Hi all,

I did Morocco photo safari and the Namibia hunt last year and am probably going to do a late Fall Egypt thing. I am seriously considering a Tiger Safari in India this year too.

I have been to Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam, and seen most of Europe. I want to try this India thing. Like I said before my mother's family lived in India, Pakistan, and Banglandesh in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Anyone know of a good operator for this India Tiger Shikar?

Hi D99,

Mehulkamdar is the best person here to help you.PM him and he will only be too glad.Do not forget to post the results of your photo shoot of Big Strpes.

Best-
Locksley,R.

I will have to get some fake fur and a taxidermy form and eyes for my tiger and mount him next to my other trophys.

D99

I was visiting two Indian National Parks only a week and a half ago.

I visited two parks:

Kanha and Bandhavgargh (splg?) for a short few days with a longer holiday visiting the famous sights of Rajahstan and also Agra.

I will posting comments and photos of the experience somewhere soon but here are a few to start off with. Mixed comments.

The game viewing as a whole was a wonderful experience and ranked with many African parks. Large herds of deer: chital; barasingha (Kanha); sambar; barking deer. Plus other game: Gaur (Kanha); jungle cat; wild boar; jackal; wild dog; peacock; red jungle fowl, etc. Tiger of course, we saw three, which was a low number. Leopard and sloth bear, we didn't sight anyone but some people do (rare).

Tiger can be sighted by two methods:

- elephants are used to walk the trails of the park and then push into the bush/jungle to follow-up sign or where as Corbett said, the "jungle folk" are telling you a tiger is located. If they find one and it is close enough to a trail, more elephants will be called up and they will take tourists on the back of an elephant (usually a couple each trip) to view the tigers, for a short time each. There can be a LOT of people waiting for this.

- driving around the park tracks in an open jeep. Looking for tiger sign. Listening for tiger growls and roars. Listening to deer and bird sounds which indicate a tiger is near. When a tiger is believed to be located, lots of other jeeps also congregate. If a tiger is actually sighted, madness starts with the number of vehicles and pushing and shoving. As I said, mixed comments.

Comments and photos to come.

Sounds like the San Diego Wild Animal Park we have out here...

NitroX,

You were fortunate to see tigers in Rajasthan. Sariska was recently completely shot out by poachers and no tigers are to be found there. Sadly, they are becoming extinct all over India even as we post here.

D99,

Please let me know when you plan on going and I shall try and suggest a few options. This may be the last that anyone would get to see tigers in the wild in India. Sometimes, I wonder whether I would find anything worth looking at when I go back to the land of my birth.

Robin,

Good to see you here. John Buxton knows of a very nice 30-06 at Minsterley if you're interested in taking one back. He said that they would hold it for you while you were at Warwick. Do check with him if you're interested.

Best wishes,

Something needs to be done to end this. It would really be a shame if Tigers were wiped from their natural habitat. Maybe offer 1 Tiger hunt for 5 Mil. That should be enough to properly patrol they area. Poachers being executed on sight wouldn't hurt either.

Nitrox, I know what you mean about photo safaris. I was on a Photo Safari in the Kruger maybe 10 years ago and there was a melanistic leopard sighted at night. Everyone at the lodge we were staying at rushed to see it in the tree. It was cool though.

On a side note if you were lucky enough to be hunting leopard and a melanistic leopard showed up in the tree, could you shoot it? I imagine you could but not sure.

Mehulkamdar,

I think it would be wonderful to see it. I am planning Kanha, Bandhavgarh, and Ranthanmbore. And seeing the Taj.

quote:

Originally posted by mehulkamdar:
NitroX,

You were fortunate to see tigers in Rajasthan. Sariska was recently completely shot out by poachers and no tigers are to be found there. Sadly, they are becoming extinct all over India even as we post here.

Bandhavagarh and Kanha are not in Rajahstan but in Madhya Pradesh. The Rajahstan trip was a tourist trip, we then transferred by train to Jabalpur and car to Kanha. Bandhavagarh is to the North of Kanha. The nearest airport is Kharurago.

We saw two tigers at Kanha by elephant but missed an extremely long and good sighting of two to three animals on and near a road for almost two hours. Our vehicle was one of the few (out of a hundred vehicles that day) which did not see the sighting . We were three days (5 game drives) at Kanha.

I believe there are supposed to be about 350 tigers in Kanha currently. Only a small amount of the park can be visited by tourists. I was promised to be sent this years census statistics which is supposed to come out about now.

At Bandavagarh we saw a male tiger for a few seconds walking in the forest from the vehicle. Got that on video however. We were only at Bandavagrah for 1 1/2 days (3 game drives) which wasn't long enough.

Luck plays a big part. When we were there it was at the end of a long period of excessive tourism. The end of school holidays with a lot of domestic tourism. Sightings had dropped off a lot. Some days no tigers were spotted, but some lucky people saw two or three or more each day and most game drives.

