“They had become veritable refugees in their own homes, stalked by a specter that seemed able to kill them at will,” Huckelbridge writes of the residents of one such village. The tiger started his campaign of death with the indigenous Tharu, who lived in mud-walled huts in the jungles of Western Nepal, before moving on to the Kumaon region of Northern India, bringing entire villages to their knees.
Operating with “almost supernatural efficacy,” the tiger was “the most prolific serial killer of human life the world had ever seen,” writes Dane Huckelbridge in “ No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History” (William Morrow), out Tuesday. It was the legendary Man-Eater of Champawat, which at the turn of the 20th century inflicted a seven-year reign of terror on swaths of rural India and Nepal, killing an estimated 436 men, women and children. Razor claws shredded the victim’s flanks, powerful jaws snapped the neck, and in seconds it was over, the beast dragging its quarry into the trees for a gorging. With stunning speed, the beast would pounce. Some rustling in the tall grass maybe, or the whisper of padded feet, but nothing to suggest the explosion of primal savagery that followed. When the strike came, it happened without warning. Tribe could resume whale hunt after 20-year battle with activist groups Gun discharges at North Carolina turkey shoot, sends four to hospital Texas hunter accidentally kills 11-year-old daughter in gun mishapħ0-year-old hunter shoots, kills mama bear that bit him in France
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