Death in the Silent Places

by Peter Hathaway Capstick

  The great classical animal hunted with the thrusting spear has been the European wild boar (Sus scrofa), and hunting literature, from the Persian cylinder of 600 B.C. in the British Museum to the present day, varies little in awed appreciation of the savage ferocity of this grand animal. It was killed in most acceptable form on foot with a heavy spear incorporating one or another “stops,” or crossbars, to prevent the animal from coming right up the shaft at the hunter. Gaston Phoebus, author of one of the earliest European books on hunting, published in Paris in the early 1500s, offers some advice on the spearing of a charging boar while on foot:

  Hold your spear about the middle, not too far forward lest he strike you with his tusks, and as soon as the point has entered the body, take the haft of the spear under your armpit, and press and push as hard as you can and never let go the haft, and if the beast be stronger than you then you must turn from side to side as best you can without letting go the haft, until God comes to your aid or other assistance reaches you.

  Boar hunting may have had a lot to do with the popularity of religion in the Middle Ages. Certainly, during a large boar drive the woods must have been ringing with invocations of the Deity!

  The so-called sport of “pig-sticking” became immensely popular with the British cavalry units in India and developed into a real art form. Although done from horseback, an amazing number of men were killed by the boar, not to mention the slaughter of their mounts under the self-whetting ivory scissors of the boars’ tusks.

  A wild boar is a terrible opponent for a spearman, granted, but a cat is something else again. To appreciate the degree of risk involved with taking on a jaguar—alone, on foot, with but a zagaya—the animal itself has to be considered. Panthera onca, the jaguar, is one of the least studied of all the big cats, excepting, possibly, only the snow leopard of the remote Himalayas. The reason for this neglect is largely that jaguars thrive in some of the most difficult terrain on earth, the jungles of Central and South America, where sheer lack of visibility greatly hinders observation. This is not to say that jungle is their sole habitat; jaguars also live—in reduced numbers because of controlled hunting to keep them from killing cattle—in the grassland marshes typified by the Xarayes Pantanal where Siemel hunted them for more than thirty years.

  Very recently, Dr. George B. Schaller, the well-known wildlife expert, tried to conduct a study of jaguars in this region. Nearly every time he located a tigre to tag with a radio collar, it was killed by ranch hands, despite the laws forbidding this. Illegal hide hunting also plays a major role in the local reduction of numbers of jaguars in the Great Marshes, although reasonable-to-good levels of population still exist in the more remote areas of the South American and Central American interiors.

  Once again, it’s the old problem of the poacher taking over when the sportsman is forced out by the creation of idealistic but hopelessly unrealistic laws, such as that forbidding the import of any spotted cat pelt into the United States, no matter how legally obtained in its country of origin. When a species such as a jaguar cannot pay its own way—through the generation of license fees, rural employment, government export taxes and the many other financial considerations that have so greatly contributed to the preservation of tens of thousands of square miles of virgin Africa for hunting concessions, instead of being turned over to cattle and goats—it is consequently of no economic value except for its poached hide on the black market. Who will reasonably pay for the conservation and management of an animal whose only financial impact upon a backwoods economy such as the Mato Grosso is decidedly negative because it kills and eats cattle? The ranchers who own the cattle? Hardly. Of bloody course, they’re going to order their vaqueros to shoot, poison or trap any jaguar they can, law or no law.

  Back in 1977, when I wrote Death in the Long Grass, a collection of my experiences over a decade as a professional hunter and game control officer in Africa, I tried to make this same point about the supposedly “endangered” leopard. Now, almost four years later, it is with intense satisfaction that I find the sportsman’s argument may have done some good. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department of the Interior proposed in the March 24, 1980, Federal Register “Reclassification for the Leopard.” One of the paragraphs sounds as if I wrote it:

  … In addition, the Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to ease its restrictions to allow the importation of sport hunting trophies as an economic incentive to encourage the leopard’s conservation by landowners in Africa, where in some areas it is indiscriminately destroyed as a predator. Trophy hunting brings additional jobs and income to African citizens and landowners and added revenue to the governments from tourists and the sale of hunting licenses that may cost $500 or more. It is expected that reclassifying the leopard to give it some economic value will lead to measures to protect it as a valuable resource.

