"Allways speak the truth and you will never have to remember what you said before..." Sam Houston Texans, "We say Grace, We Say Mam, If You Don't Like it, We Don't Give a Damn!"
Thanks for the good words, guys, glad you like the pics. I got over 1200 pics from our photographer, but haven't had time/energy to edit them for posting here. Hopefully will get some done shortly.
Pugs, the hyena is big, I'd guess 90 pounds or so. Tough bastard, I hit him twice with the 375, through both shoulders and through both hips, and he still ran 50 yards before he piled up.
GRF, I've started my writeup for y'all, I'll get it posted this weekend (I hope) right here.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Pugs, the hyena is big, I'd guess 90 pounds or so. Tough bastard, I hit him twice with the 375, through both shoulders and through both hips, and he still ran 50 yards before he piled up.
Wasn’t it Ol’ Chuckles that convinced Ruark to use enough gun?
Thank you for the pics and really looking forward to getting the write-up!
Last edited by Johnny Dollar; 09/06/19.
“My horn is full and my pouch is stocked with ball and patch. There is a new, sharp flint in my lock and my rifle and I are ready. It is sighted true and my eyes can still aim.” Kaywoodie
Guys, I apologize for being so tardy in getting an account of our Zim safari up here... I can only plead business, which is a damn poor excuse, so feel free to pelt me with rotten fruit!!!
As you may recall, I took my first safari in 2015 with John Sharp in the Bubye Valley Conservancy (BVC), and took two of my three desired species: kudu, and the Big One, cape buffalo. I did not take an eland, although I tried hard. I flew back home and figured I had shot my Africa wad, and that would be that. However: my wife, Cate, had other ideas.
I introduced Cate (a.k.a. The Redhead) to the Dallas Safari Club show in January of '15, and she has become as addicted to the event as I have. As it happened, between the '15 safari and January of '18, Cate and I tied the knot and became man & wife, but because both of us have busy businesses to run, there was no time for a honeymoon. Until we were walking in to the DSC show in '18, at which point she announced to me and Tiny (her growth-stunted 19-year-old son): "I hope you brought your checkbook, darlin."
"Why, what's on your mind, babe?" I replied, visions of a fine English hammer double gun dancing in my head.
"John will need a deposit for our honeymoon trip to Africa next year, Sugarbritches," she announced. (Yes, she really calls me that. Texas gal, born & bred.) So the deed was done. We marched straight to John Sharp's booth, established the dates of our 10-day safari, fixed a price, and I wrote him a rather large check for 50% of the total. Our very own Tarbe was there to witness me being browbeaten and henpecked into the whole thing. Ask him, if you don't believe me.
Fast forward to the last day of this past July. Cate and I were on a Delta flight to Johannesburg. We had clothes (her hunting clothes were all brand spanking new, and stylish as heck, of course), boots, guns, ammo, and sundry other articles stuffed down in the hold, and I was literally giddy with excitement. Well, excitement and trepidation, that is.
You see, Cate was and is an old school Austin, Texas gal. She grew up in a Texas that doesn't exist any more. As the daughter of a prominent Austin internist, she was raised pretty much as a princess... which means that while she did spend most weekends at the summer house on the ranch just east of Junction, TX, she never wore jeans in Town, and although her dad and brothers hunted everything on four legs, she had never actually shot a living critter in her life. That is not to say she didn't know her way around a rifle... she was and is a damn good rifle and pistol shot, she'd just never had opportunity to kill anything with a firearm.
So I was bringing a hunting virgin to Africa for her very first real hunting experience. I could see it going well, but I had a few anxious thoughts I kept stuffing back down about the myriad ways things could go wrong.
But the flights were fine, the overnight stay in Joburg at Africa Sky Guest House was delightful, and after all was said and done, we arrived in the BVC on August 1 in fine form, with all our gear intact, and the hunting party formed up. Here's a list of the characters:
DocRocket: needs no introduction. Nuff said.
Cate: Texas gal, 5'7" and 130 pounds of sugar & spice, mesquite thorns, and Austin attitude (not modern Austin, the old school Austin). A dead shot with rifle or pistol, but new to the hunting game. Which proved to be a key detail to some of our safari adventures, as you will find later on.
John Sharp: Professional Hunter in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and other countries for damn near 40 years. The guy who has stood down more DG charges than any man alive (which he claims were nearly all bluff charges, and as such no big deal), and quite possibly Africa's foremost authority on hunting buffalo and lion. Formerly an enlisted man in the Rhodesian Army and a veteran of the Bush War, he hasn't just seen the elephant in all its forms, he's killed and eaten the mofo. A devout Christian and a true gentleman. I once called him the real life 21st century Alan Quatermain, and the more I know him, the more I believe it's true.
Rayno Egner: Owner and operator of Dark Continent Video Productions, out of the Northern Cape of South Africa. Farmer, rugby player, lifelong hunter and professional hunter, Rayno and his wife operate one of the top hunting photo/video companies in the world. Rayno had booked one of his employees to video our hunt, but circumstances changed and we were stuck with him instead. I'm not complaining, believe me... Rayno is a great guy, always upbeat, intelligent, humorous, and very, very skilled at his craft (Ivan Carter insists on Rayno being his cameraman on all of his TV shows). Rayno looks like a younger and skinnier Brett Favre, and shares my passion for ice hockey. Cate and John were bemused by the way Rayno and I were constantly talking about Wayne Gretzky, and how much The Great One would have enjoyed being on our hunt. Goofy, like me.
I'll stop here and continue in a fresh post shortly.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
So now you know the players, so let's talk about the stage: the BVC.
The BVC is just under a million acres of Old Africa. An amalgam of several old Rhodesian cattle ranches, the owners of the BVC have kept the ravages of the Mugabe Crime Machine at bay, no doubt by means of millions of dollars in bribes... er, I mean, "fees". A group of PH's hunt the BVC for the owners, but do not own it. The entire complex is surrounded by two 10-foot wire fences, so yes, it is a "high fence" operation... but it is so large, 95% or more of the game in the BVC never comes within sight of a fence in their entire lives. The game species and numbers within the BVC defy description. There is no wildlife park in Africa, or the rest of the world, to match it. There are more than 500 lions, almost 300 black rhinos, almost 300 elephant, more than 1000 leopards, and tens of thousands of Cape buffalo; and that's just the Dangerous Game. The plains game species are all represented there: wildebeest, zebra, kudu, eland, blackbuck, bushbuck, all of the Tiny Ten, impala by the zillions, and so on. If you want to see the size of the buffalo herds, I posted some pics of herds in my account of my 2015 safari, so go back to that post and you can view them. Suffice to say that we saw thousands of impala wildebeest and zebra every day, hundreds of giraffe and buffalo every day, and so on. We only saw 2 rhinos on this trip, but on my last safari, John and I sighted 14 black rhinos in 10 days, one of which was at Bad Breath distance.
The BVC is split up into 9 hunting areas or concessions, each of which is more than 100,000 acres. When you engage with the BVC and your PH to hunt there, you have exclusive rights to hunt your area. As John put it to Cate at supper on our first night on this safari, "Cate, your husband is the king here. Whatever he wants, within reason, is his to command. That maa Each concession has a central "camp", which consists of several luxurious (for African bush, that is) chalets, a dining hall, and support facilities. I had selected Nengo as our hunt district. I did so because Nengo Camp is one of the loveliest camps in the BVC, overlooking a big dam with its attendant water hole, so the profusion of game right outside your chalet window is staggering. Nengo also benefits from having a long section of the Bubye River itself running through the middle of it, so you have the benefit of the mostly dried-up river bed and its sporadic natural waterholes to draw game.
Is it worth paying the premium price to hunt in the BVC? I can't speak for anyone else, but it was worth it to me. It is a safe place, for one thing; that is not as easy to come by in modern Africa as it was 50 years ago. And by safe, I mean safe from evil men with automatic rifles. It is NOT safe if you fear lions, at least theoretically. More than once on this safari, we came off a buffalo stalk to find on our backtrail that lion tracks had been laid down over our booted footprints. Yes, that meant while we hunted the buffalo, the lions hunted us. John assured me that no hunter had ever been killed by lions since the inception of the BVC, but he averred when I asked him if anyone had ever been mauled by lions. And I also noted that the black Africans in our camp became very anxious about being outside of the concrete walls of the camp after sunset.
This is truly one of the last vestiges of Wild Africa.
To be continued...
Last edited by DocRocket; 10/06/19.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
As previously noted, my lovely wife Cate had never killed anything with a firearm before. Well, not quite true... she had shot turtles on the pond on her dad's ranch with a .22 rifle. My mistake, early on, was thinking that she didn't know her way around a rifle, which was far from the truth. She had been sent to a summer camp in New Mexico every summer in her girlhood, up until she was 16 or so. I eventually found out that in addition to learning her horsemanship skills at this camp (she's a damn good rider, I learned early in our acquaintance out in west Texas), she also had riflery training every morning at this camp, and being the competitive gal she is, she naturally made it a point to win the "friendly" competitions they held.
We noodled around in local gun stores looking at rifles for a while, and borrowed a couple of rifles from friends for her to try, but eventually settled on a Howa 1500 Mountain Rifle in 6.5 mm Creedmoor. With Hornady factory ammo (143 gr ELD-X) it's a very, very accurate rifle, well under MOA. It's a smallish rifle, well-suited to Cate's frame. She liked it from the get-go. She had never used a scope before, but it didn't take long for her to get that down. She didn't shoot off the bench much at all, but shot from hunting positions and off sticks. We didn't use paper targets, because I didn't want her focusing on group size: I put up an 8" gong, which as y'all know is pretty much the size of a deer's boiler room, and she rang that thing with authority.
My rifle was/is old hat... a Kimber Caprivi 375 H&H, this is the same rifle I used in 2015. I'm very, very comfortable with this rifle. It shoots 300 gr A-Frames at 2500 fps, give or take, and puts them well within minute-of-ventricle. By way of reference, for those of you with an M1 Garand rifle, this Caprivi has roughly the same size and weight as the old WW2 battle rifle. Carrying it in the right hand, the size/feel of the stock at the action is virtually the same.
Anyways, that's as technical as I'm gonna get on the subject of rifles today. Suffice to say both thunder-sticks arrived in Africa in good shape, and they both put bullets on paper at 100 yards to the satisfaction of our intrepid PH, and of course your intrepid correspondent, who, after all, was and is the final arbiter on the accuracy and performance of the rifles in my hands...
So, after confirming zero on paper on the morning of Safari Day 1 (SD1), we piled into the truck and began cruising from waterhole to waterhole to view the game, check out the tracks, and so forth. (I gave a more detailed description of this process of game-finding in my 2015 account, if you're curious.) After perusing 3 or 4 waterholes and their attendant mixed herds of wildebeest and zebra, John pulled over at the next spot, stepped out, and motioned for the sticks. Isaac, John's longtime head tracker, pulled out the shooting sticks, and we all piled out of the truck. It was Cate's time to shoot a zebra.
