XXII. SAMBUR (Rusa Aristotelis)

I started up the river bed and found fresh tracks. After following the track for a good way we came on a single bull feeding on a grassy plain about half a mile in width, studded with a few trees. Leaving all the men behind, I crept up on my stomach to within about forty yards of him, and got behind a small pollard tree without the bull being aware of my presence. I fired at his shoulder with the 12-bore, and he fell over kicking on his back. Just as I was going to give him another shot, a second and larger bull rushed out from the long grass and attacked number one, who was still kicking on the ground. He gave him a tremendous punishing, bowling him over whenever he attempted to rise. I was so astonished at the whole thing, that I simply stood and watched. After a little while, number two seemed to think there was something wrong, and stopped to look round; whereupon, I took the opportunity of giving him a shot, which laid him on his back like his fellow. Both bulls then got up and went into the long grass. I followed number one, going very cautiously, as I was not quite sure of number two’s whereabouts. I came up with number one, who was still on his legs, knocked him over again and finished him with a shot behind the ear. I then went after number twoand killed him without any difficulty. The fight had been quite knocked out of him.

Buffaloes appear to charge much more readily when hunted with a line of elephants or from boats than when stalked on foot. In the first case at all events the buffalo is generally roused from his midday sleep, and attacked at close quarters, when his temper is ruffled, while when stalked on foot he gets such a severe wound when feeding (probably without seeing his enemy) that the fight is knocked out of him to start with. Still fatal instances have occurred, notably in the case of Mr. Chatterton, of the police, who was killed by a buffalo in 1886.

‘He gave him a tremendous punishing’

Measurements

Kinloch gives an account of a bull charging elephants both before and after being wounded. When they have thoroughly made up their minds to fight, buffaloes will, as a rule, carry out their plans most resolutely; but wild ones, though in a less degree, have the same kind of slow-wittedness that is so remarkable in tame buffaloes. If a European rides past a herd of tame buffaloes in some rather out-of-the-way district where Europeans are scarce, some of the herd are sure to begin pondering on the advisability of charging him, but before they can make up their minds, the object of their attentions has got beyond reach and they give up the problem. The average size of a good bull’s horns is about 40 ins. in length by 16 ins. in girth, or about 8 ft., measuring from the tip of one horn round the curve across the forehead and up the other horn. It is somewhat unfortunate that sportsmen should have selected this style of measurement, as it gives a poor idea of the comparative size of horns.

Forsyth and Kinloch both agree that a front shot is rarely successful against buffaloes, owing to the angle at which their heads are carried and the enormous thickness of their chests. Forsyth recommends hardened bullets, as he found two ounce bullets of soft lead propelled by eight drachms of powder flattened on their shoulders, pulverising the bone but not penetrating to the vital parts. Williamson describes shooting buffaloes out of boats in flood-time, and says that the point to aim at in this sport is to get the beast into such deep water that he cannot lower his head to use his horns.

As for using dogs for buffalo, Forsyth’s experience with a wounded bull was not a happy one; he writes: ‘The dogs were now loosed, and bayed round him till he began to chase them all round the field; but as soon as our heads appeared over the fringe of grass, he left them and charged down at ourselves.’ In spite of one of the dogs pinning him by the nose, the bull made good his charge, knocking Forsyth’s rifle out of his hand and upsetting his companion.

Generally, ‘Sambur’ or ‘Maha’; in Gurwhal, ‘Jerow’ or ‘Barasingh’

The sambur is found throughout the lower slopes of the Himalayas from the eastern bank of the Sutlej river (Kinloch points out that the Sutlej seems to be its boundary), and extends all over India and Ceylon to the south, and through Assam and Burmah as far as the Malay Peninsula to the south-east, wherever there are forest-clad hills. It does not ascendto any great elevation, being rarely found above an altitude of 5,000 or 6,000 ft. It seems to delight in heat, not, indeed, of the sun, as it is as careful of its complexion as a gooral, but of hot stony hills and stifling ravines covered with thick forest.

Sambur appear to require very little water, drinking, according to Sterndale, only every third day—a fact which the writer’s experience entirely confirms.