  Hallelujah, brother!

  Would it be unreasonable to suggest that the same economic dynamics might apply to some areas of the jaguar’s status, too?

  The jaguar, or tigre—literally “tiger” in Spanish or Portuguese—was once fairly well established in the United States, as well as in its more southern current home. If memory serves me right, Smith and Wesson ran some early dramatic ads for their revolvers featuring jaguars attacking cowboys, presumably in the American Southwest. Once prowling as far north as Arkansas, it is now an extremely rare animal north of Mexico, although some experts feel that it is again expanding its range toward the United States. It is by far the largest of the New World cats, ranking about third in size with the rest of the true panthers—the lion, tiger and leopard.

  There has always been considerable discussion about the size of a “big” male jaguar. Appearing to the uninitiated as rather an overweight leopard, estimates vary from 250 pounds as the top weight all the way up to the whopper I saw a poor-quality photo of while hunting in Brazil, on cattle scales tipping in at 460 pounds (209 kilos on the metric scales). There’s no doubt in my mind that, as the Brazilians claim, many localized races of jaguars may vary considerably in size because of particular genetic and/or dietary conditions. Therefore, a “big” jaguar in Mexico might weigh 200 pounds, and in the Mato Grosso as much as 350 or more pounds. One skin from a jaguar, killed by Siemel, was reported by the famous hunter and author, Russell B. Aitken, who photographed it, as bigger than a very large male African lion. No weight was given, if, indeed, the cat was ever weighed, but the size would indicate well over 400 pounds.

  Few naturalists would argue that the largest race of jaguars is that of the Mato Grosso, although some very hefty specimens have come from Amazonia. In the Xingu Basin, a southern tributary of the Amazon where I hunted, the largest type was locally called the canguçu, so named for the peculiar “swallow wing” pattern of the rosette conformation on the hide. Three distinct types of jaguar were supposed to be recognized in the Xingu, although whether they were merely individual differences between single animals or truly disparate races I could not say.

  Despite a cosmetic similarity to the leopard at first glance, jaguars are really quite different, beside being half-again heavier and stronger. Possibly they are not quite so agile as the unbelievably shifty leopard, yet are thoroughly aboreal, as well as aquatically adapted. For all practical purposes as strong as a lion or a fair-sized tiger—which is the largest of all the cats—the jaguar feeds on virtually any meat he can catch, including swamp deer, tapir, capybara, fish, birds, snakes, alligators and domestic cattle. Whereas the other big cats, especially lions, tend to kill by biting the windpipe and keeping it closed until their victim suffocates (despite the common belief that they pull down big game in a manner that breaks their neck in the fall, which happens only incidentally, in my experience), the jaguar usually bites through the top of the skull, driving the canines deep into the brain to cause instant death.

  Tigres are highly territorial, the usual pattern being for the range of a male to overlap those of two or even three females. Solitary and highly jeal
ous, jaguars will defend their stomping grounds ferociously from other males. A very big “black,” or melanistic phase, male jaguar I killed in the Xingu back in the 1960s has an epidermis that looks as if it did its undergraduate work at Heidelberg. On the shoulders, neck and rump are more than sixty deep claw and fang marks, undoubtedly sustained in a lifetime of territorial battles. Since this particular tabby was pushing 300 pounds himself, I wonder what the opposition looked like after he got through with them. A pasting from this chap—which I very nearly got—must have had the same effect as an extended cold shower!

  One curious aspect to this particular black jaguar, in addition to his rare color phase, is that he does not have the normal long tail of the ordinary tigre. It is more or less a stump, just thirteen inches in length. On first examination I thought it had been bitten off by a rival or perhaps even by piranha, but close inspection shows that unquestionably it is natural, being perfectly rounded and showing no sign of having been amputated. A photo I have of another skin from the same area, also black, obtained by a friend who traded for it with Indians, clearly shows the same stump tail. Now, there’s been little enough work done on jaguars as a species, let alone black ones from a region still so nasty that prospectors and missionaries are found clubbed to death with unnerving frequency, so perhaps the Indians are correct that the black jaguar as found in the Xingu Basin has evolved into a separate subspecies. Additional to the stump tail as a distinguishing feature, the tribes claim that the pugmarks are slightly different, that the call is more highly pitched and that black jaguars will only mate with others of the same genetic mutation. I have no idea of the truth of the matter, but considering the frequency of such mutant traits as extra toes on domestic cats, perhaps the solidification of genetic errata in circumstances of relative confinement such as the Xingu region would be possible. On second thought, maybe I’d better cover all bets by suggesting with characteristic modesty that this elusive creature, should it be defined by science, might be handsomely labeled Panthera onca capstickii!

