The number of tiger & leopard skins that have gone waste due to poor care would be scary.

Firstly, I suspect that 30% or more or the cats were wounded and lost. Considering that India, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Thailand & Indo-China have thick jungle with hot humid conditions, the carcass starts rotting in about 4 to 8 hours if the guts are not removed. Even salted skins rot because of high humidity & the agroscopic (attracting water) property of salt. Also take into account that the most commonly used salt was crystallised sea salt & the chances of rain was always on the cards, wet skins would have been the rule rather than the exception. I have lost small game & deer skin due to wet weather even though the skins were under a roof.

My dad's 4 cats in the early to mid 50's had 4 different results. The first tiger was skinned & tanned locally & was with my grandfather for years. It was last seen folded & put away in a trunk. No one has seen or heard of it since the late 60's. The second tiger was shot just on dark & charged into thick bamboo. It was recovered the next day and ruined. Only the teeth, claws & whiskers were recovered. One leopard was well tanned & processed by Van Ingins of Mysore. This trophy still hangs on the wall of my cousin's house in India. It was presented to Grand-dad & inherited by a cousin! The second leopard was not salted & dried properly & all the hair slipped out when it was processed by Van Ingins.

In those days & also in the case of the story in this thread, transportation was not very easily available. People often had to walk miles to the nearest road & then take an ox cart to the bus stop!

Even today, the thrill of seeing a tiger in the wild is as much to do with the remote location as it is the animal's mystique!