A Killer of Men: The Story of a Deadly Sloth Bear, From the Archives

The opening image from the magazine story shows the killer bear with one of the villagers it had maimed.

India holds a tragic place in hunting history. Some of Outdoor Life‘s most influential tales of hunting come from the jungles of India—including those of Jim Corbett and Fred Bear. Hunting has been banned in India since the early 1970s, and poor conservation practices, deforestation, and poaching haven’t helped the country’s wildlife. Still, classic hunting tales from India can inspire and educate us to take better care of our resources in the future.

When it comes to hunting man-killers in India, most people think of jungle cats: tigers and leopards. Sloth bears aren’t usually at the top of the list. However, while on a tiger hunt in Madhya Pradesh, a large landlocked state in central India, Frank C. Hibben was asked to hunt a sloth bear that had killed several villagers. This story, “A Killer of Men,” was originally published in the March 1957 issue of Outdoor Life.

Sloth bears are about the size of the American black bear, but with shaggier coats and very long claws on their front paws. Attacks aren’t common, but they do happen. In fact, a CBS article published in June 2022 details a fatal attack by a sloth bear in the same region where this story took place.

A Killer of Men

By Frank C. Hibben

IT WAS THE PEACOCK that gave the warning. The bright little eyes of the bird had picked us out immediately, although the foliage was dense and Rao and I were motionless as the stones around us.

The peacock gave a clacking cry, and at the sound the bear turned toward us. The animal’s black lips wrinkled up in the beginning of a snarl. The panting stopped for a moment. The yellowed teeth, dripping with saliva, opened wide and snapped shut with a sharp noise. It clicked in my mind that this same animal had already killed three humans.

We hadn’t come to this part of India to hunt bears—not even a certain sloth bear. This was tiger country, and Rao and I, only a few hours before, had been busy tracking down a very large male tiger near the neighboring village of Arjuni. There was other game, true, but tigers were the main attraction. The week before, Rao and I had killed a large tigress and a male which ran with her. These two tigers had turned man-eater and had accounted for several human victims. Having shot the two man-eaters, we moved here to the Arjuni area to hunt a big male tiger.

We were in one of the most remote portions of the plateau of east-central India. My wife, Brownie, and I had gone to considerable trouble to get here. We had flown from Bombay to Nagpur, where we picked up our Hindu guide, Rao Naidu of the firm of Allwyn Cooper Limited. Allwyn Cooper was originally a firm dealing in teak and other tropical woods. However, it had turned to big game hunting entirely. Rao Naidu had already killed more than 80 tigers and is considered one of the top tiger men from Ceylon to New Delhi.

Rao had suggested that we take the long train ride from Nagpur to Raipur to get into the tiger jungles of Madhya Pradesh. At Raipur, we picked up a jeep and trailer loaded with bedding and equipment for a three-week hunt. We also picked up eight Hindu boys as camp assistants, skinners, and trackers.

From Raipur, Rao drove the jeep and trailer 100 miles along forest roads which the British had built into the heart of the teak forests north and east of Raipur. As he drove the jeep through the suffocating clouds of dust, Rao explained that we had come all this way not just for tigers but for one particular tiger.

Rao was somewhat annoyed when, on the fourth evening of our stay at Arjuni, a man broke into our conversation at the government rest house which was our camp. The fellow wore the usual white rag around his buttocks and was otherwise naked except for a distinctive cap which had a visor and a flap of cloth behind. It was his only badge of office as a minor official. He saluted smartly and asked to speak with the sahib. My wife and I thought the man might be applying for a job or that he had news of our big tiger, but as he talked in Hindustani, it became clear that he was asking for something.

After Rao had listened, he turned and translated for us: “This man has walked over from the village of Gindoli. He asks us to come there and shoot a killer of men.”

“Another man-eating tiger?” I asked.

“No tiger at all,” Rao said slowly, “but a sloth bear.” I had heard of the Indian sloth bear before. I knew that its name was derived from the fact that it has very long claws on its forepaws and in that respect resembles a sloth. It uses these claws for digging up roots and small rodents, which constitute the major part of its food. The sloth bear is a handsome beast with long black hair on its body and a white V-shape marking on its chest. I remembered particularly seeing this light-colored chevron on a sloth bear I once watched in a zoo.

Our head bearer led the man from Gindoli village to the rear of the cottage to have some tea after his long walk. Then Rao said, “Sloth bears are not usually dangerous; but when they are bad, they are very bad.”

Next Rao shook his head as though in consternation. The man from Gindoli had told him more than he had translated for us. “Perhaps we could put off our hunt for the big tiger a few days,” Rao suggested. He turned to Brownie. “Would you like to see Gindoli? It is a beautiful drive.”

I knew this was a subterfuge but I did want to get this sloth bear that killed people.

WE DROVE the 20 miles or so to Gindoli the next day. The Raipur teak forests never cease to amaze us. The country was rolling and almost flat. As this was in March, the forests were dry and had the appearance of a relatively open New England or Pennsylvania woods in the fall of the year. Along the nullahs or watercourses scattered about the low hills were clumps of bamboo and thicker growth. Every few miles were small villages surrounded by cleared rice fields now empty and brown. This was the middle of the dry season.

