The gathering of hundreds of tigers may seem like a sensational event, but in the 1950s, this terrible strange thing happened in a village in Hunan, causing huge losses to the people in the village. Not only that, the South China tiger also appears frequently everywhere, affecting people's lives, and then affecting people's life safety. In a period of 10 years, because of the rampant south China tiger, more than 2,000 people have been buried in the tiger's mouth. So why did the South China tiger, as a solitary animal, appear in groups to besiege a small village with no name? In the end, how was this matter resolved?
South China Tiger
In the 1950s, when "fighting tigers" was popular in Hunan, coincidentally, one day, the villagers caught a young tiger in a trap, and everyone did not know what to do, so they had to put the tiger in a cage.
No one expected that a disaster would come to this village. On that day, the livestock in the village were restless, and those who were kept in captivity desperately drilled into the depths of the circle; those who were not kept in captivity also ran back to their homes early, hid in the corner, and did not dare to move, and the village became surprisingly quiet.
Just when everyone was feeling very strange, some villagers saw several South China tigers around the village and rushed back to the village to ventilate the message: "Oops, the big worm is coming!" ”
South China tiger cubs
It wasn't long before people started beating gongs and drums to evict them. Who knew that the South China Tiger, who had always been very sensitive to sound, would not leave at this time. When the crowd saw the situation, it was up to them, and they just wanted to wait for the South China Tiger to "play enough" and leave on their own.
But the next thing began to surprise everyone, did not expect that the few South China tigers not only did not leave, but also came one after another more tigers, according to the villagers who knew at the time, there must be more than a hundred South China tigers. This made the villagers panic and fear. GuLai is known as "one mountain does not tolerate two tigers", even if someone sees the South China tiger on weekdays, they are all alone, where someone has seen this kind of battle.
So the villagers began to try all kinds of ways to start expelling these tigers. But whether it was beating a gong or a drum or setting fire to threats, these tigers had no intention of leaving. Because of the fear that the tigers would attack the villagers, no one dared to really touch them.
Little by little, the whole village and the nearby villagers spent three days and three nights in extreme panic. In these three days, not only did no one dare to go out, but even sleeping had to add several layers of protection to prevent tigers from sneaking in the middle of the night.
It wasn't until the morning of the fourth day that the tiger was still around the village, and the well-informed old man in the village remembered that not long ago, the villagers had caught a small tiger, so he said to the crowd: "That little tiger is most likely the child of the Tiger King." ”
Then, under the instructions of the village chief, the villagers carefully released the little tiger back. Originally, I thought that the little tiger would go back safely and without incident, and the tiger group should retreat. But no one expected that the tigers began to attack the village as if they had received some instructions.
They quickly ransacked the livestock in the village, and the villagers, who had no resistance at all, began to flee in all directions. Li Huaide, a villager in Gaoping Village who was interviewed, once told reporters that the situation was very critical at that time, and he also saw a pregnant woman who was forced to have no way to retreat, picked up her child and ran to the mountain, and finally no one knew whether she was alive or dead. At that time, most people could only sit on the roof and helplessly watch the South China tigers do whatever they wanted in the village.
Fortunately, the South China Tiger did not stay long, and after some "looting", the South China Tiger left satisfied. The villagers who survived the disaster came out and began to clean the village.
After the incident spread in the outside world, many people began to speculate about the reason why the South China tigers besieged the village. Some people speculate that it is because the tiger king's child was captured that the South China tiger was anxious. After all, "people have seven points of fear of tigers, and tigers have seven points of fear of people", if it were not for the desperation, the South China tiger would not have taken such a big risk and run to its own human village.
But there is another way to say it. Because the habitat of the animals was occupied in large quantities at that time, they were forced to move to human areas. In order to protect their land, the villagers began to hunt wildly, which led to the South China tiger not having enough living space and not enough food, which occurred.
This statement was also traceable at the time. Before this incident, humans had also begun to hunt and kill South China tigers because of the invasion of South China tigers.