I should mention that John now has a set of Viper shooting sticks, which Cate really liked. For a new shooter, or one who's not real comfortable with the ubiquitous crossed sticks used everywhere in Africa, the Viper sticks are really cool. Basically it's two sets of sticks joined at the feet, so you end up with a bipod supporting the fore end of your rifle, and a second bipod supporting the buttstock at your shoulder. It really stabilizes the rifle, although you sacrifice mobility and adjustability in doing so... but that's a decent trade, most of the time.
Anyway: John and Cate moved up closer to the herd, and John picked out the zebra he wanted her to shoot, and they set up the sticks. Zebra moved, sticks came down, and they stalked further up, and repeated the setup and takedown a couple of times until finally Cate got on the zebra and all looked good. John gave her the go-ahead, and the Creemoor barked, and the zebra ran around the brush for a dozen seconds, then fell down. Everybody cheered, Cate high-fived the trackers and hugged John, and we walked over to view her trophy.
It was a lovely old mare with a very nice head an neck, which will look very nice as a pedestal mount (Cate had, of course, picked out her taxidermist, decided on the style of mount she wanted, and where in her living room the mount will go months before the safari...). This mare had a very cool bonus for us, too: the stripes on her left haunch were misaligned where a lion's claw had scarred her deeply years before, so that when the skin finally closed up again, the stripes went from black to white and white to black along a 12-inch scar line. We will make sure that piece of back skin is incorporated on the panel of the base of the final mount.
I painted some blood on both Cate's cheeks (just a little) to fulfill tradition, and she wore that blood proudly for the rest of the day.
We loaded up the carcass and headed back to camp for lunch. As we rolled along, Rayno suddenly rapped on the top of the cab over John's head, and John screeched to a stop. There was a hushed conversation among John, Rayno, and Isaac in Fanagolo with much hand signalling. Then John stepped out and spoke to me.
"Would you like a bushpig?" he asked. "We rarely see them in the daytime, but the guys spotted a pair of them under the bushes by that rock," he gestured at a huge rock dome 50 yards from the two-track, "and one of them looks pretty good."
"Of course I do," I said, pretending I had a good grasp of what a bushpig is and what its value as a trophy is, which of course I didn't, having seen maybe two pictures of bushpigs in my entire life and having zero real interest in shooting one. But as I had learned on my first safari, when Africa offers, one had best not turn the opportunity down. So off to hunt the mighty bushpig I went!
We circled around the rock and sneaked upwind, and then Isaac and Lovemore both pointed. A blur of grey-orange something-or-other was evident under a bush. I couldn't see head or tail, but judged I was looking down the spine of a sleeping critter of some type. John put up the sticks and I sighted my rifle on the nearer half of what I thought was the spine. The Caprivi roared, the grey-orange blob quivered a bit, and then congratulations were offered all round. We moved up and found a lovely little pig of about 100 pounds, grey and orange and ugly as all pigs are, and a bit hairier and orangier than most. The big 300 gr A-Frame had ploughed a furrow up the lumbar spine of the hog on its way in, and then blasted a small crater in the brisket on its way out, and pretty much macerated all parts between the two massive holes.
"You'll want a full body mount of that one," John positively beamed at me as he said this. He was really, really tickled that we had collected one of these. Rayno explained to me in the truck that in this part of Africa, this is one of the rarest trophies you can aspire to. I felt vaguely guilty for not being all that excited; after all, I've killed a bunch of pigs in my life, and they're just not an exciting animal, even if they wear grey-orange paint rather than grey-brown paint. But I have been educated, and this animal's hide will be duly transformed into a full body mount by Conroe Taxidermy some time next winter.
Nap Time and Dinner Time
With both rifles blooded, the first edge of the safari was nicely settled. We drove back to camp and dropped the fresh carcasses off with Gibson, John's ancient and venerable skinner, who seemed delighted at the sight of Cate's zebra's lion scar, and over the moon at the sight of my bushpig. Then we the hunting party headed back to the dining hall for lunch.
Meals in camp are a Big Deal. Breakfast is, well, breakfast... but made to order, and always a crucial start to the day. Even for a non-breakfast person like Cate, it becomes the foundation of the day's events at 0545, with departure looming at 0630 each morning. Lunch in camp, which is where we took it most days, is a big deal, too: meat and potatoes and soup and all that, it's a full meal, and you're ready for it after a full morning in the bush. And then supper: well, this is a production. Delicious cuts of wild game cooked to order (medium for Cate, medium rare for me and Rayno, and blood-rare for John), delicious fresh-baked bread and rolls, and after dinner, delicious home made cake or pudding for dessert. Coffee, of course, is available at all meals in John's camp, and I mean coffee... dark, rich, full flavored coffee from John's French presses. He buys the beans locally and they're ground fresh each day. Delicious, and necessary for a couple of coffee addicts such as Cate and me.
For those who imbibe, wine and liquor was top quality and plentiful. I gave up Demon Rum 5 years ago, so left that to Rayno and John, although I will admit that the wonderful aroma of freshly-poured Pinot Noir blended with that of freshly grilled eland steaks was tempting. Neither John nor Rayno are heavy drinkers, but they did get a bit tipsy on the 9th night (more on that later), which was a lot of fun. Sundowners, dinner, and after dinner, were all lively times for discussions about our lives away from hunting, on matters of politics, religion, and everything else. Having the company of such sharp and interesting minds as we had in camp for such discourse was remarkable.
And then there is the Best Thing about safari: nap time. Think about it... it's hot (90's or hotter), dusty, and you've just filled your belly with a good meal of wild game and smoked a pipe or cigar over coffee while conversing on any and every interesting subject under the sun. You find yourself yawning and stretching, and then you toddle off to your chalet, where the air is still cool. You slip your boots off, lie back on the bed, and you're gone. An hour later Soul, the houseboy, knocks on the door to remind you that there's more hunting to be done, so you don your boots and fully refreshed you wander back up to the hunting car. It may not sound like much, but anyone who has been on safari will tell you: the best part of safari is the naps.
To be continued...
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
At the end of Safari Day 1, after dinner was done and our bellies were full and we sat at table with glasses of scotch and cups of coffee and cigars and pipes lit and all the good stuff, I told John I had noticed something.
I began by summarizing my 2015 hunt for the others. John needed no reminding, as his memory for hunts and hunting details is astounding: he recalled almost every detail of my hunt 4 years before as well as I did, and recalled some details I had forgotten. But for those of you who may not recall it quite so well (ahem. ) here's a brief summary: I shot a nice zebra stallion on SD1, then we began stalking buffalo on SD2, killed a good buffalo on SD4, killed a really good kudu on SD6, then it started to rain, and we never got another shot on game despite looking hard for eland and waterbuck every day thereafter.
"So here's the thing, John," I said after the summary discussion hinted at above. "I had a great hunt in 2015, with the exception of not getting an eland, which is simply the way hunting goes. But I've been thinking, and maybe more accurately feeling, and what it feels like is this." I paused to puff my pipe and take a sip of coffee.
"What it doesn't feel like, to be precise, is that today doesn't feel like Day 1 of a new safari," I continued. "In reality, it feels like Day 11 of a continuing, ongoing, 20-day safari. It feels like I never left. We are still hunting eland, we are looking for our second buffalo, and maybe a second kudu, and definitely a nice waterbuck, but it's not a new hunt at all. We've added a couple of new people to have fun with us," I pointed my pipestem at Cate and Rayno, "But you and I are still on the same hunt we were on in 2015."
John smiled that small smile of his when something has got him thinking. "I think that's a very good way of looking at it, James," he said. "I'm pleased to hear that's how it feels to you, too."
"So that's how it feels to you as well?" I asked.
"I often feel that way," he said. "Not with everyone, but with clients who become friends, as you have done, that's how it feels."
Cate and Rayno seemed bemused by the conversation, but there were so many other good things to talk about they didn't mind. John and I mentioned it to each other now and again for the rest of the safari. (For example, on the morning of our second-last day in camp, I said to John as we walked out to the truck together, "Day 19, John, and we still haven't found him." "Don't remind me," he murmured in agreement. More on this discussion later...)
It may not seem like much to the casual reader, but to the African hunter, this concept of a never-ending safari that you can pick up at any time in the future is a profound one. The hunt never really ends, you simply lay it down after a while, and then after a longer while, you can pick it up again.
And that, my friends, is a priceless gift.
To be continued...
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Safari Day 2: Buffalo Stalking, Dagga Boys, and The Elephant Man
The morning chill in Africa is hard to believe if you haven't been there. In the heat of the day each afternoon the mercury may rise well above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the dry air parches your burning throat, and the slightest breeze feels like a kiss from Heaven, and you can't imagine what it's like to be cold. Yet at 0530 on a BVC morning, you'll be damn glad to have long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a heavy fleece jacket, and a felt wool hat as you sit down to your breakfast porridge.
On SD2 we tucked into our breakfast of porridge (that's oatmeal to you heathen Yanks) and eggs and toast, and then we limbered the rifles and went out to the truck, keeping moving to ward off the chill. The trackers shambled over to meet us in their heavy insulated hooded parkas, with the standard African greeting: "Morning, morning," but always with a big smile for the Memsahib.
Then off we went to look for the mighty Cape buffalo!
Buffalo are the damnedest critters. A Cape buffalo bull is close to two tons of sinew and horn that can kill you more ways than you can think of, if he's of a mind to do so. He can see better than you, hear better than you, run faster than you, and in every way is your physical superior. But he knows that men have thundersticks, and are as deadly as lions, his ancient and deadliest enemy, so he fears you, and will run from you if he so much as gets a hint of your presence. He is at once the most dangerous of Dangerous Game, and the most shy and retiring of the plains game, the hardest to stalk close to, and the least likely to give you a clear shot on any given day. So chasing the mighty buff is three parts hoping you can get close, two parts hoping you don't get too close, and one part each of raw fear of his power and lust to hang his great meathook horns on your wall in constant competition with each other.
Once you've hunted buffalo and won, you'll never hunt anything else without comparing it to this. As our 24HCF compadre Ingwe says, "One hunts buffalo in order to have hunted buffalo."
I've described the process before, in my 2015 account. The short version is this... You drive around looking for tracks at waterholes; he trackers identify a group of bachelor bulls (dagga boys); and you follow the tracks. After 2 to 4 hours of walking in the mopane bush, eventually one of 3 things will happen: 1) you'll get a good look at the bulls, and none of them will be shooters, so you'll back off; 2) you'll get a good look at the bulls, and one of them will be a shooter, and you'll shoot him; or most likely, 3) the bulls will catch your wind and run off, or an oxpecker will scream an alarm and the bulls will run off, or a rhino will get startled and run you over in his (literally) blind panic to get away from the African Boogeyman, or any other number of bad things will happen that prevents you seeing or shooting a bull.
Number 3 is what happens most times you stalk buffalo. By this time it's usually close to noon, you're hot and thirsty and dusty, and the mopane flies (which are actually little non-stinging bees) swarm all over your face and around your head, and as you trudge back to the truck you can't help but think what a lucky damn sonofabitch you are to be doing this. There is nothing like hunting buffalo.
