Tonight , l will share an account to all of my dear readers about a man eating panther which certainly knew how to rack up a body count - 20 people dead and 7 injured in the 46 days that it terrorized the village of Takalghat , in the state of Maharashtra, India. It was also unusual among all the man eating panthers which l had killed in my entire career , because it simply did not fear people at all , even in large groups. Let us begin , dear readers.
Our story begins in April of 1968 , 1 of the hottest months of the year , in India. I was in Nagpur at the time , having successfully finished guiding a French client for a royal Bengal tiger shikar . So l had a week free , before another client would come to Allwyn Cooper Limited , on the 23rd.
I was using these free days to spend time with my girl friend and we had gone to an ice cream parlor 1 day , when news about the man eater first came to me . A vanilla ice cream cone used to cost 20 paise back in those days and a chocolate ice cream cone used to cost 25 paise back then . While we were enjoying our ice creams , we were casually chatting with the owner of the ice cream parlor , a kind , elderly gentleman named Mr. Gupta .
Mr . Gupta was talking about how 1 of his relative's children in Takalghat ( a village a few hours away from Napgur ) had been killed by a man eating panther . My shikaree's instincts got the better of me and l asked Mr. Gupta more about this panther . Mr. Gupta told us that the panther had killed over a dozen people and that the authorities were offering a big reward for the destruction of this brute . However , he did not know many other details about this man eating menace. No matter .
I began to ask around and l soon gathered enough information about this man eater . It was a forest panther , which had claimed 19 lives ( till now ) and the local authorities were offering 1000 rupees for it's death. This was considerably more than the average amount which local authorities would typically offer for the destruction of man eaters and nuisance animals back in those days.
Knowing that l had some free time before my next client came to Allwyn Cooper Limited for royal Bengal tiger shikar , l decided to try my luck in hunting down this man eater .
I asked my good friend and shikaree partner , the German American , Tobin Stakkatz if he would like to accompany me in hunting this brute down .
Old Tobin always had a love for challenges and a desire to save innocent people from getting harmed. He immediately agreed and we made plans to visit Takalghat .
In the next part of this 3 part article , l will relate what we found when we had reached Takalghat and the preparations which we had to take .
Below , l have provided a photograph taken from the internet of an Indian forest panther , as l do not wish to reveal the photograph of the panther killed by us , until the climax of this article.
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