People do not comprehend the "sixth sense" of animals. Two anecdotes for you:
-An acquaintance owned a zoo and had a tiger in one of the exhibits. He knew this cat very well and was observing odd body language. (the owner was a hunter so he understood predation and aggression in animals) A visitor to the zoo, in cold autumn or winter weather, was watching the tiger that kept walking past the school children and a dozen other visitors and was clearly taking an interest in killing this visitor if the cat could gain the opportunity from the other side of the bars. Curious, the owner walked up to shake the man's hand, introduce himself, and comment on the odd behavior of the cat. When the man shook the zoo owner's hand, it was a horribly disfigured hand that emerged from his coat pocket revealing a disability. The cat's sixth sense indicated a vulnerability that was impossible for a human being to know as it was concealed from sight.
-In 25 years of flying raptors in falconry, I noticed a lot of strange behavior from raptors. Many times I watched hawks, particularly goshawks, fly directly over the "guaranteed 100% kill" duck to instead commit to difficult aerial maneuvers on a much more distant duck in the flock. This seemed absurd, made no initial sense, and provided remarkable and difficult pursuits. 100% of the time when this happened and it ended with a kill, there was always a defect with the duck that was selected from the flock. Either a cut to the webbing of a foot (not visible to a human), a canker on the skin, or after dressing the animal it had a cyst or bird shot in the animal. Yet again, predators have a cunning sixth sense we cannot detect using human objective criterion and general observation.
Clearly, the Royal Bengals becoming aggressive to the rifleman during the daytime hours is due to some behavior detectable to the tiger about the human behavior, likely something perceived that has nothing to do with the firearm. (body posture, state of mind, difference in aggressive stress as a predator rather than defensive stress from the unarmed members of the party, etc.)
@rookhawk
You are correct . Observe these pug marks of a marauding Royal Bengal tigress which I had to hunt down recently .
One of the animal’s toes is showing an abnormality . She was impaled through the toe with a porcupine quill and thus , bit part of her own toe off ( in an attempt to stop the pain ) . Like all marauding Royal Bengal tigers , she would stalk stalk wood cutters and / or honey collectors for hours through the Sundarban mangrove forests . But she would always attack the weakest and most frail member of the party .
Marauding Royal Bengal tigers will always ( without exception ) go after the weakest possible prey which they can come across . In fact , the very reason why Royal Bengal tigers and cheetahs become marauders is because they perceive human beings as weaker prey than Axis deer or wild boars .
I will relate one small incident from December , 1972 . Hunting Royal Bengal tigers for sport was still not formally prohibited in Bangladesh , so I used to hunt them for their hides ( which used to fetch a great deal of money ) . I did not possess my .458 Winchester Magnum until 1977 , so I was forced to make do with only my Laurona 12 bore side-lock ejector ( loaded with Eley Alphamax LG shells ) at the time .
It was 2:00 AM at night , in the Sundarban mangrove forests . I had a Garo tracker ( indigenous people who inhibit the Sundarban mangrove forests ) under my employment . My Laurona 12 bore was in my hands and there was a six cell torchlight clamped to the fore end . The Garo tracker was leading the way and I was following him . We came across three Royal Bengal tigers lying down under some Banyan trees . One was a male and two of them were tigresses . Their hides were extremely high in quality and so we decided that we found what we were looking for .
After closing in on them to within 20 feet range , I switched on the torchlight and immediately fired my left barrel at the region where the male’s neck met the shoulder . He gave the characteristic death growl and we knew that he was done for . Without waiting for the death growl to end , I immediately fired my right barrel at the ear of the first tigress ; taking her out on the spot . By now , I started seeing the second tigress beginning to rise up to her feet . She had now come to her senses about what was going on .
I frantically opened the breech of my Laurona 12 bore and was putting in two fresh Eley Alphamax LG shells , in order to take her out . She locked eyes with me , but simply bounced off into the foliage instead of attacking me and my tracker . My tracker wanted me to take a shot at her , but I declined because I realized that the tigress was pregnant . Besides , I rationalized that I had enough hides for pay the bills for the next three months .
During daytime , I believe that it would be suicide attempting to hunt a Royal Bengal tiger with a shotgun .