Life.Culture.Discovery.

American hunter who hastened demise of the South China tiger, and how Mao’s assault on nature finished it off

Trophy hunters like boastful William Lord Smith pushed the big cat towards extinction in China and Southeast Asia; greed and growth hastened its end

Smith’s self-regarding memoir included the fact that he always sent one of the Chinese in his employ into a tiger’s lair first

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Police officers pose with a tiger that was shot dead in Sheung Shui, in Hong Kong, in 1915.

Published: 4:00pm, 9 Nov 2019Updated: 4:21pm, 9 Nov 2019

In early 1903, a 40-year-old big-game hunter, Dr William Lord Smith, who had stalked Kodiak bears in Alaska and shot lions, tigers, elephants and rhinos from the safety of a hot-air balloon in Africa, heard there were man-eating beasts roaming the hills of Fujian province. The American was immediately gripped by the prospect of bagging a South China tiger.

Swarthy, moustachioed Smith set off, stopping in Japan and Manchuria before sailing down the China coast to the port of Amoy (now Xiamen). He rested a few days in the European enclave of Gulangyu Island, where between cleanings of his prized hunting rifles, he hit it off with a local tiger hunter named Taikoff, whom Smith tasked with assembling bearers, a cook and men who knew the villages and monasteries of the interior. The deal was simple – 30 cents a day per man, an extra $5 any day a tiger was killed.

Assembled and provisioned, the expedition left the comfort and relative modernity of Amoy and headed inland, initially guided by the smoke from village fires, lit to keep tigers away. Even in the first years of the 20th century, the South China tiger’s habitat was being encroached on by farmers growing lowland crops such as rice – or opium – all but inviting big cats from nearby hill caves to feed on dogs, goats and the occasional human.

Recalling his adventures in The Cave Tiger of China (1920), Smith described himself in unabashedly fearless terms, willing to get down on his hands and knees, crawl into dark, dank caves, armed with only a flashlight and rifle, not knowing if he’d meet “... whiskers bristling in a snarl of rage as [the tiger] blinks at the bright torches through narrowed eyes”, and, “if the tiger is at home your work is simple and you are not bothered by choice of action”.

Tiger hunters in a photograph from William Lord Smith’s 1920 memoir, The Cave Tigers of China.

Like many memoirs of the time, Smith’s was rife with self-regard. “Retreat is impossible and you have but one thing on hand: to kill the tiger.” Though he also admitted to always sending in one of the Chinese in his employ ahead of him.