At almost every bend of the rude road were peafowl dusting themselves in the ruts. We stopped once to shoot two of the birds for supper. A peacock is about the size of a turkey and delicious eating. Our trackers were very eager to have us shoot the big males so they could use the long tail feathers for dance decorations and fans, but we found the cocks wary and hard to approach within shotgun range.

But there were also jungle fowl (which are the ancestors of our own chickens), partridges, green pigeons, and several kinds of doves. We seldom had difficulty shooting enough birds for the pot on any drive in this area.

One of the author’s trackers with a peafowl—harvested for the dinner pot. Tyler Freel

The region of Gindoli village was more barren than most of the country. Here the sandstone rocks of the plateau were bare of soil in many places. Some geological upheaval of long ago had created two low ridges of jumbled rock perhaps half a mile apart. Between these was a long basin. In this depression, the village of Gindoli lay.

As our jeep labored over the rough rocks of one of these ridges and down into the hollow, all the villagers came forward to look at us. The men bowed low to make us welcome. Women with tattooed faces and rings in their noses smiled graciously upon us. Naked children pressed forward to touch the fenders of the jeep.

Rao began a spirited conversation with the elders of the village. Our two trackers, Manchu and Sardarsingh, were talking with several young men of the village, apparently the hunters of the group. One of these men carried an ancient muzzle-loader that obviously would not fire. But it gave the owner considerable prestige, nevertheless. He was gesticulating and arguing with an air of authority.

My wife and I examined the surroundings of the village while these long talks were in progress. The houses and fields of Gindoli suggested extreme poverty. It was difficult to see how any people, no matter how industrious, could wring a living from this barren place.

About a quarter of a mile below the village was a small pond. As we walked down to examine the place, a flock of teal jumped up and circled away. White egrets stalked in the mud around the water. I noticed a tiger track at the edge of the pond. The animal had come in to water the night before. I could not understand why these people, who lived every day with tigers and a dozen other hazards, should be afraid of a bear.

When we returned to the group around the jeep, Rao led a young man forward to meet us.

“This is Daru of Gindoli,” Rao said by way of introduction. “He was hurt last year.”

We scarcely heard what Rao said. We were staring at the man’s face, or rather, what had been his face. His cheek and ear were gone so that the naked bone of his jaw showed through a crack. One eye had been torn away. His mouth, ripped open at the corner, had healed askew, and with a horrible star-shaped scar on the side of his chin.

Rao said, “This man was attacked by the male bear. He put betel juice on the wound and did not die.”

“There are three sloth bears near the village,” Rao continued. “There is a female, a young bear, and an old male. The female and the old male have killed two men and one woman of the village. Two days ago another woman was attacked. That is when they sent for us.”

“Let’s shoot them, then,” I said with enthusiasm.

Rao smiled in his quiet manner. It was obvious that I had no idea how one went about shooting a sloth bear.

RAO WAS ALREADY issuing orders to the young men of the village. The village headman was waving the small hatchet he carried and ordering the young men to start off on the hunt. Four of these steadfastly refused. Some of the women also joined in the argument. The four young men sat down on the ground· to emphasize their determination not to move. Rao shrugged and we started off towards the rocky ridge on the far side of Gindoli with only 10 men and two or three boys.

“Some of the men are afraid to help us hunt the bear,” said Rao somewhat needlessly.

One of the villagers carried a charpoy, a native bed made of a wooden frame laced with cords. Rao and I carried our rifles, and Brownie brought along the cameras. We mounted the rocky slope and crossed it, entering an area where the trees were thicker in patches, with occasional glades of bare rock where the soil was too thin to support vegetation.

It was in one of these bare, sandy spaces that I saw for the first time the track of a sloth bear. The track was impressive—about the size of a grizzly track, with the marks of the long, arching claws of the forefoot well out beyond the toes.

“The bears have been eating the fruit of the mohwa tree in the valley beyond here,” Rao explained. “They water at night at the pond below the village. Any humans that they meet they attack.”

The men from the village stayed in a tight group and talked in low tones as Rao directed their hoisting the charpoy into the forked branch of a low tree. The bed was lashed in a horizontal position, and Rao, Brownie, and I climbed up to the platform. It was late afternoon as we took our position. From the platform, or machan, we could see across one of the little open spaces of bare rock for perhaps 100 yards. Beyond this, the mohwa and sal trees grew thick to form an almost impenetrable wall of vegetation. The mohwa trees at this time of the year produce a white fruit the size of a small crabapple. This fruit drops off the branches every night and covers the ground with a fragrant-smelling layer that looks like a carpet of popcorn. The mohwa fruit is eaten by almost all the animals of India, including humans. A Gindoli woman gathering mohwas had been killed by the big male sloth bear only the month before.

