200 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



nothing is more demoralising to the elephants, especially at the 

 beginning of a trip, and every precaution should be taken to 

 save your elephants from getting mauled ; for, if injured, many 

 of them never recover confidence, and become absolutely worth- 

 less for tiger shooting afterwards. Forsyth mentions an instance 

 of an elephant dying of wounds received from a tiger. It is all 

 very fine for the sportsman to take a charge, standing in a how- 

 dah perched on the back of a large tusker ; but it is a very dif- 

 ferent thing for the opium-sodden nerves of an unarmed mahout 

 riding a small timid pad elephant. Close order is the only safe 

 formation for pad elephants, and should invariably be adopted. 

 If the tiger is marked into a particular bush, the line may 

 be halted, and the howdah elephants alone be taken up to 

 engage him ; but until the mahouts have thorough confidence 

 in the guns a fight is better avoided. 



It is a good plan to reward all the mahouts engaged after 

 a successful hunt, and the douceur should be bestowed on the 

 spot, or at latest the same evening on return to camp ; any 

 mahout misconducting himself of course forfeits the reward. 

 A wounded tiger rarely goes far before lying up, and there 

 is really less chance of a close line missing him than an 

 extended one, as with the latter he may crouch and be passed 

 over. 



Ringing tigers with a large number of elephants, as practised 

 in the Nepal Terai, is merely a variation of the ordinary method, 

 and is thus described by Sir E. Durand : 



The usual method is to send men ahead the day before, to tie 

 up buffaloes in all the likely places round the place selected for camp, 

 then beat up the jungle with a long line of three or four hundred 

 elephants. If a kill is found, the flanks of the line gradually get 

 forward and wheel inwards, and on a tiger being seen the flanks 

 sweep round as rapidly as possible and form a ring round the 

 patch of jungle the tiger is supposed to be in. If the tiger breaks 

 out, fast elephants are sent in pursuit at once to head him and try 

 to detain him till a fresh ring can be formed. On one occasion, 

 when a kill had been found, both flanks of the line of elephants 

 had gradually been creeping forward till they were almost at right 



