Mar 25, 2014 06:39 AM
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There are many fascinating aspects of reading and actually getting engrossed in Jim Corbett’s memoirs of his pursuit of the dreaded big cats of the Himalayan foothills. But none more so, than getting transferred to a place and time where real people lived in terror of an animal for days and sometimes months, so much so their whole lives revolved around how to survive the night without, one of them becoming it’s next meal. A little less than a century after, our only interfacing with such terrorizing wildlife is limited to television documentaries conceptualized and created by masterful photographers with immense knowledge of their subject animals’ behaviors and an unwavering commitment towards conservation of such precious wild life.
Coming back to the Corbett stories which were staged in the hills of Kumaon, Garhwal and Tehri, the residents of that era, from a very young age were witness to an environment where it was not the humans who held sway, it was the resident big cat, who would reign over the territory which would some times stretch into hundreds of square miles. Thankfully not all tigers and leopards were man eaters, actually only a miniscule percentage were, the reasons of which have been carefully examined and illustrated by the author himself in detail . The prime reason, in most such cases, was an injury or old age or both of the animal which disabled it to successfully go after it’s natural prey and target an easy meal.The other reasons being, with the abundance of human dead bodies in the gorges and ravines, the animal sometimes develops a taste by scavenging on them or the cubs of a man eater inherit this property from their mother and would know of no other prey all their lives.
The stories are replete with expert observations from Jim Corbett about tiger behavior in the wild.
Listed below are few such pearls of wisdom. A leopard never kills in the day. A tiger doesn't know about humans’ weak sense of smell and hence treats us as any other prey and moves around trying to mask its scent while on a hunt. A man eater is not always weak or mangy, in fact it is the opposite. Human flesh works wonders to the tigers’ health and coat. Tigers are prone to scavenging, sometimes on carrion, as well. A leopard is one of the most secretive and hence dangerous animals, mainly because of it’s ability to advance towards it’s kill without making the slightest of commotions. This is achieved by the superlative powers of concentration and patience on its part where it can stalk its prey for hours together without the unfortunate soul, having any idea whatsoever of the impending danger.
But, that’s not all. Having born and brought up in the hills of Nainital, Corbett was a keen follower of nature from a very young age. His knowledge about the overall flora and fauna of the region is exemplary. This know-how enables him to successfully beat a man eater at its own game in its territory. He knows the sounds of the jungle, the best tree to perch on for a sit on, the tell tale signs of a scene of a kill and how to spend nights together without being noticed by his targets. A very extreme example being, he was able to entice a man eater tigress by faking a mating call himself and the unsuspecting tigress who was known to cow down dozens of wood cutters at one go and had no fear of humans, fell hopelessly for this last gasp attempt by Corbett.
Corbett also has enormous empathy for the hill folks, who still go about their daily business albeit with a lot of alertness, despite the existent fatal threat. He has first hand witnessed the reactions of relatives when they see a victim stripped down to clothes and bones. Everywhere he has been summoned to relieve the local populace from the clutches of terror of a resident man eater, he has sat down with the eye witnesses as part of investigation and sometimes chosen some of them to be a part of his entourage for the particular hunt. The sense of courage of the people who are hopeless victims in man eater territory, that comes out in these accounts is heart warming and Corbett makes an ample note of it .
Above all, it’s the tiger which captivates him the most. In spite of years and decades of hunting, sometimes as a sport .sometimes as a call of duty, Corbett clearly hasn't had enough. Although he is witness to so many human lives being consumed by man eaters, he still has the prudence of not generalizing the tiger as a blood thirsty demon. Rather he remembers a chance encounter he had in his childhood where he, unarmed and vulnerable to say the least, came face to face with one such individual and all he could read on the tiger’s face was “What has brought you here, this is not your place." That enduring vision stays with him forever as he concludes saying, the best way to shoot tigers is not with an armed rifle but with a camera and stay enamored by the stills all your life.
