I'm thinking about lions. Well, one lion, actually.
I didn't used to think about lions, at all. Like anybody else, I'd seen lions in zoos and in circuses and on TV, but these seemed dull and shabby to me, even when I was a young boy. Where's the excitement, when the animal will sit on a stool for its trainer and roar on command for a scrap of old horsemeat? And what's the thrill of the sound of a grunting roar in a zoo that is barely audible over the sounds of the thousands of other pedestrians and the omnipresent drone of city traffic all around you? What would be the point in stalking a lion, who National Geographic TV explained was nothing more than a stud animal who lazed around all day while his wives gathered the groceries, and never lifted a finger himself? No, I didn't think about lions at all.
I thought about Cape buffalo, though, and the buff is what lured me to Africa. And it wasn't until I went to Africa to hunt and kill my buffalo bull that I met my first real lion. The lion who told me the truth: that those pathetic creatures in the zoo and on those lying National Geographic TV shows were not lions at all.
I met him in 2015, on my way to find Cape buffalo. We were out in the Land Cruiser on my first day in-country, just an afternoon's drive to look at the land and see what's what. Near the Nyati Dam, it was. A small pride consisting of a couple of adult lioness and three half-grown cubs were lounging in the shade of a smallish tree on the edge of a clearing about the size of a football field. Two of the cubs were worrying the remnants of what had been a warthog earlier in the day. The lionesses stood as we approached and watched us warily. The cubs watched, too, but with little interest. We drove to within 30 yards of the group and watched them through the windshield, and we took some photos.
Then my PH nudged me and pointed off to the right, and up the slope of the low hill, standing between a couple of mopane clumps, stood the lion. He was perhaps 30 yards away, and in the brilliant afternoon sunshine every detail stood out with crystal clarity. I could see the striations of the irises of his eyes as he looked at me. And he was looking at me; not at the hunting car, not at the trackers up on the back rack, but directly at me, as if he knew who the hunter in this group was, and I could almost hear his thoughts.
His attitude toward me was malignant. His eyes seemed to say, "I see you, and I know who you are. You are my enemy. You and your kind have been killers of me and my kind since time immemorial, and if I can, I will kill you and I will eat you." And in the depths of my soul, I felt a corresponding recognition of him as the enemy of me and my kind, and I wanted absolutely right then and there to kill him, and take his skin, and eat his meat, and then sleep the sleep of the righteous with a bellyful of lion.
Then he turned and slipped into the bush, and where he had stood was only bright yellow grass and white stones.
And ever since that day I have not been able to stop thinking about that lion, and his kind.
We saw quite a few lions on that safari, my PH and I. We also saw a lot of rhino (John counted 15, I only recall 11), a lot of elephant, and even a leopard. I was impressed by all of them, they're wonderful animals. But none of them stirred my blood, none of them made me want to kill him. Only the lion did that. When my wife came back to Africa with me in 2019, we only glimpsed a pair of lionesses one time, never an adult lion. But that didn't matter, I heard him grunting and roaring in the night, and I knew he was there, and I wanted him.
So now I'm wondering if I can make it happen. Can I get the money together to do this? Lions are hellish expensive, unless you shoot a tame one on a game ranch in SA. (I have no interest in shooting a tame lion.) The price tag isn't just for the lion himself, but for the way he is hunted. You have to shoot bait, which means buffalo (trophy and non-trophy, in most places), zebra, and maybe giraffe. Those all cost money, too. Not to mention the fact that lions live in country where all the other wonderful African plains game live, so there's chance you'll run across a sable, a kudu better than the one on your wall, an eland, or that elusive waterbuck you've not managed to collect on your previous safaris. And you need to invest time, because lions don't show up on a schedule... you need to book a minimum of 3 weeks in-country to have a reasonable chance of putting a bullet into simba's brisket.
Can I afford it? Probably not, but if I can move some dates and some other things around, and if I can line up some work I'm lining up that will pay as well as the proprietors say it will, I might be able to make a go of it. And if I do it, I have to do it soon. I'll be 70 before you know it, and even if you're a young 70, the grim reality is that a 7 followed by any other number is an age that should not be associated with a lion hunter. I'm looking online at various outfitters in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Mozambique. Wondering which of them can offer the best lion for a price I can afford, if any. I'm looking at the African outfitters who will be at the Dallas Safari Club convention in January, and thinking about who I want to talk to about this. I've reread Ruark, and Bell, and I just discovered and read Pease's The Book of the Lion (1914), and only slightly regretting the fact that chasing down lions on horseback is a sport that no longer exists, anywhere.
I have no plan to hunt lion. I have a dream, and I have a desire. Maybe you do, too.
