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

Observations on Pointers

Alteza and the author, ready for the next perdiz

Over the last several years I have had the opportunity and pleasure to hunt upland birds over pointing dogs in the United States and Uruguay and the differences in the behavior of birds and dogs are nothing short of impressive.

In the US I hunted mostly pheasants (Phasianus Colchicus) with German Shorthaired Pointers (I would never accuse Tupã, my Labrador retriever, of being a pointer and we will discuss differences and preferences between flushers and pointers at another time), both released preserve birds in Michigan and the fantastically wild roosters of North Dakota.

In the prairies of North Dakota pheasants prefer heavy or dense cover and there is a strict limit of three roosters per day. Hunters demand that their dogs “freeze” when they go on point, and then the “gun” will circle around the dogs until they believe that they are in a straight line with the pheasant and the dog. The “gun” then will walk towards the dog until the bird is flushed, and during all this time the dog must remain locked on point, bringing great pride and joy to their owners.

This is almost an exercise in aesthetics, but the unruly and uncooperative pheasants do not necessarily follow the script, and many times they just disappear through the cover, and the pointing game must start again.

In Uruguay I have been hunting perdiz or codorna (Nothura maculosa), a fantastic upland bird, primarily following English Pointers and Epagneul Bretons. Perdizes prefer much lighter or sparse cover than pheasants, and both would rather run away from dogs than sit tight under the dog’s nose.

In the first year that I hunted in Uruguay all my North American friends had a very hard time killing perdizes, as they attempted to hunt just like they would have done in the United States by making wide circles around the dogs once they were on point, and in most cases the perdiz would just slip away or present a wild flush.

The “proper way” to hunt with pointers in Uruguay, and all other South American countries, is to follow close behind the dog once it starts to herd the bird and once it goes on point the hunter comes directly behind the dog and nudges him with a leg. The dog will break point and crawl forward. This may be repeated several times until the perdiz loses its nerves and flushes, many times almost under the hunter’s legs.

As a rule the dog will break point and charge after the bird in an attempt to catch it, and the hunter must be very careful when shooting low flying birds as not to hit the dog.

On that first year I did my best to try to explain the difference in dog culture and educate my friends on how they should behave with the local dogs. But old ways die hard, and by the fifth day I had bagged more birds than my four “gringo” friends. However on the following years they may have learned the lesson to well.

The daily bag limits in Uruguay can only be considered lavish when compared to the three roosters a day in North Dakota, and the way that dogs are handled in the south appears to be a lot more productive in terms of flushes per point and birds shot.

I know that many northern hemisphere pointing dog purists consider it an aberration and will disagree when I say that I prefer to hunt the South American way. One of the reasons is that I believe that the southern way allows the dogs to better use their atavist hunting instincts, as they not only locate the bird by scent, but stalk very close and upon the flush pursue their prey. But, maybe most important, this is the way that I learned from my father.

Monsters Still Exist

My parents and me with sucuri skin

Fazenda Taboa is the farm that I was raised in Brazil, and Córrego do Rosário is the stream that runs through it, and both are known to produce little monsters, in the shape of Eunects notaeus or Eunects murinus, better known as anaconda or sucuri.

My grandmother used to tell stories about babies or small children that disappeared when their mothers took them to do laundry on the Córrego do Rosário banks (probably before World War II).

In the 1960’s a couple of reasonable sized sucuris were shot on the farm, and their photos are very impressive.

Then, one weekend day, during the Brazilian winter of 1980 (I had to ask my mother for the year and Brazilian winters are from June to August) I finally saw, live and on color, the largest snake I ever came across. We were in our way to a polo game (something I was never particularly fond of) at the Fazenda São Judas, and since we had to drive by our farm to get there we stopped at it so my father could take care of some business. As we were about to leave, the group of people that was coming to fish just downstream from our old powerhouse started calling for help because of this huge snake that was laying on the grass.

