The peculiarity of Neilgherry hunting is, that nothing can be done by means of beaters only—the plan adopted in India generally. Cocks cannot be flushed without spaniels, and foxhounds are necessary for tracking large game. The canine species thrives prodigiously on the hills, and seems to derive even more benefit from the climate than the human dogs. The crack sportsman from the plains must here abandon his favourite pig-sticking, or exchange it for what he always considered the illicit practice of hog-shooting. En revanche, he has the elk, the bison, and the ibex.
The Neilgherry Sambur, or elk,[168] is the giant of the cervine race—often fourteen hands high, with antlers upwards of three feet long, spanning thirty-two or thirty-three inches between the extremities. In spite of this beast’s size and unwieldiness—some of them weigh seven hundred pounds—they are sufficiently speedy to distance any but a good horse. They divide their time between the mountain-woods and the lower jungles, resorting to the former for the sake of the water, and descending to the latter to get at the “salt-licks,” in which they abound. Elk are usually met with in pairs, or in greater numbers, and when once sighted are easily shot. The neck and the hollow behind the shoulder are the parts aimed at, for these animals are extraordinarily tenacious of life, and will carry off a most unreasonable number of balls, unless hit in a vital region. The flesh is coarse, but makes excellent mulligatawny, the shin-bones afford good marrow, the hoofs are convertible into jelly, the tongue is eatable, and the skin useful for saddle-covers, gaiters, and hunting boots. The head, stuffed with straw and provided with eyes, skilfully made out of the bottom of a black bottle, is a favourite ornament for the verandah or the mantelpiece. Samburs are easily tamed: several of them may be seen about Ootacamund, grazing with halters round their necks, almost as tame as cows. There are several ways of hunting elk. On the hills skirting the Pykarry river, where there is little swamp or bog, attempts have been made to run and spear them. Some sportsmen stalk them; but the usual mode is to post the guns, and then to make the beast break cover. Dogs are preferred to beaters for this purpose, as their giving tongue warns one when the game is coming, and the animal will almost always fly from his fourfooted, whereas it often succeeds in charging and breaking through the line of biped foes. Samburs, when wounded and closely pursued, will sometimes stand and defend themselves desperately with tooth and antler; the “game thing” then is to “walk into them” with a hunting-knife.
Bison-hunting upon the hills is a most exciting sport, requiring thews and sinews, a cool head and a steady hand. A charge of one of these animals is quite the reverse of a joke: Venator had better make sure of his nerve before he goes forth to stand before such a rush. The bison is a noble animal. We have seen heads[169] which a strong man was scarcely able to lift, and horns that measured twenty inches in circumference. They are usually shot with ounce or two ounce iron or brass balls, and plugs made by the hill-people, who cut a bar of metal and file it down to the size required with the rudest tools and remarkable neatness. The Hindoos, however, do not patronise bison-hunting, as they consider the beast a wild species of their sacred animal.
The word “ibex,” like the “jungle sheep”[170] of the Neilgherries, is a misnomer: the denominated being the Capra Caucasica, not the Capra ibex of Cuvier. It is to these hills what the chamois is to the Alps, and the izzard to the Pyrenees. If you are sportsman enough to like difficulty and danger, incurred for nothing’s sake, you will think well of ibex-hunting. In the first place you have to find your game, and to find it also in some place where it can be approached when alive, and secured when dead. The senses of these wild goats are extraordinarily acute, and often, after many hours of toil, the disappointed pursuer is informed by the peculiar whistling noise which they make when alarmed, that, warned of his proximity—probably by the wind—they have moved off to safer quarters. Secondly, you must hit them—hard, too; otherwise you will never bring about a dead stop. And, lastly, as they are addicted to scrambling down and rolling over tremendous precipices—especially after they have felt lead—you must either lose the beast or risk your neck to bag the body. Not for the pot. The flesh is never eaten, but the stuffed head is preserved as a trophy of venatic prowess.
