----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. Krishnan : Hazaribagh Sambar : The Sunday Statesman : 22 September 2019
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAMBAR
(Browtine,Sore-patch)

" THE FEATURE of Haharibagh National Park is its Sambar. By day, they stay in deep cover, but with dusk come out to the roadsides and licks and the rare pools of water. In the course of three summers, in 1968,69 and 70 I have seen many hundreds of Sambar in Hazaribagh at night, and early in the morning and late in the evening, and while undoubtedly many were these animals I saw more than once, they were of all sizes, from young fawns to dark, burly old stags with impressively heavy antlers.

Two features about these Hazaribagh Sambars were especially noteworthy. Most of the Stags were in hard horn when I saw them, and in full-grown animals the 'browtine' was usually exceptionally long and heavy, though the antlers themselves were of medium size. This notable development of the brow tine is a feature of Sambar in parts of Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh ; I have not seen enough Sambar in Uttar Pradesh to be able to say if this is a feature of the animals there, too, but Sambar seen elsewhere in peninsular India did not display this development of the brow tine.

The second and more note-worthy, feature of Sambar here was that though I kept looking for it specially, in not a single animal did I notice a 'sore-patch'. The occurrence of the sore-patch in Sambar at the base of the throat,where it joins the chest in a symmetrical, median, bare extravasated patch of variable size, with a small, central, white-lipped tubercle when well developed) is something already discussed in this column years ago (23 August 1964). I do not propose to recapitulate that discussion here, but it may be said that the invariably symmetrical, median ventral location of the patch at the base of the neck, as well as the fact that in the same animal the sore- patch diminishes and increases in size, suggests a glandular origin for it - it may, for these very reasons, be also connected in some way with the nervous system. Anyway, the sore-patch is something peculiar to Sambar, not known in any other kind of deer.

Schaler thinks the sore-patch has a glandular origin, and suggests that it is probably connected with the rut in Sambar and serves to establish a scent- trail. I am unable to agree with the latter part of this view : I do not think the sore-patch has any sexual significance, for I have seen it on Sambar both in summer and in winter (November- January), and also on stags in velvet - I have even seen, and photographed, a heavily gravid hind with an extensive patch, and also hinds with very young fawns that displayed it - the hinds, not the young.

To return to Hazaribag , how is it that Sambar here are so unanimously free of the 'sore-patch' in February-March, when most of the stags are still in hard horn - when I have even seen stags following hinds and sniffing at their hind quarters? "

- M. Krishnan
This was published on 30 January 1972

.