Will go back for a longer period again and also plan to visit Corbet National Park in the North (but not mid-winter), maybe November. Maybe Nepal as well.

Of course these tigers are used to human activity. I do not think they would be that difficult to hunt, or poach in the parks.

D99

The hotels and "tiger resorts" normally orgainse the game viewing vehicles for the parks. I can tell you which ones I used and also get some recommendations or not from some other tourist we met if I get a reply from their email addresses. We agreed to swap digital photos.

I don't think there are such things as "outfitters". Also all the hotels/resorts are outside the parks and you enter for a morning drive and an afternoon drive with enforced starting times (no earlier) in the morning (6:30 am (?)) being out by midday and again in at around 2:30 pm and out a half hour before dark (5:30 pm.

Nitro PM me with the information. Thanks for sharing, I am looking forward to doing it.

D99,

Feel free to PM me when you schedule your Egypt trip. You also might consider coming a bit later (December) and bird hunting with us (provided they dont cancel the season again due to bird flu concerns).

Best,

John

That sounds like a hell of an idea, thanks I will.

Seth

D99,

This website has details of most of the commonly visited wildlife sanctuaries in India. If you plan on visiting the Taj in Delhi it would give you access to several options for seeing tigers because Delhi is centrally located in India.

Corbett is a fantastic choice for a sanctuary as it borders Nepal and if you go there you could also visit Kaziranga which is the last home of the Indian one horned rhino.

If you plan on visiting the South, Mudumalai in Tamilnadu and Periyar in Kerala are good choices for tiger, gaur and wild elephant.

Best wishes and do let me know if there is anything that I could do. If you would like to visit gun shops in and around Delhi and in Rajasthan, I could give you a list of addresses as well.

NitroX,

Sorry - I didn't know where you visited. I would personally take the Indian pug mark censuses with a truck load of salt - the Forest departments have been known to lie in the past and the situation is most probably a lot worse than it was even two years ago.

I'll ask my cousin Nomito Kamdar who works along with her husband S L N Swamy, a former Forester turned environmental activist about the current situation and post whatever information I get from them over here when I get it. They have the background as well as the inside knowledge to get hold of information that the government doesn't want made public.

Cheers!

They say there are 5000 "domestic tigers" living in North America. I would say that's pretty close to half of the total bengal tiger popoulation worldwide.

D99

India claims to have 3,500 tigers with India also claiming most other countries having as low as a dozen to several hundred.

If there are 5,000 tigers in the USA hopefully some can be consolidated and got breeding somewhere.

D99/NitroX,

Numbers that I have been given seem to indicate that there are more than 10,000 tigers in private as well as public zoos in the USA. This number is more than the total number of tigers in the wild in the rest of the world.

I would take the Indian numbers with more than a truck load of salt.

Our domestic tigers are a pain in the ass. We have enough of them that we could open a hell of a season.

People do whatever they can to own them, including sacraficing life and limb.

I wish that we would have put some island aside years ago for a preserve and made that work. Perhaps in BC, or those Channel islands in CA.

Cast your eye over these.



Some photos for your enjoyment. The photo below will change from time to time. To excite anyone interested in India, wildlife, historical and current.




.

Is there any way to go on a darting safari for tigers, or is that considered entirely too dangerous?

Nice stuff, I can't wait!

NitroX,

Yesterday rumours seem to have hit the Indian media about tigers going "missing" in Ranthambhore. I really wish the bloody politicians and bureaucrats in charge could be lynched!

This is a little place south of Oklahoma City. When I was there, the owners were struggling to keep the place going. There were some great cats, albeit in cages, but nice examples... They had a fund raiser, where for $50 donation, you could play with, hold, or take a pic with tiger or lion cubs... It was kinda cool to play with baby tigers...

Nitro,

Like your photograph of the Taj with the flowers in the foreground.

Hope we get to see some more.

Lynx

quote:

This may be the last that anyone would get to see tigers in the wild in India. Sometimes, I wonder whether I would find anything worth looking at when I go back to the land of my birth.

Indians multiply like rabbits. Pity that there are not enough man-eating tigers to control the population.

Sunshine,

Here is something a little more sunny than that!

Here are some pix of some of my father's trophies from the good old days!

10' 2" Tiger shot with 9mm Mauser. He shot 21 of them and said he could have shot more had he wanted to! Sadly he died attempting to save a friend's son from drowning and many of his stories went with him.

Mind you none of these were hunted with PHs in tow. Most of them he shot while hunting with native shikaris and Gond tribals who were his trackers and who lived in the jungles.



42" Sambur Stag also shot with 9mm Mauser




Nilghai also shot with 9mm Mauser


A pair of tigers shot with 425 Westley Richards.

reddy

Some interesting historical photos.

Some more 'recent' random photos.

I think another photo-op that few people think of in India is the Gir Forest, and the Asiatic lions that are found there.