HUNTING IN NEPAL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 649, 7 March 1914, Page 7

HUNTING IN NEPAL.

HOW THE MAHARAJAH SHOOTS. The method of shooting when the Maharajah of Nepal gives a big shooting-party is that two or three regiments of soldiers are sent down from . Katrriandhu into the Terai tc act as beaters, and that a vast number of elephants, of which there are plenty in Nepali, are collected. Th€ whereabouts of a number of tigers are known, and an immense circle is formed of elephants, with men in between as beaters. Little elephants, very qu'ick of foot, are • used to carry the officers who regulate the closing. in of the enormous circle. There is a great noise of tom-toms and gongs,' and shouting and firingoff of guns as the circle begins to close, and the tigers in the ring, hearing the clamour, begin to move restlessly from place to place, looking for an opening, but being always headed back. The principal guest on his elephant has on either side of him, on their elephants, two of the surest shots in India, to make quite certain that if a charging tiger is not stopped by a bullet from the guests rifle it will be stopped by a bullet from a man ; on either side of him. WHEN A TIGER CHARGES. Closer and closer draws the circle of tho elephants, and louder a nd louder grows the noise at all points while the shooting-party on the'ir elephants are waiting for the great game to attempt to break out. At last, through the yellow and russet grasses something moves at the pace of an express engine. It is a tiger making: his dash for life, and prepared to charge anything which stands in his way. If he is not stopped he will 5 be, at one spring, up on to the forehead of an elephant, clawing at \ the mahout seated on its back. But it is a thousand to one that, no tiger ever gets' as far as this. The rush of each fierce, striped thing through the grass is stopped by the bullets, and a beautiful, limp, dead thing is collected when the shooting is finished, and hclisted up on to one of the pad elephants, to be carried in triumph to camp to be skinned, and to become, later on, an ornament in some lady's drawing-room. THE ROYAL GAME AT NEPAL. The Royal game animals of Nepal, however, are not tigers but rhinoceroses. The rhinoceroses living by the rivers in some parts of the Terai are preserved for the shooting of the Maharajah, the Prime Minister of Nepal, and his brothers and their sons, and he must either be a Royal guest or a stranger of very great distinction to whom permission to shoot any of these animals is given. It is their rarity more than any particular sport in the hunting of them which causes them to be held in such honour. In some parts of British India there is quite good rhinoceros-shooting, and I fancy that the late Maharajah of Kooch Behar used to show the guests at his shooting-parties excellent sport after rhino.—"Sketch."