India, June 19 -- Ian Douglas was 10 when he first encountered Jim Corbett.

The 1948 classic The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag "struck me as slightly scary, but I guess it was a scary leopard after all," he says, chuckling.

Growing up in cold, coastal Northumberland in England, Corbett's jungle adventures in India hardly seemed real. And yet they were! Thrilled, a young Douglas decided to go scouting in the woods near his home, in imitation of his hero.

"I wasn't going to find leopards or tigers, but I could track deer," he laughs. "I could trace where they had been feeding and find their droppings. I was an outdoors child, and I'm an outdoors adult still."

Douglas, now 67, would go on to study environmental sciences, and has spen...