real pulp heroes: Jim Corbett

[shadowcat1313]

Jim Corbett, Hunter of Man Eating big cats, ww2 jungle survival trainer, photographer, conservationist

 

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=954#more-954

 

After having killed the Chowgrath Tigress with a one-handed shot, Corbett found that she was afflicted by a collection of porcupine quills in her right foreleg. Unlike most punctures, a porcupine's quill will not dissolve, and after years of having the quills embedded the wound was so deteriorated that the tiger's muscle was rotted, and the bones cratered with signs of infection. Most of the big cats taken by Corbett were also assigned a reason for having become man-eaters. Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett killed a dozen large cats who were collectively blamed for more than 1,500 human deaths. While being hailed as India's most celebrated hunter of man-eaters, Corbett developed a vast respect for tigers and leopards.

[FenrisUlf]

Re: real pulp heroes: Jim Corbett

 

Jim Corbett, Hunter of Man Eating big cats, ww2 jungle survival trainer, photographer, conservationist

 

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=954#more-954

 

After having killed the Chowgrath Tigress with a one-handed shot, Corbett found that she was afflicted by a collection of porcupine quills in her right foreleg. Unlike most punctures, a porcupine's quill will not dissolve, and after years of having the quills embedded the wound was so deteriorated that the tiger's muscle was rotted, and the bones cratered with signs of infection. Most of the big cats taken by Corbett were also assigned a reason for having become man-eaters. Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett killed a dozen large cats who were collectively blamed for more than 1,500 human deaths. While being hailed as India's most celebrated hunter of man-eaters, Corbett developed a vast respect for tigers and leopards.

 

I actually know a guy who's descended from him. And I also like that Corbett became a conservationist later in life.

 

That said, what stats and skills should this man have? The Great White Hunter should serve as a start, with plenty of skills related to knowledge of the culture and geography of India (possibly the Expatriate Soldier of Fortune?). If there's a Talent for 'Fearlessness', Corbett certainly deserves it. I've read several of his books, and the man seems to have had the proverbial nerves of steel.

 

I also wonder just how you would write up his most fearsome foe, the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag. In the book about the animal, Corbett stated that the leopard scared him as no other man-eater ever did. One episode was: when starting on the hunt for the cat, Corbett and a few associates were staking out a goat along a game trail in the jungle near the village most commonly haunted by the leopard. This was at night, and it was as black as pitch. They were siting their rifles in, something distracts Corbett and the others, and when they look back the goat is just plain gone.

 

Knowing that the animal would have taken the goat some ways off to eat in peace, Corbett and the others start back to the village in the pitch-black jungle night. Just as they're out of sight of the place wher they'd been waiting for the leopard, they see something in the trail ahead of them. It's the goat, still twitching. Corbett reaches the animal and bends down to check it. The fang punctures in its throat (leopards apparently go for the neck to kill) are still oozing blood. The goat was killed literally the second before.

 

And then the men hear a rising, angry, coughing snarl from just a few yards off. It's the leopard, and he knows that they're there. As Corbett put it later, "I cannot begin to describe the icy chill that went along my spine just then. It was as though the animal really were the devil the natives credited it with being, and this was its way of saying, 'You thought to trap me? Well, here is your silly goat, and now, let us see how many of you make it back to that village of yours.' "

 

The leopard paced Corbett and the others all the way back to the village, with Corbett convinced that at any moment he'd hear a snarl and feel claws on his back (he'd taken rear guard). Corbett later described it as the most terrifying moment of his life.

[DusterBoy]

Re: real pulp heroes: Jim Corbett

 

I think the BBC did a drama about this chap a couple of years back. Jason Flemying played the "young" Jim Corbett and Geoffrey Palmer played him as an old man/Jim Corbett's ghost.

 

I think Jason Flemyng would make a good action hero - if you're in the mood for a more cerebral character.