In 1952, coinciding with the land reform in Hunan, a large area of wasteland was reclaimed to plant crops, and the living environment of wild animals was greatly compressed, and they had no choice but to go to the fields that villagers had worked hard to cultivate to find food. The villagers were furious at the wildlife's destruction of their crops, so they organized teams to start hunting.
Wasteland
In order to protect the crops, many people carried hunting tools and began to hunt in the nearby mountains. But because people's energy is limited, it is impossible to look at their land all the time. Therefore, the villagers began to use traps, poisons and other things to prevent the animals on the mountain from approaching.
Many wild boars are buried in traps carefully laid by the villagers. This was once the place where south China tigers gathered, a large number of animals were hunted and killed, south China tigers did not have enough food, had to come out of the mountains and break into people's lives.
At that time, not only the livestock in the family would be taken away by the tiger, but even the villagers would be bitten by the tiger from time to time. In the years from 1952 to 1963, more than 2,000 people were buried in the mouth of the South China tiger.
When tiger activities in South China were the most rampant and seriously affected people's lives, many people spontaneously went up the mountain to fight tigers. However, because of the huge size of the South China tiger, sometimes a South China tiger needs four or five adults to cope, and it is difficult to fight the South China tiger by personal strength, so some villagers began to spontaneously organize a team to go up the mountain to "fight the tiger". Suddenly, the trend of fighting tigers began to become popular in the Hunan region.
The villagers who fought the tiger reached a tacit understanding and began to hunt and kill the South China tiger in groups with full armed forces. After summarizing the experience of many people, the South China tiger often haunts at night, and during the day, it is entrenched in the nearby mountains. So many people began to take the shovels and other tools prepared at home and went to the deep mountains to look for traces of the South China tiger.
Because the young and middle-aged people all went out to fight tigers, the people left in the family were some old and weak women and children, and some people would bring the whole family with them in the process of going up the mountain to fight the tiger for safety, so there were often children in the team with shovels and followed in the middle of the team. Many teams were completely destroyed because they were unable to defeat the South China Tigers, but there were still people who joined in one after another.
After a period of large-scale hunting, the villagers hunted a total of 647 South China tigers. Later, in 1956 alone, the number of tiger skins handed in has reached 1750, which has not been included in the statistics. The person who killed the most South China tigers in the process of hunting is called the "Tiger King".
Chen Qifang is a very powerful "tiger king", and it is said that the team he led hunted and killed more than 100 South China tigers in 7 years. He was originally just an ordinary old man who should enjoy the joy of life at home, but an accident made him pick up his shotgun and start to embark on the road of fighting tigers.
Chen Qifang
Chen Qifang was born in Hunan and began hunting with her father since she was a child, so she developed a very superb hunting technique. But he has always had his own principle, that is, not to move the tiger in the mountains.
But there were unexpected storms in the sky, and Chen Qifang didn't expect that bad luck would happen to her. One day, his beloved grandson dug sweet potatoes in the field and didn't come home until very late. The family was not at ease, so they went out to look for it. As a result, they found only one of their grandson's shoes and some blood stains on the ground, accompanied by the footprints of the South China tiger.
At this time, Chen Qifang realized that his grandson may have been taken away by a nearby tiger, which made him feel both sad and remorseful in his heart, and since then, Chen Qifang has returned to his old business and lived a life of hunting, but this time is different from before, in order to avenge his grandson, he specializes in beating the South China Tiger.
In just three years, Chen Qifang has grasped one by one through various old and spicy means. He and his two sons hunted and killed more than 40 South China tigers without any casualties.
Soon, his deeds became famous, and many people came to him to ask him how to hunt and kill the South China tiger. At this time, Chen Qifang would tirelessly teach him, and in his heart, as long as he could hunt and kill the South China Tiger to avenge his grandson.
