ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[peter]

B - LANGS TIJGERPADEN (L. Denninghoff Stelling, The Hague, 1966, 233 pages)

*This image is copyright of its original author

1 - INTRODUCTION

While we're at it (Sumatran tiger and sun bear), this one should be discussed as well. It is one of of the best books about tigers I read. Although Denninghoff Stelling wasn't as able with his pencil as Corbett, the book is vividly written and very interesting. It also has some good photographs.

In the days Indonesia was a Dutch colony, many left Holland to work in the 'Empire of Insulinde', as Indonesia was known. Many never returned. The great grandparents of Denninghoff Stelling moved to Indonesia a long time ago. His grandparents probably were born there and so was his father. I don't know of Denninghoff Stelling was, but it seems very likely.   

In the early fifties of the last century, Indonesia became independant. Many thousands were shipped back to Holland. I remember the big passenger ships in the Amsterdam harbour. Although many ended up in The Hague, Amsterdam also was popular. I know quite many who were born in Indonesia. Some of my friends were and so was Dr. P. van Bree. Some were white, some were Asian and others were of mixed origin. They thought and acted as we did and they did not. They interacted with their new neighbours and they did not. They adjusted and they did not. In many cases, they kept to themselves. Friendly and silent, they often were.

When I got older, I came to the conclusion that many just never found their way over here. They never really left Indonesia. Their children, although as Dutch as it gets, often visit Indonesia. At times, they meet a partner. Some return and some don't. As a child, Indonesia seemed like a far away paradise to me. My guess is many of those who had to return to Holland felt the same way. They seemed to long for Indonesia and never got over it.          

Denninghoff Stelling probably was one of them. He dedicated his book to his father and his friends in Indonesia. The ones with whom he walked through the steaming jungles of Sumatra. I don't know when he left Indonesia, but my guess was he returned somewhere in the early fifties. In Holland, a country he probably had never visited before, he wrote a book about his experiences in Indonesia. It was published 15 years after he had left the country in which he had lived for so long. 

The introduction, written by Tjalie Robinson (probably also born in Indonesia), is interesting. He said there's only one kind of hunting (on foot), only one kind of motivation (to be one with the natural world) and only one real hunt. The reason tiger hunting was considered as the ultimate hunt was the tiger himself. In Indonesia, many saw him as a magician. He could mimic all other creatures, he could select and kill the most able of men and yet spare the playing child, he could be a human if he wanted to and he could outwit anyone trying to hunt him. Hunting tigers wasn't considered a sport. It was much more than that. To Robinson, the book isn't about hunting tigers. It is a study about them.   

Denninghoff Stelling's great grandparents hunted tigers. Same for his grandparents and his father. Every generation trained the new one and in the end the ultimate hunter was born. The young Denninghoff Stelling was trained to have a career. He had one. But one day, he left and never returned. He sailed to Sumatra. Like all true hunters, he couldn't stay away from the forest and the animals. He caught, shipped and killed many and yet he respected them, more so than his friends. They were his peers and talked to him. It is clear Denninghoff felt strongly connected. 

In his day, it was considered as out quite something to leave a career and enter the forest for a living. Not only because he gave up what he had (a lot), but also because he entered a world feared by many. In the twenties and thirties of the last century, Sumatra still had very large tracts of forest. It also had dangerous animals. The newspapers often had weird stories about large unknown animals (like the lion-tiger), giant snakes and crocs, killer elephants, ruined estates, deserted villages and countless man-eaters. The result was Sumatra became known an alien place. One you should stay away from.


2 - LIFE AS A CATCHER AND HUNTER

Denninghoff settled somewhere in the southeast of Sumatra. Initially, he hunted deer and sold the meat. Later, he caught, sold and shipped animals. Sun bears, tigers, birds, small cats, monkeys, tapirs, crocs and snakes. Pythons in particular were easy to sell. The longer, the better. Quite many reached a length of 17-20 feet and their heads were large.  

Denninghoff and his friends often travelled to unknown places. He saw villages where a hunter had never set foot. When travelling, they used the rivers. And they walked, at times up to thirty miles a day. He noticed the people he met were more developed and aware than those on Java. Different culture. Men and women has equal rights.  

Catching, selling and shipping animals took much more time than hunting. When he hunted, he often went for deer and elephants. Meat and ivory were easy to sell. Not many were interested in tigers and tiger skins. Apart from that, they were considered as dangerous everywhere. Denninghood, however, hunted them whenever he could, sometimes for months at an end. In Sumatra, hunters used a 'belor' (a long stick with a light at the end) when they were sitting over a bait. Most animals didn't seem to be bothered, but tigers and, in particular, bears didn't like it.

When he got a reputation, people in remote villages asked him to hunt the animals who raided their fields. He also hunted man-killers (very often roque elephants) and worked for estate-owners troubled by wild boars, sun bears and tigers.


3 - SUN BEARS

In general, estates in the southeast of Sumatra (the first region to be developed) were attractive for sun bears. The reason was food. Sun bears had to be hunted in daylight. And not on foot if it could be prevented. The father of one of the trackers of Denninghoff Stelling, when walking beneath an overhanging branch, startled a bear. The bear immediately attacked, shredded his belly with the claws of his hind legs and bit his skull into small pieces. After the poor man had died, the bear decided to become afraid. He left the man screaming like a madman, running for his life.   

According to Denninghoff, bears were more courageous than tigers. They also were more loyal to their partner. If one was in trouble, the other would come to his assistence, no matter what. The front paws of a sun bear compared to those of the tiger and his hindlegs were even more terrible. When shot at a vital place, they often managed to get away. One, after his heart had been shattered by a bullit, managed to walk 15 yards and hide. Denninghoff was amazed at their strength and power and considered them way more dangerous than tigers. When in a bad mood or at the wrong place, they would attack on sight.


