The maneater that stood it's ground

[prashantsingh]

SHIKAR BY CHANCE


Friday 23 rd January 2015

The final day.

Zaheer said a special prayer in his mosque.
Shooters assured us (on whattsapp) that we would get the maneater the same day.
While leaving.
For the first time . My wife came up to me and told us (Safarigent and I) that we would get the maneater today.

Fingers crossed we reached the spot at 3 30 pm.
Shahid who had tirelessly spent all these days on the machaan opted out.
Singh was down with a bad cough.
Zaheer was running a low grade fever.
This left Safarigent and I .
Today the two of us had to slog it out on the machaan.

What happened next was just unbelievable.
We had no idea that in the next few hours we would be back in the Rest House with the maneater in our Jeep.

[Baljit]

Wow!! very touching story Prashant. I can see the whole picture front of my eyes.

Waiting for rest of the story.........


Baljit

[xl_target]

Prashant,
Before you go any further, can you give us a rundown of the firearms (and calibers) that all of you carried?
Also, do you have the links to your previous man-eater hunts?

[prashantsingh]

My first maneater hunt was in Devprayag. Then it was the Chandmari maneater. After that I spent some time trying to hunt the maneating tigress of Moradabad. Then the maneating leopard of Pithoragarh and now the Dehradun maneater.
Out of the 5 hunts I attended , we could only get two. But what is more important is that in both cases we got the right animal.
Singh had his. 315 rifle.
I had my. .3006 rifle modified by Baljit.
Safarigent had his. 375 mag rifle.
Zaheer carried his 12 bore dbbl gun.
Shahid carried his 12 bore gun
Corbett 99 initially carried my gun and then took Singh s 12 bore.

[prashantsingh]

By 3 45 pm the baits arrived.
By 4 15 pm Singh and pandit ji reached the spot.
There was a slight delay in getting on to the machaan. But when things have to happen they just happen.
I climbed in first with the shotgun. Safarigent followed with his. 375 mag.
This was Safarigent s second maneater hunt. We had decided that we would wait for the leopard to kill the bait.
The bait was well secured and could not be possibly carried away. Only when the maneater had relaxed a little would we pull up our weapons and fire.

[prashantsingh]

We were on the machaan for hardly 5 minutes when we heard some locals shout. ...... Baagh Baugh.
I am sure Safarigent could not have believed his luck.
Zaheer jumped into the Jeep closely followed by Singh and Shahid. They drove up hill from the main road towards the direction from where the locals had spotted the leopard.
We sat still and waited. It was not yet dark and everything was clearly visible .

[prashantsingh]

The leopard moved down the ridge and came in from behind.
We first saw it when it was crawling through the Lantana bush and coming in from our right.
It sat for a little while and observed the bait . Barely 20 yards from us. This was the time when we should have taken our shot.
But both Safarigent and I were so spell bound by its beauty that we just couldn't pull up our weapons.
It then moved towards the bait dancing with excitement.
It was the most amazing of sights which I shall never forget in my life.
Now we had the leopard on the left of the machaan.
It was a female and around the same size as we had assessed.
Zaheer, Singh and Shahid could see the whole display clearly from the ridge and had no idea why we were not taking the shot.
"Shoot Dr. Shoot Arjun. What the fu## are you guys doing. " said Singh.
The leopard was around 25 yards from the machaan towards the left.
I finally realised I was not here to make a documentary for animal planet.
I was here to shoot a maneater.
The same animal that was dancing around its bait infront of us.
For some reason the beast was reluctant to take the first bite.
The reason we discovered after we shot it.
I shouldered the shot gun slowly and asked Safarigent to shoot.
Four shots were fired. But the locals heard only 3.

[prashantsingh]

Our first two shots went simultaneously.
The maneater was dead in the first shot. But since you can not keep the skin and the carcass has to be burnt anyways . We both took a second shot.
All shots were hits but I must say that Safarigent s .375 mag must have killed the maneater instantly.
His shot placement couldn't be better. Through the right shoulder pearcing the heart and lung.
The animal would not have known what hit it.
The maneater lay dead on a small stone wall 6 inches high dividing one plot from the other. Man had invaded the leopard's habitat , distroyed his wilderness and would soon colonize it.
The shots were heard far and wide and people started trickling in from all directions. In all the excitement they forgot to bring us down. Finally the ladder was brought and when we got down we were received with open arms. A heros welcome.
All the hard work. All those sleepless nights. All the cold dark nights in the jeep and on the machaan was a distant past.
We had finally been rewarded. Thank God for it.

[timmy]

Wow!

All I can say is that I was on pins and needles!

You must have had some very strenuous cardio-vascular activity!

[ckkalyan]

Here are the links to the previous maneater saga's on IFG:

Devprayag / Chandmari http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14845

Pithorgarh http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=22475

Moradabad http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=21518

[prashantsingh]

There are two tragedies in the life of a hunter.
One. .... Not getting the trophy he is after.
and
Second . (the more serious one). Getting it.

It's the same feeling you get after shooting an animal as majestic and beautiful as a leopard.

[Sakobav]

prashant
Very poignant narration and glad you took the animal out and sad reason that without proper wild life base leopard had to resort to humans tragic loss of human life.Its all about survival for humans and animals..thanks to your posse Zaheer, shahid, 99 and safarigent..Good luck

[xl_target]

Kudos to all of you.

...so why didn't if pounce on the bait immediately?


CK,
Thanks for posting those links. It was great going through them all again.

[zaheer.bakshi]

SOME PHOTOS OF THE BEAST AFTER

[ckkalyan]

Edge of the seat narration prashantsingh I can actually smell the rank odor of cat from your Machan!

Thank you and the team of intrepid Shikaris:

Safarigent, zaheer.bakshi, Corbett99, Singh and Shahid

When you feel appropriate in the sequence of your flow of narration, I would love to hear about the shot placement.

In your opinion prashantsingh do you think this cat had pain / difficulty in chewing and hence turned to easily available, softer human prey?