The Big Game Hunter is an unused character created for the Haunted Mansion by Marc Davis.
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Marc Davis created the Big Game Hunter for an unused Trophy Room sequence in-which guests would pass by a room filled with taxidermy trophies of tiger-hunting. A portrait on the wall (ornated with a Wildebeast head-carving) would have showed the hunter triumphantly standing over the recently poached remains of a tiger he killed and on the walls there would be mounted heads of six tigers and the mounted tail of a seventh, all of which would become animated due to the Haunted Mansion. In the centre of the room, the Hunter's ghost would be tormented by the spirits of his prey as a tiger-pelt carpet bit his rear (and in later concept art by David Witt would also bite at his legs and ankles as the ghost tried to escape).
Bertie Dread
Legacy[]
The Big Game Hunter appeared in the ending page of the comics story "Doom of the Diva", with his head stuck in the mouth of a bullet-ridden tiger.
As of the 2011 update of Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion, a series of tombs decorated with marble busts were added to the queue outside of the Haunted Mansion and which would become known as The Dread Family. The marble bust of Bertie Dread shares a resemblence to the Big Game Hunter and is also dressed in similar safari-gear to the hunter. Along with this Bertie's epitaph describes him as having been "An Avid Hunter and Expert Shot" with the original concept art of the character showing him being tormented by his pet snake in a similar manner to how the hunter was tormented by tigers post-mortem. In this same queue, poetess Prudence Pock tells a poem about a man named Franz Geiger being eaten by a tiger while on safari.
Trivia[]
Concept art made by Ken Anderson of an alternate trophy room
- Keeping in the theme of unused Trophy Hunting concepts, Imagineer Ken Anderson's artwork for Bloodmere Manor often included mounted taxidermy heads as-well. The different here however was that these heads were human and mounted in a way similar to how a hunter might mount an animal head. These heads were likely inspired by similar dark-humored gags from the work of Charles Addams, and/or by the short horror story The Most Dangerous Game/The Hounds of Zaroff by Richard Connell where an aristocratic Russian hunter uses a private-island in the Caribbean to hunt man for sport.
- While the tigers in the trophy room sequence were never incorporated into the ride, the Were-Cat Lady (who was originally a black-panther) got turned into a White Tiger within every current iteration of the attraction.
Big Game trophies from the film
- The 2003 film adaptation of the Haunted Mansion featured several big-game hunting-trophies decorating the area just outside of the conservatory. This included: a bengal tiger's pelt and the mounted heads of a zebra, water-buffalo, warthogs, deer, and antelope.
- Also within the Attic sequence, a tiger-skin rug which once belonged to Reginald Caine can be seen within Constance's hoarde. This was a prop reused from the film.
- Marc Davis planned a connected unused gag for the Jungle Cruise which would have shown a big-game hunter on elephant-back attempting to shoot at a tiger, only blasting the fur off the animal's rear.