THE BACHELOR OF POWALGARH

THREE miles from our winter home, and in the heart of the
forest, there is an open glade some four hundred yards long
and half as wide, grassed with emerald-green and surrounded
with big trees interlaced with cane creepers. It was in this
glade, which for beauty has no equal, that I first saw the tiger
who was known throughout the United Provinces as 'The
Bachelor of Powalgarh', who from 1920 to 1930 was the most
sought-after big-game trophy in the province.

The sun had just risen one winter's morning when I crested
the high ground overlooking the glade. On the far side, a

96 Man-eaters of Kumaon

score of red jungle fowl were scratching among the dead leaves
bordering a crystal-clear stream, and scattered over the emerald-
green grass, now sparkling with dew, fifty or more chital were
feeding. Sitting on a tree stump and smoking, I had been
looking at this scene for some time when the hind nearest to
me raised her head, turned in my direction and called; and a
moment later the Bachelor stepped into the open, from the thick
bushes below me. For a long minute he stood with head held
high surveying the scene, and then with slow unhurried steps
started to cross the glade. In his rich winter coat, which the
newly risen sun was lighting up, he was a magnificent sight as,
with head turning now to the right and now to the left, he
walked down the wide lane the deer had made for him. At
the stream he lay down and quenched his thirst, then sprang
across and, as he entered the dense tree jungle beyond, called
three times in acknowledgement of the homage the jungle folk
had paid him, for from the time he had entered the glade every
chital had called, every jungle fowl had cackled, and every one
of a troupe of monkeys on the trees had chattered.

The Bachelor was far afield that morning, for his home was
in a ravine six miles away. Living in an area in which the
majority of tigers are bagged with the aid of elephants, he had
chosen his home wisely. The ravine, running into the foot-hills,
was half a mile long, with steep hills on either side rising to a
height of a thousand feet. At the upper end of the ravine there
was a waterfall some twenty feet high, and at the lower end,
where the water had cut through red clay, it narrowed to four
feet. Any sportsman, therefore, who wished to try conclusions
with the Bachelor, while he was at home, would of a necessity
have to do so on foot. It was this secure retreat, and the
Government rules prohibiting night shooting, that had enabled
the Bachelor to retain possession of his much sought-after skin.

In spite of the many and repeated attempts that had been
made to bag him with the aid of buffalo bait, the Bachelor had

The Bachelor of Powalgarh 97

never been fired at, though on two occasions, to my knowledge,
he had only escaped death by the skin of his teeth. On the
first occasion, after a perfect beat,, a guy rope by which the
machan was suspended interfered with the movementof Fred
Anderson's rifle at the_cjjjjcal moment, and ocT the second.
occasion |the Bachelor arrived at the machan before the beat
started and found Huish Edye filling his pipej On both these
occasions he had been viewed at a range of only a few feet, and
while Anderson described him as being as big as a Shetland
pony, Edye said he was as big as a donkey.

The winter following these and other unsuccessful attempts,
I took Wyndham, our Commissioner, who knows more about
tigers than any other man in India, to a fire track skirting the
upper end of the ravine in which the Bachelor lived, to show
him the fresh pug marks of the tiger which I had found on the
fire track that morning. Wyndham was accompanied by two
of his most experienced shikaris, and after the three of them had
carefully measured and examined the pug marks, Wyndham
said that in his opinion the tiger was ten feet between pegs, and
while one shikari said he was 10' 5" over curves, the other said
he was 10' 6" or a little more. All three agreed that they had
never seen the pug marks of a bigger tiger.

In 1930 the Forest Department started extensive fellings in
the area surrounding the Bachelor's home and annoyed at the
disturbance he changed his quarters; this I learnt from two
sportsmen who had taken out a shooting pass with the object
of hunting down the tiger. Shooting passes are only issued for
fifteen days of each month, and throughout that winter, shooting
party after shooting party failed to make contact with the tiger.