Sometimes you see a herd, though, which is a magnificent sight. Herds in the BVC run anywhere from 50 to 200 cows and calves, with a good sprinkling of herd bulls around them. The herd bulls are youngish fellows, sexually mature, and obsessed with the need to breed cows. They run anywhere from 3 to 6 years of age, I'm told. The cows come into season at all times of the year, so the young bulls hang around all the time to take advantage a horny cow's random randiness. Herd bulls are not usually shooters, being younger, and their horn bosses are not fully formed and hard. They are huge as a rule, however, and may have impressive spreads. In the BVC they don't encourage shooting bulls in herds, mostly because bullets may pass through the targeted bull and wound or kill a second animal. You can do it if needs must, but they'd rather you hunt the bachelor herds.
By the time the bulls hit age 5 or 6, though, they've got tired of the constant drama of hanging around with females, and wander off on in bachelor groups of three to five to half a dozen or so. Sounds familiar, doesn't it gentlemen? These bachelor buffalo are called dagga boys, and the oldest and gnarliest bulls are to be found here. This doesn't mean they don't breed a cow now and then, they just don't hang with the females on a full time basis. Herd bulls sometimes join the dagga boys (bachelor night out, sort of thing), but quickly return to the cows. Dagga boys sometimes rejoin the herds when there's a lot of hot females in season.
So, on the morning of SD2 we drove from water hole to waterhole, and while we didn't identify any good bachelor groups, we did see a couple of good herds. We stopped to glass them, just because. In both cases the herds were out in the open so the process was relatively easy; but when you're looking over a herd at close quarters in the bush, it's a whole nother deal... more on that process later!
This was Cate's first up close and personal look at buffalo, and she was impressed, to say the least. The game viewing in general was very good this morning. We saw two groups of eland cows, and one youngish eland bull, a ton of giraffe, impala, and a lot of waterbuck. This latter was encouraging to me, as waterbuck had been added to my wish list after I saw them in the BVC in 2015. We also saw a good selection of warthog, kudu cows, and some young elephant bulls.
After lunch, we had a chance encounter that justified the expense of hiring a videographer for the whole trip, as far as I am concerned. If you recall, I debated hiring a videographer in '15 but decided against it. As a result, I have no footage of the amazing close encounters with bull elephant and black rhino we had on that trip, and I really regret that to this day. But this time we had Rayno along, and he caught many of those fleeting experiences. Today's event was one of them. saw We were cruising a two-track that paralleled the Bubye River, when about 5 o'clock Lovemore spotted a mature bull elephant in the bush. John stopped the car, and we watched him, a scant 60 feet off in the bush. At first he seemed oblivious to our presence, but then he turned his head and looked right at us, flaring his ears out: talk about enormous! He lifted his trunk to get our scent, and whether it was the sweet smell of diesel exhaust or the subtle fragrance of the Memsahib, he decided we were an object that seemed close enough to Cow Elephant that he ought to make some courtship gestures.
His courtship gestures consisted of extruding his enormous schlong so that it dangled inches from the ground, then spraying urine all over the ground and his feet and legs as he walked around the bush to get a better look at us. Let me tell you, boys... if you've never seen a 5-foot length of 6" black PVC sewer pipe hanging under a 12-ton wrinkled grey body, you don't know what the definition of "sexy" is!! The old boy finally stepped out into the roadway no more than 10 yards behind the truck, waving his trunk and his dick at us simultaneously, and spraying urine all over the place, before he finally decided we would probably be a lousy lay, and shambling off into the riverine foliage.
Once we were assured we weren't going to be charged and/or raped by the bull elephant, we all broke into laughter. It was a pretty amazing sight.
Oh, and I must say it was a bit of a boost to my ego, at least at first, when my lovely wife thereafter referred to me as The Elephant Man. The other guys were similarly impressed, believing as I did that she was referring to the size of my own equipment; however, it turns out she was alluding otherwise, as she told me in private that evening in our chalet. She was referring to my apparent inability to hit the toilet bowl with any decent degree of accuracy most mornings, she informed me, crushing my fragile male ego into the dust.. I did not inform the other fellas of this distinction, preferring to maintain some shreds of my dignity for the duration of the trip...
To be continued...
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Safari Day 3: Hog Warts, Ivory That Is, and Ivory That Isn't
Now, as I have previously explained in this chronicle, the Memsahib had some definite goals for this safari, and having fulfilled the first half of her wish list on SD1, she immediately moved on to her second objective: a warthog. I had mentioned to her that warthog tusks are lovely, and can be carved by an artisan into magnificent stuff such as jewellery, knife scales, and other objects of admiration among the hunting set. Well, at the mere mention of the word "jewellery", the die was cast, and Miss Cate's heart was set on one of the ugliest critters on God's green earth, the African warthog.
As previously noted, there were a lot of warthog to choose from on this hunt. We saw many, many warthog on the first two days, dashing away from the truck with their tails sticking up ramrod straight in the air, their short little legs pumping. I'm not a fan of the A10's namesake, at least as a trophy, but I think they're cool little critters.
We started SD3 with a good buffalo stalk. We found tracks at a waterhole shortly after sunrise, and we set off to track them. It was a beautiful morning, and as we followed the meandering trail between towering kopjes I couldn't help but marvel at the loveliness of this place. By 9:30, or about 2-1/2 hours of tracking, the trackers signalled they had seen the buff, and we all froze. Then Isaac conferenced with John in sign language. John turned to me and whispered, "There's a herd of zebra in there, and the buffalo are behind them. Too many eyes, we'll probably be seen. But we might be able to swing around them."
So we turned off the track to the north, or our right, into some dense bush. Twenty minutes later we came back out onto the buffalo trail, and both trackers signalled that the buff were still ahead of us. We resumed our westward direction. I happened to look up and was surprised to see something solid and dark in the mopane brush to our left, about 150 yards distant. I could make out some zebra behind the dark blobs, and then as clear as dammit I saw a big buffalo bull's head looking straight at me.
At that moment the bush exploded. Zebra scattered in all directions, and half a dozen buffalo bulls thundered out of the thicket into parkland to their west, parallel to the track we were on. In seconds they were gone, although the deep echoes of their hooves pounding the hard, dry earth could be heard long after they were out of sight.
"Well, that's it," John said, and we all stood staring off at the sound of rapidly receding buffalo.
"I saw them just before they broke," I said.
"Yes, well, it was probably too late by then anyway," he replied. He and Isaac and Lovemore conversed briefly in Fanagolo and sign language. John nodded sagely. "They were all young bulls," he said. "Not a shooter among them. One might have gone thirty-six, but he wasn't nearly as good as the one you've got."
And with that we reverse course and walked back to the truck. It wasn't as long a hike as the track in, because we were able to walk a straight line instead of the meandering track of the buff, and so forth. We got back to the truck before 1100, where we enjoyed a refreshing drink of ice cold ginger beer. Cate had some interesting observations about buffalo tracking. She noted that the tracking order (Isaac, then Lovemore, then John, then Me, then Rayno with his camera, and finally the Memsahib) left her feeling acutely vulnerable.
"I'm back there all alone," she said. "Basically, I'm lion bait!"
She decided that even though she was not hunting buff, she was going to carry her rifle on buffalo stalks. "While the rest of y'all are hunting buffalo, lion are hunting me."
The ride back to camp for lunch was abruptly interrupted when John and Isaac simultaneously spotted a good warthog in the dry bed of the Bubye River. John beckoned Cate out of the truck. "He's a bit farther than a hundred yards," he said. "Do you think you can take him at this distance?"
"I sure can try," she said, and at that they moved forward with the sticks. We were on the high northern bank of the river, while the warthog was rooting in the sand at the base of the south bank. They set up at the edge of our cover. She lined up on the warthog and then the Creedmoor cracked. The "whack" of the bullet echoed across the sand to us, and the grey pig took off like a bullet to our right, up the far bank and into the riverine.
"Hit him a bit far back," John said.
"I'm sorry," Cate apologized, embarassed at the shot.
"No problems," Rayno said. "He's hit hard, and he won't go that far. We'll follow up and finish him."
Which we did. We descended the north bank and plodded across the loose, coarse sand of the dry riverbed to the far bank. Isaac and Lovemore cast about for tracks, and immediately led us up into the brush where the warthog had disappeared. This had none of the trepidation of a wounded buffalo stalk. Hunters are rarely charged by wounded warthogs--although it has happened--and if they do, they're not the hardest charges to stop with the rifle. Nonetheless, we progressed carefully, and after a hundred yards or so, the trackers stopped and pointed. There, under the boughs of a mopane, the warthog stood with his hind end to us. John put up the sticks and Cate finished him. John wasn't satisfied, though, and asked me to put a .375 bullet into him where he lay just for insurance. I couldn't really see what part of the pig I was shooting at, except that I could tell I wasn't shooting him in the mouth. It would've been a shame to damage those huge tusks!
We walked up to the dead pig, and his tusks were truly impressive. Cate posed happily with her soon-to-be-jewellery, and then Rayno flew his drone camera high above us to record our triumphant progress back across the riverbed. All in all, a splendid hunt.
On the ride home, Cate sat in back with Rayno and me. Rayno explained how only hippos and elephant have real ivory. Miss Cate opined that this was so much hooey, and her jewellery was going to be called warthog ivory, that that was the end of the discussion. Rayno, being a married man and smarter than most, agreed that she must be right.
To be continued...
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
At lunch after the successful conclusion of our warthog quest, John asked Cate what else she might want to hunt, as she had cleaned up her entire shopping list in only 3 days. We tossed a number of ideas around, and to my surprise the Memsahib said, "I'd like to get a hyena!"
Well, that was a surprise! I've never thought of a hyena as a trophy; to be honest, all the stories I'd read and TV nature shows I'd seen had left me with fairly strong distaste for old Fisi. Unlike the coyote or wolf, he doesn't have that noble canine visage. Unlike the big cats, he lacks the grace and fluid movements that characterize that family. No, the hyena is just an odd-looking character. He's ugly, he runs funny, and his wife has a bigger dick than he does.
But Cate had other reasons... you see, her primary experience of Africa up til now was NatGeo specials on TV as a kid, and repeated viewings of the Disney "Lion King" movie when her kids were small. And based on her Lion-King criteria, warthogs and hyenas all needed to die. Since she had her warthog, it was Fisi's turn now.
So that afternoon we took a haunch of zebra out of the cooler and a barrel of zebra and warthog guts for a scent trail, and we proceeded to set up a hyena bait. The process was interesting, to say the least. The bait had to be hung, and the blind had to be built. John selected a spot near a huge dome of ancient volcanic rock about 5 miles north of Nengo Camp. There is a waterhole on the southwest side of the rock dome, which being the only waterhole in that area tends to draw a lot of game. John expected there to be a lot of hyenas in that district accordingly.
The zebra quarter was hung from a smallish tree with chains, covered with brush to keep the vultures off it, and then he and the trackers built a blind with sticks and branches and camo netting about 60 yards above the bait, up on the rock dome and behind a couple of huge boulders. Then the trackers splashed guts and blood all over the ground, and then tied a pile of guts to a piece of rope. We got back in the truck and dragged the pile of guts up and down the countryside in all directions for several miles. Finally, John set up his game camera to monitor the bait. We would see what was coming in to the bait when we rolled out of camp in the morning.
"Could be lions, could be spotted hyena, and we have brown hyena here as well," he said. "We'll check the game camera after we look at the tracks at the waterhole."
