“KILLING A MAN-EATER” 159 
The largest tigers are found amongst the habit- 
ual cattle killers. When a tiger becomes old and 
fat he usually settles down in some locality where 
beef and water are plentiful, and here he lives on 
amicable terms with the villages, killing a cow or 
bullock about once in four or five days. 
A full grown, large tiger would have no chance 
in a fair fight with a bull-bison; the latter’s brawny 
throat, with its hide one and a half inches thick, 
would afford him a difficult hold, even could he 
attain it, and no wrench could dislocate the bison’s 
powerful neck, while the tiger would be crushed out 
of all recognition if once caught between the ground 
and the bison’s massive forehead or forelegs. 
I have never witnessed a tiger actually seize its 
prey, but it has been described to me by natives 
who have seen them many times while tending cat- 
tle. The general method is for the tiger to slink 
up under cover of bushes or long grass ahead of 
the cattle and to make a rush at the first cow or 
bullock that comes within five or six yards. The 
tiger does not “spring” upon his prey in the man- 
ner usually represented, but clutching the bullock’s 
forequarters with his paws, one being generally 
over the shoulder, he seizes the throat in his jaws 
from underneath and turns it upwards and over, 
sometimes, springing to the far side in doing so 
to throw the bullock over and give the wrench which 
dislocates its neck. 
The popular belief that a tiger can kill his prey 
