Is it right, seriously speaking, that people who, by their own admission, are still under the influence of very primitive impulses, should be allowed to take their pleasure in this barbarous fashion without some voice being raised on behalf of the innocent victims?
“Live Bait.”
It appears that there are various ways of hunting the lion. One is to track him to some thick part of the jungle, and having set fire to it at one end to wait at the other with several guns until the terrified beast rushes out and meets his fate.
Another method, which seems to us a specially dastardly one, is the tying up of some domestic animal—donkey, bullock, or goat—as a “live bait” for the larger carnivora, while the sportsman lies in wait, safely concealed, to shoot the “game” or afterwards to track him out to his lair. We read in one instance as follows:
“I woke up to find myself being vigorously shaken by the watchman. A terrible struggle was going on between the donkey and the lion, but a cloud of dust completely obscured them, notwithstanding the brilliant light of a tropical moon. The lion succeeded in breaking the ropes and carrying off the struggling animal for some distance. The latter, however, gaining his legs, emerged from the cloud of dust and made slowly for the camp. Before he had gone many yards the lion had got him again, and this time he killed him without giving me a chance of aiming at all on account of the great cloud of dust.”
This practice is also mentioned in the Hon. J. Fortescue’s “Narrative of the Visit to India of Their Majesties King George V. and Queen Mary,” where we read:
“Overnight, or in the afternoon, bullocks are tied up in likely places for a tiger, generally at the edge of thick jungle; and in the morning the shikaris (or gamekeepers, as we should call them) go round to see if any of these have been killed.”
Mr. Fortescue mentions that “the reports of the morning of December 26 set forth that, though sixty bullocks had been tethered in the jungle on the previous night, only one had been killed.” The paucity of the kills on this occasion is explained by the fact that many tigers had already been shot and the “game” was becoming scarce. It is not stated how many oxen in all were thus sacrificed.
Now we submit that, whatever may be said in defence of big-game shooting in general, this usage of domestic animals—animals towards whom in all civilised countries it is recognised that mankind has moral, and often legal, obligations—is a very shocking malpractice.
That the actual suffering witnessed and chronicled is a small part only of the whole is everywhere obvious. These books teem with cases in which the animals escape wounded, to linger for days, or perhaps weeks. We read, for instance: “I kill a big male (elephant). As to the other male and a female, I wound but lose them both after a day’s pursuit. However, as the male seemed to me to be doomed, I send four men in search of it. They return without result after passing the night out of doors. I found this elephant dead on the 26th”—that is, after seventeen days in a climate where bodies do not lie long on the ground. We can quite believe that this author does not overstate the case when he candidly admits: “A good hunter, however careful, adroit, or well seconded he may be, must count one out of every two animals which he pursues as lost, owing to the many difficulties of his profession. This is the minimum, for how many wound or miss three or four animals before killing one!”