Towards the end of the winter an old dak runner, who
passes our gate every morning and evening on his seven-mile
run through the forest to a hill village, came to me one evening
and reported that on his way out that morning he had seen the
biggest pug marks of a tiger that he had seen during the thirty
8

98 Man-eaters of Kumaon

years of his service. The tiger, he said, had come from the
west and after proceeding along the road for two hundred yards
had gone east, taking a path that started from near an almond
tree. This tree was about two miles from our home, and was a
well-known landmark. The path the tiger had taken runs
through very heavy jungle for half a mile before crossipg a wide
watercourse, and then joins a cattle track which skirts the foot
of the hills before entering a deep and well-wooded valley; a
favourite haunt of tigers.

Early next morning, with Robin at my heels, I set out to
prospect, my objective being the point where the cattle track
entered the valley, for at this point the tracks of all the animals
entering or leaving the valley are to be found. From the time
we started Robin appeared to know that we had a special job
in hand and he paid not the least attention to the jungle fowl
we disturbed, the kakar (barking deer) that let us get quite
close to it, and the two sambur that stood and belled at us.
Where the cattle track entered the valley the ground was hard
and stony, and when we reached this spot Robin put down his
head and very carefully smelt the stones, and on receiving a
signal from me to carry on he turned and started down the
track, keeping a yard ahead of me; I could tell from his be-
haviour that he was on the scent of a tiger, and that the scent
was hot. A hundred yards further down, where the track
flattens out and runs along the foot of the hill, the ground is
soft; here I saw the pug marks of a tiger, and a glance at them
satisfied me we were on the heels of the Bachelor and that he
was only a minute or two ahead of us.

Beyond the soft ground the track runs for three hundred
yards over stones, before going steeply down onto an open plain.
If the tiger kept to the track we should probably see him on this
open ground. We had gone another fifty yards when Robin
stopped and, after running his nose up and down a blade of
grass on the left of the track, turned and entered the grass which

The Bachelor of Powalgarh 99

was here about two feet high. On the far side of the grass there
was a patch of clerodendron, about forty yards wide. This plant
grows in dense patches to a height of five feet, and has widely
spread leaves and a big head of flowers not unlike horse-chest-
nut. It is greatly fancied by tiger, sambur and pig because of the
shade it gives. When Robin reached the clerodendron he stopped
and backed towards me, thus telling me that he could not see
into the bushes ahead and wished to be carried. Lifting him up,
I put his hind legs into my left-hand pocket, and when he had
hooked his forefeet over my left arm, he was safe and secure,
and I had both hands free for the rifle. On these occasions
Robin was always in deadly earnest, and no matter what he
saw, or how our quarry behaved before or after fired at, he
never moved and spoilt my shot, or impeded my view. Proceed-
ing very slowly, we had gone half-way through the clerodendron
when I saw the bushes directly in front of us swaying. Waiting
until the tiger had cleared the bushes, I went forward expecting
to see him in the more or less open jungle, but he was nowhere
in sight, and when I put Robin down he turned to the left and
indicated that the tiger had gone into a deep and narrow ravine
nearby. This ravine ran to the foot of an isolated hill on which
there were caves frequented by tigers, and as I was not armed
to deal with a tiger at close quarters, and further, as it was
time for breakfast, Robin and I turned and made for home.

After breakfast I returned alone, armed with a heavy .450
rifle, and as I approached the hill, which in the days of the
long ago had been used by the local inhabitants as a rallying
point against the Gurkha invaders, I heard the boom of a big
buffalo bell, and a man shouting. These sounds were coming
from the top of the hill, which is flat, and about half an acre
in extent, so I climbed up and saw a man on a tree, striking a
dead branch with the head of his axe and shouting, while at the
foot of the tree a number of buffaloes were collected. When
he saw me the man called out, saying I had just arrived in