The general colour of the stag is dark sepia, the chin and inside of limbs yellowish-white, and an orange-yellow patch on the buttocks. The dirty yellow patch on the chin is sometimes very striking, and looks as if the stag had the skin of a pale orange in his mouth. The tail is large, the hair being coarse and very dark brown; and on the neck there is a shaggy coarse ruff. The ears are large and coarse, rounded in shape, nearly black, and almost hairless. Sterndale calls the sambur a noble creature, but compared with the Cashmere stag, red deer, or wapiti, he looks an ugly, coarse, underbred brute. The horns are massive, with a long brow antler and a bifurcated top, and in good specimens are about 40 ins. in length; longer horns are obtained occasionally, but not often. As the sambur is almost entirely nocturnal in its habits, it is most commonly shot in drives, and in many places it is almost impossible to obtain sambur otherwise; but where it can be managed, stalking is, of course, far better fun. The sportsman should be on his ground just before daylight, and work slowly through the forest at the edge of the feeding grounds, taking the bottom of the hill if there are crops on the plain below, or, failing these, the edges of the open glades in the forest. Presently, if there are any sambur about, he will hear their trumpet-like call, and, creeping on, see two or three dark forms moving among the trees. In the grey of the morning it is often very hard to distinguish a stag from a hind, and the writer has on several occasions had to wait after viewing the herd till there was light enough to pick his stag. Even in broad daylight it is difficult to judge the size of a stag’shorns as he stands motionless in the deep gloom of the forest, and what little can be seen of them makes them look three times their real size—the beam is so massive and the tines so long. The stag, too, is such a big beast, standing nearly a hand taller than a barasingh, that if seen in the open he looks as big as an Irish elk.

If the sportsman fails to intercept any stags on their return from their feeding grounds by working along the base of the hill, he should next ascend the hill and try the cup-like basins which are so often found near the summits. Sambur are very fond of these spots, but a first-rate local shikari is necessary to show the way to them, as there is often no sign of the existence of such places from the foot of the hill, the trees appearing to grow taller in them on purpose to hide them from observation from below. The approach to them is often up a heartbreaking boulder-strewn slope, which apparently continues to the summit. Up this the sportsman toils, thinking his shikari must have lost his way, when suddenly he comes upon a dark cool glen, and in it there is pretty sure to be a herd. The above applies chiefly to the isolated hills which rise out of the plains in Central India; in ranges like the Sewaliks the best plan is to walk along the top of a ridge, examining the ravines below, and in the grass on the crest of these ridges will often be found places where sambur have been lying down under the trees, the form being carefully chosen so that the shade of the tree will be over it during the hottest part of the day. Many pleasant little incidents may occur during an early morning stroll in the Sewaliks; kakur, gooral, and chital afford tempting shots if the sportsman likes to vary his bag, and an occasional bear, leopard, or tiger may be met with. One sportsman met a tiger almost face to face just as he gained the crest of a ridge. The man only had a light single-barrel rifle, so he wisely refrained from attack under the circumstances, and, the tiger being a well-behaved deer-stalking beast, the two passed the time of day and parted. Wild elephants, too, are not uncommon in certain parts, so that altogether there is always a chance of finding amusement. What fun there must have been in the Sewaliks in the days of the Ganesa mammoth and the four-horned moose-like sivatherium! Their remains in the British Museum make one’s mouth water to think of them.

