4 ideas
Despite his skill and several close-range opportunities, each attempt failed through improbable mishaps, and he finally abandoned the hunt without being able to explain it. The episode is a documented case of a rigorous, evidence-minded hunter recording an outcome he could not account for, without dismissing the local belief.
A tiger turns to killing people when a wound or infirmity leaves it unable to hunt its natural prey. The Muktesar tigress had lost an eye and carried dozens of porcupine quills in a foreleg, so humans became the only prey she could still catch. Man-eating is therefore a symptom of disability, often caused by humans through careless shooting, and is not evidence of the species' character.
Corbett located hidden tigers by reading the warning signals of other animals rather than by searching for the tiger itself. Alarm calls from langurs, deer and birds, and the direction in which they moved, showed where the predator was and what it was doing. A dangerous, invisible agent can be tracked through the reactions of everything around it.
Corbett argued that the tiger's real threat is people, not the other way round. He foresaw its decline as forests were cleared, firearms spread and sport shooting went unchecked. He saw the animal's reputation as a savage killer as a distortion built from a few injured exceptions, and argued that this distortion helped justify its destruction.