The hill people, when not employed in spearing and netting game on their own account, will generally act as lookers-out and beaters. We are apt, however, to be too generous with our money: the effect of the liberality proving it to be ill-advised. Often it will happen to you—especially during your first month’s sporting—that some black scoundrel rushes up in a frantic hurry to report game trove, in the hope that you will, upon the spur of the moment, present him with a rupee. And suppose you do so, what is the result? It is sad weather; the clouds rain cats and dogs—to use an old phrase—the wind is raw as a south-easter off the Cape; the ground one mass of slippery mud. Do you look out of the window, roll your head, dismiss the “nigger,” return to your fire, the “Demented,” and your cigar. No! emphatically no!! You rush into your room, pull on shoes and gaiters, don your hunting-garb with astonishing rapidity, catch up your guns, roar for the favourite servant that carries them, and start in the middle of the howling storm. Your eagerness to “get a slap at a bison” incites you to cruelty: you think nothing of dashing into the first village, and compelling a troop of half-naked wretches to accompany you. Now mark the consequence of giving away that rupee in a hurry. The head beater leads you up and down the steepest, the most rugged, stony, and slippery hills he can hit upon, with the benevolent view of preventing your making a fool of yourself to any greater extent. But when your stout English legs have completely “taken the shine” out of those baboon-like shanks which support his body, then he conducts you to some Shola,[171] places you and your servant upon the top of an elevated rock commanding a thorough enjoyment of the weather, and an extensive view of the ravine through which the beast is to break cover, and retires with his comrades to the snug cavern, which he held all along in mental view. There he sits before a cosy bit of fire, occasionally indulging you with a view-halloo, proving how actively the gang is engaged in discovering the game. Half an hour has passed; you are wet through, “jusqu’aux os,” and the chill blasts feel as if they were cutting their way into your vitals: still your ardour endures. Another twenty minutes—your fingers refuse to uphold the cocked rifle.
“We really must go if they can’t find this beast in another quarter of an hour, Baloo!”
“Han, Sahib!—yes, sir,”—quavers forth your unhappy domestic, in a frozen treble—“if the Sahib were to—to go, just now—would it not be good? It is very cold—and—perhaps—they have been telling the Sahib lies.”
Baloo is right. The head beater appears, followed by his attendant train. He swears that it is a case of “stole away.”
You feel that there is something wrong about that bison, by the way in which the man’s eye avoided you. But probably a sense of justice prevents your having recourse to the baculine discipline which, on any other occasion, we should have advised you to administer with no niggardly hand.
Sounders of hog are commonly found at certain seasons about Coonoor especially. They are often shot, and more often missed, as their gaunt forms boring through the high grass afford a very uncertain mark. If Diana favour you, you may have the luck to come upon that beautiful variety of the leopard tribe, the black cheeta, and wreak upon him the revenge which his brethren’s ravages amongst your “bobbery-pack”[172] has roused in your bosom. If you are proud of your poultry yard you will never allow a jungle cat to pass without rolling her over: the large fierce beasts are so uncommonly fond of ducks and fowls. The jackals[173] on the hills are even more daring and impudent than they are in the plains. Hares are so numerous and voracious that they will destroy any garden, flower or kitchen, unless it is defended by a dwarf-fencing of split bamboos. Your careful Malee[174] takes, moreover, the precaution of surrounding your cabbages with a deep ditch in order to keep out the huge porcupines that abound here. En passant we advise every one who has not tasted a rôti of one of those animals to do so sine morâ, not, however, forgetting to roll up the flesh in a layer of mutton fat, and thus to remedy its only defect—dryness. Martins, polecats, mongooses, and the little grey gilahri[175] of Hindostan, flourish on the hills; there is also a large dark brown squirrel, with a huge bushy tail, but the flying species, so common on the western coast, is not an inhabitant of the Neilgherries. The woods are tenanted by several kinds of monkeys, black and red, large and small: the otter is occasionally met with in the fords of the Pykarry river.