For years one of my favorite books has been The Man-Eaters of Kumoan by Jim Corbett, which is a collection of true stories recounting Corbetts methods of tracking and killing tigers who gained a taste for human flesh in Northern India in the early 1900s. This may sound like a strange book for a wildlife biologist to love but you gotta read it to understand. Corbett is a fantastic writer, his imagery will leave you jumping at the smallest noises for a whole day after reading his accounts of tracking tigers through jungles. Truly some sentences in this book that will haunt me forever.
He's also absolutely not the type of person you would immediately assume he is. You're probably picturing the bad guy from Tarzan, I know I was when I first heard of him. But he 100% isn't! Dude was actually so humble and genuinely respectful. He repeatedly expounds the bravery and virtues of the multiple Indian women who survived being mauled by these tigers, and seriously there are some amazing women in this book and it he gives credit where credit is due.
Its very refreshing to read accounts like these that have empathy and grace to the victims and their families, especially older accounts like these. He never once blames anyone else for the many times when the tiger he's after slips away, I do not think I could have been as patient and understanding if I'm being honest.
And he was not in it for the glory or the trophies!! He just wanted everyone to be safe I'm being so for real. He was a huge advocate for conservation and greatly preferred taking pictures of tigers to killing them, hes on record in saying that his exception to that is the maneaters. That's fair, ya'll.
He was instrumental in creating India's first Narional Park, which was named in his honor after he passed away. They also named a subspecies of tiger after him. You cant get more respected as a naturalist than that.
Anyway, this has all been context to say I finally got my hands on a copy of his other book The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag which I finished moments ago and I just had to say Jim, you've done it again. I do still think Kumoan is my favorite of the two but man if the last line of Rudraprayag isnt the strongest closing to a book I've ever had the pleasure to read. Highly recommend.
thinking of the Champawat tiger upsets me every time
she was unable to hunt due to human behavior and then was forced to hunt humans as they're easy prey
she ended up killing ~430 people before she was killed
but it was never her fault
the man who hunted her saw why she was hunting humans and gave up hunting for life - becoming a popular conservation advocate who founded the first national park in india
QUICK! IF YOU GOT TELEPORTED INTO THE LAST BOOK YOU READ, HOW SCREWED WOULD YOU BE??
also haiiii
Man Eaters of the Kumaon. Autobiography by Jim Corbett
Oh Lordy. VERY screwed. I’d be teleported to the thick Jungles of the “Kumaon Divisin of the United Provinces” (Occupied India) in the 1920’s, with Jim Corbett as he hunts literal man-eating tigers that have been ravishing the small local villages.
Hunter and Hunted: Historical Horror Reading For Your Halloween
Burned out on masked stabbers? Yawning at the movie monster of the week? Alien abductions falling as flat as a cow dropped from a tractor beam?
Try reading some historical accounts of people hunting man-eating Tigers in India and never walk willingly into the dark again!
Towards the end of the colonial era in India, growing populations and deforestation were causing the same issues with wildlife that we see today. The difference being, there were thousands and thousands of tigers and leopards, far bigger populations than today, prowling the land.
And while still rare, a lot more animals means a lot more potential murder cats. In an era just before and during the advent of cars and phones, most people still lived in small communities surrounded by fields and forest. People that were easy prey for big cats that were too elderly or injured to hunt other prey, or just decided they liked to eat humans.
So imagine you and your friends are out in the fields or at the well doing your normal thing…
And a Giant Goddamn Tiger leaps out of the grass, grabs your friend, and drags them screaming into the woods to eat them. Right in front of you.
Oh Shit!The Economy!
Or when you walk home, the last person in line silently disappears and the only trace left behind is a piece of clothing.
This was the reality across many places in India.
Imagine this happening to SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE in your community over the course of a few years. From ONE Tiger. And everyday you leave the house praying you aren’t next, while you can do fuckall about it.
Fuck…
This thing is a goddamn ghost, and while volunteer hunters go after the thing, they’re always one step behind. News of sightings and kills travels only as fast as people can walk, and the Tiger is hitting multiple villages in the region.
