As I have indulged my hobby of reading about the most interesting big game hunters of the past, no subject has been as riveting as the story of Sasha Siemel. Siemel was the first white "Tigrero," a man who kills jaguars with a spear.
Aleksandrs Ziemelis was born Jan. 25, 1880, in Riga, Latvia. He moved to the United States in 1907 when he was 17 years old. But he only stayed for two years before moving to Argentina.
In 1914, Siemel traveled to the jungles of Brazil and worked as a gunsmith and mechanic for the diamond mine camps of the Mato Grosso. Siemel spoke seven languages, which helped him communicate with the various people involved in the diamond mining industry.
While working in the mining camps of the Mato Grosso, Sasha, as he became known, met a Guato Indian who was a well-known Tigrero. Sasha was able to convince him to teach him how to be a Tigrero and hunt jaguars with a 7-foot spear, or "zagya."
Sasha learned quickly and mastered the quick feints and thrusts that he would need to be successful. He would later tell people that he experienced more adventure in a year than most people would in a lifetime.
Siemel worked as a hunting guide, primarily for hunters who wanted to hunt jaguar. However, he primarily became a professional hunter who hunted jaguars that were preying on the livestock of the farmers in the Mata Grosso. In that capacity, he is known for hunting and killing over 300 jaguars, most of them with a zagya.
During the late 1920s to the late 1930s, Siemel was considered a master Tigrero and was in high demand by the farmers of the Mata Grosso.
In the late 1930s, the Mato Grosso farms were being preyed upon by a large 300-pound jaguar the farmers called Assassino. This jaguar had killed livestock from most of the farms in the area and had killed several hunters who had gone after him, including a couple of Tigreros.
Most of the Tigreros refused to go after Assassino because he had obviously been hunted and likely wounded at one time by hunters. This jaguar would not tree, probably because he had learned the hard way that treeing meant death.
A farmer who had lost several cattle to Assassino asked Sasha to hunt and kill the animal. Sasha initially refused to hunt Assassino for much the same reasons no other hunter would risk going after him. Only after the farmer went after the jaguar himself and was torn from his horse and killed did Sasha relent and proceed to hunt Assassino with a bow and his zagya.
Sasha came close to dying during that hunt. Three of Sasha's hunting dogs had picked up Assassino's trail and had taken off, only to have the jaguar circle and kill each dog as it ran past him. Sasha grabbed his last dog, Pardo, to prevent him from being killed as well.
Sasha then knelt down in the tall vegetation and purposely stepped on Pardo's tail to make him shriek in pain. It worked. After about 30 seconds, Sasha saw a distinct movement in the jungle in front of him. Sasha judged where the jaguar's shoulder should have been and fired one arrow from his bow. That did it.
Assassino screamed and erupted from the dense foliage, and 300 pounds of angry jaguar in a blur of teeth, claws and spots, came flying through the air straight at Sasha's face. The cat was almost too fast for Sasha to react, but he got his zagya in front of him and feinted to get the point of the spear past Assassino's claws. He then drove the spear into the center of the jaguar's chest.
The impact of the jaguar's attack drove Sasha off-balance and onto his back, but he was up in an instant and drove the spear further into Assassino's chest right up to the the cross bar, or hilt, behind the spear blade.
At this point Sasha and the jaguar struggled against each other while Sasha tried to work the spear back and forth in the wound to facilitate making the big cat bleed profusely and hopefully die of blood loss. With the wooden shaft of the zagya clutched firmly in his arm pit, Sasha was lifted off the ground several times, but he always came back down on his feet.
After about 30 minutes, Assassino went limp and it was over.
After that hunt, and also because he ran across the remains of the Guato Indian who had trained him after the man lost a fight with a jaguar, Sasha never hunted alone again. He decided he wanted someone with him if he lost a fight with a jaguar.
A few years later, Sasha Siemal returned to the United States, where he wrote a couple of books and was a actor for several years. He died in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in 1970. He was 80 years old at the time of his death.
Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He was a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University for 25 years. There he taught orienteering, marksmanship, self-defense, fencing, scuba diving and boxing. He was among the first DPS-certified Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.
