When whole communities in the United Provinces were suddenly terrorized by man-eaters, Major Corbett was made official hunter to pit his skill against the animals. He relates his experiences in his book Man-Eaters of Kumaon from which this story of his encounter with the Chowgarh tigress is taken.
In March 1930, Vivian, our District Commissioner, was touring through the man-eater’s domain, and the 22nd of the month I received an urgent request from him to go to Kala Agar, and two days after receipt of Vivian’s letter I arrived in time for breakfast at the Kala Agar Forest Bungalow, where he and Mrs. Vivian were staying.
Over breakfast the Vivians told me they had arrived at the bungalow on the afternoon of the 21st, and while they were having tea on the verandah, one of six women who were cutting grass in the compound of the bungalow had been killed and carried off by the man-eater. Rifles were hurriedly seized and, accompanied by some of his staff, Vivian followed up the “drag” and found the dead women tucked way under a bush at the foot of an oak tree.
On examining the ground later, I found that on the approach of Vivian’s party, the tigress had gone off down the hill, and throughout the subsequent proceedings had remained in a ticket of raspberry bushes, 50 yards from the kill. A machan was put up in the oak tree for Vivian, and two others in trees near the forest road which passed 30 yards above the kill, for members of his staff. The machans were occupied as soon as they were ready and the party sat up the whole night, without, however, seeing anything of the tigress.
Next morning the body of a woman was removed for cremation, and a young buffalo was tied up on the forest road about a mile from the bungalow, and killed by the tigress the same night.
The following evening the Vivians sat up over the buffalo. There was no moon, and just as daylight was fading out and nearby objects were becoming indistinct, they first heard and then saw an animal coming up to the kill, which in the uncertain light they mistook for a bear; but for this unfortunate mistake their very sporting effort would have resulted in their bagging the man-eater, for both the Vivians are good rifle shots.
On the 25th the Vivians left Kala Agar, and during the course of the day my four buffaloes arrived from Dalkani. As the tigress now appeared to be inclined to accept this form of bait, I tied them up at intervals of a few hundred yards along the forest road. For three nights in succession the tigress passed within a few feet of the buffaloes without touching them, but on the fourth night the buffalo nearest the bungalow was killed.
On examining the kill in the morning I was disappointed to find that the buffalo had been killed by a pair of leopards I had heard calling the previous night above the bungalow. I did not like the idea of firing in this locality, for fear of driving away the tigress, but it was quite evident that if I did not shoot the leopards, they would kill my three remaining buffaloes, so I stalked them while they were sunning themselves on some big rocks above the kill and shot both of them.
The forest road from the Kala Agar bungalow runs for several miles due west through very beautiful forests of pine, oak and rhododendron, and in these forests there is, compared with the rest of Kumaon, quite a lot of game in the way of sambur, kakar and pig, in addition to a great wealth of bird life. On two occasions I suspected the tigress of having killed sambur in this forest, and though on both occasions I found the blood-stained spot where the animal had been killed, I failed to find either of the kills.
For the next 14 days I spent all the daylight hours either on the forest road, on which no one but myself ever set foot, or in the jungle, and only twice during that period did I get near the tigress. On the first occasion I had been down to visit an isolated village, on the south face of Kala Agar ridge, that had been abandoned the previous year owing to the depredations of the man-eater, and on the way back had taken a cattle track that went over the ridge and down the far side to the forest road, when, approaching a pile of rocks, I suddenly felt there was danger ahead. The distance from the ridge to the forest was roughly 300 hundred yards. The track, after leaving the ridge, went steeply down for a few yards and then turned to the right and ran diagonally across the hill for a hundred yards; the pile of rocks was about midway on the right-hand side of this length of track. Beyond the rocks a hairpin bend carried the track to the left, and a hundred yards farther on another sharp bend took it down to its junction with the forest road.
I had been along this track many times, and this was the first occasion on which I hesitated to pass the rocks. To avoid them I should either have had to go several hundred yards through dense undergrowth, or make a wide detour round and above them; the former would have subjected me to very great danger, and there was no time for the latter, for the sun was near setting and I had still two miles to go. So, whether I liked it or not, there was nothing for it but to face the rocks.
