Major Khan
AH legend
In my last few articles on this forum , l have provided reminiscences of my career as a professional shikaree in Nagpur , India revolving around 2 royal Bengal tigers ( one shot by myself and one shot by a client ) , a gaur ( shot by both myself and a close friend after a 10 minute long struggle ) and my old Belgian shot gun .
Tonight , l want to provide the members of this marvellous forum with a story involving a man eating panther . The largest man eating panther which l had ever shot .
A few words are necessary before we begin . What we refer to , as a "panther " is identical to the African leopard ( with only a difference in weight ) .
Indeed , while we in Nagpur and South India used to refer to these large cats as " panthers " , our fellow Indians in West Bengal ( such as Darjeeling , where my good friend and fellow professional shikaree and forum member , Sergeant Kawshik Rahman was based ) used to refer to these same creatures as " hunting leopards " .
The Indian panther is heavy and these brutes can weigh up to 200 pounds easily . Normally a sour encounter with a panther is unlikely to result in a fatality for a human being . If a human crosses paths with a normal , unwounded panther and the panther attacks the human being , then it will normally attack like this : It will lunge at the human being and upon getting them on the ground , will proceed to give the person a short series of scratches with it's claws and perhaps a bite or 2 or 3 or 4 at most . You will end up looking as if someone has driven a lawn mower over you . As horrifying as that is , the chances of a fatality are about 1 in 15 . There are 2 exceptions to this , however :
The 1st exception is when a miserable victim of fate crosses paths with a wounded panther .
These brutes will be far more ill tempered than an unwounded panther and the chances of a fatality are about 8 in 15 .
The 2nd exception is when the panther in question , happens to be a man eater . In such a case , a fatality is absolutely guaranteed .
Why does a panther turn into a man - eater ? There are a few reasons which l have personally rooted out based on the number of man eating panthers which I have shot . The reasons which l know of , are as follows :
1. A panther may be wounded by a hunter ( or poacher's ) poorly placed bullet .
2. A panther may be be injured by some other other animal , such as getting porcupine quills stuck in it's body or getting wounded by the tusks of a wild boar or the horns of a gaur .
3. The brute may get weakened with age and become too incapable of hunting wild game . Therefore , they choose to go after man , whom they perceive as easier prey than , for example , a cheetal deer .
4) Human corpses may have been left around the areas where a panther or 2 happens to be roaming , and by chance , the panther happens to acquire the taste for human flesh .
5) This may be perceived as rather hard to believe by many people , but there have actually been quite a few instances of mother panthers teaching their cubs to become man eaters and instilling the habit into them from a very young age. Call it " indoctrination" if you will .
1 thing is for certain , however . Once , the panther does taste human flesh even once , he becomes addicted to it and will prefer it to the flesh of any other animal . I know not why we taste so good to the panther , although l once read a book written by a gentleman forced to partake in cannibalism , who compared the flesh of man to veal . What a macabre comparison .
A good friend of mine , Dr. Khayrul Amin proposed a theory to me once why man eating panthers are so common in India , as opposed to Africa , where the man eating panther ( referred to , as a " leopard " in Africa )
is comparatively rare . The theory is as follows :
In India , roughly 60 to 70 % of the population are unfortunately vegetarian . As such , the heat signatures of these people are different from those who eat meat . It may entirely be possible that leopards can sense the heat signatures of other animals . When they sense the heat signatures of these people , they associate them with the herbivorous animals which they normally eat ( such as cheetal deer or 4 horned buck ) .
In order to reinforce this theory , the good Doctor gave me a book named " The man eaters of Tsavo " written by 1 Colonel Patterson . The book revolves around 2 man eating lions in Africa which were terrorizing rail road workers in the early 1900s. The Doctor showed me that the rail road workers were all brought over from India ( and were all predominantly vegetarian) and that the lions did not actually start molesting humans until the Indian workers started working on the rail road tracks . I do not know how sound the Doctor's theory is , as l am not a Doctor myself . However , his theory certainly does seem rather well thought out and reasonable to me .
In my life , l have killed 20 panthers , 13 of whom are man eaters . Out of these 13 man eaters , 5 had old bullet marks in their body or signs of being previously maimed by traps when l had post mortems done on their corpses , while 4 had marks in their bodies , indicative of being injured by some other animal or the thorns of plants .
While l killed a dozen royal Bengal tigers ( 7 of which were man eaters) , during my career as a professional shikaree , l personally do not consider them feats , because out of those 12 tigers , 11 of them were already shot and badly wounded by clients or other shikarees before l merely finished them off after following them into the thickets .
I feel more inclined to regale my readers with the tales of me hunting those 20 panthers , because those were uninjured panthers which l had killed all by myself ( although , l still had plenty of assistance in other ways from my dear friends and colleagues ).
Today , l will relate a story to you all about the largest man eating panther which I have ever hunted .
I will lay out the entire story in the next 3 posts .
Below , is a photograph kindly provided to me , by Sergeant Kawshik Rahman . It is of a panther which he and his client , Don Fernando Delgado
( Whom l also had the pleasure of guiding ) had shot in 1970 in Darjeeling . I have provided the photograph for reference purposes as l do not wish to provide the photograph of the panther which l had shot until the climax of this article .