Early the next morning we came back to check the camera, and found both brown and spotted hyenas had come to the bait. We began formulating a plan to hunt the bait two nights hence. Then we headed out to look for buffalo. After checking several more waterholes, we found a small bachelor herd and followed their trail for several miles, then the wind shifted and the bulls thundered off. John and Isaac both said there was a soft 36" bull in the herd, but they saw no shootable ones. Back to camp. But on the way we came across a trio of elephant bulls playing at a waterhole, and we stopped to watch them for half an hour.
Next morning, SD5, we again headed out to look at the game camera on the hyena bait, but had to wait for a herd of buffalo to clear out of there. At breakfast, John had announced we were headed north of the Bubye River again, and that it was "time to get serious about buffalo". So here we were, a few miles out of camp, looking over a herd of well over a hundred cows and calves, with perhaps 30 bulls or so. One bull, near the head of the herd, was a very good bull, well over 40 inches with hard bosses.
"Just what I want," I whispered to John.
"But not in a herd," he replied.
So off we went, to check out Number 4 and Number 5 waterholes. We found sign of a group of 5 bulls at Number 5, so we set off to find them. It was hot already by 0900, and it got a lot hotter. The cover here was a lot thicker than we had been hunting, and there was almost no wind. We tracked them until almost 1100, then the wind came up and the bulls caught our scent, and off they went... busted again. We drove all afternoon, saw little game; it was just too damn hot, well over 110. And this is winter! I can't imagine how hot it must be there in summer, when the afternoon temps rise over 125! We put a stalk on a good impala ram in the very heat of the day, which was absolutely brutal: no wind, the heat of the sun like a physical pounding on your body, having to creep slowly through the brush, and after an hour or more of that the have the herd cow spot us and send her off with the rest of them all leaping away after her.
SD6 was more of the same. We tried to find the same bulls we had tracked the day before, as Isaac said there were at least a couple of very old bulls among them. We struck sign well south of where we'd lost them the day before, and set off to track them, but we were betrayed by the wind again after only a couple of hours of stalking, without sighting them at all. We hunted the river again in the afternoon, which was thankfully not as hot. We put in a stalk on a huge waterbuck but once again the unpredictable and swirling winds defeated us, and the waterbuck crashed away in the heavy brush.
John was unhappy with the pictures from the game camera, which showed lions and brown hyena coming to the bait, but no spotted hyenas. He decided to take down the bait and blind, and set up again nearer to camp. We spent the last hours of daylight moving the set. Dinner that night was a bit subdued. We were all feeling a bit discouraged by our continuing lack of success.
SD7 was even more of the same: a long stalk on buffalo without a glimpse of the beasts, then busted by a stray zebra that spotted us and stampeded as we were getting close. In the early afternoon I started to feel a bit of panic. We were down to the last few days of the safari, and all we had to show for all our effort were a zebra, a bushpig, and a warthog. I was beginning to have some severe doubts about the outcome of this safari. The heat was oppressive. The long drought, having extended from the previous winter, had reduced forage for the animals to a minimum, so they were hard to find and harder to expect to stay put. For the first time I was starting to wonder if we would be heading back to Texas with little to show for our hard work.
I could have got really sulky at that point, and was frankly ready to head down that road, but at just the right time, Africa offered up, and everything changed. But before I get into that, I have to go back to our suppertime conversation on SD3.
To be continued...
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
A good principle to guide me through life: “This is all I have come to expect, standard lackluster performance. Trust nothing, believe no one and realize it will only get worse…”
Great job Doc. it is like reading a book on line with an installment at a time; very well done! Doc. you do tell stories around the campfire don't you. Cheers NC
don't judge until you have walked a mile in other persons' moccasins' SUM QUOD SUM........HOMINEM TE ESSE MEMENTO
After our warthog success on SD3, the sundowners and dinner conversation were lively indeed. Cate and I had discussed the direction we would want to go for the rest of the hunt, and as we enjoyed our coffee and cigars around the campfire after supper she raised the issue with our intrepid Professional Hunter.
"So, John," she said, "I've been talking to my husband, and I think it's time I try to shoot something with horns. What do you think?"
"Well, that sounds fine to me, Cate," John said. "What kind of horns do you have in mind? Impala? We have a lot of those."
"No, I don't think so. And James already has a kudu, and wants a waterbuck, so they're out." She paused, then pointed up at the wildebeest mounted on the wall of the dining hut. "I think I want to kill one of those things. A wildebeest."
"Ah," said Rayno. "The poor man's buffalo."
"Why's it called that?"
"Well, for one thing, the trophy fee on one of those is one-tenth what you'll pay for a buff," Rayno explained. "Then there's the fact that they're comparatively easy to find, easy to stalk, and you don't need a heavy rifle to kill."
"Well, that may be true, Rayno," John said. " But they are the toughest of the plains game to kill, and in that respect they are more like buffalo than any other antelope. You can't really take one on with a light rifle like Cate's 6.5." He looked at me. "She would have to use your three seven five, if you think that might work."
I nodded. John was asking me if Cate could handle the big rifle. We would discuss this more later.
We all turned to look at the wildebeest on the wall, and after a moment John turned back and said, "That's fine with me, Cate. We'll keep an eye out for a good one, and when we see him, you can shoot him."
So that was that.
Except it wasn't. We saw an awful lot of wildebeest each day, but we were either hot after buffalo, or there were no shootable wildebeest bulls around when we were at loose ends. the discussion.
"So, James," he asked, "Do you think Cate can handle your three seven five?"
"I think so, John," I replied.
"Has she shot it at the range at all?"
"No."
"Well, that might work quite well, then."
Which is exactly what I was thinking. Hunters flinch because they anticipate recoil. Cate had been shooting a light rifle that hardly recoiled at all, so she had no experience of it. Furthermore, when shooting at game, hunters typically don't notice the recoil of even a very heavy rifle at all, because their adrenalin is up and they are focused on the game. My reasoning was that if Cate's first (and hopefully only) shot with the 375 H&H was at a real wildebeest, she wouldn't know to flinch and wouldn't notice the recoil. Apparently, John thought the same thing.
Fast forward now, to dinner time on the evening of SD6. My mood had brightened immeasurably since my fit of glooms the day before, which I won't get into except to say that faith and prayer had a lot to do with it. Suffice to say I was feeling pretty good about the safari despite the repeated failed stalks on buffalo. John was starting to sound frankly worried.
"We just aren't seeing the numbers of buffalo I was expecting," he said. "We've looked everywhere here in Nengo, and even most of Chamalaya, and the bulls just aren't there. Tony tells me they're seeing a lot of buff in Dyers, but they have a party of four hunting in there now, so that's off limits to us. We'll just have to do the best we can with what we've got."
We all mumbled agreement, but I could tell that both of our PH's and even my usually upbeat bride were starting to worry, and I mean a bit more than slightly.
"Look, guys," I said. "It's hunting, not shooting. We haven't had the luck we'd hoped for, but if we keep putting in the work, we'll make our own luck."
More nods and mumbles of agreement, but I could tell they weren't convinced. John simply looked morose. Well, all I could do was keep believing, smiling, and encouraging. That's what the King of the Safari has to do, right?
SD7
Safari Day 7 dawned clear and bright, with a lovely gold and red sunrise for Rayno's cameras. The morning was slightly warmer than the previous two had been, and that made a difference as we drove along, checking early morning waterholes.
Isaac and Lovemore found the tracks of 4 good bulls at one of the big waterholes well south of camp, near the border with Chamalaya district. We drove down one road and north on the next, and Isaac found the bulls' tracks where they crossed the road as we slowly motored along. We clambered down and chambered rounds in the rifles, and set off. This was easily the longest stalk of the entire safari. We started off at about 0730 and tracked the meandering buffalo until nearly 1000 without finding them, then Isaac announced we had lost the trail! This is an unheard of event, by the way... Isaac and Lovemore have skills beyond the white man's comprehension, and even John admitted it was extremely rare for them to lose a track. But the drought conditions were tricky, he explained.
So the four of us sat down under the mopane trees and waited while our trackers reversed up our back trails to try to find the bulls. They returned half an hour later and led us back to where they had picked the trail up again, then we followed for another hour or so. At that point we stopped. We were facing a very dense thicket of mopane and other brush still holding very thick foliage. John and Isaac conferred, then we prepared to leave.
"They've bedded in this thick stuff," John explained. "We'll leave them here, and come back around 3 to pick up their trail again after they start to move."
Which is what we did. But the wind continued its capricious behavior, and after a 3 km stalk, the buffalo caught our scent and stampeded off. Busted again.
"There's at least one good bull in that bunch, John," Rayno said. His eyesight was and is excellent, and I would say was at least as good as Lovemore's... which is to say, he had been seeing game all week that only he and the young tracker could spot. This proved to be a real boon later!
John looked at Isaac, who mumbled agreement, and they all nodded. "We will try for them again tomorrow, perhaps," John said. "This same group of four or five bulls has stayed in this area for several days. They've got good forage, the lions aren't too thick in here, and they seem to be moving between these 3 waterholes. We should be able to pick them up again in the morning at one of them."
It sounded like a great plan, and we were all feeling buoyant as we loaded up into the truck and headed back toward camp.
The late afternoon light was, well, purely African. Those who have been know what I mean. The dusty haze in the air that blankets southern Africa in the dry season makes the photographer's "golden hour" a good 2 hours long, if not longer. It has to be seen to be appreciated.
John had chosen a meandering route back to camp, and as we were driving along the east-west road that leads to Nyati Dam, Rayno suddenly tapped on the roof over John's head, pointed off to our left, and said something in Fanagolo to the trackers. They immediately got excited, and as John brought the Land Cruiser to a halt, they were all climbing down the right side of the truck. John peered through his Swarovski's for a few moments, then beckoned to Cate.
"I think we've found your wildebeest, Cate," he said, smiling. I pulled the Caprivi out of its sock and handed it down. Cate worked the bolt and chambered a round, and then she and John moved ahead and to our left.
There was a smallish herd of wildebeest in the open brush, about 75 yards from the road. John and Cate, and Rayno close behind with his camera, moved stealthily through the brush to get closer. About 50 yards from the quarry they stopped, John set up the Viper sticks, and Cate laid the 375 across them.
I looked over the wildebeest through my binocular, but I honestly couldn't tell which one was the good bull... since I have no interest in the species, I've not done the eye work to get to know what's good and what's not. They all looked about the same to me. Blue wildebeest are really dark colored, and in the fading afternoon light they were really hard to pick out. But one bull was standing broadside, and John seemed to be pointing Cate at it, and I suspected that was the one.
The 375 crashed and the wildebeest I was watching through my binocular was poleaxed. I mean, it was a bang-flop. I let out a whoop, and started to run over to John and Cate. I looked at Isaac, who was behind John, and saw him shaking his head. Uh oh.
The wildebeest staggered up to his feet again. [bleep]. I knew instantly what had happened: the Accupoint scope on my Caprivi has a post reticle, with an illuminated green triangle at the top. You use the tip of the triangle as the aiming point, and it's all good. But Cate had the Leupold Duplex reticle in her scope, so if she used the entire green triangle as the aiming aid, her shot would go high. A high shot means the bullet would stun the thoracic spine, temporarily dropping the animal, but it would be up on its feet again. Sure, the wound would eventually kill him, but about as quickly as a gut shot would. Not good.
