ROAD HUNTER

easy, Hancock connecting on this one while I worked the light. Five minutes later, the other two cats returned and I dropped another lion.

The pride of killer cats were all lionesses, and the fourth one wouldn’t come back to our calls. We got in Hancock’s four-wheel-drive Toyota and went after it. I was in the driver’s seat, Hancock in back, leaning over the top of the truck with a man from the village holding a spotlight. Driving into 5-foothigh, thick, yellow grass, we hadn’t made it far when Hancock knocked on the roof, the signal for me to stop. The instant the truck stopped, he fired. The blaze of the muzzle blasted inches from the windshield. Hancock had caught a glimpse of the cat as it charged through the tall grass, and when it was 3 feet from the bumper, he fired, hitting it between the eyes.

We lined up the cats for the villagers to see, come sunup. Finally, their time of living in fear had been put to an end, at least for now. Hancock worked as a problem animal control expert for the South African government and he hired me, short-term, to assist.

In 1990, the author got his first taste of facing a maneater. Haugen took this polar bear in -42-degree temperatures, amid total darkness, in Alaska’s Arctic after it had killed and partially devoured a man.

THE NEXT DAY, Hancock and I returned to his office to file a report. That’s when he received a message about problem crocodiles in a place he’d been to only a few days prior.

“Last week, I took a big croc from this pond … I just happened to be in the village when it killed a 14-year-old girl,” he recounted.

Crocodiles kill a lot of villagers and livestock every year in the African bush. “Any croc we see over 6 feet long, you shoot,” Hancock instructed. The first croc I shot was just over the minimum size, one Hancock established through experience that it was big enough to kill humans and livestock. The second one was bigger.

We spotted the second croc sunning itself on a point of land. Stalking through mud and water wasn’t easy, as we had to remain silent. Picking leeches from our legs and bare feet slowed our progress.

Eventually, I was in the shooting sticks, the croc facing away. “When it opens its mouth, shoot it in the brain,” Hancock instructed. Crocs regulate their body temperature by gaping their mouths, and this provided the perfect shot angle. At the sound of the .222, the croc’s upper jaw dropped, its tail flinched, and it was over.

Walking up on the croc, I’ll never forget the solemness in Hancock’s voice. “This is where the 14-year-old girl was killed,” he pointed at his feet and the dead croc.

MY FIRST MAN-EATER experience came in 1990, shortly after my wife Tiffany and I moved to Alaska’s Arctic, where we worked as school teachers in the village of Point Lay. Point Lay consisted of fewer than 100 Inupiat Eskimo people at the time, and polar bears were prevalent in winter.

This part of Alaska is remote. No tourists visit. One year we went 199 straight days below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Total darkness is continuous for two months. Storms can last weeks, burying homes in massive snow drifts.

On December 9, I was awakened by a 5 a.m. phone call. It was -42 degrees, we were amid 24 hours of darkness and the village public safety officer (PSO) was requesting help. He’d received a call that a bear had attacked a man in the middle of town, underneath one of the few street lights that illuminated the desolate village.

Armed with a .30-06 and a flashlight, finding the attack site wasn’t difficult. Shoulder-length human hair whipped in the wind, attached to chunks of scalp that were frozen to the snow. The blood trail was easy to follow.

Alone, I continued on the trail while the PSO stayed behind to organize a