260 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



native shikaris in existence ; I write " competent " in the 

 sense merely to express their power to kill game. The vast 

 majority of these men are poachers pure and simple, as 

 were their fathers and fathers' fathers before them. For- 

 merly, however, owing to their antiquated low-power 

 weapons, the damage they were capable of doing was of a 

 negligible quantity : nowadays it is far otherwise, and 

 the methods to be put in force to deal with them form one 

 of the most difficult problems those responsible for the 

 upkeep of the game in the forests, and country generally, 

 have to solve. 



The plea ever placed in the forefront by such men is that 

 the guns are required to protect the villagers' crops, and this 

 plausible excuse has been accepted in the past by Local 

 Government after Local Government ; and we can quite 

 see the difficulties that have confronted the latter, and still 

 do so, in a settlement of the question. It cannot, however, 

 be said to have been ever satisfactorily or fairly faced, and 

 this inaction on the part of the central authority has check- 

 mated the efforts of many a Collector and Forest Officer in 

 his attempts to keep down the number of (poaching) guns 

 in a district. A sympathetic Government was always 

 too eager to listen to the tales of destruction of crops, and 

 the District Officer, without local knowledge, preferred to 

 err on the side of liberality, and so readily granted licences 

 to applicants. 



We all know the way these licensed gun-holders go to work. 

 A machan (platform) is built on a known deer-run on the 

 edge of the forest and just without its boundary, if not 

 inside, with the connivance of the Forest Guard. The 

 shikari occupies his post in the late afternoon he is no 

 respecter of a close season or of sex or age and by sunrise 

 next day several bucks and hinds may be lying round the 

 machan ; the skins, horns, should there be any of the 

 latter, and the flesh are taken off to the bazaar, where a 

 ready sale is found for them throughout the country. The 

 meat is sold locally, the skins and horns being bought by 

 middlemen for export. It was a common thing to see on the 

 platform at wayside stations near forest areas piles of 

 skins and horns booked, and openly booked, in defiance of 

 all rules and regulations, to some large centre. 



I would not be understood to say that it is the native 

 shikari alone who acts in this way. It is an open secret 



