HOW “HUNTING ELEPHANTS” ARE TRAINED.
Probably all readers are familiar with the fact that, in their native countries, elephants are not only used to aid in the capture of their own species, but also in the pursuit of various wild beasts of the jungle. In tiger hunting especially is this the case, and this sport furnishes one of the chief and most exciting amusements of the English troops in India. In this sport the elephant is rather an unwilling participant. In his wild state there is no occasion for any conflict between himself and other dwellers of the forest. Living entirely on vegetable food, and so under no necessity of preying upon other animals; too peaceful to molest others, and too powerful to be molested by them, in a state of nature each seems anxious to avoid rather than to provoke any encounter. Should a tiger and an elephant meet in the jungle each would probably be only anxious to get out of the other’s way as quickly as possible.
The principal difficulty in training elephants for hunting is to overcome the excessive antipathy, and even dread, they entertain toward tigers. To accomplish this a tiger’s skin is stuffed and placed partially concealed among the undergrowth skirting some road. Along the road the elephant is then conducted; always observant, he quickly detects the unwelcome neighbor and considerable urging is required to induce him to pass it. After passing it several times he becomes more indifferent to its presence and may be gradually induced to approach it. Then he is made to turn it over and get thoroughly familiar with it; this accustoms him to the tiger in a state of quietude. Then the stuffed figure is thrown toward him and he is taught to receive it upon his tusks. The next lesson may be to drive his tusks into the body. The last operation is to teach the elephant to allow the stuffed tiger to be placed upon his back; this is the most difficult part of all.
When the elephant is properly trained and ready for service the hunter takes his place in the howdah—a sort of box-seat fastened on the animal’s back—while the mahout sits astride the neck. Behind the hunter, in the howdah, rides the shikaree, or native gun carrier, whose duty it is to “play second fiddle” in the expedition. A number of natives are also usually employed as “beaters” to start the game. These men go on foot, seeking safety, in case of danger, by climbing trees or by being lifted up by the elephant upon his back. The elephants are now formed in line and the jungle beaten, in all parts if a small one, or if very extensive in those portions only which appear most likely to contain game. As soon as a tiger is started the line advances upon him, each hunter watching for an opportunity to fire as his elephant charges. Notwithstanding the most careful training instinct often proves an overmatch for the elephant’s education and, he takes to flight in spite of all the driver’s efforts to prevent him. One hunter relates an incident of his elephant being seized with a panic and dumping hunter, driver and all upon his back, into the very midst of a number of tigers which the party were in pursuit of.
In taking a dead tiger home the elephant lies on his side until the body is fastened to him, and then rises with it.
The liability to be seized with a panic at trifling circumstances is probably due in a measure to the elephant’s limited range of vision, the short neck preventing his looking much above the level of his head. An anecdote illustrative of this is told by Sir J. E. Tennent: “In 1841 an officer was chased by an elephant that he had slightly wounded. Seizing him near the dry bed of a river, the animal had his fore foot already raised to crush him; but its forehead being touched at the same instant by the tendrils of a climbing plant which had suspended itself from the branches above, it suddenly turned and fled, leaving him bodily hurt, but with no limbs broken.”
Elephants seldom use their tusks as weapons unless they have been trained to do so; their vertical position, and the structure of the neck preventing their being effective unless the object of attack being directly below them. The stories told of the execution of criminals by elephants when Ceylon was under the rule of native kings, generally describe the elephant as killing the victim by running its tusks through his body. An eye-witness of one of these executions, however, says the animal never used his tusks at all, but placed his foot upon the prostrate man and tore off his limbs in succession by a sudden movement of the trunk. Hunters have frequently described their escape from elephants when the latter might easily have killed them by a thrust of their tusks, but apparently did not even know how to use them for that purpose.
The elephant’s dependence is really upon his trunk and his ponderous feet. It is related that in an encounter between two elephants, one a tusker and the other without tusks, the latter proved the victor, breaking off one of the former’s tusks with his trunk.