I could see Cate was struggling with the bolt, trying to get a fresh round into the chamber, then saw John reaching over and bulldozing the bolt back and forward again. Cate shot again as the wildebeest bolted forward.
We had a quick discussion as to what happened, and Cate confirmed my fears about shooting high. She had been confused by the aiming point of the post reticle, as I suspected. Hindsight dictated that I should have had her sight through the scope, at least, but that horse was well out of the barn. The trackers were already up ahead and looking for blood when we moved forward. Isaac pointed at some blood with a long grass stem, and Lovemore, 20 yards to his right, pointed out a large splash of blood on a mopane trunk. Good. He was bleeding well.
"Might have nicked the aorta, John," I ventured, looking at the bright red blood splashes.
"Could be," John said, but his tone was not hopeful.
"Probably not," Rayno added, cheerfully. "When they get hit high like that, there's often a lot of blood initially, but it comes from the muscle. The wound closes up as the muscle swells, and the bleeding stops. Externally, anyway."
"Well, ain't you a ray of freakin' sunshine, Rayno," I replied. He gave me a shrug and a lopsided grin. "Sorry," he said. But he was right.
We tracked the wildebeest for about a kilometre before we sighted him again. By this time, the sun was getting very low in the sky, already dipping into the trees on the western horizon. We saw the wildebeest, and he was moving slowly, obviously hurting badly and unable to really run, but not slowing down, either. True to Rayno's prediction, there was no more blood to trail. That didn't matter to Isaac and Lovemore, however. We caught up to him again another 500 metres further on, but by then the sun had set and darkness was coming on rapidly. Isaac and Lovemore stopped tracking, and looked at John.
"I think we'll have to leave him, I'm afraid," he said to Cate and me. "We're almost a kilometre from the road, and there are a LOT of lions in here. They'll smell the bull's blood, and we don't want to be between them and him."
"Lions turn into real [bleep] after dark," Rayno observed.
Cate looked like she'd been kicked in the belly. "Are the lions going to get him?" she asked me in a whisper.
"They might not," I said, without much conviction.
"No, the hyenas might get him first," Rayno said cheerfully. "But don't get down on yourself, he may make it through the night, and we'll get him in the morning."
The ride back to camp was very quiet. Cate didn't cry, but she looked like she was going to. When we got back to camp, she went straight to our chalet for a shower, while John and Rayno sat down at the firepit.
"What do you think, John," I asked. "Chances we'll find him tomorrow?"
"Well, I'd normally say we've got a pretty good chance of finding a jawbone tomorrow," he said gloomily, swirling the ice in his scotch glass. "But Isaac says he didn't see any sign of lions in that area, and the place we left him is a long way between waterholes. So there may not be any predators near there, and since he's not bleeding, he won't be giving off much scent. So he might make it."
"Maybe a 20 percent chance, you think?" asked Rayno.
"Sure, maybe a bit better than that."
Cate walked over to us from the chalet, freshly showered and looking lovely.
"Well, guys, I've had a few minutes to be glum, and I'm over it. What have y'all decided?" and just like that, she seemed to be over her sadness at losing the wildebeest.
We talked then, about how every hunter misses now and then, and no one who's really hunted can claim he or she has never wounded an animal. It happens. Wd all done it, and Cate had just proven that she wasn't immune to the universal disease at all.
"This is part of hunting," I said. "Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is really easy, even when it looks easy."
"We have all missed, Cate," said Rayno. "I have, James has, John has. You have to accept it and move on."
"Well, that's it then," Cate replied. "So tomorrow morning we'll look for him where we left him, and maybe we'll get him before the lions do."
"That's it, Cate," said John, smiling. "We can only do our best, and that's the truth of it."
To be continued...
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Doc thanks for the write up! cant wait for more! Guys like me that wont ever be able to see Africa, get to live it thru you Lucky ones! Yes I do have John Book a Great Read!!
In safari camp, one tends to go to bed early and rise early. But awakening well before dawn in Africa is infinitely more civilized than it is at home. At home, a pre-dawn awakening is a chore, the preface to a long drive in the dark to the ER and a hard day of work. In Africa, the awakening is much, more fitting for The King. It's good to be King.
It starts with a soft knock on the door, then before your eyes actually open a gentle voice says, "Morning morning," and the aroma of fresh coffee hits your nostrils. The light comes on and a tray with two French presses and two mugs is laid on the bedside table. You untangle yourself from the bed covers and your wife, push up the pillows for a backrest, and sigh contentedly as your wife pours a cup of hot black aromatic coffee and you slowly sip it until your body gradually moves from the Land of Nod into the deep dark morning of Africa.
That, gentlemen, is how a King wakes up.
Then up and dressed, and the short brisk walk to breakfast, then breakfast, then out to the Land Cruiser at 0620 with the eastern sky brightening but the land still in shadow. "Morning morning," says Lovegood, taking your rifles and sliding them into the gun sheaths fastened to the roll cage, muzzles down, chambers empty, magazines full. "Morning morning," says Isaac from his perch up on the seat at the top of the roll cage. The truck coughs itself into wakefulness, and then you're rolling down the two-track, the wind created by the truck's passage cutting through the fleece jacket, and Rayno notices you shiver and comments that Wayne Gretzky wouldn't be shivering on such a warm morning, and you tell him to fornicate off in no uncertain terms and he laughs at you.
We arrived at the spot we'd left last evening just before sunrise. We took down both rifles, and I shouldered the 375 as Lovegood handed the Creedmoor to Cate. "Hey," she said, "That's my rifle today, remember?"
"Just thought I'd carry it for you," I said.
"I can handle it, mister," she said, and we exchanged rifles. To tell the truth, the light little Howa is a pleasure to tote on the shoulder.
Isaac was already off on his way to the spot we'd left the wildebeest the night before, with Lovegood taking up another track perhaps 20 yards to his right, both men already scanning the ground and the bush ahead. Rayno pointed with his chin as he shouldered his video camera.
"Looking for lion sign," he commented.
I looked down at the ground, and the profusion of game tracks in the dry ground of the roadside. "Do you see any?"
"No, none," he replied, and smiled. "We may be in for a bit of luck."
And off we went, following John, who was following Isaac, his big 470 Rigby double rifle perched on his right shoulder as usual. The trackers took us through the mopane scrub as if it was a 4-lane freeway, straight as a die, a good 500 yards from the road. Then Isaac stopped and Lovemore pointed.
"There he is!" Rayno whispered excitedly, and we all saw him at once. The bull was standing perhaps 100 metres west of the last place we'd seen him, looking back at us. He slowly moved off, obviously limping. We let him get out of sight, then moved up to where he had stood. The grass was flattened here where he had lain down for a miraculous undisturbed night's rest.
"I wouldn't have given odds better than one in ten," John said, smiling. He looked at the Howa slung over my shoulder. "You'll need the three seven five to finish him, don't you think?"
I nodded at Cate, who was looking west with clear purpose and intent. "Cate's got it, she'll do fine," I said.
John looked surprised for a moment, then turned and looked at Cate appraisingly, then looked back at me with a faint smile. "Right you are, James," he nodded.
The trackers were already following the wildebeest to the west, and we promptly followed the trackers. Two minutes later Isaac suddenly stopped and turned and came back to John, handing him the shooting sticks. Cate shouldered the 375 and laid it on the sticks, looked down the scope.
The wildebeest was standing with his back end toward us, his head turned so he could look at us. He was in shadow, so it was hard to make it out if you don't know what to look for. Cate didn't know what to look for. "Where should I shoot him?" she whispered.
"Shoot him right in the middle of the biggest part," John replied.
Cate said nothing, just thumbed the safety forward. BOOM. The wildebeest collapsed. General hysteria ensued, whoops and hollers, and Cate cried incredulously, "Did I get him?" and John laughed and said yes, and she handed me the rifle and gave John a big hug and then we all went up to survey the dead wildebeest. Which wasn't quite dead yet, it seemed. He tried to rise up as we approached, his head tossing and legs thrashing.
"Give him one more in the heart, James," John suggested. So I unslung the Howa and put one Hornady slug through the animal's heart, and he finally subsided, completely dead, finally.
"Look at this," Rayno said, squatting near the bull's back end. "A perfect Texas heart shot!"
And so it was: the bullet hole was half an inch from the bull's puckered butthole. There was much laughter and congratulating at that; Cate had made much of being a native Texan, so Rayno's characterization of her bullet placement was spot on.
As we waited for the Land Cruiser to make its way through the brush to pick up the big gnu's carcass, Cate was ecstatic. "I can't believe it," she said. "From the lowest of lows last night to this, I can't believe it. I'm over the moon." She kept kneeling down to stroke the big bull's head and neck, feeling the mass of his horns. "What a beauty," she whispered.
"Where are you going to put him?" John asked.
"I'm gonna hang him right over our bed," she replied. "And I'm gonna name him Bill."
Bill is her ex-husband's name. Nuff said about that. "I'd just as soon not look at, uh, Bill when we go to bed, darlin," I said, and everyone laughed.
The trackers winched the bull up into the bed of the Land Cruiser, which is almost a feat of magic with an animal of this size, and considering the tininess of the cargo bed in the Toyota 4X4. We cruised back to camp in fine mettle, all of us chattering happily at this remarkable turn of luck.
We dropped the wildebeest off at the skinning shed, and Gibson and John got out their tape measures. "Nineteen inches, inside spread," John announced. "That's a really, really good bull." (We didn't measure the outside spread for some reason, and our friend Ingwe prompted me to make a guess at outside spread, based on the picture of Cate holding the skull that I took the next day. We tried to duplicate the photo at home later, and my best guess was an outside spread of 31 or 32 inches. That, my friends, is getting close to Rowland Ward territory if the estimate holds up in reality.
But at that point none of us were thinking about Rowland Ward's book, or any other such academic nonsense. We had felt our luck change. It was as certain as certainty can be. We all felt it, we all knew it. We were hunting with an entirely different purpose now.
And Africa seemed to have got the same message. It was no later than 0930, and we hadn't driven more than 20 minutes out of camp when we rounded a corner and it appeared that All The Buffalo In Africa were suddenly there. It wasn't just a herd, it was a YUGE herd, on both sides of the road, crossing the road in tens and twenties, in the bush on both sides of the road, and seemingly oblivious to our presence. By the time the morning was over, I realized there were well over 200 bovines in that bunch, which amounts to roughly 400,000 pounds of cranky critters with large, sharp horns and cast-iron hooves.
The topography here was interesting. There was a small dry creekbed off to the left of the road, which the buff had apparently been using as a corridor through rather thick brush. Off to our right there was a long ridge, perhaps 20 or 30 feet higher than the road, and running obliquely to the southeast. The entire area was fairly heavily wooded, and there was a lot of grass and other forage. The buff were feeding more than they were moving, but they were definitely still moving, not bedded or about to bed.
