The Bavarian Hiasl

Matthäus Klostermayr was born in 1736 in Kissing, a village south of Augsburg. His father was a farmhand; the family was poor. At fifteen Matthäus went to work for a Bavarian master huntsman as a hunting servant. There he learnt the woods, the guns, the cunning of the game. But he also saw the ducal hunting parties, where the nobles rode for pleasure and left to the peasant whatever was left over.

In 1758 Matthäus poached for the first time on his own. He shot a stag in the ducal preserve and shared the meat among four poor families in Kissing. One of his companions betrayed him; he was caught, beaten, released. He then went underground in the Augsburg woods and slowly built a band round him.