100 Man-eaters of Kumaon

time to save him and his buffaloes from a shaitan of a tiger,
the size of a camel, that had been threatening them for hours.
From his story I gathered that he had arrived on the hill shortly
after Robin and I had left for home, and that as he started to
cut bamboo leaves for his buffaloes he saw a tiger coming to-
wards him. He shouted to drive the tiger away, as he had done
on many previous occasions with other tigers, but instead of
going away this one had started to growl. He took to his heels,
followed by his buffaloes, and climbed up the nearest tree. The
tiger, paying no heed to his shouts, had then set to pacing round
and round, while the buffaloes kept their heads towards it.
Probably the tiger had heard me coming, for it had left only a
moment before I had arrived. The man was an old friend, who
before his quarrel with the Headman of his village had done a
considerable amount of poaching in these jungles with the
Headman's gun. He now begged me to conduct both himself
and his cattle safely out of the jungle; so telling him to lead on,
I followed behind to see that there were no stragglers. At first
the buffaloes were disinclined to break up their close formation,
but after a little persuasion we got them to start, and we had
gone half-way across the open plain I have alluded to when the
tiger called in the jungle to our right. The man quickened his
pace, and I urged on the buffaloes, for a mile of very thick
jungle lay between us and the wide, open watercourse beyond
which lay my friend's village and safety for his buffaloes.

I have earned the reputation of being keener on photograph-
ing animals than on killing them, and before I left my friend
he begged me to put aside photography for this once, and kill
the tiger, which he said was big enough to eat a buffalo a day,
and ruin him in twenty-five days. I promised to do my best
and turned to retrace my steps to the open plain, to meet with
an experience every detail of which has burnt itself deep into
my memory.

On reaching the plain I sat down to wait for the tiger to

The Bachelor of Powalgarh 101

disclose his whereabouts, or for the jungle folk to tell me where
he was. It was then about 3 p.m., and as the sun was warm
and comforting, I put my head down on my drawn-up knees
and had been dozing a few minutes when I was awakened by the
tiger calling; thereafter he continued to call at short intervals.

Between the plain and the hills there is a belt, some half-
mile wide, of the densest scrub jungle for a hundred miles
round, and I located the tiger as being on the hills on the far
side of the scrub about three-quarters of a mile from me
and from the way he was calling it was evident he was in
search of a mate.

Starting from the upper left-hand corner of the plain, and
close to where I was sitting, an old cart track, used some years
previously for extracting timber, ran in an almost direct line to
where the tiger was calling. This track would take me in the
direction of the calling animal, but on the hills was high grass,
and without Robin to help me there would be little chance of
my seeing him. So instead of my going to look for the tiger,
I decided he should come and look for me. I was too far away
for him to hear me, so I sprinted up the cart track for a few
hundred yards, laid down my rifle, climbed to the top of a high
tree and called three times. I was immediately answered by the
tiger. , After climbing down, I ran back, calling as I went, and
shrived on the plain without having found a suitable place in
which to sit and await the tiger. Something would have to be
done and done in a hurry, for the tiger was rapidly coming
nearer, so, after rejecting a little hollow which I found to be
full of black stinking water, I lay down flat in the open, twenty
yards from where the track entered the scrub. From this point
I had a clear view up the track for fifty yards, to where a bush,
leaning over it, impeded my further view. If the tiger came
down the track, as I expected him to, I decided to fire at him
as soon as he cleared the obstruction.

After opening the rifle to make quite sure it was loaded,

102 Man-eaters of Kumaon

I threw off the safety-catch, and with elbows comfortably resting
on the soft ground waited for the tiger to appear. I had not
called since I came out on the plain, so to give him direction
I now gave a low call, which he immediately answered from
a distance of a hundred yards. If he came on at his usual pace,
I judged he would clear the obstruction in thirty seconds. I
counted this number very slowly, and went on counting up
to eighty, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement
to my right front, where the bushes approached to within ten
yards of me. Turning my eyes in that direction I saw a great
head projecting above the bushes, which here were four feet
high. The tiger was only a foot or two inside the bushes, but
all I could see of him was his head. As I very slowly swung
the point of the rifle round and ran my eyes along the sights I
noticed that his head was not quite square on to me, and as I
was firing up and he was looking down, I aimed an inch below
his right eye, pressed the trigger, and for the next half -hour
nearly died of fright.

