In March, Brad and Ian guided some clients on a short tiger safari in Bandhavgarh National Park. They spent five days on elephant back "hunting" tigers. They were very fortunate to see some extraordinary action including mating tigers on a couple of occasions AND A KILL! Yes, indeed. A tigress killed a spotted deer (chittal) not 15 metres in front of their elephant. For the initiated you will know that this is extremely, extremely rare. What was most striking was the acute sense of hearing of the tiger. She was actually preoccupied at the time hunting a samba (a medium sized deer) when the chittal moved in the leaf matter. No sooner had the chittal stood up when the tigress locked on and covered the 40 metres or so, that separated the two, in a couple of seconds. Needless to say the "coup de grace" was delivered swiftly. Unbelievable!
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