So along comes this guy from out of nowhere, he tells you he works on the railway or something? Then he tells you he’s going to try and kill this tiger. Just another trophy hunting jackass right?
But this guy never asks for anything other than a place to sleep and maybe a cup of tea if you can spare it.
And he’s running himself ragged walking 20+ miles a day between villages to where the tiger was last seen. For weeks or months on end.
And every night he sits alone, in the dark, in the woods, by a tethered farm animal he bought off you. Or the corpse of a half-eaten victim. Sometimes in a low tree branch or just sitting on the fucking ground.
The crazy bastard is hunting something that very much wants to kill and eat him. A thing that can see in the dark where he can not. By moonlight.
Or if seen during the day, the guy walks in after the Tiger, tracking the paw prints and knowing it is actively hunting him.
What could possibly go wrong?
But somehow, using the finest old-timey gun technology, he kills these nightmare monsters again and again. Some while they’re charging him!
He never asks for a dime, never cashed in a government reward, and takes the dead tiger back to the locals to prove its dead and provide closure and peace of mind. He genuinely cared about the locals and did everything he could to help at great personal risk. For decades.
Jim Corbett slayed man eating monsters under terrible odds like he was the goddamn final girl of every horror movie. And while it sounds far-fetched, his accounts were backed by many people, and his own photographs.
In his later days he became a staunch conservationist and recorded his tales for all to read in a number of books that read like the greatest horror fiction.
He was so beloved that he has a national park and a species of Tiger named after him!
All his works are available free on the Internet Archive. There’s also a YouTube channel with narrated versions of all his stories and context. The narrator grew up reading these accounts and does a fantastic job making audiobook recordings of his stories!
His accounts and this history have largely faded from public memory, but make for some of the finest horror reading ever penned.
And he wasn’t the only one doing this! Another hunter in the same era, Kenneth Anderson, was dedicated to hunting man-eating Tigers and Leopards across India.
Anderson, a madman who would sit in a blind made of two beds and a chair, and armed with a dying flashlight and a rifle, peered out into the dark and went face to face with one such monster. Point blank in pitch dark.
Just look at these creepy-ass covers and tell me this isn’t horror.
There are also written accounts of man-eating sloth bears, serial killer wild elephants, and general animal related nightmare fuel.
I’ll be writing about African man-eater books in a subsequent post. Many accounts are just as terrifying, all the more because it’s not fiction.
Those who have never seen a leopard under favourable conditions in his natural surroundings can have no conception of the grace of movement, and beauty of colouring, of this the most gracefuL and the most beautiful of all animales in our Indian jungles.
Chamari had been at work all that day and in the afternoon had accompanied me to a nearby village in which a woman of his coal gang, by the name of Parbatti, was reported to be seriously ill. Parbatti, a widow with three children, was the first woman to volunteer to work for me when I arrived at Mokameh Ghat and for twenty years she had worked unflaggingly. Always cheerful and happy and willing to give a helping hand to any who needed it, she was the life and soul of the Sunday evening gatherings, for, being a widow, she could bandy words with all and sundry without offending India’s very strict Mother Grundy. The boy who brought me the news that she was ill did not know what ailed her, but was convinced that she was dying, so I armed myself with a few simple remedies and calling for Chamari on the way, hurried to the village. We found Parbatti lying on the floor of her hut with her head in her grey-haired mother's lap. It was the first case of tetanus I had ever seen, and I hope the last I shall ever see. Parbatti's teeth, which would have made the fortune of a film star, had been broken in an attempt to lever them apart, to give her water. She was conscious, but unable to speak, and the torments she was enduring are beyond any words of mine to describe. There was nothing I could do to give her relief beyond massaging the tense muscles of her throat to try to ease her breathing, and while I was doing this, her body was convulsed as though she had received an electric shock. Mercifully her heart stopped beating: and her sufferings ended. Chamari and I had no words to exchange as we walked away from the humble home in which preparations were already under way for the cremation ceremony, for though an ocean of prejudices had lain between the high-caste woman and us, it had made no difference to our affection for her, and we both knew that we would miss the cheerful, hardworking little woman more than either of us cared to admit.