Among the larger ranges of hills in Southern India, the best way of hunting is to send men in pairs before daybreak to well-chosen positions to watch the forest, the sportsman with one attendant taking a line of his own, and working on or watching his particular beat till the sun is beginning to get powerful and the animals have lain down for the day; then he should himself go round the different groups of watchers and collect their reports. It is important that the sportsman should go round himself and not depute the work to his shikari, as a stag or a bear may often have been marked down to an inch by the watchers and may be stalked forthwith, whilst if a drive be decided upon the sportsman has an opportunity of studying the ground and settling all the details with his head shikari on the spot. Having gone round his sentries and withdrawn the men, he should then return to camp for breakfast, order beaters for any drives he has decided on, and about 11a.m., when the sun is really hot and the animals marked down are likely to be disinclined to move, and so enable the beaters and guns to get into position, he should begin operations. All driving should be done in the heat of the day, when the animals are lying down; trying to drive when beasts are naturally on the move generally results in the game leaving the beat before the men are in their places. Another great point to attend to in driving is for the sportsman, if possible, to get up into a tree. It may sound ridiculous for a man to climb up a tree in a sambur drive, but he is far more likely to get an easy shot in this position, as the deer will neither see nor wind him, he commands more ground, and he runs no risk of heading back the wary old hind which often leads the herd; the chances being that if he is rightly posted the herd will come right under his tree. Another advantage is that, his fire being plunging, he can shoot all round without danger to the beaters. If two or three guns are out, it is more than ever necessary to try to post them well up off the ground. Having settled himself in his tree, the sportsman should send his gun-carrier to some tree or rock at least a hundred yards behind him, so that the course taken by a wounded animal can be observed. Tracking in jungle is often very difficult work, and a sharp gun-carrier posted well to the rear will often save a lot of trouble. In some parts of the Himalayas native shikaris declare that they often shoot sambur by selecting a likely path and improvising a salt-lick, after the fashion of Laplanders when they want to catch their tame reindeer. General Macintyre describes the formation of a ‘kar’ and his adventures in watching one; he calls it a dirty way of killing ‘jurrow.’

Though sambur occasionally throw out abnormal tines, they usually carry only three antlers on each horn—a long brow antler and two on top. The horns are generally shed about the end of March, and are free from velvet about the beginning of November. Major Ward’s remarks about shooting small stags are well worth quoting:

Remember that sambur are not prolific; they seldom have more than one fawn, and that it is four years before the young stag assumes his complete shape of horn, and that he has still three or four years to live before he can have a pair of antlers worth preserving. He has quite sufficient chances against his attaining an age of seven or eight years, without having to run the risk of being shot down by the rifle bullet whilst still in his immature state.

Shooting hinds is quite unpardonable, the venison being not worth eating.

Native name: generally ‘Para’

Kinloch aptly describes this deer as the rabbit of Indian battues. It is a long-bodied rather heavily built beast on short legs with horns like a small sambur, the brow antlers coming straight up from the burr at an acute angle without the handsomecurve of those of the spotted deer. The stags are reddish brown, their hair coarse and thick, their tails rather long and exactly of the sambur type, their ears round, not pointed like a spotted deer. When galloping through the grass the hogdeer carries its head low, its horns laid back on the neck, and its rump high. It is found throughout the high grass swamps at the foot of the Himalayas and on the islands and banks of the big rivers. High grass and plenty of water are its chief requisites. It expends through Assam to Burmah, and is also found in Ceylon.

Hogdeer shooting

It is usually shot when beating the large tracts of grass in the Doon and Terai with a line of elephants, and affords pretty snap shooting from a howdah when better game is not expected. The does will squat in the grass till the elephants almost kick them up, but the way to get the best stags is to go well ahead of the line on a flank, or, if possible, post yourself on foot so as to command a nullah leading from one patch of grass to another, or the dry sandy channel separating two islands. This, however, is a matter of some risk, as, if hogdeer are plentiful, the firing from the line becomes fast and furious, and unless you are on an elephant the guns in the line cannot see where you are. Shooting from a howdah is an art which requires practice, and many a good rifle-shot on foot finds himself missing hideously when he first tries shooting off an elephant. A very sound rule is, never to put your head down on the stock, but keep it well up, look hard at the beast’s shoulder and see as much of its body as possible over the muzzle of the rifle: the range is generally short and nearly all misses go high. Shooting hogdeer from elephant has been likened, with some confusion of ideas, to shooting rabbits from a pitching collier in a gale of wind in the Bay of Biscay.

Hogdeer are often put up when pigsticking in grass, and give capital runs.

Major FitzHerbert had a quaint bit of sport in 1874. He slipped a brace of dogs at a stag and rode after them; in his own words:

The stag made for the river, and as the ground got more and more open the bitch caught sight of him, made a rush and soon got up to him; she laid hold and pulled him over, but as the dog would not help her, the stag shook her off and went away again. When she came up to him again, he stood at bay with head down and bristles raised like a miniature red deer of Landseer’s, but broke away when I came up. Once he charged the bitch and knocked her over: he stood at bay two or three times, but I never could get a spear into him for fear of hurting the dogs; at last one time as he was breaking bay I came up, and he charged me with such force as to break one of his horns clean off against the spear; however, I stuck him in the spine and rolled him over.