Instead of dropping dead as I expected him to, the tiger went
straight up into the air above the bushes for his full length,
falling backwards onto a tree a foot thick which had been blown
down in a storm and was still green. With unbelievable fury
he attacked this tree and tore it to bits, emitting as he did so
roar upon roar, and what was even worse, a dreadful blood-
curdling sound as though he was savaging his worst enemy.
The branches of the tree tossed about as though struck by a
tornado, while the bushes on my side shook and bulged out,
and every moment I expected to have him on top of me, for he
had been looking at me when I fired, and knew where I was.

Too frightened even to recharge the rifle for fear the slight
movement and sound should attract the attention of the tiger, I
lay and sweated for half an hour with my finger on the left trig-
ger. At last the branches of the tree and the bushes ceased
waving about, and the roaring became less frequent, and

The Bachelor of Powalgarh 103

eventually, to my great relief, ceased. For another half-hour
I lay perfectly still, with arms cramped by the weight of the
heavy rifle, and then started to pull myself backwards with my
toes. After progressing for thirty yards in this manner I got
to my feet, and, crouching low, made for the welcome shelter of
the nearest tree. Here I remained for some minutes, and as
all was now silent I turned and made for home.

II

Next morning I returned accompanied by one of my men,
an expert tree-climber. I had noticed the previous evening that
there was a tree growing on the edge of the open ground, and
about forty yards from where the tiger had fallen. We
approached this tree very cautiously, and I stood behind it while
the man climbed to the top. After a long and a careful scrutiny
he looked down and shook his head, and when he rejoined me
on the ground he told me that the bushes over a big area had
been flattened down, but that the tiger was not in sight.

I sent him back to his perch on the tree with instructions
to keep a sharp lookout and warn 'me if he saw any movement
in the bushes, and went forward to have a look at the spot
where the tiger had raged. He had raged to some purpose, for,
in addition to tearing branches and great strips of wood off the
tree, he had torn up several bushes by the roots, and bitten
down others. Blood in profusion was sprinkled everywhere,
and on the ground were two congealed pools, near one of which
was lying a bit of bone two inches square, which I found on
examination to be part of the tiger's skull.

No blood trail led away from this spot and this, combined
with the two pools of blood, was proof that the tiger was still
here when I left and that the precautions I had taken the previ-
ous evening had been very necessary, for when I started on
my ' get-away ' I was only ten yards from the most dangerous
animal in the world a freshly wounded tiger. On circling

104 Man-eaters of Kumaon

round the spot I found a small smear of blood here and there
on leaves that had brushed against his face. Noting that these
indications of the tiger's passage led in a direct line to a giant
semul tree l two hundred yards away, I went back and climbed
the tree my man was on in order to get a bird's-eye view of the
ground I should have to go over, for I had a very uneasy
feeling that I should find him alive: a tiger shot in the head can
live for days and can even recover from the wound. True,
this tiger had a bit of his skull missing, and as I had never
dealt with an animal in his condition before I did not know
whether he was likely to live for a few hours or days, or live
on to die of old age. For this reason I decided to treat him as
an ordinary wounded tiger, and not to take any avoidable risks
when following him up.