The wind was blowing up the hill so I was able to ignore the thick cover on the left of the track and concentrate all my attention on the rocks to my right. A hundred feet would see me clear of the danger zone, and this distance I covered foot by foot, walking sideways with my face to the rocks and the rifle to my shoulder; a strange mode of progression, had there been any to see it.
Thirty yards beyond the rocks was an open glade, starting from the right-hand side of the track and extending up the hill for 50 or 60 yards, and screened from the rocks by a fringe of bushes. In this glade a kakar was grazing. I saw her before she saw me, and watched her out of the corner of my eye. On catching sight of me she threw up her head, and as I was not looking in her direction and was moving slowly on, she stood stock still, as these animals have a habit of doing when they are under the impression that they have not been seen. On arrival at the hairpin bend, I looked over my shoulder and saw that the kakar had lowered her head and was once more cropping the grass.
I had walked a short distance along the track after passing the bend when the kakar went dashing up the hill, barking hysterically. In a few quick strides I was back at the bend, and was just in time to see a movement in the bushes on the lower side of the track. That the kakar had seen the tigress was quite evident, and the only place she could have seen her was on the track. The movement I had seen might have been caused by a bird; on the other hand it might have been caused by the tigress; anyway, a little investigation was necessary before proceeding further on my way.
A trickle of water seeping out from under the rocks had damped the red clay of which the track was composed, making an ideal surface for the impression of tracks. In this damp clay I had left footprints, and over these prints I now found the splayed-out pug marks of the tigress where she had jumped down from the rocks and followed me until the kakar had seen her and given its alarm-call, whereon the tigress had left the track and entered the bushes where I had seen the movement.
The tigress was undoubtedly familiar with every foot of the ground, and not having had an opportunity of killing me at the rocks – and her chance of bagging me at the first hairpin bend having been spoilt by the kakar – she was probably now making her way through the dense undergrowth to try to intercept me at the second bend.
Further progress along the track was now not advisable, so I followed the kakar up the glade, and turning to the left worked my way down, over open ground, to the forest road below. Had there been sufficient daylight I believe I could, that evening, have turned the tables on the tigress, for the conditions, after she left the shelter of the rocks, were all in my favor. I knew the ground as well as she did, and while she had no reason to suspect my intentions towards her, I had the advantage of knowing, very clearly, her intentions towards me. However, though the conditions were in my favor, I was unable to take advantage of them owing to the lateness of the evening.
I have made mention elsewhere of the sense that warns us of intending danger, and will not labor the subject further beyond stating that this sense is a very real one and that I do not know, and therefore cannot explain, what brings it into operation. On this occasion I had neither heard nor seen the tigress, nor had I received any indication from bird or beast of her presence, and I knew, without any shadow of the doubt that she was lying up for me among the rocks.
I had been out for many hours that day and had covered many miles of jungle with unflagging caution, but without one moment’s unease, and then, on cresting the ridge, and coming in sight of the rocks, I knew they held danger for me, and this knowledge was confirmed a few minutes later by the kakar’s warning call to the jungle folk, and by finding the man-eater’s pug marks superimposed on my footprints.
To those of my readers who have the patience to accompany me so far in my narrative, I should like to give a clear and a detailed account of my first – and last meeting with the tigress.
The meeting took place in the early afternoon of 11 April 1930, 19 days after my arrival at Kala Agar.
I had gone out that day at 2 p.m. with the intention of tying up my three buffaloes at selected places along the forest road, when at a point a mile from the bungalow, where the road crosses a ridge and goes from the north to the west face of the Kala Agar range, I came on a large party of men who had been out collecting firewood. In the party was an old man who, pointing down the hill to a thicket of young oak trees some 500 yards from where we were standing, said it was in that thicket where the man-eater, a month previously, had killed his only son, a lad of only 18 years of age.
I had not heard the father’s version of the killing of his son, so while we sat on the edge of the road smoking, he told his story, pointing out the spot where the lad had been killed, and where all that was left of him had been found the following day. The old man blamed the 25 men who had been out collecting firewood on that day for the death of his son, saying, very bitterly, that they run away and left him to be killed by the tiger.
Some of the men sitting near me had been in that party of 25 and they hotly repudiated responsibility for the lad’s death, accusing him of having been responsible for the stampede by screaming out that he had heard the tiger growling and telling everyone to run for their lives. This did not satisfy the old man. He shook his head and said, “You are grown men and he was only a boy, and you ran away and left him to be killed.”