John carefully put the Land Cruiser in reverse, and backed us around the corner and out of sight. We all got down and conferred briefly while Lovemore handed down the rifles and Cate and I both jacked cartridges into the chambers, and John dropped a pair of cigar-sized 470 rounds into the twin chambers of his Rigby (tonk, tonk, they said).
"So are we going to hunt this herd?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
John nodded. He understood what I was asking. Yes, the BVC discourages hunting Cape buff in herds. No, the BVC does not forbid it. And as it was already Safari Day 8, it was time to throw the gloves down on the ice and start swinging with a purpose.
"Yes, and it's time now," he said simply. "What we will do is go that way to get around the head of the herd," and he pointed off to the south. "We'll try to get a good look at all the bulls up there, then we will use that ridge to move down alongside the herd, and finish up looking at the tail. We'll probably find the best bulls at the tail of the herd."
And that's what we proceeded to do. Now, I had never hunted a herd before, but I'd read about it. This is actually the way it's usually done in most of Africa, apparently. Boddington, Ruark, and Seyfried all have written detailed accounts of how it's done, so I won't spend a lot of time on details. Suffice to say that if you crave a prolonged adrenalin rush severe enough to cause you to mess your pants several times over, hunting a buffalo herd in heavy brush is the ticket for you.
For the next two hours we sneaked, crept, slunk, and skittered through heavy brush as John and the trackers carefully looked over every damn buffalo in the herd. We would scoot along for a bit, then the signal from up front would come to FREEZE, which we would do, holding still for two or three or five minutes while John and Isaac peered through brush and leaves with their binoculars, then the signal would come to move on again. At one point we all stood stock-still as a young bull suddenly appeared out of a mopane thicket less than five yards away, feeding happily on the dense grass at his feet for perhaps 7 or 8 minutes all the way to the next thicket, completely oblivious to our presence. I probably don't need to say that the wind was decidedly in our favor!
Finally, at about 1130, we reached the road again and John and the trackers seemed satisfied and relaxed.
"Quite a nice herd," John said. "We saw perhaps 40 bulls, but we didn't see a really good one. We couldn't see the opposite side of the herd, though, so there may be one there. But the wind is starting to get tricky, and they're going to bed soon, so it's best not to chance it. We can come back for them again tomorrow if we need to."
And with that, we headed back to camp for a lunch and a nap.
At 1530 we drove out of camp again, back north to Waterholes Number 5 and 6. "There's no point in looking at the herd again," John explained. We know where they're headed, so we know where to find them if we want to hunt them in the morning. But we don't know if there are any good bulls in there, and we know there are several good ones up near Fimbiri, so let's go up there tonight and see if we can find some."
Unspoken was the understanding I shared with John about the other quarry we still had on the list: eland, and perhaps a bigger kudu bull than the one hanging on my wall in Texas. Both species were more likely to be found up near Fimbiri than down south where the herd was, so the possibilities of a mixed bag was better this way.
And I haven't even got into the frustrations we'd had in our quest for a good waterbuck bull. Suffice to say we'd put on several stalks, and never gotten even close to a shot. The waterbuck were plentiful up along the Bubye River on the way to and from the Fimbiri waterholes, though, so I knew that was in the back of John's mind.
Long story short: we found tracks that told us both of the Fimbiri waterholes had held buffalo bulls that day, and they were big bulls, and they were old bulls. Dagga boys of the first order. My hopes were high for the morning hunt on SD-9. And yes, we stumbled across a really good waterbuck along the banks of the Bubye as we headed home, and yes, we had yet another unsuccessful stalk on him, but we didn't mind much.
Because in the morning we were going to kill a buffalo. I knew it.
To be continued...
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
The mood at our dinner table that evening was upbeat, to say the least. Cate's wildebeest was the prime topic of conversation, of course. We relived the experience together, reminding each other of different aspects of the hunt, laughing at the funny bits, and generally revelling in the astonishing change of luck we had had that day. --a After dinner was done and the coffee and cigars were ascendant, Cate announced something profound.
"You guys don't know what an experience this has been for me," she said. "I've been among hunters my whole life, and my husband has given me some idea of what a hunter is, and I admit I really like it. But I had no idea what an amazing thing it is, to be a hunter. There's honor in it--honor for the land, and for the animals, and for each other--that I never knew about. And it's more important to you guys than I ever realized. And you have a really high set of standards for how everything is done, and I never realized how high that standard was, or how hard you were willing to work to make sure those standards are never violated.
"Hunting is the most amazing thing, and I never knew it until I came here and learned from you guys," she said. We were all a bit quiet there, for a minute.
"And I'll tell you one more thing," she said. "I wasn't a hunter when I came to Africa. But when I leave Africa, I will not leave as a tourist, or a hunter's wife. I will leave as a hunter."
There isn't much I can add to that.
SD-9 Hyenas After Breakfast
I awoke sometime in the middle of the night to the sound of rain falling. Not heavy rain, just a light pitter patter of raindrops on the thatch overhead and the flagstones outside the window. I wondered if that was a good thing. I considered how everything had changed the day before, and I decided it must be a good thing, and I rolled over and went back to sleep.
We met at the Land Cruiser at 0630. The sky was overcast, so it was darker than usual. The ground was damp from the sprinkling of rain that had fallen overnight, but it wasn't raining at the moment. Lovemore met me as usual.
"Morning morning," we greeted each other. He climbed up into the bed, and I handed him my rifle to put into the scabbard, then climbed up to the bench seat. I looked up at him as he took his seat on the roll cage.
"Today, Lovemore," I said, "Nyati."
Lovemore grinned. "Mbogo," he replied, and his eyes got big.
"Buffaloooooo," I replied, and we both laughed.
John made sure we all had rain gear, then we drove off to the north. The clouds were very low, I would estimate at no more than 200 feet off the deck. We were already getting a light sprinkling of rain as we passed the dam and headed off toward the Bubye.
We had scarcely traveled the prescribed 2 kilometre gun-free zone around camp (the BVC frowns on any shooting close to camp, for obvious reasons) when Rayno knocked on the roof of the truck, pointing off to our right. John brought the truck to a rapid stop, and we all tumbled out.
Hyena.
He was perhaps 80 yards off the road, and had been loping along parallel to our track when we first saw him. When we stopped, he did too, and stood there staring at us. John put up the sticks and I laid my rifle across it, but as I looked down the scope I could barely make out the hyena. Try as I might, I couldn't make out anything more than a blob... and then he was gone.
John seemed a bit disgusted. "You're not in a box blind in Texas, now, James," he said. "Game isn't going to stand around all day waiting for you in Africa."
I only half-heard his admonition... this was my 19th day of hunting in Africa, after all, and I had a pretty good idea how quickly one needs to shoot. My problem was being able to see what I wanted to shoot.
I was already trouble shooting my problem as I climbed back up into the truck. The 1.5-3X Accupoint DG scope I was using has no objective bell, which means it's not a great light-gathering scope for the sort of shot I was trying for that morning. I had the variable set down low at 1.5X, so it was not going to give me much targeting information, and the aiming point at the top of the post, a glowing green triangle, was set for brighter conditions. I turned the magnification up to 3X and turned the tritium setting down until it was almost as black as the post beneath it. I shot a quick look through the scope as we started up again. Much better.
We had barely got going again, and were perhaps 200 metres down the road, when we all saw the hyena loping along parallel to our track again! John slammed on the brakes, we all tumbled out again, and the sticks went up again. I laid the rifle down, and this time I could see the bizarre-looking carnivore perfectly well.
I put the tip of my aiming point on his shoulder and sent off a 300 grain A-Frame to say hello, and lost him in the recoil. I brought the rifle back down again, not lifting my cheek from the buttstock as I stroked the bolt, and he was still there, but facing the other way. Rayno was saying I'd hit him, and hit him again, but I already had my post on his hindquarters, the only part I could see clearly behind the little bush he'd spun around behind, and my finger was already tightening and I fired again and the rifle slammed back and I lost him again. I brought it down again and looked for the hyena, but he was gone.
Damn. Missed. But Lovemore was grinning at me and Rayno was slapping me on the back and saying I'd knocked the bastard into next week, and John was congratulating me on some fine shooting... I hit him?
We walked up to the little thicket that stood next to where he'd been standing, and Isaac let out a shout and we all went around it and found the hyena dead on the ground with two bullet holes in him--well four, really, two entry holes and two exit holes. I'd hit him exactly where I'd aimed with both shots: through the shoulders, and through the hips. He was dead as Al Gore's political career, and I said as much, thinking I had about the same level of respect for the pair of them. Actually, in retrospect I realize I hold the hyena in considerably higher regard, but that was my thought at the time.
I was surprised at what a lovely animal the hyena was, up close. His fur was thick and soft and quite luxuriant, golden brown with darker brown spots, and that black face and muzzle, and those frighteningly large jaws and teeth... yes, Fisi is an ugly bastard, but he's beautifully ugly at that.
"That's a beauty," Rayno told me, stroking the fur. "A really good one. How do you think you'll mount him?"
I laughed. "I have no idea. I've never thought of having a hyena, so I have no idea. I suppose I'll have to do a full body mount. Maybe with a dead cottontail in his mouth, I can get one of those in Texas easily enough. And the rabbits here look just like our cottontails."
John nodded approval. "That would look really fine, I think," he said. And that was that. I was ridiculously happy with my hyena, a total target of opportunity. Cate had shot my theoretical wildebeest, and Ihad shot her theoretical hyena. Tit for tat.
"That was all of a hundred and eighty yards," John said, as we loaded him up into the truck. "Fine shooting." From John, that's quite a compliment.
We rolled back to camp and dropped the cat-dog off with Gibson, then turned around and headed back north to Fimbiri.
We caught some moderate rain on the 45-minute drive up to Number 5 waterhole, but it slacked off a good 10 kilometres short of the kopje country up that way. The beauty of it was, the rain had soaked the dirt of the road and countryside just enough to wash away all the old tracks, so every track we saw now was absolutely morning fresh.
We rounded the corner by the stone wall and dam about 4 miles short of the twin kopjes overlooking Number 5 and climbed the hill. We all saw them at once, and John slammed on the brakes. The road dropped away before us in a long swale, and at the crest of the next rise in the road, perhaps a kilometre away, we could see the unmistakable bulk of four buffalo bulls walking down the road as if they were on their way to church or something.
We waited until they had dropped over the far side of the rise, then John started off again. He stopped just shy of the next crest, and we got out and got ourselves ready for the stalk.
"They look pretty good to me, John," said Rayno.
"They do look pretty good," John agreed. "At least two shooters there, maybe three. Wide enough anyway. We'll have to see about the bosses when we get a closer look."
Well, that was good enough for me, and i felt positively ebullient as I shouldered my rifle. Today was going to be the day. I knew it. I grinned at Lovemore, and he mugged back at me. He knew it to. Hell, even Isaac had a shadow of a smile on his stony face.
To be continued...
Last edited by DocRocket; 10/07/19.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
We got down from the truck, checked gear, chambered rounds in rifles, and set off after the bulls. We walked quickly, briskly, parallel to the road and just on the edge of the mopane for perhaps five or six hundred yards, down into the swale between crests, and then back up the opposite slope. Before we reached the crest, we moved deeper into the bush, but kept up the brisk pace. Glancing off to my right, the deep, heavy tracks of the buff were plain as day in the wet earth of the road.