From my elevated position on the tree I saw that, a little
to the left of the line to the semul tree, there were two trees,
the nearer one thirty yards from where the blood was, and the
other fifty yards further on. Leaving my man on the tree, I
climbed down, picked up my rifle and a shot-gun and bag of a
hundred cartridges, and very cautiously approached the nearer
tree and climbed up it to a height of thirty feet, pulling the
rifle and gun, which I had tied to one end of a strong cord,
up after me. After fixing the rifle in a fork of the tree where
it would be handy if needed, I started to spray the bushes with
small shot, yard by yard up to the foot of the second tree. I
did this with the object of locating the tiger, assuming he was
alive and in that area, for a wounded tiger, on hearing a shot
fired close to him, or on being struck by a pellet, will either
growl or charge. Receiving no indication of the tiger's presence
I went to the second tree, and sprayed the bushes to within a
few yards of the semul tree, firing the last shot at the tree itself.
After this last shot I thought I heard a low growl, but it was
not repeated and I put it down to my imagination. My bag of
1 Bombax malabaricum, the silk cotton tree.

The Bachelor of Powalgarh 105

cartridges was now empty, so after recovering my man I called
it a day, and went home.

When I returned next morning I found my friend the buffalo
man feeding his buffaloes on the plain. He appeared to be very
much relieved to see me, and the reason for this I learnt later.
The grass was still wet with dew, but we found a dry spot and
there sat down to have a smoke and relate our experiences. My
friend, as I have already told you, had done a lot of poaching,
and having spent all his life in tiger-infested jungles tending his
buffaloes, or shooting, his jungle knowledge was considerable.

After I had left him that day at the wide, open water-course,
he had crossed to the far side and had sat down to listen for
sounds coming from the direction in which I had gone. He
had heard two tigers calling; he had heard my shot followed
by the continuous roaring of a tiger, and very naturally con-
cluded I had wounded one of the tigers and that it had killed
me. On his return next morning to the same spot, he had been
greatly mystified by hearing a hundred shots fired, and this
morning, not being able to contain his curiosity any longer, he
had come to see what had happened. Attracted by the smell of
blood, his buffaloes had shown him where the tiger had fallen,
and he had seen the patches of dry blood and had found the bit
of bone. No animal in his opinion could possibly live for more
than a few hours after having a bit of its skull blown away, and
so sure was he that the tiger was dead that he offered to take
his buffaloes into the jungle and find it for me. I had heard of
this method of recovering tigers with the help of buffaloes but
had never tried it myself, and after my friend had agreed to
accepting compensation for any damage to his cattle I accepted
his offer.

Rounding up the buffaloes, twenty-five in number, and keep-
ing to the line I had sprinkled with shot the previous day, we
made for the semul tree, followed by the buffaloes. Our pro-
gress was slow, for not only had we to move the chin-high

106 Man-eaters of Kumaon

bushes with our hands to see where to put our feet, but we also
had frequently to check a very natural tendency on the part of
the buffaloes to stray. As we approached the semul tree, where
the bushes were lighter, I saw a little hollow filled with dead
leaves that had been pressed flat and on which were several
patches of blood, some dry, others in process of congealing, and
one quite fresh; and when I put my hand to the ground I found
it was warm. Incredible as it may appear, the tiger had lain
in this hollow the previous day while I had expended a hundred
cartridges, and had only moved off when he saw us and the
buffaloes approaching. The buffaloes had now found the blood
and were pawing up the ground and snorting, and as the pros-
pect of being caught between a charging tiger and angry buffa-
loes did not appeal to me, I took hold of my friend's arm,
turned him round and made for the open plain, followed by the
buffaloes. When we were back on safe ground I told the man
to go home, and said I would return next day and deal with
the tiger alone.

The path through the jungles that I had taken each day
when coming from and going home ran for some distance over
soft ground, and on this soft ground, on this fourth day, I saw
the pug marks of a big male tiger. By following these pug
marks I found the tiger had entered the dense brushwood a
hundred yards to the right of the semul tree. Here was an
unexpected complication, for if I now saw a tiger in this jungle
I should not know unless I got a very close look at it whether
it was the wounded or the unwounded one. However, this
contingency would have to be dealt with when met, and in the
meantime worrying would not help, so I entered the bushes and
made for the hollow at the foot of the semul tree.

