News — Tigers

On an April evening in 1930, in the hills of northern India, a man eased down a narrow ravine — a clutch of nightjar eggs carried with care, a rifle at the ready. He stepped clear of a great slab of rock, looked back over his right shoulder — and straight into the face of a man-eating tigress.

The rifle lay across his chest, pointing away from her. To bring it to bear, the muzzle would have to travel three-quarters of a circle. One-handed. So slowly that the movement itself could not be seen.

The man was Jim Corbett — and those few seconds have been argued over for ninety years. At the centre of the argument stands one particular rifle, with a number in a London gunmaker’s ledger, and a silver plaque engraved with the wrong initials.

But this is not the story of that rifle. It is the story of all of them.

The Rose & Scroll Fine Gun Journal presents… Jim Corbett’s Gun Cabinet: A Life in Steel...

Watch the video here or on YouTube or the Rose and Scroll website. If you enjoy it, you can read in detail about the life and legacy of Jim Corbett in Ian Douglas new book, Undiscovered Corbett. 

The rifle used by Jim Corbett, owned by Rigby & Co. It was a .275 Mauser presented to him in 1907 for killing the Champawat man-eater. A fascinating memento of an extraordinary man, as documented in Hero of Kumaon by Duff Hart-Davis.