A lucky find ... A Royal Shikar

amazing find!
thanks for sharing

Thanks Nick.. Fascinating.

Don

Stu,

I just typed in: "skeletons in colonial closets"

zambian,

Dehradun is still a beautiful place with a romance that goes back to Corbett and Anderson's days. The Central Indian states allow far easier gun ownership than other parts of India and you still see people walking there carrying guns on the streets and no one bats an eyelid. Mussorie, which is in the hills above, allows some bird hunting - for Coucal (a type of pheasant) and boar.

You should go back there on a holiday if you find time. The place is a lot more crowded than it was before but it still has the old charm in spades.

Good hunting!

I really appreciate that post since I'm sitting in India.

When I go to Bhavnagar to look at our logistics base I stay in the Nilambag Palace which was the old home of the Maharaja. They likewise have a lot of old photos and mounts. They have one photo similar to what you show. Two tigers laid out in front of a palace. Of the hunters posing, a number are wearing ties. Lord Mountbatten and his wife are in the photo.

Rather sad in many respects, not least of all the fact that tigers are no longer plentiful in India. Most of the Maharajas fell on hard times when independence came to India in the late 40s I'm told. They lost their power and influence to a great extent. Some like this one turned their home into a hotel.

I thought one of the stupidist acts of the IRA was the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.

Thanks again for the post.

NitroX,

If the government had the will to kick the PFA (Indian wing of PETA) idiots out and concentrate on building up the old system of hunting preserves, India would be a top notch hunting destination in about 5 to 10 years. There is a lot of government as well as private (owned by the erstwhile maharajas and zamindars) land that could be brought up to any hunting standards you would like to compare it to if only the encroachments on it (again supported by the bloody NGOs who talk about Human Rights here after animal rights) were ended.

The sad fact is that the Indian members here have to hide under aliases because they cannot afford to be targetted by the PFA fascists in India. I personally came to know how many Indians there were on AR only two weeks ago.

Sad, but the only hunting that we may see in India is likely to be the bigger crop predators like Nilgai in the future in addition to the boars which are now so numerous that they have to sell permits for them on an open basis.

Good hunting!

Boghossian,

The Indian elephant is a much smaller animal than the African and only males have tusks. Elephant hunting was never a big thing in India as the Indians had domesticated the elephant in history. It would have been the equivalent of shooting a farmyard horse or cow.

The game that was treasured above all else was the tiger and some archives in India still have black and white footage of the old beaten game hunts. It isn't considered politically correct to even acknowledge that these exist, of course, unless you request a copy to either make a statement against hunting or imperialism. Bloody sad!

If Indian hunting was revived and sustainable harvests could be made on serious game animals, it would beat (IMO) any country in Africa hands down. And think of the revenues it would bring in espcially if most of these went to local populations and back into funding conservation projects.

Grand game animals - Indian elephant, tiger, leopard, gaur, water buffalo + nilgai, blackbuck, sambar, chital, hog deer, wild boar, waterfowl, peafowl, pheasants. Plus Indian culture and cuisine. When can I book?

But is there enough open space left for such an idea?