Bandhavgarh National Park

A pack of four jackals on the left flank of the road seemed absorbed with something in the Rajbhera grassland in Bandhavgarh, and were so engaged that they paid little notice to our presence just less than seven or eight metres away.

- Abhay K. Singh, IFS

We parked and sat patiently for about twenty minutes whispering wild guesses. The favourite postulation seemed to be that there was a kill in the tall elephant grass. If we had been on elephant back we would have been able to enter the great wall of grass, but since it was higher than our vehicle, we had to resort to guesswork. At this point, without warning, a pack of three dholes went past us... following a sambar family! Only, this time they moved to our right. We were aware from reports written by S. H. Prater (1948) that wild dogs sometimes intermingle with grazing sambar, predator and prey often ignoring each other. So we were not really expecting any great activity from this lot. It was 9.10 a.m. and the sun was fairly high as the sambar family crossed the road followed by the pack. Suddenly all hell broke loose in the thick bamboo brakes about 20 m. from us. We could see nothing, but could make out from the sounds that a hunt was indeed in progress. Our riveted concentration was suddenly broken by the sound of another vehicle heading in our general direction. The vehicle would almost certainly have wound its way towards us as it wa