I was sorry for having asked the questions that had led to this heated discussion, and more to placate the old man than for any good it would do, I said I would tie up one of my buffaloes near the spot where he said his son had been killed. So, handing two of the buffaloes over to the party to take back to the bungalow, I set off, followed by two of my men leading the remaining buffalo.
A footpath, taking off close to where we had been sitting, went down the hill to the valley below and zigzagged up the opposite pine-clad slope to join the forest road two miles farther on. The path passed close to an open patch of ground which bordered the oak thicket in which the lad had been killed. On this patch of ground, which was about 30 yards square, was a solitary pine sapling. This I cut down.
I tied the buffalo to the stump, set one man to cutting a supply of grass for it, and sent the other man, Madho Singh, up an oak tree with instructions to strike a dry branch with the head of his axe and call at the top of his voice as hill people do when cutting leaves for their cattle. I then took up a position on a rock, about four feet high, on the lower edge of the open ground. Beyond the rock the hill fell steeply away to the valley below and was densely clothed with tree and scrub jungle.
The man on the ground had made several trips with the grass he had cut, and Madho Singh on the tree was alternately shouting and singing lustily, while I stood on the rock smoking, with the rifle in the hollow of my left arm, when all at once I became aware that the man-eater had arrived.
Beckoning urgently to the man on the ground to come to me, I whistled to attract Madho Singh’s attention and signaled to him to remain quiet. The ground on three sides was comparatively open. Madho Singh on the tree was to my left front, the man cutting grass had been in front of me, while the buffalo – now showing signs of uneasiness – was to my right front.
In this area the tigress could not have approached without my seeing her; and as she had approached, there was only one place where she could now be, and that was behind and immediately below me.
When taking up my position I had noticed that the farther side of the rock was steep and smooth, and the lower portion of it was masked by thick undergrowth and young pine saplings. It would have been a little difficult, but quite possible, for the tigress to have climbed the rock, and I relied for my safety on hearing her in the undergrowth should she make the attempt.
I have no doubt that the tigress, attracted, as I had intended she should be, by the noise Madho Singh was making, had come to the rock, and that it was while she was looking up at me and planning her next move that I had become aware of her presence. My change of front, coupled with the silence of the men, may have made her suspicious; anyway, after a lapse of a few minutes I heard a dry twig snap a little way down the hill; thereafter the feeling of unease left me, and the tension relaxed. An opportunity lost, but there was still a very good chance of my getting a shot, for she would undoubtedly return before long, and when she found us gone, would probably content herself with killing the buffalo.
There were still four or five hours of daylight, and by crossing the valley and going up the opposite slope I should be able to overlook the whole of the hillside on which the buffalo was tethered. The shot, if I did get one, would be a long one from 200 to 300 yards, but the .275 rifle I was carrying was accurate, and even if I only wounded the tigress I should have a blood trail to follow, which would be better than feeling about for her in hundreds of square miles of jungle, as I had been doing these many months.
The men were a difficulty. To have sent them back to the bungalow alone would have been nothing short of murder, so of necessity I kept them with me.
Tying the buffalo to the stump in such a manner as to make it impossible for the tigress to carry it away, I left the open ground and rejoined the path to carry out the plan I have outlined, of trying to get a shot from the opposite hill.
About a hundred yards along the path I came to a ravine. On the far side of this, the path entered very heavy undergrowth, and as it was inadvisable to go down into thick cover with two men following me, I decided to take to the ravine, follow it down to its junction with the valley, work up the valley, and pick up the path on the far side of the undergrowth.
The ravine was about ten yards wide and four or five feet deep, and as I stepped down into it a nightjar fluttered off a rock on which I had put my hand. On looking at the spot from which the bird had risen, I saw two eggs. These eggs, straw-colored with rich brown markings, were of a most unusual shape, one being long and very pointed, while the other was as round as a marble; and as my collection lacked nightjar eggs, I decided to add this odd clutch to it. I had no receptacle of any kind in which to carry the eggs, so cupping my left hand I placed the eggs in it and packed them round with a little moss.
