What Is the Largest Bengal Tiger Ever Recorded?
He was called the “Bachelor of Powalgarh” and measured 3.23 meters (10.6 feet) from nose to tail. Between 1920 and 1930, he roamed the hill forests of British India’s United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, near the village of Pawalgarh, in what is now the state of Uttarakhand. Although he was not known to be a man-eater, his immense size made him a prized target among game hunters. He earned the nickname “Bachelor” because tigresses were believed to be absent from the area. After years of being pursued, he was finally shot by the British hunter Jim Corbett in 1930. In his 1944 book Man-eaters of Kumaon, Corbett recounts how Bachelor survived after being shot through the face, succumbing to the injuries from the subsequent bullets fired at him four days later.
The length of a tranquilized or dead tiger is determined in one of two ways—by measuring the straight distance between two pegs placed near the nose and the tip of the tail of the animal or by placing the tape measure over the animal’s body and following the natural curvature from the nose to the tail tip. The over-curves measurement tends to be greater than the between-pegs measurement because it accounts for the bulges and contours of the body.
For more than 30 years, Bachelor continued to be one of the largest Bengal tigers ever recorded in the Indian wilderness. Then in 1967 an even larger tiger was killed in Uttar Pradesh. When measured over the curves of his body, this unnamed Bengal tiger stretched 3.38 meters (11.1 feet) in length—almost the length of a compact sports utility vehicle (SUV). He weighed approximately 389 kg (about 858 pounds). By comparison the average Bengal tiger typically attains a length of about 3.2 meters (10.5 feet) and weighs about 295 kg (650 pounds). Experts suspect that the unusually heavy weight of the Uttar Pradesh tiger—greater than that of a Harley-Davidson Road Glide touring motorcycle—was partly due to a buffalo meal consumed the night before he was killed.
India’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries have been home to several iconic Bengal tigers, many of them renowned for their massive size. In the absence of scientific evidence, wildlife enthusiasts remain divided over which tiger deserves the crown as the largest: Waghdoh of Tadoba-Andhari National Park, who is said to have sired more than 40 cubs; the Umarpani male of Kanha National Park, widely regarded as the park’s colossus; Jai of Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary, named for an iconic character from the Indian blockbuster Sholay (1975); or some other undocumented giant from the country’s 107 national parks and 574 wildlife sanctuaries. In 2025, for example, a large adult male tiger was spotted in Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand. Suspected to weigh at least 300 kg (660 pounds), his immense size has earned him the nickname “Hercules.”
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