Just past the crest we paused, Isaac and Lovemore casting around in the grass and leaves ahead of us. Rayno pointed at the road.
"They probably heard us getting out of the truck right here," he ventured. "Look, you can see they milled around there in the road, then they moved off into the bush."
Even I could read that story in the sign. Isaac and Lovemore beckoned and started to track. The bulls had moved perpendicular to the road perhaps 30 yards, then resumed their eastward direction. "They're heading to water," Rayno whispered, and John glanced back over his shoulder at us, and nodded.
This was unusual. Because of the rain during the night, the bulls had stayed out feeding much later than they would normally, not heading for water until daylight was upon them. Their route was direct now, and much easier to follow, bearing toward the distant kopjes and the cool water of Number 5. We tracked them for perhaps another kilometre, not slowly and cautiously as we had done each of the previous eight days, but directly. The sign was easy for the trackers to read, and the message they were reading was, "thirsty buffalo".
We dropped down into a dry creekbed and up the other side, and up a bit of a rise, and then Isaac signalled an urgent halt. We did, and watched as he looked at something out of our line of sight with his binocular. He turned and beckoned, and John moved up, whispering to us to stay put. He moved up beside Isaac and Lovemore, and took out his own binocular. They stood there a long time, looking. Then John turned and beckoned. I moved up with Rayno beside me, Cate close behind.
As I peered out through the mopane, I could see that we had reached an open place: a road right-of-way, and a major road at that, with a gravel surface and wide clear shoulders. I guessed which road it was, leading north into Fimbiri; which meant ahead of us about a mile or so was the Maletetzi River, which was the border with Dyers. The bulls had veered away from Number 5, and were headed for the edge of our hunting area. This was getting a tad dicey, I realized.
But across the road, perhaps 80 yards away, were the buffalo. They were feeding calmly just inside the sparse brush at the edge of the shoulder, all four of them. John pointed and whispered.
"The ones in the middle are both shootable bulls. The one on the right is wider, but the one on the left has better bosses. They're about eighty yards. Do you think you can take him at this distance?"
It was a loaded question, and the fact he had even asked it was a hell of a compliment. John had told me more than once that he hardly ever lets a client shoot a buffalo past 50 yards. As distance increases, the chance of wounding the bull increases exponentially, and as everyone knows, a wounded buff is Not A Good Thing. The fact that he was even asking me this question told me that he was saying he trusted me to do something he would not let almost any other hunter try, and that was a hell of a thing. A hell of a thing.
"Let's look through the scope," I whispered back. John moved us to the left a yard or two and put up the shooting sticks. I laid my rifle across and sighted through the tube. The bulls were there, clear as dammit, big and black as railway oil cars, long and menacing in their bulk. They were feeding and partially obscuring each other. My scope adjustments earlier that morning were perfect: I could see the bulls clearly, and the softly glowing green triangle at the tip of the post was just bright enough for perfect clarity. I sighted on the chest of the bull on the left, and knew it would be fine. Both of the shooter bulls were partially obscured by brush, but they were constantly moving, and it was only a matter of time til one of them gave me a shot.
"I can take him," I whispered.
"All right, then," John said. "The one on the right is the one we want. If he comes out from behind that bush, or turns the opposite way, we'll take him."
So we waited, John watching them through his binocular, and I watching through my scope. I was glad of the cool weather that morning. On any of the previous eight mornings at this time, holding my rifle on a buffalo for this length of time would have meant quivering muscles and salt sweat stinging my eyes. But this morning I felt nothing but comfort and calm. I had this bull. I had him.
And then he turned. Just like that, perfectly broadside to me, and he stepped into the clear space between the bushes. "That's it," said John. "Take him now."
My right thumb found the safety and slipped it forward, and my finger found the trigger and I started my squeeze.
Then the truck came. The mother fecking cark sucking pig fecking truck fecking came.
The bulls simultaneously lifted their heads and my bull whirled around to look to our right, and then they were gone.
To be continued....
Last edited by DocRocket; 10/07/19. Reason: improved profanity
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
I was incredulous as the truck roared up the road toward us. I put my safety back on, lowered my rifle. My pulse pounded in my throat, and my vision was red. I wanted to shoot the fecking driver of the truck. He had stolen my buffalo at the eleventh hour, the buffalo I'd worked so hard for! I was infuriated!
Lovemore had moved off to our right, partly out of the bush, and had waved frantically to stop the truck, but they saw him too late. They did stop though, and all four or five of the men in the truck grinned broadly at us and waved. They were all carrying automatic rifles. Game guards. Good guys, but not hunters, and they had no idea what a devastating blow they'd delivered to our hunt.
John growled something in Fanagolo to Isaac, and both Rayno and Isaac growled something back, and I guessed that it was some sort of imprecation against these well-intentioned men who had so badly busted our hunt. But there was nothing for it, we were busted. And that was that. I was crestfallen.
"Come on, let's go," said John, and he and the trackers started across the road.
"What?" I said, surprised. "We're still going after them? They'll be half a mile into Dyers by now!"
"Maybe," join agreed, "But maybe not. They see vehicles all the time. The buffalo didn't run, they just walked away. If we're lucky, we might still have a shot at them."
Bemused, I slung my rifle and started after him. I glanced over at Rayno, who shrugged, seeming as skeptical as I felt. I looked back at Cate, and she smiled and blew me a kiss.
We crossed the road, waving and smiling at the heavily armed Game Guards, who smiled and waved back. I felt slightly less murderous as I stepped into the brush on the far side of the road, though, and watched as the trackers carefully examined the ground ten yards ahead. They gestured this way and that, signalled to John, and then started off into the deeper bush.
"Well, we may be in luck," John said quietly. The bulls haven't run at all. They're just walking that way," and he pointed eastward. "But we have some bad luck, too, perhaps. They're not going for Number 5 any more. They're headed toward the Maletetzi River."
"And that's bad because..." I paused.
"Because that's the boundary with Dyars," he explained. "Once they cross the riverbed, we can't follow them."
"So we have to hope they don't cross," I said.
"Or catch them before they do," Rayno suggested.
"We shall see," John finished, sounding remarkably upbeat for a PH whose hunter had just got busted for the umpteenth time. And on we went.
The bulls seemed to be following a less direct course now, but they weren't moving as fast, either. Isaac and Lovemore had no trouble following the trail in today's soft earth, which was so clear that even I could follow it most of the time with my ancient and city-wrecked eyes. The terrain was more rolling here as we approached the Maletetzi, and the bush became thicker and thicker. I was beginning to worry we were going to get into such thick stuff that no shot would be possible.
Then they stopped. Isaac and Lovemore, I mean. I couldn't see much ahead, other than their backs 20 yards ahead. John moved up to see, while the rest of us hung back. Then John gestured us forward. When I moved up the brush parted enough for me to see, and I wasn't exactly pleased by what I saw.
We had reached the bank of the Maletetzi. We were perhaps 20 feet higher than the dry sand riverbed, which lay unbroken before us for at least 60 to 80 yards. And on the bank across from us was Dyars. And there, in Dyars, feeding on the brushy far bank, were our four buffalo bulls. John motioned me up beside him, and he pointed carefully.
There was a more or less clear patch directly opposite us, perhaps 30 yards wide. It was flanked by two tall trees with thick trunks. The base of the tree on the right was partly obscured by a thick tangle of brush and thorn. The bulls were feeding in and around that brushy tangle. John pointed to the bull on the far right.
"That's our boy, on the right," he said. "At least I think it is. The one on the far left, by the tree, is still soft and not wide at all. I can't see the one behind the tree, but the one feeding just on the edge of the brush is the heavy-bossed dagga boy."
"I thought we couldn't hunt in Dyars?" I whispered.
"Well, we can't really hunt in Dyars," he said, "But that doesn't mean we can't shoot into Dyars."
"And I suppose we can follow a bull we've already shot if it goes further into Dyars..." I continued.
"Right," John said. "It's a fine point, but I don't think anyone will really have a problem with it."
I squinted at the bulls across the wide riverbed. "What's the range, d'you suppose?"
"About a hundred," John said mildly. "That shouldn't be a problem for you, the way you've been shooting today. Hmm?"
"Let's have a look," I replied, and John set the sticks up. I laid my rifle across and peered through the scope. The light was really just about perfect: the bulls were feeding in fairly open country, with no overhead canopy. The high overcast clouds diffused the sun's rays enough to obliterate all shadows, but there was plenty of light to see detail. I put the green aiming triangle on the chest of the far left bull, the non-shooter, and looked carefully. I could see the line of his shoulder clearly, and the point of the triangle rested steadily on his chest. I counted five Mississippi's, and the reticle stayed on the heart. Good. Well and good.
"I can do it," I said.
"I know you can," John said simply. "Now, let's wait for the one we want to come out." I stood back from the rifle, and put my binoculars on the bulls. We watched for what seemed like a very long time. Rayno had moved off my right shoulder, and John stood on my left. Cate was directly behind me, the trackers flanked us on both sides. We waited. The heavy-bossed bull moved a bit more into the open, but the wide bull seemed to be feeding back, away from us, and behind the tangle.
"I can't see him at all now," I said. John nodded. Then he spoke.
"Well, James. It's Day Nine, and this may well be our last chance. Beggars can't be choosers, you know."
I dropped my binos and took my rifle up again, looked through the scope. The heavy-bossed bull was there, broadside. Shootable.
"Let's take the heavy one, then," I said.
"Take him when you're ready," John said simply, and that was that.
The post settled firmly on the bull's chest, the point an inch behind the shoulder. I felt the safety slip forward under my thumb, and the smooth metal of the trigger under my finger. I tightened my grip slowly. The post remained rock solid.
The rifle roared and bucked up off the sticks, and I was driving it down and forward as the bolt worked itself in my hand as if the rifle was doing it rather than me, and I was finding the bull in my scope again. The loud THWACK of the bullet strike echoed across the river, and I could see three bulls milling about in the clearing between the trees. Which was he? They weren't running, they couldn't tell where the shot came from! Then I picked him out, the heavy-bossed bull, over to the left now, standing with his head low, breathing hard, and I knew I'd hit him hard.
"Should I hit him again?" I asked.
"You can if you like," John replied mildly. "But you've already killed him. You got him right through the heart with your first shot."
I decided to hit him again, and yanked the trigger. The rifle bucked again, and the resounding THUMP that echoed back confirmed my suspicion that I'd hit him too far back. I worked the bolt again, and found him standing on the right side of the open space, moving, starting to turn. I didn't hesitate, but settled the post and fired a third round. This one made the hollow THWACK of a hard chest hit again, and I knew he was done and dead on his feet. The bulls turned away, the first two running, but my bull walking, and walking slowly. They disappeared into the brush.
I came up off my rifle and looked at John, who was grinning broadly. I turned to look at Isaac, and he was making a downward gesture with his hands, signalling that bull was going down. He looked at me and with a ghost of a smile he nodded at me. Rayno was thumping me on the back, and Cate came up behind me and hugged my neck.
