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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 4 4 killer as this and gripped my rifle, knowing that in a moment the killer would reach the dead man's body. Its approach grew louder and louder. Anytime a man-eater comes to a kill, it is always a moment of extreme tension and excitement. Every nerve in my body was taut. Every sense was alert. Then the large, dark body of an animal came into view, making directly for the kill. I slowly placed the gun to my shoulder. My adrenaline rapidly drained as I looked at a wild pig rather than the leopard! Knowing that the villagers would have never accepted the abhorrent possibility of a pig desecrating the dead body, I had no choice but to kill the animal, which fell dead at my shot. Within moments I heard the excited shouting of my tracker and the villagers as they scurried up the hill, anticipating the death of the man-eater. I knew they would be disappointed but the circumstances were such that there was no other alternative. It was a quiet and dejected group that returned to the village that night, carrying with it the remains of the latest victim for proper burial. O n January 11 I was called from my home late in the afternoon by a villager on a bicycle imploring me to quickly follow him to the burial ground near Nuagam. He had been on his way to town and had seen a leopard brazenly exhuming a body in broad daylight. He insisted that if we hurried we might still find him there. I found all this a bit hard to believe but quickly slung my rifle over my shoulder, and we pedaled as fast as we could to the place where he had seen the leopard. We parked the bicycles and quietly approached the burial site concealed by a small hedge. Peering cautiously over the top, I was amazed to see the leopard still pawing the ground not more than 50 yards away. I sighted over the hedge and fired a shot. The leopard spun about and made one gigantic leap and was gone. Hearing the shot, several men joined us. Although we searched diligently, it soon became too dark to see and we did not find the leopard. Returning the next morning, we resumed the search again, going a bit farther into the bush, looking hopefully for blood spoor which, until then, had eluded us. With no signs to guide us, we were amazed when, quite by accident, we stumbled across the body of the leopard. Regretfully, it had been found by a hyena, which had managed to gnaw on the body and had consumed quite a bit of it. Although this was disappointing, the highlight of the discovery was that the leopard, which was a big male, had a large number of festering porcupine quills deeply imbedded in its left forefoot. The quills must have caused the animal great pain and would certainly have handicapped it in pursuit of normal prey. This, coupled with the fact that the leopard had been attempting to exhume a human body, left little doubt that this was the man-eater. So much for optimistic and hasty conclusions that would soon almost cost us our lives. J anuary 12 dawned as another gloomy, rainy day, but since we felt we now had effectively taken care of the man-eater problem, I was pleased when the midday bus brought in a visitor to break the monotony of a long, lonely day. The man coming to my bungalow proved to be the schoolmaster from a larger village called Gunjibada, which lies about five miles up the road from Dharampur. The man, Surja Singh, informed me that a tiger had killed a milk cow belonging to an elderly widow living in a tiny forest hamlet called Sandrekia. He had been asked by the people of the village to see if he could request my help in killing the animal. Listening to the description, I felt that the matter of shooting a cattle-killing tiger would be quite routine and, not having any other commitments, I told him I would be pleased to help. I borrowed a 12-gauge shotgun and some heavy L.G. shells and, accompanied by my tracker Budiya, we caught the midday bus to Dharampur. After leaving the bus and before beginning our walk to the hamlet, I started to organize my gear and discovered that my 5-cell flashlight, upon which I was entirely dependent for nighttime shooting, had been left on the bus accidentally. There was little we could do except continue our walk toward Sandrekia, although I felt that now the situation totally favored the tiger rather than us. I had with me a rustic lantern with a headlight reflector that had been left behind by American troops serving in India during the war. It was far from adequate, but under the circumstances, the best we had available. Budiya and I decided to give it a try, although we were not very optimistic. Following Surja Singh's directions, we walked along a swiftly flowing mountain stream, and soon after a strenuous climb reached the tiny hamlet, which consisted of all of three huts. Sandrekia was certainly no metropolis, but because of its size, it didn't take long to find where the cow had been pulled down. The kill, we were told, was lying under a small hut located on a hillside a short distanced from the village. A frail woman holding a small infant to her bosom volunteered to show us to the place, and then added that she was the owner of the dead cow. She was visibly moved as she told us that this was