4 - GOLIATH AND THE SUN BEAR

When working in a remote part of an estate, Denninghoff Stelling saw the largest tiger he had ever seen. He described his head as monstrous. He shot the tiger, but never saw him again. Others found his remains.

It wasn't the only large tiger he saw. On an estate known as 'Bekri', a very large male tiger he called 'Goliath' was one of the tigers he was after. During a number of days, they followed his trail. His pug marks were the largest he had seen. One day, when following the tiger, he came to a place where something had happened:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Here's the rough translation:

" ... We followed the trail for about a hundred yards, when it suddenly stopped. I returned to the last prints ... and saw that the tiger had left the trail abruptly and entered a garden. The distance between the prints become shorter, as if he had advanced slowly. Then they suddenly became wide apart, as if he had taken very long jumps. They stopped at a place where large claws had left many gashes in the ground. This was the place where a fight had taken place. There was blood everywhere. Goliath had won the fight. From the battlefield, something heavy had been dragged to an alang-alang field a hundred yards wide. Directly behind the field, the forest started. We expected to find the remains of the animal killed by Goliath, but only found bear skin, bear claws and gnawed bones. I became enthousiastic. Tigers hesitate to attack bears. The reason is these innocent creatures, very solidly built and armed with strong teeth and dangerous claws, are more than capable to defend themselves ... " (pp. 187-188).

The bear had been completely eaten. In order to get to the giant tiger, Denninghoff Stelling shot a large wild boar. He was to be his next meal. The next day, they found that Goliath had broken the rope and taken the heavyweight in his jaws. He did it in such a way, there was hardly a drag visible. It took Denninghoff and his tracker Oesin some time to get to the place where the giant had decided to start his meal. The wild boar had been completely eaten, but Goliath had not been the only one who had feasted. They found the pug marks of a small tigress close to the boar. 

They decided to sit up over the left-overs, lighted the 'belor' and thought it would be wasted energy. To their surprise, Goliath returned to his kill. But he didn't show himself. He made a detour, discovered the machan (called a 'prangong' in Sumatra) and protested for a long time before leaving. But minutes later, still in the prangong, Denninghoff saw him out in the open in a nearby field. The tiger wasn't going to give in and waited for them to leave. When he approached his kill, Denninghoff Stelling, aiming at the only thing he could see, the eye, didn't miss. It proved to be a giant tiger:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Here's a rough translation of what he saw:

" ... I had Goliath! What a giant and how perfect he was. His skin was beautiful and dark, a clear sign he still was in his prime. There was not a scar visible on his skin, which was unusual for animals of his size. My shot hadn't damaged anything. What a trophy! I couldn't stop looking at him. His head was as large as mine and my torso together and his canines were thick and undamaged. He measured 295 cm. Not as large as the other, second, male I had shot at the estate, but he was close. He was, however, more beautiful and as heavy as a result of his robust built. I estimated he was about twice as heavy as the wild boar ... " (pp. 199-200).

The same day, a little later in the evening, he went to see a friend who had sat up in a different corner of the estate. His tigress had not showed. When he saw Goliath, he said he didn't know tigers could grow to such a size in Sumatra. Neither did I:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Have a good look at this tiger and remember Denninghoff Stelling was as experienced as they come. Also remember he wasn't out for records. The only measurement in the book is this one. Like many of you, I think he could have been measured 'over curves'. Maybe he was measured in a generous way, although Denninghoff Stelling wasn't involved in exaggerations anywhere in the book. He just said it as it was.

In northern India, tigers were also measured 'over curves' as a rule. It was done in a very careful way, as measurements were sacred over there. In all cases, the difference between both methods used ('between pegs' and 'over curves') was 2-5 inches. But in the largest tiger shot by Col. Stewart Capper (an 'immense animal'), the difference was no less than 12 inches. Let's assume the difference between both methods was somewhere between 6-12 inches in Goliath. That would still leave a total length of 8.8-9.2 (264,16-279,40 cm.) 'between pegs'.

Unheard of for a Sumatran, but he wasn't the only one who reached that size. The tiger he had shot on the same estate (the one he had not been able to find after he had shot him) could have been even larger. Also remember a renowned hunter in Indonesia (a man called Pieters) stated he had shot males of up to 300 cm. in total length and 185 kg. (Hoogerwerf, 1970).

V. Mazak (1983) wrote males ranged between 100-140 kg. I don't doubt he was right. But in the days there were ten tigers to every one today, things could have been different. In the ZMA (the former Zoological Museum of Amsterdam), I measured a skull of 350,00 mm. in greatest total length. Not saying the owner would have been as large as an average male Indian tiger (Sumatran tigers have relatively larger skulls), but there's too much information about very large animals to ignore. Also remember I talked to men who had hunted tigers in Indonesia. They had seen a lot and were convinced some males were only marginally smaller than an average male Indian tiger. And yes, they had been in India. 

I'm not going to speculate about the weight, but it is clear the tiger was a very robust male, well over average in many respects. Even without the wild boar, he would have been quite a bit heavier than 'Slamet', who was 148,2 kg. I compared both photographs and there's no doubt Goliath was a larger animal.

Denninghoff Stelling thought he was about twice the weight of a large male wild boar. In order to show you wild boars in Sumatra were anything but small, two more pictures to finish the post:

*This image is copyright of its original author

    

*This image is copyright of its original author

I have no reliable records of Sumatran wild boars, but the photographs I have suggest large males could have been 80-100 kg. (177-221 lbs.). Some no doubt exceeded 100 kg.  Reply