206 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



bamboo where cushions could not be slung, the top of the 

 ladder being lashed to the tree or bush, and the sportsman 

 seating himself on one of the rungs. Many sportsmen 

 praise these highly, as being easier to erect and giving more 

 choice of position ; but, on the other hand, they entail an extra 

 man to accompany the sportsman to his tree, and are more 

 conspicuous. Accidents of course happen equally to both ; 

 men have been taken out of their cushions, and ladders have 

 been upset. The district in which the sportsman has received 

 his training usually decides his choice of gear. The want of 

 elephants, however, in Bombay and Madras obliges the guns 

 to follow up their wounded tigers on foot. The orthodox pro- 

 cedure is to form a picked force of beaters and shikaris into 

 a solid triangle, the apex and flanks being formed by the guns. 

 Every man should provide himself before starting with all the 

 stones he can carry ; the wounded tiger is generally given a con- 

 siderable time to stiffen two hours if they can be spared may 

 well be spent thus. The trail is then followed at a slow pace, 

 every bush being well stoned before it is approached, far more 

 passed ; at every tree the party is halted and a man sent up to 

 look, and if a tracker is necessary, he moves close under the 

 guns of the two sportsmen who form the apex. If the natives 

 can only be persuaded to keep together, with cool guns and 

 fairly open ground like the bamboo jungles of Southern India, 

 there is no excessive danger ; but the writer's experience of the 

 work was that for the first hundred yards the men kept together 

 pretty well, but would go too fast ; then they became care- 

 less, and as the danger really increased began to straggle. Being 

 single-handed, though there was another party working parallel 

 to him at about fifty yards distance, the writer was unable to 

 keep his men in order, and by the time the tiger was found, 

 luckily dead, by the other party, his followers were all over the 

 place. 



The subjoined account by Captain Lamb gives a good 

 idea of what may be expected to take place without trained 

 men : 