There was no blood trail to follow so I zigzagged through
the bushes, into which it was impossible to see further than a
few inches, for an hour or more, until I came to a ten-foot-wide
dry watercourse. Before stepping down into this watercourse

The Bachelor of Powalgarh 107

I looked up it, and saw the left hind leg and tail of a tiger.
The tiger was standing perfectly still with its body and head
hidden by a tree, and only this one leg visible. I raised the
rifle to my shoulder, and then lowered it. To have broken the
leg would have been easy, for the tiger was only ten yards away,
and it would have been the right thing to do if its owner was
the wounded animal; but there were two tigers in this area, and
to have broken the leg of the wrong one would have doubled
my difficulties, which were already considerable. Presently the
leg was withdrawn and I heard the tiger moving away, and going
to the spot where he had been standing I found a few drops of
blood too late now to regret not having broken that leg.

A quarter of a mile further on there was a little stream, and
it was possible that the tiger, now recovering from his wound,
was making for this stream. With the object of intercepting
him or failing that, waiting for him at the water, I took a game
path which I knew went to the stream and had proceeded along
it for some distance when a sambur belled to my left, and went
dashing off through the jungle. It was evident now that I was
abreast of the tiger, and I had only taken a few more steps when
I heard the loud crack of a dry stick breaking as though some
heavy animal had fallen on it; the sound had come from a
distance of fifty yards and from the exact spot where the sambur
had belled. The sambur had in unmistakable tones warned
the jungle folk of the presence of a tiger, and the stick therefore
could only have been broken by the same animal; so getting
down on my hands and knees I started to crawl in the direction
from which the sound had come.

The bushes here were from six to eight feet high, with
dense foliage on the upper branches and very few leaves on the
stems, so that I could see through them for a distance of ten
to fifteen feet. I had covered thirty yards, hoping fervently
that if the tiger charged he would come from in front (for in
no other direction could I have fired), when I caught sight of

108 Man-eaters of Kumaon

something red on which the sun, drifting through the upper
leaves, was shining; it might only be a bunch of dead leaves;
on the other hand, it might be the tiger. I could get a better
view of this object from two yards to the right so, lowering my
head until my chin touched the ground, I crawled this distance
with belly to ground, and on raising my head saw the tiger
in front of me. He was crouching down looking at me, with
the sun shining on his left shoulder, and on receiving my two
bullets he rolled over on his side without making a sound.

As I stood over him and ran my eyes over his magnificent
proportions it was not necessary to examine the pads of his feet
to know that before me lay the Bachelor of Powalgarh.

The entry of the bullet fired four days previously was hidden
by a wrinkle of skin, and at the back of his head was a big
hole which, surprisingly, was perfectly clean and healthy.

The report of my rifle was, I knew, being listened for, so I
hurried home to relieve anxiety, and while I related the last
chapter of the hunt and drank a pot of tea my men
were collecting.

Accompanied by my sister and Robin and a carrying party
of twenty men, I returned to where the tiger was lying, and
before he was roped to a pole my sister and I measured him
from nose to tip of tail, and from tip of tail to nose. At home
we again measured him to make quite sure we had made no
mistake the first time. These measurements are valueless, for
there were no independent witnesses present to certify them;
they are however interesting as showing the accuracy with which
experienced woodsmen can judge the length of a tiger from his
pug marks. Wyndham, you will remember, said the tiger was
ten feet between pegs, which would give roughly 10' 6" over
curves; and while one shikari said he was 10' 5" over curves,
the other said he was 10' 6" or a little more. Shot seven years
after these estimates were made, my sister and I measured the
tiger as being 10' 7" over curves.

The Mohan Man-eater 109

I have told the story at some length, as I feel sure that those
who hunted the tiger between 1920 and 1930 will be interested
to know how the Bachelor of Powalgarh met his end.