My father and others ran down to the stream and saw the very big sucuri. My father asked the others to help him capture the snake because he wanted to send it to a zoo due to its enormous size, and five or six men quickly joined him in trying to pull that snake away from the river, but the sucuri had a different opinion and did not quite agree to my father’s noble goals.

By the time they could get a hold of the serpent, it had its head and part of it body in the water and “had a hold” of something, and no matter how hard the men tried they could not move that snake a single inch.

Now, a sucuri is a very powerful animal, a non-poisonous snake that feeds on alligators and mammals as large as deer and capybara (or calves and pigs if they are handy) and that kills their prey by constriction. The sucuri after securing the prey with its jaws wraps itself around the animal and literally squeezes it to death. If nothing else the result is a reptile with muscles that would cause envy to a bodybuilder.

Another characteristic of snakes is that the skin is cold and smooth and when in a humid environment feels like it is lubricated. Without any place to grip, fighting that snake must be like trying to pull on an oiled crowbar.

Since after much pulling and stretching no progress was being achieved, my father decided to try to grab the serpent by its head and untangle it from whatever underwater hook it was holding to.  Because of the steep river bank, he had to come to his knees and support his body with his left arm while he moved the right hand along the snake’s body searching for its neck (or what would be a neck on a snake). Just as he was doing this, the head of the sucuri came out of the water and it grabbed my father’s left hand.

Mr. Candinho, a long time farm employee and one of my father’s hunting partner, was standing guard from the beginning of the fight and as the sucuri grabbed my father’s hand he shoved the barrel of the 12 gauge shotgun against the snake and fired and as it did not let go he reloaded and fired again, this time almost separating the serpent’s head from its body.

The picture above shows my parents and me with the nearly seven meter long (21 feet) sucuri’s skin. Unhappily the tanning process and three decades or so did not preserve the beautiful contrasting black, brown and green colors or the elasticity of the scales but it is still possible to admire it and image the power of the largest snake in the American continent and one of the largest in the world.

My mother called today and told me that a sucuri of about the same size was spotted this week at Fazenda Taboa. Maybe the world is not such a dull place, and there is still place for adventures and monsters in it.

New Year, New Hunt, Old Friends

Doug, the author and a group limit

I just returned from the duck hunting trip to Stuttgart, Arkansas, that I mentioned to you a couple weeks ago.

My friend Jay Riley and I took a leisure 720 miles (1.160 Km) road trip from Michigan to Arkansas, and in the way down we first stopped at Cabela’s in the Indiana/Illinois border in order to acquire a couple items that we could not live without (including a new hat for me), and then overnighted in Mount Vernon, Il. We arrived late Tuesday afternoon, and after meeting Dave Helge and his son Josh we went to Mack’s Prairie Wings to buy licenses and some other toys.

Upon returning to the lodge for dinner I met Doug, the guided that I hunted with last year and that owns Rudy, the brown lab that I “bravely” rescued from an iced pond. Until now I never gave much thought to last year’s incident, but clearly it meant something very imported to Doug, as he warmly saluted me and said that we would hunt together this week. All the newcomers were already aware of the story, and Lyle Zetterlund, the organizer of our annual duck hunting trips, mentioned that he considered bringing me a pair of “floaties” to keep me safe.

As usual we stayed up too long during the night, some of us had one too many drink, and everybody was up for breakfast at 4:30 AM.

It is impressive how much a place can change and still be the same. In 2010 Arkansas had record high floods and I never had seen so much mud in my life, last year we had record low temperatures and whole country side was frozen solid, and with so little open water ducks were very concentrated and the shooting was frantic. Now this year we had some unseasonable warm weather through most of the Midwest, and ducks were scattered all the way from Minnesota to Arkansas, all along the Mississippi flyway.

On the first morning Doug took us to a blind on some flooded timber overlooking a lake, but duck’s were just avoiding us and our decoys, and after about one hour we relocated to some minnow ponds just south of I-40, and there we had a blue bill day. Basically only Blue Bills were decoying, and we shot our limit plus one Golden Eye hen that Dave shot.

