Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Best books about hunting in India?

Have an upcoming trip to a national park with tigers in India and was wondering what the best books about hunting in India are. Doesn't have to be about tigers or just about tigers, but I would prefer at least one about tiger hunting. Trying to get a feel for what it was like when hunting was allowed in India.

Anything (everything) by Jim Corbett.

Yup. Jim corbett.

"Man Eaters of Kumaon", and "The Temple tTiger" are classic books by Corbett. if you can't find one of them, "Jim Corbett's India" is a pretty good collection of short stories.

I picked up a two-volume omnibus of Corbett's stuff on Amazon a few years back. Saves looking for separate books.

RevMike put me on to the books of Kenneth Anderson a while back. He has a slightly different view of the subject and operated a bit to the South of Corbett's territory. You can get free PDFs of his stuff from online archives like archive.org. His stuff on cobras is pretty scary (well, it scared me!).

For more contemporary stuff on India ( which is all pretty old by now),read JOC articles on tiger hunting there.

Also Elgin Gates, "A Trophy Hunter in Asia" IIRC.

Gates is especially good.

Corbett is my favorite of them all, India or Africa.

Safari Press sells their 5-volume collection of Corbett for $100, which is a really good deal.

I first read a Reader's Digest book condensation of Man-eaters of India when I was 11 years old.

I think that Corbett is the best writer about hunting anything anywhere who has ever lived.

I would tend to agree!

Yup,and C.J. McElroy's book "McElroy hunts Asia."

Corbett.....Hands down.

I would say the years available to "hunt India" were fairly limited, and Corbett lived in the center of those.

When I was there I saw no chance of hunting...

There's also Corbett's Jungle Lore, a tiny book that describes his early life and how he acquired his skills.

If you go to Amazon and search "Jim Corbett", you'll hit the jackpot.

There are a couple of chapters in Ruark's Use Enough Gun that will show you how to lose a "dead" tiger and get nicely chewed by a leopard, if either of those notions appeals to you.

Another book written about an earlier era than Corbett's series is THE RIFLE AND HOUND IN CEYLON, by Sir Samuel White Baker. While not strictly India, the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), just off the southeastern coast of India, had many of the same game species. Ceylon was known during Baker's era as a place to hunt elephants and water buffalo, along with sambar, axis deer, and several other species.

Baker notes that: "Although the wild boar is constantly killed, I do not reckon him among the sports of the country, as he is never sought for; death and destruction to the hounds generally being attedant upon his capture. The bear and leopard also do not form separate sports; they are merely killed when met with."

It's a very different book than Corbett's, about a very different sort of hunting (along with more dependance on dogs, the guns are mostly black powder doubles) but well worth reading if you can find a copy. Like Corbett's books, it's been reprinted more than once, but not as often or abundantly.

Asian Hunter by Capt. John Brandt
Another Rifle Another Land has sections on Indian game. This is a J.Y. Jones book.

That is probably true. To me his books are as much a cultural experience as they are a story about hunting. No one wrote as well and as I recall his writings have been used to teach writing skills and in English classes.

Of course this was back in the days when people aspired to write,sadly unlike today.

But I digress.....

Two years in the jungle by William Hornady.He was a tough SOB and probably shot more game in India and Indonesia than any other person.Also a Taxidermist and one of the founders of B&C club.