284 DRIVING WITH BEATERS. 



was safe ahead, and came on with undiminished confidence. Beaters cannot 

 be expected to drive out a piece of jungle boldly where there is a possibility 

 of a wounded tiger being stumbled upon. I have been fortunate enough 

 never to have had a single accident in tiger-shooting, though I am sure men 

 would have been injured on some occasions had our arrangements not been 

 good. 



I generally managed to keep up communication with the men leading 

 the beat by signals, and often found it of great advantage. I had a man 

 posted at some distance from me in a tree, or open space, who could see the 

 advancing beaters and myself. By a wave of a handkerchief, red or white, 

 by the head of the beaters, which was telegraphed to me by the sentinel, I 

 knew if the tiger had been found, had broken back, or was coining along ; 

 and when I have sometimes had to stop a beat I have been able to do so 

 by a signal without losing time. It is very inconvenient to be unable to 

 communicate with beaters without shouting, or sending some one down one's 

 tree with a message. 



All this training was excellent practice, moreover, for the Morlay people 

 for the more important work of elephant-catching, in which signals with 

 fires or flags upon hill- tops at a distance of some miles were sometimes 

 used. Of course it is but few sportsmen who have opportunities for hunt- 

 ing tigers in this systematic way, but perhaps some of the above hints may 

 be found applicable on most occasions. 



There is perhaps no method of shooting tigers so seldom successful as 

 watching for their return to feed on animals they have killed. Almost 

 every sportsman has tried it again and again, and solemnly vowed upon 

 each occasion that it should be his last, generally only to be found at his 

 post on the next tempting opportunity. For my own part I confess to a 

 o-reat liking for the silent and solitary watch ; and as this description of 

 shooting requires the exercise of the sportsman's utmost vigilance and 

 patience, I have never felt any qualms as to its legitimacy. In a shady 

 green median* in some fine tree, watching at the cool of evening — that 

 always bewitching hour in the Indian day, — when jungle-sounds alone break 

 the stillness, and birds and animals, seldom seen at other times, steal forth, 

 and can be watched at leisure — whilst intense excitement is kept alive by 

 the possibility of the tiger's appearance at any moment, — I have often 

 wondered how any one can consider being perched upon a tree under a 

 blazing sun whilst a tiger is being driven towards him sport, and use 

 the term poaching in reference to this. How many men have killed their 

 forty or fifty tigers who have never succeeded in bagging one by watching, — 



* A screened platform. 