On that evening Doug really honored me by inviting me to join him at the guide’s lounge where we talked hunting and shared some excellent Patron tequila.

During the night the temperature dropped to below freezing and the wind picked up to over forty miles per hour (65 Km/h), so we found a pond with a levy high enough to protect us from the wind and had to face the rising sun and increasingly blue sky. Ducks were shy of the decoys and flying hard on the wind and shooting was challenging to say the least. (Not that our shotgunning abilities help a lot!)

On Friday the temperature dropped a bit more but the wind calmed down and it was much comfortable than the previous day. We hunted a pond by the “Millionaire’s Club”, a very exclusive duck hunting and bass fishing club with an admission fee of one million two hundred fifty thousand dollars!

This time we had the sun to our back, almost no wind, ducks that were decoying every time they flew by, and by 10:00 AM we had our limit of Shovellers, Gadwalls and Mallards. Rudy performed brilliantly with some really long retrieves and I don’t think that we lost a single bird this day. We drove back to the lodge to pack and start the drive back home.

We left Arkansas with a balmy 41 Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) and the temperature dropped hour by hour as we drove north, and by the time we reached Michigan the temperature was around 20 Fahrenheit (-7 Celsius) and we were in the middle of a snow storm.

One final note before I tire you. Over the last three years I tried all sort of different non-toxic ammunition from several different manufacturers, and my observation is that they all lack in killing power to good lead shot that we use on upland birds and, when hunting in Uruguay, waterfowl. I believe that all over the country a lot more wounded and crippled ducks are lost and die, than ducks that would be potentially poisoned by lead shot.

Never to be matched

Bird hunting is one of my greatest passions, the other is story telling, and it is very nice that one passion leads to the other.

Some of the best and most affordable upland bird hunting in the entire world is to be found in the Uruguay, and I do my best to hunt perdiz (Nothura maculosa) there at least every other year. Perdiz or codorna (as we say in Brazil) is one of the greatest of all upland birds, and it is a real pleasure to hunt them over dogs in the almost flat Uruguayan grasslands (Pampas).

I have many good memories of my hunting trips with JP Cacerias (jpdacosta@netgate.com.uy), in Trinidad, province of Flores (see “Last Bird, First Bird” the oldest posting in this blog). João Paulo or JP is a great cook and a better host, knows where the perdiz are, has a cannel with some great dogs, and a fantastic family and staff to make you have a good time and feel really at home.

The picture above is from our trip of May 2011, when again I had the pleasure of having Ariel as my secretário. The secretário will handle the dogs, carry your birds, water and extra shells, will always compliment you for a good shot and find an excuse for miss. But Ariel is much more than that, a true gentleman, and if not a great photographer, a very lucky one, as I don’t think that this picture that he took can be matched.

Perdiz are generally solitary birds that do not covey, and having the opportunity to shoot a true “doublé”, while not rare, is unusual; and as many expert hunters say that shooting a true “doublé” is the apex of the art of bird hunting I am very happy that Ariel could capture this unique moment on a still photo.

Please, pay attention to the details as in this fantastic photo you will be able to see all the elements of the art of bird shooting.

The hunter and dog are very obvious. I was shooting an AyA 16-gauge side-by-side gun with side locks, but no ejectors, which represents the typical game gun of Southern Europe and South America. If you follow the barrel line you will be able to see the wad already open and quickly slowing down. Continue in the same line and you will see the perdiz closing its wings, just prior starting to collapse.

But, if you pay attention to the dog path, you will notice that he is charging to a direction to the right of the bird mentioned above.

You will need to look really carefully to a point that is just at the skyline and to the right of the right most tree. There is a brown spec there. That is the first bird of the “doublé”, already folded and falling to the ground.

Even a rather mediocre shotgunner like me deserves perfection once in a while, and no automatic shotgun in the world can deliver the conclusiveness of right and left barrel shots and two birds down.

Note: In case your eyes are aging like mine, I have the same picture below, with the three “flying elements” clearly marked.

