162 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
shooting, for which there was not even the excuse 
of inexperience. Each such failure should bring 
with it, and surely does to the ardent lover of 
Nature, a wider knowledge and a keener zest in 
applying it; while as the sportsman grows older the 
desire to kill diminishes, and the love of the hunt is 
increased ; he devotes his attention to the most 
experienced of the«jungle animals, not so much 
because the trophy he may wrest from them may 
be superior, but rather because the greater skill 
and care is needed in its attainment. And even 
when at last you stand over some defeated king of 
the forest, and recall how he has survived through 
long years of danger to reach the magnificent 
proportions of his prime, a feeling of remorse is 
born that you, who are yourself imbued with the 
spirit of the forest, with a love of its silence 
and of its freedom, should have been guilty of 
depriving another of what you have learnt to 
value. 
One march to the west of the Bhira railway- 
station lies the forest-house of Kishanpur, and here 
were, when we arrived, the tracks of a tiger and 
tigress, evidently young beasts, and probably not 
long separated from their mother; with the appetite 
of youth they had killed a buffalo on the side of the 
road, and carelessly dragged it to a forest of sap- 
lings. There was no suitable tree to tie the 
“machdn,” but eventually it was supported between 
three slender poles about 10 feet from the ground, 
where it rocked with each movement and swayed 
with each passing breeze. The tigers made no 
attempt to conceal their approach; they could be 
