Gavin,
My country has beautiful jungles full of fauna & flora , and had been a great hunting destinations once upon a time but after 1972 there has been a complete ban on feline hunting due to the decimation of Tiger & Panther population, and after 1999 hunting of all game legally has been banned.
We only have 1411 tigers and may be 6000 odd leopards left in the wild today , as the poaching is rampant and the Government with all its might is trying to curb it , but its of no avail , ill legal hunting is still on and it seems Tigers would vanish from his home land for ever.
At the turn of the century we nearly had 40000-50000 tigers , but all been hunted legally and ill legally , and its existence now has a bleak future and its very disheartening, I am few of the lucky ones to have seen them in wild and experience the allure of this magnificent animal which the poet William Blake has described in the best of manner:::
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Its a new fascination and an experience when ever you see a Tiger in the forests. And the flame is dying which is unfortunate and sad for this country .
Leopards are very elusive and are very rarely sighted but I do see them at times near my farm lands as they lurk around for goats & dogs, there have been spordiac human attacks but since quite many years never heard of a man eating Tiger but did have few leopards killing humans in few of the states.
The famous man eating leopard of Rudraprayag was killed in 1926 which was responsible for 125 reported human kills . And the famous tigress which had 436 human kills to her credit was the man eater of Champawat shot in 1911 . Both of these man eaters were silenced by Jim Corbett the famous hunter and a conservationist.
So this was little on the cat situation today in India
Are there any hounds for sale? would they be compatible with my rotweilers and great danes ?
Monish