  Animal behaviorists appear to be in rare agreement that the main factor determining the danger of the jaguar to man lies in its highly developed sense of territorialism. In comparison to the also territorial leopard, by way of example, it is far more likely to stand its ground in the face of real or imagined threat, even by man, and it is this characteristic that is the primary reason for the great majority of jaguar-caused deaths. This situation is at its most deadly when a jaguar, who has taken to preying on a herd of cattle, decides to include the cows as part of his territory, actually considering them possessions to be defended. Unlucky or careless cowboys are usually the victims of this behavior, charged from close quarters as they ride up to the herd. In fact, the death of Jose Ramos in the Xarayes Pantanal seems to have been a bloodily classic confirmation of these tactics.

  In the same vein, individual jaguars are certainly man killers for other reasons, quite as diverse as those affecting the other great cats of the world who take up people pouncing for fun and profit. Oddly, though, actual man-eating is comparatively rare in jaguars, as opposed to simple homicide. There have been no recorded protracted plagues of man-eating by tigres that would in any way compare with the many reigns of terror of the lions, tigers and leopards of both Africa and Asia. Still, to the hunter or traveler who happens to get his check cashed by a man-killing jaguar, who, for reasons of hygiene or heartburn, does not eat the body, the point is somewhat moot. Siemel himself wrote that a jaguar that has once killed a man will turn man-eater as soon as he realizes what easy prey people are. Sasha once killed such an animal on the Terere River. This particular jaguar had stalked a vaquero with the obvious intention of making a meal of him and, cornering him in a hut, did just that. Siemel caught up with the cat two days later and killed it with his Winchester.

  Over many weeks after Sasha Siemel watched gap-mouthed for the first time as Joaquim Guató battled the tigre, the two men of different worlds hunted together, the Latvian quickly learning the deft techniques that permitted a fast and strong man to challenge a charging jaguar with only the zagaya and emerge alive. Several times, as they fought the great cats together, student and teacher, Sasha nearly was caught by his undeveloped sense of timing the thrust, but always the old Indian saved him with his leaping, darting blade. Siemel learned not only the bushcraft of the unforgiving Mato Grosso, but the true elements of spear hunting. With each fight, he developed better the absolute concentration of the master tigrero, a pure serum that saturated the body and brain of the zagayero, welding confidence, balance and muscle action into a finely tuned killing machine, leaving the hunter fainting and exhausted, physically and mentally, after he had killed.

  It was 1925 before Sasha was to hunt his first jaguar alone with the zagaya. Although Joaquim had forbidden him to attempt to spear a tigre by himself, when the old man went off on an assignment to settle a cattle raider, Siemel decided that his time had come. He felt he had developed the concentration and confidence as well as the technique, learning to watch and react only to the feet of the tigre before the charge, as all jaguars attack differently; some leaping up at the head and throat of the spearman, others charging in low to the ground with feinting movements. Only at the last instant, after the cat had committed himself, could the decision be made to raise or lower the lance point, the decision that determined life or death.

  Sasha Siemel spear-fought his first solo jaguar—a big male—in the thick marsh grass of the São Laurenço Pantanal, facing a double charge when the cat wrenched himself off the spear blade in his chest and launched himself at the man a second time. It died as the first of sixty-four tigres that his dog Valente would give him and the head of the list of the more than three hundred jaguars he would kill with various weapons. By 1948, twenty-three years after his first spear fight, he had taken 281, plus 22 more captured alive. Of his total at that time (which was at least seven years before he retired, although the last accounting of his kills is not, to my knowledge, recorded in print), 30 were taken with the zagaya, 111 with bow and arrow and the remainder with a rifle, the different weapons reflecting the fact that jaguars will not charge under all conditions, and, in some terrain, use of the spear is impossible.

