n SOME PRE-WAR TIGER SHOOTS 11 



her a severe wound high up in the shoulder, 

 which destroyed some of the vertebrae and left 

 a hole as big as a man's fist. We tracked that 

 beast all that day and found we were wrong ; we 

 tracked her on the following day, found she was 

 moving on ; and tracked her on the third day 

 into an awkward ravine, out of which she luckily 

 went of her own accord. B. then killed her, 

 trotting, with a beautiful long shot. 



This was my tigress theoretically, because I 

 had fired first and we had never given her up. 

 B. refused to take her ; she was certainly his 

 in reality. The original wound, though severe, 

 was not a mortal one. 



The only fair rule is that the tiger shall belong to 

 whosoever inflicts the first injury that would kill. 

 Even this rule does not do away with the luck 

 of the draw for place. In this shoot and in the 

 one before I had considerably more than my 

 share of shooting simply through this luck. 

 The only way to obviate this would be to draw 

 for the trophies, a proceeding unsatisfactory to 

 every one. 



The tiger defeated us altogether, for he went 

 straight for the beaters at once ; and we would 

 not risk a repetition of this. He was a hot- 

 tempered beast whom we called " Shaitan," and 

 had killed a bear some feet up a tree one day. 

 He was shot next year after nearly pulling 

 one of the 4th Hussars out of a tree. It was 

 apparently a habit of his. 



After one beat a big python was reported in a 

 rocky pool. We found him there, 18 feet long, 

 more python than pool. B. was a very powerful 



