A very skilful tracker is necessary if one is to have much hope of success, and one should not fire, even after the game is in sight, unless he can get a brain shot or can be certain of breaking the spinal column; otherwise, he endangers his own life by shooting, if the tamarau is at moderately close quarters.
I believe that no other ruminant is harder to kill outright. Certainly there is no other approximating the tamarau in size which is so tough. I refrain from chronicling my own experiences, as I am certain that my statements would not be believed, and prefer to leave hunters to find out for themselves how much shooting it takes to put one of these extraordinary beasts out of commission.
There is one place in Mindoro called Canturai, where tamarau may be taken with comparative ease. It was described to me, in Spanish days, as an extensive open area with a conical hill near its centre, and I was told that by burning the grass and sleeping on the hill one could readily get early morning shots at tamarau which came out to lick up the ashes.
But various other stories had also been told me, and one and all had proved false. I had dug pitfalls for the wary beasts in vain. I had perched in trees, devoured by mosquitoes, and with hard branches cutting into my flesh, waiting for some pugnacious bull to come out and fight a tame carabao fastened at a convenient distance from my hiding place, all to no purpose. Under such conditions a tamarau once came and bellowed around in the bushes, but did not show himself. I had heard tales of men who rode tamarau down on horseback and lanced them, and these yarns I knew to be false. So I never took the trouble to look up the Canturai story, worse luck, for it proved to be true.
American soldiers occupied Mindoro for years before one of them succeeded in killing a tamarau. Finally a party of officers went to Canturai and the first morning they shot seven! Various other persons who have since gone there have had extraordinary luck, although several have narrowly escaped being killed, owing to their folly in following wounded animals into the cógon grass.
A tamarau pursued under such circumstances will almost invariably back off at right angles to its own trail, wait for its pursuers to come up, and charge them, giving them no time to fire.
Young calves are as wild as their parents, and I am credibly informed will often endeavour to attack female carabaos if an attempt is made to get them to regard these animals in the light of foster mothers.
It is a curious fact that calves, and in fact young animals up to a year or more of age, are of a light reddish colour closely resembling that of some Jersey cattle. Their coats turn dark later on. Their horns, too, are at first circular in cross-section. Later they become triangular.
When pursued, tamarau cows have a curious fashion of passing their heads under their calves, raising them with the horns pressed down in such a way as to hold them against their necks, with forelegs hanging on one side and hindlegs on the other, and running with them. All in all, they are very interesting beasts, and we still have much to learn about them. The man who attempts to hunt them with anything but a heavy and thoroughly reliable rifle is a fool.
Crocodiles of the largest size frequent many of the streams and most of the lakes in the Philippines. They are also to be seen occasionally on sandbars rising out of the sea. Doubtless they will some day be shot for their hides, but as yet they are left undisturbed, unless they display special proclivities for eating human beings, valuable horses or fat cattle. The Filipinos claim that with crocodiles the liking for human flesh is an acquired taste, and that it is only in comparatively rare instances that they become man-eaters, as do tigers. I believe that this is true. Certainly, I have seen a clear pool full of happy Tagbanua children with a big crocodile lying in plain sight at the bottom of it. On the other hand, I have known of individual crocodiles, of evil reputation, each of which have killed numbers of human beings. In one little pool crossed by a trail which I have had occasion frequently to use in Cagayan province ten persons were pulled down and devoured in three years. Most men who use the rifle sooner or later become interested in putting these vicious reptiles out of the way whenever opportunity offers.