As Rao signaled the drivers to move off, they walked reluctantly and still in a group. Our two trackers, Manchu and Sardarsingh, tried to marshal them into some semblance of order, but it was obviously difficult. The plan was for the line of men to circle wide and form on the far side of the mohwa thicket, then, with shouting and noise, drive the bears toward us. This driving technique is one standard way to hunt tigers. I’d already seen the villagers of Arjuni walk through the thick brush to drive man-eating tigers up to us. Certainly these Gindoli villagers weren’t going to be afraid to drive bears in the same way.

But Rao shook his head as he saw the villagers leave. Brownie and I were occupied with the sights and sounds of the jungle in the late afternoon. A flight of parrots flew past, their bodies emerald-green against the evening sky. Peafowl screamed in the distance. A spotted deer barked like the baying of a hound. Far off to the side, we saw the spiral horns of a big-bodied antelope called the blue bull as it broke through the trees and dashed away. But that was all.

The author’s guide Rao Tyler Freel

After perhaps two hours of waiting, we made out the bobbing turban of Sardarsingh, our tracker. Manchu was a few paces to one side of him, moving along striking the boles of the trees with the flat of a small ax. Far to the right was a whole cluster of turbans and faces—the villagers. They were still in a group and were coming toward us single file, making scarcely a sound. They looked furtively from side to side as though they hoped they wouldn’t see any bears and would get back to the machan safely.

“Some drive,” I said. “How do these guys expect us to shoot their sloth bears if they won’t drive them for us?” Rao shrugged eloquently.

After the miserable failure of our sloth bear drive, I expected Rao to give up the project so we could go back to hunting the big male tiger. Rao didn’t even mention sloth bears as we drove back through the jungle night to the government rest house at Arjuni. The next morning as usual, he received reports on the tigers from the local trackers and sent the assistant cook to an adjoining village to bring back a half-grown water buffalo for tiger bait. That evening Rao suggested that we take a ride in the jeep.

I noticed as we started out that Rao had mounted a big searchlight on the back of the jeep and connected it by short wires to the jeep battery. Manchu, sitting high in the rear, could manipulate this light from side to side and up and down to sweep

Attempting to outline, only finding tangled stems, white mohwa fruit rotting, and dry leaves. Suddenly, a head appears. Swinging the gun, I mutter, “Another peacock.” The bird’s bright black eyes catch us. The peacock jerks its head from side to side, assessing the situation. Its gaudy crest of feathers gleam green in the setting sun as it gazes at us and then the thicket. The peacock is about to take flight, but it pauses to determine the drivers’ proximity. The sloth bear has eluded us once again. Our elaborate drive was pointless.

I glance at Rao, wondering if we can abandon our blinds. Rao leans his gun against a bent tree. The peacock screams sharply. I look where the bird is bolting.

There I see the bear’s head. Its mouth is half open, revealing yellow teeth, loose lips, and a red tongue dripping with moisture. I spot the white V on its chest and the black body behind. I hurriedly thrust my rifle forward and release the safety.

At my movement, the bear runs once again. It had only paused for a second when the peacock warned it. That brief warning was sufficient. With yelling humans behind and two crouching humans in front, the bear refuses to cross the open ground.

The bear circles the mohwa thicket, making great leaping bounds through the thick vegetation. Branches and vines tear away as it moves. Sardarsingh, our tracker, is so close on the flank that he hurls his ax at the bear, attempting to turn it, but fails.

One small opening remains as the bear completes a half-circle around me. Even this opening is filled with upright rocks and scattered trees. There the bear is—a black form that gathers into a solid mass, then stretches out in another arching leap up the slope and away.

Through the scope sight, I see the shaggy hair of its flank between the trees. It disappears behind a rock, then reemerges. I position the crosshairs of the sight ahead of the massive chest and squeeze the trigger. At the blast of the shot, the bear leaps once more, then slides on its face and rolls over.

Excited noise surrounds me. Rao grasps my hand and kisses it. People slap me on the back. Turbaned heads jump up and down, and there is much shouting.

Villagers carry the slain sloth bear after a successful drive. Tyler Freel

“Luckiest shot I ever made,” I grin foolishly. “That peacock almost ruined the show—” But everyone else is speaking Hindustani, and my own comments are disregarded.

Brownie arrives with the cameras. Daru, the man with the horribly torn face, steps forward to touch the bear that maimed him so badly. The villagers proudly carry the animal back to Gindoli. However, most of the women refuse to touch it.

All evening and late into the night, a celebration is held to appease the spirit of the bear. Drums boom and homemade flutes wail high and low. Male dancers, wearing two-ended drums around their necks, dip and move rhythmically.

I would’ve enjoyed these things more if I could’ve simply observed them, but I am the center of the ceremony. The village’s elderly women bring a brass tray filled with oil and a burning wick. They make passes around me with it. They apply yellow meal to my forehead and pour oil on my feet until my shoes are soaked. Finally, they present me with a small coconut, symbolizing the spirit passing from the bear’s body to mine.

When we skin the bear late that night, we find four lead pellets as big as the end of a finger lodged in the animal’s chest. The crude projectiles are encased in cartilage and were fired a long time ago from a muzzle-loading gun. It’s no wonder that the sloth bear of Gindoli has sometimes killed men.