South African conservationist and film-maker John Varty said he felt like a rag doll when one of his tigers recently attacked him and tried to drag him into its enclosure.

Varty suffered several puncture wounds and two broken ribs when he was grabbed by the tiger, called Corbett, while filming on his Tiger Canyons farm in the central Free State.

On Thursday, the Volksblad newspaper reported that doctors at Mediclinic Bloemfontein were happy with his condition.

“There is no infection,” Andre Loubser, a trauma surgeon at the hospital, told the newspaper.

He said Varty would remain in the trauma unit for now and that a decision to move him to a general ward would be taken on Sunday.

In a newsletter on Tiger Canyons website, Varty described how the tiger reached through the wire gate and used its paws to hook him around the waist and drag him back against the gate.

He said one of the people present risked her own life by grabbing his legs in a tug-of-war with the tiger. Another woman helped her.

The tiger eventually released him when a cameraman struck it over the head with an iron bar.

He said it felt as if his last moments on earth had arrived.

The film-maker thanked the three people, who had never worked with tigers before, and the Bloemfontein doctors who operated on him for six-hours.

Tigers are not native to South Africa, which is home to lions, leopards, and cheetahs.

Varty set up the experimental reserve near Philippolis in the Free State with the aim of eventually returning the cats to Asia to boost their dwindling numbers.

He founded the luxury Londolozi Game Reserve, in the private Sabi Sands Game Reserve, which shares an unfenced border with the country’s world-famous Kruger National Park.

He has made several documentaries and co-wrote, produced, and starred as himself in the 1992 film “Running Wild”, also starring Brooke Shields and Martin Sheen.