Safaris in Kanha National Park

Using your senses to find a tiger

The tiger hunts primarily by sight and hearing, with the sense of smell as a poor third in importance. It is a striking coincidence that your eyes and  ears are the best senses to use when you are hunting a tiger with your camera in hand.
Tigers are fond of using roads to patrol  their territories or  to seek  indications of prey, so seeing a tiger on the  road is  not uncommon, especially during  the early morning (sunrise +90 minutes)  or the late afternoon (sunset – 90 minutes). But theroads  offer  little or no cover, which is one  of the  tiger’s  most  basis need

                                                                                                                       
Tigers  move  through deep jungle,  long   grass,  bamboo thickets,  or long the edge (called the “ecotone”) of forest and open meadow. Tigers love the  deep gullies or nallahs made by watercourses, which offer tem cool shade  as well as excellent opportunities for the ambush of an unwary deer. Even when they are nearby, tigers can be silent and perfectly camouflaged in their surroundings that it is said that for each tiger you spot in the jungle, five tigers have already sen you. So, if you are not lucky enough to see a tier ambling down a road or sitting out in the open, how can you improve your chances of a sighting?

The key to successful tier spotting lies in the jungle’s  reactions to the animal’s movement.  When  the  king  of  the  forest is on the move,  his  kingdom is as responsive as the court of any  of the  great Indian emperors.  Peacocks  blare, sambar bell, spotted deer call, langurs explode in cough-like alarms, jungle fowl screech, bison  whistle  softly,  and  barking deer  emit  the impossibly raucous bark for which they are named. The continuous repetition of such call, as well as their  combination from two  or  more  species in  the  same  small  area  of forest, is a very good sign that a tiger is moving nearby.

Pugmarks:
If an imaginary  square were  placed  around the  extremities of an adult  male tiger’s pug mark, the dimensions might measure anywhere from 14 to  17^th cm on each side. A typical adult female pug mark would square off within a  range of 111/2 – 15 cm. Exception may occur, of course. From these pugmark’s  one can  get  several  useful   information  like  sex,  direction  and rate of  travel, presence  of  dependent cubs with the  mother,  and  other activities  such as drinking, rolling sitting, or even making kill.

Tiger Show’s in Kanha:
In addition to sighting of Tiger by vehicle,  Kanha also offers its  visitors  the chance of seeing the tigers by elephant back. In fact, the tiger show, as it is locally referred to , offers most tourists their best chance of seeing a tiger in Kanha.

Early in the morning at Kanha, Kisli and Gorehela Camp on the Mukki side of the park, the ark mahouts and their elephants begin  tracking  operations. Tracking may be suspended or cancelled if special circumstances  warrant,  but the  park makes considerable efforts  to  insure  that  the  trackers  look for  tigers  with reasonable regularity. If the  mahouts are  successful  in  finding a  cooperative tiger ( one  that  is sitting  still  for considerable  time)  they  send  a  wireless message to headquarters. Visitors are then allowed to drive on the nearest road position, hence they are taken into the jungle on elephant back to View  Tiger. The mahouts are successful roughly 70% of the time.