So after a period of time, the team that was originally only a father and son gradually grew to more than 50 people. Subsequently, in order to improve the efficiency of tiger hunting, Chen Qifang divided the team into 6 groups and taught them all skills such as digging traps, using crossbows and setting ambushes. Once again, he launched a vigorous "tiger fighting activity" in the deep mountains.
They are very clear about the habits of the South China tiger, and they can often follow the footprints and feces of the South China tiger to find the place where the South China tiger is active, set up an ambush, and basically gain something every time. With the full cooperation of several groups, the anti-tiger campaign became more and more intense, and their names were spread farther and farther.
Later, Mao Zedong's hometown of Shaoshan also began to have incidents of South China tigers injuring people, and the local tiger fighting team had no way to attack the South China tigers because of their lack of experience. In order to ensure the personal safety of the local people, the local government immediately decided to invite Chen Qifang and others to come over.
In December 1955, Chen Qifang, who had received an invitation to inform, immediately took the tiger squad to Shaoshan, and after months of tracking and investigating the tiger's feces and footprints, they determined the location of the tiger. Chen Qifang immediately led people to start setting traps on the mountain, and then began to wait patiently.
After more than an hour of waiting, Chen Qifang calculated that the time should be about the same, so he led the people back to the place where the trap was dug, and sure enough, a huge tiger lay in place. Later, it was said that the tiger was more than 3 meters long, weighed more than 200 pounds, and had a very conspicuous "king" on its head, which was a veritable tiger king. Later, because of Chen Qifang's outstanding contributions in fighting tigers, she was once received by Zhou Enlai.
From this series of evidence, it can be inferred that because of the shrinking territory, the loss of food, and the fear of being hunted by humans, it is very likely that the "Hundred Tigers Village" will occur.
Although this thing sounds very scary, in fact, there are still some doubts about its authenticity. Because it is common sense for tigers to live alone, in the eyes of outsiders, in any way, hundreds of tigers gathered together is a very strange thing. The crowd also talked about this matter and put forward a lot of basis for questioning this matter.
The first is the habits of tigers. In the early years, because China's tigers did not have any natural enemies, they multiplied in large quantities in the wild, and the number of tigers increased, and correspondingly, the demand for food increased. At this time, people began to cultivate land on a large scale, resulting in a reduction in the range of activities of the South China tiger and a reduction in food. There are indeed attacks on humanity as a result.
But it would seem almost impossible for more than 100 South China tigers to attack a village together. Tigers are solitary animals, and the South China tiger is the least social race of tigers, and only during the breeding period will female and male tigers live together briefly, but only for a short time. In addition, there are basically no two South China tigers that can live together.
The living range of a South China tiger is about 70 square kilometers, so the activity range of more than 100 South China tigers also needs at least 7,000 square kilometers. This distance will take months for the South China Tiger to come over. So how can the South China Tigers get together so uniformly over such a long distance?
Later, some people said that it would not be because these hundreds of tigers were related by blood. This proposal seemed plausible, but it was quickly overturned. Because for male tigers, they are not involved in the process of raising children. After the South China tiger completes the breeding task, the male tiger will quickly leave the territory under the "threat" of the female tiger, so most of the male tigers do not know their offspring.
If in the wild, the male encounters a single tiger, even if it is of the same species, it is very likely that it will attack the tiger.
In another case, the male tiger knows his own children, as a father, he will take great care of his children, but this is only for his own children. Different from the human "next-generation relatives", once the male tiger's child gives birth to its own cubs, the male tiger will still launch indiscriminate attacks on the cubs, so the above-mentioned hundreds of tigers are almost untenable.
In addition, there are various theories circulating in the outside world, and some people say that this incident really happened at that time, perhaps it is just that the villagers were too nervous and misread the number of South China tigers, and later after word of mouth from the outside world, it became today's version.
But in any case, this is a painful lesson in human history, and now the South China tiger can no longer hurt people. And people should also reflect on themselves and have a reverence for the moments of nature.