Animals: Tiger Man

Big game hunting, a sport often overrated by the accounts of wealthy pilgrims to Africa and India, is also a profession. Until very lately, the State of California maintained a hunter whose whole duty was to hunt and kill mountain lions. There still are official wolf-killers in France (TIME, April 7). And from South America returned last week Alexander Siemel, professional tiger hunter, with photographs of the adventures out of which he has made his living in the state of Matto Grosso, Brazil.

When he was 16, Alexander Siemel ran away from home in Riga, Latvia. When he was 21, he left Manhattan for Brazil. Thirteen years ago, aged 27, he went to live in the jungles at the headwaters of the Amazon to mine diamonds. That did not pay too well, so he took up tiger hunting.

Natural history books call them “jaguars” but “tiger” is the local name for the big mottled cats of Brazil, which grow nearly as big (300 Ibs.) and almost as strong as the biggest cats of Bengal. Brazilian cattle-raisers are glad when a tiger is killed. They prey on beeves. Few ranchers bother to hire tiger men and the state pays no bounties but any rancher will outfit a hunter with horses and food. The hunter’s income then derives from the sale of skins ($40 each, f.o.b. the jungle) and live cubs ($400 each). Also there are plenty of puma (mountain lion) to be had, easier to kill, just as lucrative.

Hunting Brazilian tigers as practiced by Alexander Siemel requires a few courageous mongrel dogs, a high-powered rifle with a bayonet attached or a six-foot spear. The dogs trail the tiger. If they tree it, Hunter Siemel shoots it through the head. (If shot through the heart, the beasts sometimes live long enough to claw a dog to death.) If the dogs run a tiger into a cave, Hunter Siemel goes in after it, spear or bayonet in hand. That, he says—for he is a sportsman as well as a businessman—is the finest way to kill a tiger, in hand-to-claw combat. The spear or bayonet must be sharp enough to penetrate the thick, rubbery pelt through which no dog can bite; long enough so that an impaled tiger’s claws cannot reach the hunter. The spot to aim for with the bayonet is the breast bone, a not-too-difficult mark after one has been charged by a tiger a few times and learns to aim coolly. The best way is to get down on one knee and brace yourself when the beast charges.

Hunter Siemel’s best dog, Valente, found 64 tigers, was killed by the 65th. Hunter Siemel has killed altogether 107 tigers, three or four each month for the last two years. Of these, 90 died from one bullet in the brain, 17 he impaled with spear or bayonet.