The Man-Eater of Mfuwe

The Man-Eater of Mfuwe was a maneless male lion that killed six people in and around Mfuwe, the small gateway town of South Luangwa National Park in eastern Zambia, over about two months in 1991. His victims included boys walking at night and women dragged from their huts; the last was a woman taken from her round house in the village of Ngozo.

He was enormous, about 3 metres from nose to tail and reported at around 227 kilograms, and often called the largest man-eating lion on record. He was also strikingly bold: he once returned to a victim’s house, took a bag of her laundry and carried it through the middle of the village, roaring over it. The behaviour fed rumours that he was a sorcerer or an evil spirit rather than an animal.

Several attempts to kill him failed. Wayne Hosek, an American hunter from Chicago with a licence that included lion, turned it to the man-eater, and with the professional hunter Charl Beukes waited about twenty nights in a blind. On 9 September 1991 the lion came within range and Hosek shot him behind the left shoulder. As a boy Hosek had stood for hours before the Tsavo lions in Chicago’s Field Museum; on 2 September 1998 he donated the Mfuwe lion there, where it is still displayed.