The fawns are always spotted. The stags seem very irregular in shedding their horns, and deformed heads are not uncommon.

Native names: ‘Chital,’ ‘Chitra’; the Stag ‘Jhank’

About the beauty of the skin of this beast, the writer heard a story of a man who was taking such particular pains to preserve the hide of a stag he had shot that his companion asked him what he wanted it for, adding, ‘It’s only a chital.’ ‘Yes,’ returned the other, ‘it may be only a chital on the banks of the Nerbudda, but I am going to send it home, and it will be a leopard at Northampton.’

The horns are of the rusine type, but the brow antler has a more graceful forward curve than in the sambur, and the anterior terminal point is always longer than the posterior. Small false points are also frequently thrown out at the base of the brow antler.

Chital are often shot off elephants, but the sport is not to be compared to stalking them; and as chital always seem to select the loveliest scenery in the forest for their abode, a morning or evening stroll after them is most enjoyable, or, if the heat is too great to render a long walk pleasant, a shot may often be obtained in the evening by watching a glade where the young grass is springing up after a forest fire. There must, however, be water in the vicinity, as chital are rarely found at any great distance from it.

The peculiar call of the chital can be heard for a long distance, and is a common hunting signal among many jungle tribes. If a chital is heard repeatedly calling in one spot, it is generally a danger signal, and means that a tiger or panther is on foot.

Unlike hogdeer, chital often go in large herds, each herd being owned by one big stag, though there may be many smaller stags in it.

The horns are shed annually but very irregularly, stags without horns, in the velvet, and with matured horns, being often met with in the same day. This is attributable to the deer breeding all the year round instead of having a definite rutting season, the shedding of horns varying with the ageof the stag. This is more noticeable in the forests along the foot of the Himalayas than in Central India, where, though still irregular, the bulk of the stags have their horns ripe in January and shed them about July.

Jerdon was of opinion that there were two species of spotted deer, the smaller of the two being found in Southern India; but Sterndale quotes McMaster to the effect that the spotted deer found in Orissa are more than usually large. As far as the writer has been able to judge, the stags in Central India have finer heads than those in the Doon and Terai.

When stalking in forest the sportsman should bear in mind that if he comes suddenly on game his best chance of avoiding detection is to stand motionless. If he attempts to crouch the movement will draw attention at once, whereas if he stands still, and his clothes are of the right colour, he may very likely be mistaken for the stump of a tree.

Native names: ‘Gōn,’ ‘Gond,’ ‘Barasingha,’ ‘Maha’; in Central India, ‘Goen’ or ‘Goenjak’ (male); ‘Gaoni’ (female) (Sterndale)

This deer avoids heavy forest and is nearly always found in the swamps and open grassy plains near rivers. Colonel Erskine, the Commissioner of Kumaon, writes of it:

I have shot numbers of these deer, but all in the swampy Terai country in the north of Oudh bordering on Nepal, and in that part of the Pilibhit district on the same frontier. I have never heard of it much to the west of the Pilibhit district. I should think Haldwani, at the foot of the Naini Tal hill, was well beyond the western limit of the tracts which it frequents; it is found in the swamps and high grass on the edges of the swamps and rivers, and on the islands in the rivers, along the forest country at the foot of the Himalayas, from the places I have mentioned, eastwards as far as Assam and Bhotan, and along the Barhamputra river down to the Sunderbands of Bengal. It is also known in the Central Provinces near Mundla and along the tributaries of the Nerbudda.

Kinloch says that it used to be found on the islands in the Indus, but is now almost extinct there. By all accounts it seems to prefer the neighbourhood of Sál forest.

Rucervus Duvaucelli

The antlers of the swamp deer are peculiar. The beam is rather slender, the brow antler very long, there is no median tine, and at the top the head becomes almost palmated. The full-grown stag carries three antlers on the top, two of which (the outside antlers generally) are bifurcated equally, as if the antler had been split and bent outwards; each horn having thus six points, including the brow antler. Colonel Erskine says that he has never seen a head with more than fourteen tines, but Jerdon speaks of seventeen. In Schomburgk’s deer (an allied form found in Siam), all three prongs on the top are bifurcated. The difference between the two varieties is very noticeable in the British Museum, where the horns are placed side by side. Sterndale says that in Schomburgk’s deer the très and royal tines are equal, whilst in the swamp deer thetrès tine is longer than the royal.