Tonight , l want to provide the members of this marvellous forum with a story involving a man eating panther . The largest man eating panther which l had ever shot .
A few words are necessary before we begin . What we refer to , as a "panther " is identical to the African leopard ( with only a difference in weight ) .
Indeed , while we in Nagpur and South India used to refer to these large cats as " panthers " , our fellow Indians in West Bengal ( such as Darjeeling , where my good friend and fellow professional shikaree and forum member , Sergeant Kawshik Rahman was based ) used to refer to these same creatures as " hunting leopards " .
The Indian panther is heavy and these brutes can weigh up to 200 pounds easily . Normally a sour encounter with a panther is unlikely to result in a fatality for a human being . If a human crosses paths with a normal , unwounded panther and the panther attacks the human being , then it will normally attack like this : It will lunge at the human being and upon getting them on the ground , will proceed to give the person a short series of scratches with it's claws and perhaps a bite or 2 or 3 or 4 at most . You will end up looking as if someone has driven a lawn mower over you . As horrifying as that is , the chances of a fatality are about 1 in 15 . There are 2 exceptions to this , however :
The 1st exception is when a miserable victim of fate crosses paths with a wounded panther .
These brutes will be far more ill tempered than an unwounded panther and the chances of a fatality are about 8 in 15 .
The 2nd exception is when the panther in question , happens to be a man eater . In such a case , a fatality is absolutely guaranteed .
Why does a panther turn into a man - eater ? There are a few reasons which l have personally rooted out based on the number of man eating panthers which I have shot . The reasons which l know of , are as follows :
1. A panther may be wounded by a hunter ( or poacher's ) poorly placed bullet .
2. A panther may be be injured by some other other animal , such as getting porcupine quills stuck in it's body or getting wounded by the tusks of a wild boar or the horns of a gaur .
3. The brute may get weakened with age and become too incapable of hunting wild game . Therefore , they choose to go after man , whom they perceive as easier prey than , for example , a cheetal deer .
4) Human corpses may have been left around the areas where a panther or 2 happens to be roaming , and by chance , the panther happens to acquire the taste for human flesh .
5) This may be perceived as rather hard to believe by many people , but there have actually been quite a few instances of mother panthers teaching their cubs to become man eaters and instilling the habit into them from a very young age. Call it " indoctrination" if you will .
1 thing is for certain , however . Once , the panther does taste human flesh even once , he becomes addicted to it and will prefer it to the flesh of any other animal . I know not why we taste so good to the panther , although l once read a book written by a gentleman forced to partake in cannibalism , who compared the flesh of man to veal . What a macabre comparison .
A good friend of mine , Dr. Khayrul Amin proposed a theory to me once why man eating panthers are so common in India , as opposed to Africa , where the man eating panther ( referred to , as a " leopard " in Africa )
is comparatively rare . The theory is as follows :
In India , roughly 60 to 70 % of the population are unfortunately vegetarian . As such , the heat signatures of these people are different from those who eat meat . It may entirely be possible that leopards can sense the heat signatures of other animals . When they sense the heat signatures of these people , they associate them with the herbivorous animals which they normally eat ( such as cheetal deer or 4 horned buck ) .
In order to reinforce this theory , the good Doctor gave me a book named " The man eaters of Tsavo " written by 1 Colonel Patterson . The book revolves around 2 man eating lions in Africa which were terrorizing rail road workers in the early 1900s. The Doctor showed me that the rail road workers were all brought over from India ( and were all predominantly vegetarian) and that the lions did not actually start molesting humans until the Indian workers started working on the rail road tracks . I do not know how sound the Doctor's theory is , as l am not a Doctor myself . However , his theory certainly does seem rather well thought out and reasonable to me .
In my life , l have killed 20 panthers , 13 of whom are man eaters . Out of these 13 man eaters , 5 had old bullet marks in their body or signs of being previously maimed by traps when l had post mortems done on their corpses , while 4 had marks in their bodies , indicative of being injured by some other animal or the thorns of plants .
While l killed a dozen royal Bengal tigers ( 7 of which were man eaters) , during my career as a professional shikaree , l personally do not consider them feats , because out of those 12 tigers , 11 of them were already shot and badly wounded by clients or other shikarees before l merely finished them off after following them into the thickets .
I feel more inclined to regale my readers with the tales of me hunting those 20 panthers , because those were uninjured panthers which l had killed all by myself ( although , l still had plenty of assistance in other ways from my dear friends and colleagues ).
Today , l will relate a story to you all about the largest man eating panther which I have ever hunted .
I will lay out the entire story in the next 3 posts .
Below , is a photograph kindly provided to me , by Sergeant Kawshik Rahman . It is of a panther which he and his client , Don Fernando Delgado
( Whom l also had the pleasure of guiding ) had shot in 1970 in Darjeeling . I have provided the photograph for reference purposes as l do not wish to provide the photograph of the panther which l had shot until the climax of this article .