  It’s interesting to note that some authorities claim it is unusual for a jaguar to “tree” when pursued by a man with dogs. My experience, and that of other hunters I have consulted on this, has largely been the opposite, as was Siemel’s. The difference depends upon individual animals and circumstances, although the jaguar is far more likely to leave a tree where hounds have chased him and charge the man when he comes up than is the puma. It is the jaguar that does not “tree,” however, that is the most dangerous, as it usually indicates that he has been hunted before and knows how to kill dogs. It was precisely this education that was so well used by the famous Assassino jaguar of the Xarayes, probably the best known and most feared jaguar in Brazil’s history.

  For three years from the day he became a true tigrero, Sasha hunted jaguar with his beloved pack of dogs—led by the great Valente and two others named Vinte and Pardo—working as a bounty hunter for cattle ranchers suffering severe losses from jaguar depredation. Except for a few months spent running a small zoo in São Paulo and a short trip to Germany, he was in the field. But for the hunting, it was a torturously sad period of Sasha’s life. His brother, Ernst, was shot in the back and murdered. His best friend, Apparicio Pinheiro, swore to kill him and broke off their relationship over a woman. Near the banks of the São Laurenco, returning from the investigation of his brother’s murder at Cuyaba, Sasha stumbled onto the badly crushed skeleton of a man in the grass. Nearby was a tooth-scarred zagaya shaft, broken in two, and the remains of a Guató canoe. Joaquim Guató had fought his last battle with a jaguar here, probably charged from behind as he dragged the canoe up onto the bank. Likely, he had seen the tigre from the water, possibly called it with a hollow gourd. From the spear shaft, he had gotten a thrust in but had been overwhelmed. Sasha buried
his skull and some fragmented ribs close by where he fell. As if this wasn’t enough, Valente was killed and eaten by a female jaguar with half-grown cubs, outnumbered at last. Possibly the only bright spot of these years was the death of Ricardo Favelle, who was eviscerated by the terrible piranha fish and blew his own brains out in his agony. Never a dull moment in the Mato Grosso …

  The last in this chain of events had been the death of his dog, Valente. Whatever the facts of the matter, Sasha had had enough. He quit hunting and went to Europe for four months, then decided to return to the wilderness to resume his life as a tigrero and to make films of the Mato Grosso. Once more, he passed through the haunts of his old friend, Dom Carlos, the collector of dried human ears, then on to the Xarayes Marshes, where he set up a camp near Cara Cara Island. His surviving dogs, Vinte and Pardo, had been kept for him by a rancher, and now he added another untried but promising lead dog named Raivoso, as well as a small fox terrier he called Tupi, merely a house pet.

  The huge cattle-killing jaguar that came to be called Assassino by the backwoodsmen of the Mato Grosso had long ravaged the pantanal before Sasha ever hunted him. A feline Jack-the-Ripper if ever one prowled the lonely morass of marsh, Assassino could certainly be considered a truly murderous maniac, a gigantic male that stalked and killed any animal that crossed his path for sheer fun, leaving the torn and disemboweled bodies where they lay, unless he chanced to be hungry at the moment. There were other reasons, too, why he was not your average, garden-variety jaguar. Once having been run by dogs and treed, he had been slightly wounded in the shoulder by a rifle bullet from a nervous vaquero, who panicked when he saw the size of the cat. The man ran, and Assassino killed the whole pack of dogs. No dog ever set on his trail from that day onward ever survived a meeting with this great tigre. Assassino’s specialty was to stay carefully in the high grass and permit the dogs to follow his scent spoor for as long as it took the pack to become slightly strung out. When one bark seemed well ahead of the others, the jaguar would fishhook back on his own trail and lie in ambush, killing the first dog as it ran by, and then running ahead to repeat the performance until all the dogs were dead. He had also learned never to seek refuge in a tree, where the searing thundercrack of a bullet could ever hurt him again.