Rucervus Schomburgkii

In the high grass of the Terai and Assam, swamp deer are generally shot off elephants, but in some parts of Central India the ground is open enough to permit of their being stalked. Forsyth gives a capital account of the sport he enjoyed while hunting them in the Sál forests of Central India. Swamp deer are gregarious, and Jerdon quotes from an article in ‘The Indian Sporting Review’ a case of three large herds being seen on one plain. The general colour of the beast is a light yellowish red, paler in the winter than in the summer; the under parts and below the tail are white. The hinds are lighter coloured than the stags, and the fawns are spotted. The stags appear to shed their horns about March or April, as, Forsyth says, they lose the velvet at the close of the rainy season; he also says that they shed their horns more regularly than theRusinæ. The following quotation from his charming book gives an excellent account of their habits:

This animal has been called in North-Eastern India the ‘swamp deer,’ but here (Central India) he is not observed to be particularly partial to swampy ground. These deer graze in the mornings and evenings in the open valley, chiefly along the smaller streams, andby springs where the grass is green, and rest during the day about the skirts of the Sál forest. A favourite midday resort is in the shade of the clumps of Sál dotted about the open plain, at some distance from the heavy forest. They are not nearly so nocturnal in habits as the sámbar, being often found out grazing late in the forenoon, and again early in the afternoon; and I do not think they wander about all night like the sámbar. Their midday rest is usually of a few hours only, but during that time they conceal themselves in the grass much after the manner of the sámbar. I have never heard of their visiting cultivated tracts like the latter; nor can I learn that their apparent adherence to the Sál forest is due to their employing any part of that tree as food.

(RucervusvelPanolia Eldii)

Native names: ‘Thamin,’ ‘Sungrai’

This variety of swamp deer is found chiefly in Burmah, but extends from Munipur to the Malay Peninsula. Its habits are, as above noted, the same as those of the swamp deer, but it is rather differently coloured, being, according to Sterndale, ‘of a light rufous brown with a few faint indications of white spots, the under parts and insides of the ears nearly white, the tail short and black above. It is said to become darker in winter instead of lighter, as in the swamp deer.’

The horns, however, are very unlike the swamp deer’s. The brow antler and beam, instead of forming an angle, are in one continuous curve, like the section of a circle, the burr being small and hardly seen. In rear of the top of the beam there is a short snag, which Sterndale calls the royal tine, and on the front of the top of the beam, which is rather flattened, instead of regular tines like those on a swamp deer’s head, there is a collection of what look like false points. In a head in the British Museum the left horn has thirteen of these little snags and the right fourteen.

Panolia Eldii

In Upper Burmah, Eld’s deer are scarce, and the only way to obtain them is to drive for them with beaters. In Lower Burmah they are occasionally shot by lamplight, much inthe same manner as that described in Colonel Rice’s book; the performance is said to be very interesting. The party (which usually consists of a lamp-bearer, a man with an arrangement of jingling bells and rings on a stick, the sportsman and his gun-carriers) having assembled after dark, a fire is lit, and a kind of incantation gone through, everyone but the speaker being forbidden to utter a word. When the incantation is over, each member of the party passes through the smoke of the fire in turn, the guns are handed through it also, the lamp is then lit, and the party starts, using the lamp, an earthenware pot with a hole in its side, as a search light, while the man with the frame of bells keeps up an incessant jingling. On a deer being discovered, the light is at once turned full on its eyes and kept steadily there, the jingling kept going, with the result that the deer is so dazed that it will often allow the party to go close up to it before the sportsman fires. Both Eld’s deer and sambur may be shot in this way, and the writer has been told that hares, and occasionally deer, will allow themselves to be approached till they can be speared or knocked on the head with sticks. This, of course, is not a very high class of sport, but in many of the coast districts stalking in the jungles is almost impossible.

Measurements

Back to Index Next