As I went down the ravine the banks became higher, and 60 yards from where I had entered it I came on a deep drop of some 12 to 14 feet. The water that rushes down all these hill ravines in the rains had worn the rock as smooth as glass, and as it was too steep to offer a foothold, I handed the rifle to the men and, sitting on the edge, proceeded to slide down. My feet had hardly touched the sandy bottom when the two men, with a flying leap, landed one on either side of me, and thrusting the rifle into my hand asked in a very agitated manner if I had heard the tiger.
As a matter of fact I had heard nothing, possibly due to the scraping of my clothes on the rocks, and when questioned, the men said what they had heard was a deep-throated growl from somewhere close at hand, but exactly from which direction the sound had come, they were unable to say.
Tigers do not betray their presence by growling when looking for their dinner and the only, and very unsatisfactory, explanation I can offer is that the tigress followed us after we left the open ground, and on seeing that we were going down the ravine had gone ahead and taken up a position where the ravine narrowed to half its width; and that when she was on the point of springing out on me, I had disappeared out of sight down the slide and she had involuntarily given vent to her disappointment with a low growl. Not a satisfactory reason, unless one assumes – without any reason – that she had selected me for her dinner, and therefore had no interest in the two men.
Where the three of us now stood we had the smooth, steep rock behind us, to our right a wall of rock slightly leaning over the ravine and 15 feet high, and to our left a tumbled bank of big rocks 30 or 40 feet high. The sandy bed of the ravine, on which we were standing, was roughly 40 feet long and ten feet wide. At the lower end of this sandy bed a great pine tree had fallen across, damming the ravine, and the collection of sand was due to this dam. The wall of overhanging rock came to an end 12 or 15 feet from the fallen tree, and as I approached the end of the rock, my feet making no sound on the sand, I fortunately noticed that the sandy bed continued round to the back of the rock.
This rock about which I have said so much I can best describe as a giant school slate, two feet thick at its lower end, and standing up – not quite perpendicularly – on one of its long sides.
As I stepped clear of this giant slate, I looked behind me over my right shoulder and – looked straight into the tigress’s face.
I would like you to have a clear picture of the situation.
The sandy bed behind the rock was quite flat. To the right of it was the smooth slate 15 feet high and leaning slightly outwards, to the left of it was a steep, scoured–out bank also some 15 feet high overhung by a dense tangle of thorn bushes, while at the far end was a slide similar to, but a little higher than, the one I had glissaded down. The sandy bed, enclosed by these three natural walls, was about 20 feet long and half as wide, and lying on it, with her fore-paws stretched out and her hind legs well tucked under her, was the tigress. Her head, which was raised a few inches off her paws, was eight feet (measured later) from me, and on her face was a smile, similar to what one sees on the face of a dog welcoming his master home after a long absence.
Two thoughts flashed through my mind: one, that it was up to me to make the first move, and the other, that the move would have to be made in such a manner as not to alarm the tigress or make her nervous.
The rifle was in my right hand held diagonally across my chest, with the safety-catch off, and in order to get it to bear on the tigress, the muzzle would have to be swung three-quarters of a circle.
The movement of swinging round the rifle, with one hand, was begun very slowly and hardly perceptibly, and when a quarter of a circle had been made, the stock came in contact with my right side. It was now necessary to extend my arm, and as the stock cleared my side, the swing was very slowly continued. My arm was now at full stretch and the weight of the rifle was beginning to tell. Only a little farther now for the muzzle to go, and the tigress – who had not once taken her eyes off mine – was still looking up at me, with the pleased expression still on her face.
How long it took the rifle to make the three-quarter circle, I am not in a position to say. To me, looking into the tigress’ eyes and unable therefore to follow the movement of the barrel, it appeared that my arm was paralyzed, and the swing would never be completed. However, the movement was completed at last, and as as soon as the rifle was pointing at the tiger’s body, I pressed the trigger.
I heard the report, exaggerated in that restricted space, and felt the jar of the recoil, and for these tangible proofs that the rifle had gone off, I might, for all the immediate result the shot produced, have been in the grip of one of those awful nightmares in which triggers are vainly pulled of rifles that refuse to be discharged at the critical moment.
For a perceptible fraction of time the tigress remained perfectly still, and then, very slowly, her head sank onto her outstretched paws, while at the same time a jet of blood issued from the bullet-hole. The bullet had injured her spine and shattered the upper portion of her heart.
