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24Sep2022

The Day of the Jackal

One afternoon, when we were at the Ringora Road and Cheetal Bhatiya junction of Bijrani zone of Corbett NP, when we heard a lot of commotion ahead on the Cheetal Bhatiya side. Sambar deer, spotted deer and rhesus macaques were giving out loud alarm calls simultaneously. We were pretty sure that most likely a big cat is out there somewhere. As we moved little bit ahead, we could see the herd and also saw a lone tusker moving towards Ringora. We stopped our Gypsy at the river bed and waited patiently for few minutes to observe the scenario and tried to understand the possible location of the predator. Calls were still going out loud but we couldn't see any predator movement anywhere. So we decided to move ahead and see further; then we came across this one of the very rare event in nature!

A few meters ahead of our Gypsy, there is this Jackal which has grabbed a medium sized Spotted Deer fawn by it's throat and dragged it further by ten feet across the gypsy track. There it left the fawn half dead and moved to the other side of the river to devoir over his another existing kill.
Unlike big carnivores, a much smaller carnivore, Jackal prefers to prey on smaller species like rodents, lagomorphs, shrews and smaller insectivores; whereas the prey size photographed here is much larger compared to its size of preyed species.

This is an extraordinary documentation that supports some behavioral characteristics of Golden Jackal. Jackals are opportunistic hunters and scavengers so they never let go an easy kill. The Spotted Deer fawn some how got isolated from its herd and the Jackal targeted it as an easy meal.

P.S.: Golden Jackals that are found in India only has four subspecies. Specie photographed here is a Canis aureus indicus, which is the which is found northern India; whereas, Spotted Deer specie shown here is Axis axis Erxleben, 177782.   

This nearly half an hour event was documented during the GoingWild tour of Corbett in April-May 2014.

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The jackal trying to drag the fawn to the other side of the game track after grabbing the fawn by its cheek. We thought that the kill has already been made.	The deer fawn was alive and struggling to free itself. Surprise!	More surprise awaited us! The jackal left the fawn and ran away to the other side of the river bed to feast on an existing kill.

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The fawn started bleeding from it's nose and mouth. The clever jackal had punctured at places on the fawn's face and throat, and then had left it to bleed to death!	The brave soul tried it's best to fight it out for the survival.	A sad end! But it's nature and survival of the fittest is a rule out there. The body was out there till next day noon, after that it vanished!

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