Sasha Siemel and the Pantanal

Jaguar, Zagaia, 357 S&W Magnum and Mr. Siemel

The first time that I ever heard about Sasha Siemel was on an article at Guns & Ammo HANDGUNS 1990 ANNUAL titled "The First Magnum", by Roy Jinks. The article tells the story of the development and launch of the Smith & Wesson 357 Magnum cartridge and revolver, but in the lower left corner of a page it presents the picture above with the following legend: "Sasha Siemel hunted the big cats of the Amazon with a spear. His backup was a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, wearing registration #10."

Later on in the article, a table informs that revolver S&W 357 Magnum registration No. 10, barrel lenght 8 3/4 inches was delivered to Sasha A. Siemel, Big-Game Hunter From South America, on April 26 1935.

I must say that at that time I was more focused on firearms than on hunting, and it would be some more years before I would learn about Mr. Siemel and his fantastic adventures in the Brazilian hinterlands and how imprecise Mr. Jinks was about where Sasha Siemel hunted.

Almost a decade later I had the pleasure and privilege of proof reading my friend's John Coningham Netto fantastic and epic book, "BODOQUENA - Uma Odisséia no Pantanal" where the main character, Jari Carreiro, or Mr. John himself, is quite saddened by the news of the passing of the famous professional jaguar hunter Sasha Siemel in cold Pennsylvania, a half world and another half century away from the Pantanal do Mato Grosso where he made his fame.

The Pantanal is located aproximately in the geographocal center of South America, and is one of the world's largest tropical wetlands areas, and is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay. It sprawls over an area estimated at between 140,000 and 195,000 square kilometers (54,000 and 75,000 square miles). To the south and west the Brazilian Pantanal morphs into the Paraguayan and Bolivian Chaco. About 80% of the Pantanal floodplains are submerged during the rainey season, nurturing an astonishing biologically diverse collection of acquatic plants and helping support a dense array of animal species.

In the early XX century cattle ranch and fur trading were the cornerstones of Matto Grosso state (before 1977 Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul were a single state and it was spelled Matto Grosso) and the Pantanal was the heart of these industries. The rich floodplains provided fantastic and extensive grazing during the winter (which is the dry season) and the cattle industry flourished after the Paraguayan War, rivaling that of the southern Pampas.

But there was one element that intimately linked the cattle industry and the fur trade, the big cats: Jaguar or Onça-Pintada (Panthera onca), the world's third largest cat, and the its smaller relative the Suçuarana, Onça-Parda, Cougar or Mountain Lion (Puma concolor).

And once the cattle herd proliferated to great numbers it did not take long for the smart cats to realize that cattle provides a much easier meal than the fleeting cervo-do-pantanal, the dangerous queixada, the crusty cayman, the somewhat ugly capybara or the invasive porco-monteiro.

And once again, as the jaguar and the cougar started to charge the ranchers a steep price for the use of their original habitat, nothing more natural that these ranchers should rebel and fight back, and in order to do so they hired Zagaieros or Zagayeros, brave hunters that used a heavy lance, similar to the European boar spears and packs of hounds to pursue and kill cattle killing cats.

After several adventures in unhealthy Brazilian diamond boom towns Sasha Siemel changed his focus to the more exciting, but probably less dangerous, pursuit of the onça-pintada and suçuarana, and that made him a larger than life person in his own time. Just to give an idea of how famous Mr. Siemel was, Smith & Wesson shipped 357 Magnum revolver serial No. 1 to FBI's J. Edgar Hoover on April 17, 1935, and nine days later, shipped serial No. 10 to Sasha A. Siemel, big-bame hunter from South America.

"Tigrero", published in 1953, is Sasha Siemel's fascinating recounting of his life and adventures in Brazil, and besides dangerous big-game encounters it also provides a picture of life in the Brazilian frontier in the first half of the XX century, and it appeared to be a lot more wild than the United Stated Old West.

Jaguar Hunting with Tony de Almeida

I just finished reading what may be the best book on large and dangerous game hunting that I ever read, “Jaguar Hunting in the Mato Grosso and Bolivia”, by Brazilian professional hunter Tony de Almeida.

The book is primarily dedicated to the hunting and natural history of the “jewel of the South American jungles”, Panthera onca, known in Brazil as Onça Pintada and in the rest of the world as Jaguar, but also has chapters about water buffalo hunting in the Marajó Island as well as Marsh Deer (Cervo do Pantanal) and many other animals.

Tony describes in details the difficult and challenging pursuit for the world’s third largest cat and the exciting and many times dangerous moments when the onça finally was bayed by the rounds and when the hunters had to come within feet of the rather displeased and aggressive animal. Clearly an adventure not for the faint of heart.

When you read this book you will feel like you are sitting around a camp fire in the Pantanal do Mato Grosso recovering from and arduous day trailing dogs through swamps and jungles, and Tony is calmly recounting one of many stories of previous hunting under the Southern Cross, and that a dominant male onça may call at any time.

However, in spite of the great hunting stories, one of the most significant parts of the book is chapter XI “The Role of the Hunter” and his description of how he managed his “hunting concessions” from the 1960’s to the late 1980’s without any decline in the onça population, reinforcing the point that wildlife, when properly managed, is a renewable natural resource than can be enjoyed generation after generation.

In this chapter when discussing substantial reduction or even extinction of wildlife, he comments that “The prohibition of sport hunting…, incidentally, has been brought about mostly by the pressure of armchair naturalists from around the world, who by meddling in a field where they possessed no practical knowledge, have defeated their own interests.”

Brazil is one of the largest countries in the world and one of the very few where almost all hunting is outlawed and not properly regulated. Recently the IBAMA (Brazilian federal environmental authority) even prohibit control hunting of invasive species such as the European boar (Sus scrofa) that are moving up north from Argentina and Uruguay, even after a wild boar killed a farmer in Minas Gerais state. The justification behind this move was that they received a letter from an unnamed non-governmental organization saying that they were “displeased” with hunting for these harmless pigs!

In other parts of the book Tony comments on that scrounge of jungles, wildlife’s worst enemy anywhere and at anytime, the poacher. Poachers destroy wildlife for profit and are generally supported by profiteers with political connections. As my friend and South African professional hunter Frans Busiahn once told me, they are the lowest life form in earth, even lower than a child’s molester.

Tony describes how the onça population increased in a certain area after they killed a very large and old dominant male. Apparently more young males could survive or enter the region after that and better serve the many females, contributing with their genes and helping increase the species population.

This correlated with a conversation that I had with a game warden in North Dakota when I was hunting pheasants in 2009. Dan, the warden explain that following a season with lower hunting pressure or when less roosters are taken (pheasant hens cannot be shot in most of the United States), the survival rate of young birds in the spring is greatly reduced as the older aggressive roosters kill many young pheasants to prevent future competition. Would pheasants and jaguars have similar personalities?

“The encouragement of a proper hunting spirit, a proper live of sport, instead of being incompatible with a love of nature and wild things, offers the best guarantee of their preservation.”

Theodore Roosevelt