Okay, lets all imagine stalking an animal while inside a cage.

I mean no insult to anybody here but I have to ask this.

How many of you have ever hunted an animal? Hunting from a still position is the most common method. As long as you have good habitat and didn't drink a bladder-load of coffee, you have a fair chance of seeing game that way.

How about stalked game? When I used to hunt a lot I stalked deer and I got fairly adept. But I spent a hell of a lot of time in the woods in and out of hunting season. Even so, I didn't get a deer every season. Stalking is just really darned difficult and where I live, you have to be able to snapshoot--identify the target and get on it and shoot because the woods are thick and deer are very wary.

If that tiger was in typical chapparal, then the vegetation was thick in the canyon. Modrono and coast liveoak from shoe to overhead. Lots of shadows and linear shadows. The canyons are usually steep and narrow. The ground is close to the color of the tiger and streaked with dark shadows from the narrow limbs and branches. Dart guns are like a low-velocity musket, including singleshot. The gun is not accurate past 30 yards. The dope takes a couple of minutes to be fully effective.

You get in the brush in a steep, narrow canyon with your dart and you stalk a hungry 400# predator.