The killer tiger in Karnataka's Bandipur reserve forest continues to elude the state guards as the hunt to capture it entered the third day on Friday.
"No sign of the tiger yet as it does not remain at one place. Hundreds of wildlife tourists visit Bandipur on safari but see a tiger once or twice as they are not easy to spot in a dense forest. We are doing camera trapping to locate it (killer tiger) and the hunt is on," state's Principal Chief Conservator (wildlife) Sanjay Mohan told IANS on phone from the forest.
The Bandipur tiger reserve, a popular tourist destination in southern India, is an 872 square km reserve forest in Chamarajanagar district on the border with Tamil Nadu. It is about 220 kms southwest of Bengaluru.
"We will not be able to comb every inch of the forest for the feline, which is likely to be a male, but the areas it usually frequents," Mohan, who joined the forest guards in the search on Friday, said.
The search operation is being conducted by the forest guards as per the guidelines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).
"Camera traps will show and we have information on the big cat's movements for the last couple of months. We know where it roams around," Mohan said, adding the search gets difficult if the tiger is hiding in the thickets.
Noting that the chances of spotting a tiger on the move were better, the official said if the animal remained still at one spot or hiding, it would be hard to locate it, as the guards' movements are blocked in a thick jungle.
"We can't chop all the forest to find the tiger. Only when it moves around, we can see it and try to capture it," Mohan pointed out.
Shivappa was the second victim of the big cat, which turned a man-eater two months ago when it claimed its first victim, identified as Shivamadaiah, in the same area in mid-September when he was returning to his village with two bullocks from another village.
Surprisingly, no tiger in Bandipur was radio tagged, a scientific method of tracking wild animals round the clock.
"Radio tagging is done for experiments or studying the behaviour of animals like tiger and how they live in their home range or protected area," added Mohan.