South tigers healthier, but archives show those in north India mightier

HYDERABAD: Which is the heaviest and weightiest tiger -- south Indian or north Indian? Though genetic studies conducted in the last couple of years show that south Indian tigers are healthier and of good built, archival records and accounts of ‘sportsmen’, who killed tigers during the 19th century, reveal that the tigers found in north India were longer and heavier than their counterparts down the Vindhyas.
The measurements of tigers found in Central India also vary significantly. The longest tiger measured in Hyderabad in British India was 9ft 8 inches from nose to tail, while those found in the north measured 10ft 5 inches, though records of 12ft tigers also exist. The tigress, of course, is shorter and lighter. The heaviest north Indian tiger measured during British India was 247kg. Its counterpart in Central India weighed 255kg and the heaviest one in Hyderabad weighed 203kg.
Brigadier-General Reginald George Burton, who served in the British army in princely Hyderabad and killed about 40 tigers in various hunting seasons, gave a vivid description in his book, The Book of the Tiger (1933), of how tigers were measured by their hunters and how some simply stretched the skin to increase the length of their kill so that they could boast of hunting the biggest of the tigers.
“I measured 40 tigers shot by myself and friends in the Deccan between 1895 and 1899. Of these, measured in a straight line from nose to tip of tail, only two attained a length of 9ft 8 inches, and the largest tigress 8ft 6 inches, including some 3ft of tail. Measured along the curves, the largest might have been as much as 10ft and an inch or two in length,” Burton wrote.
According to him, the Maharaja of Cooch Behar kept a record of game shot between 1871 and 1907. The bag numbered 365 tigers and the longest of them measured 10ft 5 inches, the tail being 3ft 5 inches. The longest tigress was 9ft 54 inches long.
Burton also referred to a news report in The Times of India (March 1932), which gave an account of a tiger killed in south India by Colonel G F Waugh of the US Army (retired). It measured 11ft in length and 4ft high at the shoulder. Burton mentioned that the most complete and important record of the weight of tigers in northern India is that of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, whose heaviest one weighed 247kg, but he shot one which he thought must have been over 272kg.
According to Burton, the heaviest shot by Captain Hunter in the Central Provinces weighed 255kg.
Colonel H Frazer, who hunted in Hyderabad, mentioned the weights of five over 181kg, the heaviest being 203kg. His heaviest tigress weighed 149kg.