The two men who were following a few yards behind me, and who were separated from the tigress by the thickness of the rock, came to a halt when they saw me stop and turn my head. They knew instinctively that I had seen the tigress and judged from my behavior that she was close at hand. Madho Singh said afterwards that he wanted to call out and tell me to drop the eggs and get both hands on the rifle. When I had fired my shot and lowered the point of the rifle onto my toes, Madho Singh, at a sign, came forward to relieve me of it, for suddenly my legs appeared to be unable to support me, so I made for the fallen tree and sat down.
Even before looking at the pads of her feet I knew it was the Chowgarh tigress I had sent to the Happy Hunting Grounds, and that the shears had enabled her to cut the threads of 64 human lives – the people of the district put the number at twice that figure – had, while the game was in her hands, turned, and cut the thread of her own life.
Three things, each of which would appear to you to have been to my disadvantage, were actually in my favor. These were (a) the eggs in my left hand, (b) the light rifle I was carrying, and (c) the tiger being a man-eater.
If I had not had the eggs in my hand I should have had both hands on the rifle, and when I looked back and saw the tiger at such close quarters, I should instinctively have tried to swing round to face her, and the spring that was arrested by my lack of movement would have been launched. Again, if the rifle had not been a light one, it would not have been possible for me to have moved it in the way it was imperative I should move it, and discharge it at the full extent of my arm. And lastly, if the tiger had been just an ordinary tiger, and not an man-eater, it would, on finding itself cornered, have made for the opening and wiped me out of the way; and to be wiped out by a tiger usually has fatal results.
While the men made a detour and went up the hill to free the buffalo and secure the rope, which was needed for another and more pleasant purpose, I climbed over the rocks and went up the ravine to restore the eggs to their rightful owner. I plead guilty of being as superstitious as my brother sportsmen. For three long periods, extending over a whole year, I had tried – and tried hard – to get a shot at the tigress, and had failed; and now within a few minutes of having picked up the eggs my luck had changed.
The eggs, which all this time had remained safely in the hollow of my left hand, were still warm when I replaced them in the little depression in the rock that did duty as a nest, and when I again passed that way half an hour later, they had vanished under the brooding mother whose coloring so exactly matched the mottled rock that it was difficult for me, who knew the exact spot where the nest was situated, to distinguish her from her surroundings.
The buffalo, who after months of care was now so tame it followed like a dog, came scrambling down the hill in the wake of the men, nosed the tigress and lay down on the sand to chew the cud of contentment, while we lashed the tigress to the stout pole the men had cut.
I had tried to get Madho Singh to return to the bungalow for help, but this he would not hear of doing. With no one would he and his companion share the honor of carrying in the man-eater, and if I would lend a hand the task, he said, with frequent halts for rest, would not be too difficult. We were three hefty men – two accustomed from childhood to carrying heavy loads – and all three hardened by a life of exposure; but even so, the task we set ourselves was a herculean one.
The path down which we had come was too narrow and winding for the long pole to which the tigress was lashed, so with frequent halts to regain breath and readjust pads to prevent the pole biting too deep into shoulder muscles, we went straight up the hill through a tangle of raspberry and briar bushes, on the thorns of which we left a portion of our clothing and an amount of skin which made bathing for many days a painful operation.
The sun was still shining on the surrounding hills when three disheveled and very happy men, followed by a buffalo, carried the tigress to the Kala Agar Forest Bungalow, and from that evening to this day no human being has been killed – or wounded – over the hundreds of square miles of mountain and vale over which the Chowgarh tigress, for a period of five years, held sway.
I have added one more cross and date to the map of Eastern Kumaon that hangs on the wall before me – the cross and date the man-eater earned. The cross is two miles west of Kala Agar, and the date under it is 11 April 1930.
The tigress’ claws were broken and bushed out, and one of her canine teeth was broken, and her front teeth were worn down to the bone. These defects made her a man-eater and were the cause of her not being able to kill outright – and by her own efforts – a large proportion of the human beings she had attacked since the day she had been deprived of the assistance of the cub I had, on my first visit, shot by mistake.
Note: Jim Corbett’s Man-Eaters of Kumaon was published by Oxford University Press, Inc. in 1946.