Shooting a Bengal Tiger in Rajasthan, India(Mike E. Walsh) The Bengal tiger is the largest and probably most beautiful of all tigers. It was hunted and shot by the rajas (feudal kings) of India and by the British in India both as a supreme trophy and as a pest: until they are nearly extinct. The Ranthambhore National Park and Tiger Reserve located in north central India was created in the 1970s when the current Maharajah, Bigadier Sawai Bhawani Singh of Juipur, deeded his private game reserve to the Indian national government.

My group of adventurous travelers went on two four-hour safari trips into the Tiger Reserve to glimpse this beauty having been told that our chances of seeing one of the remaining Bengal tigers that roam the park was not good.

Before dawn the morning of Friday December 18, 2009 we entered the park where life is as it has been for thousands of years - wild and natural. Our large land rover filled with our excited group bumped along slowly through rugged hilly terrain. We were on a mission to find one of the remaining tigers in the 125 square mile park. We had a crazy driver and bilingual guide to help us with our mission.

Once Bengal tigers were found in large numbers throughout the Indo-Ganges plain. Now they are few in number and only in protected national parks. There had been 11 left in this area and over many years of careful protection and some serious poaching and setbacks there were now 40. Tigers are loners we were told. They are very territorial, claiming a certain land area from other tigers. They prowl their land fequently, mark their territory by peeing on it, and occasionally fight and kill other tigers that encroach. Their lives are difficult and they catch perhaps only 1 chased prey in 35. Their prey has developed many defenses against them, e.g. monkeys in overhead trees symbiotically warn other animals of an approaching tiger. Food is a persistent pursuit.

After searching for 4 hours in the morning we returned to the hotel for lunch and at 2pm returned to the park for another four-hour search. It was a long day of searching. We saw much wild land and widlife. Many varieties of indigenous birds, deer, monkeys, peacocks and a spotted leopard. My party became very good at spotting animals and alerting each other, but no tiger. The afternoon was almost over - the light beginning to dim. I was resigned to the reality that I would not fulfill my mission and that the journey and all the interesting experiences: were it!

Then there was a shout up ahead in another land rover. A tiger had been sighted. We raced dangerously towards it. I peered, then climbed on top of the land rover for a better view. But it was gone. And so we started to ride back somewhat defeated. Then a shout went out ahead of our vehicle - the same large tiger had been sighted again. We drove through the brush and trees like hungry beasts insistent on our prey. The land rover bumped and scaped very noisily against the trees sounding like fingernails on a blackboard. Our guide screamed at our driver to hurry up forcing him into more aggressive ride; like a jockey hitting his horse to get that last effort out of it before the finishing line. And there he was, big and beautiful. Our guide indentified the large male tiger as number 23 from his patterned markings. The tiger looked at our land rover then looked away walking slowly and stopping. Eyes, ears and mind intently focused on his prey: thankfully not us. He paid little attention to our shouting and noisy approach. We were to him part of the landscape: unimportant, merely a distraction. And then no more than 30 seconds, fifty feet from the land rover, he disappeared in the brush.

We were all exilarated and happy. We had fulfilled our mission and left contented. Like the rajas who had hunted and shot all those tigers many years ago, we had hunted him and shot him, shot him with our cameras. Yet unlike those days we were now in harmony with the tiger and were not seen as a meal, enemy or friend. We were just there to the tiger, and the tiger was just there to us.

---