In October there is usually some rain in the Mudumalai Sanctuary, but last year, after a long spell of drought, it was specially heavy. Wearing a mackintosh, I was out most days in the natural teak forest near Theppakkadu, following a large composite herd of gaur on elephant back.
These composite herds, which I have been studying for some years now, come to this particular forest in September-October. They stay there for anything from a week to a month, depending on the amount of disturbance they have to put up with, and the break up into smaller herds, each with only one dominant bull in it. The tokens by which one may know a composite herd are unmistakable-it is obviously too large to be a single herd, any thing from 30 to 70 animals, and moving with the herd, or in a loose party a little away from it, are the big herd bulls, two, three, or even four; usually there are other lesser, but adult, bulls also in the herd, and these are often brownish and markedly smaller size.
The remarkable feature of this association is that many careful observers have taken it for granted that though there is no defined breeding season in gaur, a herd bull will not allow the near presence of a rival, particularly when a cow is in season. I am unable to find out what length of sustained observation backs this general statement, and I realise that the circumstances in which the observation was made were probably very different from those in which I made my study. All that I can say is that among gregarious polygamous animals herd loyalties and rivalries, and the assertiveness of the dominant male, are governed by unreasoned, instinctive compulsions, and that it is unlikely in the extreme that with territory (especially feeding grounds) now severely limited and dwindled, such animals will adopt an intelligent course of peaceful coexistence.
And I am now quite sure that gaur, at times, particularly when on the move to new feeding grounds soon after the first rains, do live for weeks together in a large composite herd; I have repeatedly seen two or three master bulls in such herds each running with a cow of his choice which was in season, or patently getting into season. I have also seen herd bulls fighting each other in October, and, as already reported in this column (February, 1964) once witnessed the remarkable sight of such a fight being broken up by a subsidiary bull, followed by the entire herd, running between the combatants. Such combats, evidently, are territorial fights, and are entered into by bulls belonging to different herds, sometimes to different composite herds.
Actually the breaking up of a composite herd seems to be quite peaceful ~ the different herds, with their bulls, just drift apart. As already said this breaking up is hastened by the herd being disturbed by men, and I have known a very large herd which I had been studying for days, stampede and break up in consequence of the sanctuary authorities attempting to round it up in order to exhibit it to some visiting VIPs.
When there is a heavy downpour a single herd of gaur usually keeps very much together, and shelters under large trees in a tight, oblong formation with the young calves in the middle, but a composite herd tends to break up into two or three such parties, and the big bulls often move off some distance.
One of the most evocative sounds the jungle has to offer is the long-drawn, reverberating low of a big bull separated from the herd and calling to it. I heard this call repeatedly in October last, soon after the downpour had stopped and the scattered herd reassembled. The call is sounded by the bulls with the head held low, chin up, at the stretch of the neck; it is not a loud sound, but nevertheless far-reaching, and in the hush that follows the swish of the rain and the sigh of the wind in the forest when the downpour stops abruptly, this call has an ineffable charm that only those that have heard it can know.
This was published on 6 February 1967