1. First bird (right barrel) falling

2. Second bird (left barrel) starting to fold

3. Shot wad

A Very Cold Bath

Todd Graham and a very cold decoy

With the coming of the New Year I am looking forward to my first 2012 hunting trip and, like the last two years, in about a week I will be driving from Michigan to Arkansas for three days of duck hunting with colleagues and friends around Stuttgart, the proclaimed and acclaimed “Duck Hunting Capital” of the world with Primm Springs Wildlife Co. (http://www.primmspringwildlife.com/).

In 2010 the temperatures were well above freezing and the amount of red mud reminded me of the raining months of my childhood in Brazil, and the torrential rains before we arrived caused significant damage and losses to the local fish farm industry.

The sight of the continuous waterfowl “V” formation as the sun rose was as meaningful and unforgettable to me as when I saw my first tumbleweed rolling through the open North Dakota prairies when pheasant hunting many years before.

Last year on the other hand there were record low temperatures, and the guides had to wake up at 3:00 AM to find open water or break ice to have open water to attract ducks. If the cold weather made the guides’ life miserable, it made the shooting fantastic and frantic, as ducks would flock to any open water allowing us to fill our limits in very short time even in face of our rather poor shooting.

In the first morning we hunted an inundated grain field and had our limit in less than one hour, and oddly enough we shot only gadwalls. We also found out that the case of beer that we “forgot” in the truck bed was almost completely frozen.

On the second day we went to a very large fish farm and had to drive around a bit before we found open water. We set the decoys and shot a single canvas back from that spot as the water started freezing and closed the small opening in almost no time. We relocated to another pond less than a mile away that had a very nice open area. We set few decoys and had some great shooting, but after sometime the guide said that we should relocate as we were shooting too many small ruddy ducks.

After we grabbed our gear we move to another a nearby pond, and this was a very odd place. There were two large ponds divided by a road, one completely open with half of the ducks of the state or Arkansas on it and the other completely frozen and totally bare.

All the birds flew away when we arrived, but we had a simple plan. We would not set any decoys and would hide on the bank of the frozen lake and shoot the birds when they returned to the open water flying over us.

There was just a small problem. Rather than flying from the frozen lake towards open water, the ducks flew over the road and when we shot at the first incoming birds one of the ducks fell over the ice some two hundred feet from the bank.

The guide sent the Labrador retriever, and she really had more sense than all of us together, and at first refused to go for the duck, but she finally accepted the challenge. As the brown lab approached the duck the ice broke. She was enclosed in a small pool and could not climb back on the ice.

The guide immediately tried to reach her and started braking ice with his shotgun, but before he reached half way the water was coming close to the top of his waders and he had to come back.

By this time the dog was getting distressed and crying for help while swimming around the small pool. While two of the guys went out looking for a boat and I decided to try to reach the dog, as I was a bit taller than the guide. I had to use the shotgun stock to break the ice that was over an inch thick and after quite a bit of effort and with the water at the very edge of my waders I reached the dog and she immediately swan back to shore.

As the dead duck was just a couple yards away I decided to fetch it myself. I grabbed the cold bird and as I started back I stepped in a hole or some other depression and had the coldest bath of my life as the lake water inundated my waders, all the way to my socks.

By the time I reached the bank everybody was back with a boat that we no longer had any use for. They pulled me out of the water and helped me out of the waders and the wet clothes and immediately put me inside one of the trucks with heater running at its maximum and we started back to the lodge.

When we arrived they told me to have a hot shower and just leave my wet clothes and gear for them to take care of. By the time I finished a very long and very hot shower and put some comfortable dry clothes on my wet clothes were on the dryer and the there were two hot air blowers working on my waders. Moments later I had a glass of warming amber liquid in my hands and was being served good hot chili.

I am not sure that I saved that dog or that I was in real danger, but at least we had a good high tale to talk about for the next couple days, and when we were saying good-bye James, one of the head guides, told me that this was the first time that a client went into the water for a dog, and that I would be welcome back. And I will be back in another week.