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usually based on hunting experience or social status rather than simple
ethnic difference. Such differences are difficult to discern in an account
that, for example, states both“Mongol vassal tribes”and the“Khorchin”
must supply 1 , 250 huntsmen for the Muran ceremonies. The prerequisite
for expressing these distinctions at all is Muran’s“ 1 , 000 liof dense forests
and abundant grassland and water”that attract“herds of wild beasts to
breed there.”Only under these conditions does Muran become“a truly
heaven-sent area for military training and pacifying the distant.”^95
Pacification by venery could also domesticate Han elites, such as Gao
Shiqi, who in 1682 accompanied the emperor on an eastern tour and was
suitably impressed by Manchu hunting prowess. Encounters with tigers
seem to have been especially opportune for this purpose. He describes
how the Kangxi emperor and his immediate retinue pepper a tiger with
arrows from elevated positions,“so that there is not one that is not
slaughtered,”or how fearless dogs are set on tigers concealed in high
grass, or how guardsmen advance on tigers with spears. Gao marvels that
“in the past, people said that the power of tigers and panthers of the
mountains could not be matched, but nowfighting them is extremely
easy. Several tens have been killed over the past month or so, something
unknown to previous generations.”^96 This was, of course, an exagger-
ation, as Han agricultural clearance had been devastating tigers in places
such as Shaanxi since at least the Ming dynasty. One study suggests a
correspondingly precipitous drop in the tiger population south of the
passes that easily exceeded the Kangxi emperor’s lifetime score of
135 tigers bagged that he reckoned up in thefifty-eighth year of his reign.
Southern Manchuria was similarly affected from the early eighteenth
century.^97
The emperor had the educational role of game in mind when he made
this statement of his hunting record in 1719 , which included twenty bears,
twenty-five panthers, ninety-six wolves, 132 wild pigs, several hundred
deer, and, in one day, 318 rabbits. This had been his practice since his
childhood, and he admonished his guardsmen to apply themselves with
like diligence. A generation later in 1749 Suiyuan General Buhi
expressed a similar concern in his request to arrange joint annual
hunting exercises beyond the passes for Manchu banner troops stationed
south of the Great Wall and regional Mongol banner troops. Buhi was
concerned that the troops, who normally cultivatedfields, had“no wild
animals”to hunt and so were losing vital military skills. He proposed
that these men be deployed for hunting in the vicinity of Pastoral
Chakhar and hoshuu areas where “there are still wild animals like
52 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
