Miscellaneous notes. le? 



with a knob at one end shaped something like a boomerang, I have seen them 

 bring home fifteen to twenty hares, not one of which they could have secured 

 without their dogs. 



Once I was after a man-eating tigress ; two Benders and one of their dops 

 were with me. I wounded the tigress which took refuge in a deep rocky 

 glen, thickly covered in with a species of climbing, thorny mimosa. Entrance 

 through this net work of hooked thorns was impossible to a man, but the 

 dog, a red pariah was able to crawl in, found the tigress, and bayed her inces- 

 santly for half-an-hour. When the dog got too close, the tigress would 

 execute a charge with the usual music, but could not get home, as her back 

 was injured. However, the dog stuck to his work, and I was able to mark 

 the spot where the tigress lay by the moving of the bushes, and meeting each 

 charge with a couple of barrels, at hazard, a lucky shot at last finished the 

 business, and I bagged the tigress which I certainly should have lost but for 

 the do^. 



These dogs are trained by native shikaris to other kinds of sport. Once 

 when duck shooting in Mysore country, I was seated on a hillock watching a 

 flight of ducks on a sheet of water, when I saw a performance that surprised 

 me. In a hole dug in the ground about twenty yards from the brink of 

 the water was seated a shikari, well concealed from the birds. He had with 

 him hia old gun and a red pariah dog; His object was to attract the birds 

 to within shooting distance. To accomplish this, every now and then, at 

 fairly regulated intervals, he threw a lump of a thick kind of chupattie they 

 eat in these parts, down to the margin of the water. The red dog would 

 then jump out of the hole, run to the chiipattie, eat it, and return at once to 

 his master. This was repeated tUl the attention of the ducks was attracted 

 and it was continued, the flock swam gently on in the direction of the dog 

 in that curious manner in which many birds will follow, and mob their 

 natural enemy. At length coming well within range, bang went the old 

 musket, and the shikari emerged from his pit to gather in the slain. 



The interesting point here, apart from the perforn ance of the dog, is the 

 well-known habit of wild birds following their natural foes. In this instance 

 the ducks evidently mistook the red dog for their enemy the fox or jackal. 

 In English decoys this habit has been taken advantage of. The Decoy man 

 trains a small red dog to show himself at different points to the ducks on the 

 water. These invariably follow the dog slowly till he leads them into the 

 mouth of the decoy net, and onwards, till the birds enter the fatal chamber 

 from which there is no escape. Here we have an Indian shikari following a 

 practice that has been for ages in use in England. Did we learn this trick 

 from the East ? The Indian fowlers could hardly have got it from us. 



W. OSBORN, Lieut.-Gen., I.S.C. 



JdGALSUK, KuLLU — PONJAB, 



June 50th, 1901. 