A long, low, very loud moan sounded from across the river. "The death bellow," Rayno and I said simultaneously, and then we were all shaking hands and slapping high fives, which Cate had taught to Lovemore, and then she hugged Isaac and the shy old tracker actually returned the hug (barely), and John and I embraced, laughing and slapping each other.
"Well, then," John said, "Let's go collect your dead bull, James."
And that was that. We crossed the river and climbed the far bank, and at the top of the bank we saw the bull lying on his side ten yards away. He wasn't thrashing or kicking or even breathing. A few yards past him in the bush, we could see the other three bulls standing and facing us, heads down, menacingly big and awfully damn close. I held my rifle high, and saw John shoulder his big double as well.
"Wheesht, wheesht," Isaac whistled oftly, waving both hands slowly at the bulls. The bulls all jerked their heads up, looking hard at Isaac. "Wheesht, wheesht," he whistled again, and the bulls whirled and galloped away in apparent terror. I don't know what Isaac's whistle meant in buffalo-speak, but the bulls apparently understood it and made haste to get themselves out of there.
We walked up to the bull, and I suggested I should pay the insurance with a bullet into his neck, but John smiled and said that wouldn't be necessary, this one was dead as dead could be, and he was. The ticks on his belly were dropping off like rats off a sinking ship, and his eyes were hooded and glazed. John touched his rifle muzzle to the near eye and there was no response.
I laid my rifle across the bull's back, and knelt down by his head. I took the massive horns in my hands and pulled... I could barely move the damn thing! I knew he wasn't any wider than the buff I took in '15, and was in fact probably a shade narrower, but those incredible bosses! They were hard and scarred and jammed tightly together in the middle, heavier and deeper from front to back than he'd looked in the scope. An ancient old bull, this. His ears were tattered and torn by lions and by other bulls' horns, his shoulders and flanks scored and scarred from a hundred battles or more, an old warrior who deserved better than to be eaten alive by lions when he became too old to defend himself, he'd died on a beautiful morning on the banks of the Maletetzi River, at the hands of a man who loved him and everything he represented in wild Africa. I bent down and whispered some words of thanks into his ragged ears.
And that, gentlemen, is pretty much that. On the nineteenth day of my 20-day safari, I killed the Cape buffalo bull I'd been dreaming about for 45 years, since the day I read The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber on a cold afternoon in my apartment in Calgary.
To be concluded....
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Well, I guess I should finish up some loose ends here.
Getting my buffalo bull back to camp was a bit of an effort, as I had dropped him at a point that is about as far from a road as any point you can find in the BVC, and it took the trackers and driver more than an hour to bushwhack through the mopane scrub to get to us. We rolled him a bit for pictures, and once we got him rolled over on his right side, John pointed at the little hole low on his left chest, right behind the shoulder.
"Perfect shot placement, James," he said, smiling. "And at one hundred and twenty yards, that's really good."
"One twenty?" I said, genuinely surprised.
"At least," he affirmed, and Rayno agreed. I frankly couldn't have cared less, but I suppose it gives me some sort of bragging rights, if that's important, which I don't think it is. None of the fellows I hunt with and know, here on the 24HCF and in the real world, would consider a 120 yard shot on a deer or elk much to brag about, and the plain truth is it's no more difficult on a buffalo... except in your head, if you let the buff take up residence there.
We got him back to camp, and put the tape to him, and he came in at 34", two inches less wide than the bull I killed in '15. But I'd learned the hard way that the width of a buff isn't the measure of his worth. This bull was and is priceless to me.
We learned the next day that two hunters in Dyars had killed monster bulls at about the same time as I killed mine: one a behemoth of 46", and another an unbelievable 49". Both bulls had been surprised by hunters who hadn't hunted buffalo much at all before stumbling upon them. They had simply been lucky. And I'm not sure that those hunters will ever appreciate what it is to really work for a bull. Perhaps they will, but it doesn't really matter in the end. I worked damn hard for mine--we all did, our whole hunting party, and all 6 of us have in irrevocable share in that hunt--and for that I feel very blessed indeed.
We had a great day on SD-9, and we killed a magnificent bull after a very long and very hard hunt, and there really isn't anything more satisfying than that. We had a great dinner of eland steaks that night, and John and Rayno drank quite a lot more wine than usual, and we all stayed up much later than usual, and we laughed a great deal more than we had laughed at dinner any night previous. I kind of wish we had recorded those dinner conversations, especially the dinner on SD-9.
On SD-10 we got up at the usual hour, ate the usual breakfast, and tried very hard to get the waterbuck we'd been looking for. We put in two very good stalks, but the wind had returned to its previous capricious habits, and we got busted both times. We tried for a big impala ram, too, but the same thing happened. It was good to do, simply to say we had tried our best right up to the end.
We parted ways with John at the airport in Bulawayo and continued on to Johannesburg with Rayno. John and I have plans to meet at DSC next January, and we will have more business to do together there and then, and probably after that as well. Some of it will entail rifles and blood, I expect. Rayno and Cate and I have plans to get together then as well, and we are tossing around ideas for a combination bird hunt and flyfishing trip in the Northern Cape next year, which will probably get tacked onto an eland hunt on the same trip. I realize now that Africa has got under my skin. God willing, I will go back.
Africa is deep under Cate's skin as well. She found a dinner set of china in one of the shops in the Joburg airport, which we bought and had shipped to our home in Corpus Christi, and now we eat our supper each night on African plates. She has the spot for her zebra picked out in the living room, too, and she's impatient for all our trophies to get back to Texas so she can go see them prior to mounting.
And yes, Cate left Africa as a hunter. She is already making plans with friends in west Texas for her first deer hunt this fall. And she tells me that she feels a lot more confident about the Glock she carries for personal defense now, too, because as she puts it, "If I can kill a wildebeest bull under those circumstances, I can kill any damn Texas son of a bitch who messes with me."
I remember Ingwe laughing at me on the telephone in 2015, before I left on my first safari, when I told him I'd only go to Africa once. I know now why he was laughing. Because now I'm laughing too.
I don't know when it will be, but I'm very much looking forward to Safari Day 21, and all the other SD's that will follow.
Last edited by DocRocket; 10/07/19.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Thanks for the kind words, fellas. I write this stuff up more for my own satisfaction than for any dreams of publication. I’m too long winded for magazines, and I don’t know if anyone would publish this stuff in a book as a collection of stories. Not a real worry. BTW, this was all written straight out with hardly any editing. It’s pretty raw. And there’s some details I left out... I didn’t make enough with the Wayne Gretzky sub-theme, which was hilarious at the time, for example...
John Barsness has mentioned that stories of this type just don’t sell any more, which is why he switched over to more technical writing. This is a shame, as he writes really fine hunting stories. So do other people. But the gunzines won’t print them, and the short-attention-span readers of today won’t read them. So there you are.
Anyway... thanks for readin', guys.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Thanks for the kind words, fellas. I write this stuff up more for my own satisfaction than for any dreams of publication. I’m too long winded for magazines, and I don’t know if anyone would publish this stuff in a book as a collection of stories. Not a real worry. BTW, this was all written straight out with hardly any editing. It’s pretty raw. And there’s some details I left out... I didn’t make enough with the Wayne Gretzky sub-theme, which was hilarious at the time, for example...
John Barsness has mentioned that stories of this type just don’t sell any more, which is why he switched over to more technical writing. This is a shame, as he writes really fine hunting stories. So do other people. But the gun ones won’t print them, and the short attention span readers of today won’t read them. So there you are.
Anyway... thanks for readin, guys.
That's the beauty of the Fire. We can read great stories that otherwise wouldn't find their way to print.
I like JB's stories, too. The old rags were into stories. I'm wondering why the market seemed to trend more toward technical stuff, away from good story telling. I guess I'm still living in the past.
Thanks for the write up, Doc. That was as good a story as I have ever read. It would be good to share a campfire with you and hear more stories of your other hunts.
Molɔ̀ːn Labé Grandpa:the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Dad:son you have 2 choices for supper eat or don't eat.
Excellent story. I could only wish. Thank you for taking the time to write that, it was an excellent read.
SD-8: Dinner You are a lucky man to have a wife that "understands" what it is to be a hunter. As much as I love my wife of 33 years, she will never really understand. Good luck to Cate on her first deer hunt. She will be hooked forever.
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." Ronald Reagan
At the end of Safari Day 1, after dinner was done and our bellies were full and we sat at table with glasses of scotch and cups of coffee and cigars and pipes lit and all the good stuff, I told John I had noticed something.
I began by summarizing my 2015 hunt for the others. John needed no reminding, as his memory for hunts and hunting details is astounding: he recalled almost every detail of my hunt 4 years before as well as I did, and recalled some details I had forgotten. But for those of you who may not recall it quite so well (ahem. ) here's a brief summary: I shot a nice zebra stallion on SD1, then we began stalking buffalo on SD2, killed a good buffalo on SD4, killed a really good kudu on SD6, then it started to rain, and we never got another shot on game despite looking hard for eland and waterbuck every day thereafter.
"So here's the thing, John," I said after the summary discussion hinted at above. "I had a great hunt in 2015, with the exception of not getting an eland, which is simply the way hunting goes. But I've been thinking, and maybe more accurately feeling, and what it feels like is this." I paused to puff my pipe and take a sip of coffee.
"What it doesn't feel like, to be precise, is that today doesn't feel like Day 1 of a new safari," I continued. "In reality, it feels like Day 11 of a continuing, ongoing, 20-day safari. It feels like I never left. We are still hunting eland, we are looking for our second buffalo, and maybe a second kudu, and definitely a nice waterbuck, but it's not a new hunt at all. We've added a couple of new people to have fun with us," I pointed my pipestem at Cate and Rayno, "But you and I are still on the same hunt we were on in 2015."
John smiled that small smile of his when something has got him thinking. "I think that's a very good way of looking at it, James," he said. "I'm pleased to hear that's how it feels to you, too."
"So that's how it feels to you as well?" I asked.
"I often feel that way," he said. "Not with everyone, but with clients who become friends, as you have done, that's how it feels."
Cate and Rayno seemed bemused by the conversation, but there were so many other good things to talk about they didn't mind. John and I mentioned it to each other now and again for the rest of the safari. (For example, on the morning of our second-last day in camp, I said to John as we walked out to the truck together, "Day 19, John, and we still haven't found him." "Don't remind me," he murmured in agreement. More on this discussion later...)
It may not seem like much to the casual reader, but to the African hunter, this concept of a never-ending safari that you can pick up at any time in the future is a profound one. The hunt never really ends, you simply lay it down after a while, and then after a longer while, you can pick it up again.
Great job, Doc!! Really enjoyed the entire write up. You have an amazing way with the pen - hope you have this all printed out in a journal somewhere for future generations to read.
Outstanding job James....the hunting and the writing.
I really cannot say what I enjoyed the most...seeing Cate become a hunter, your well-earned Bull, or going along on a hunt with John and feeling like I am back in the BVC with that special man, once again.
Yes, God willing I would love to make another hunt with John. After getting my bull with him on day 6 (the week after your hunt), I spent 6 days chasing Eland...numerous close calls, but the Eland are still running!
Thanks for taking the time to capture this great time and I look forward to seeing you and Cate again at DSC in January.
Tim
USMC 0351
We know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Thank you for the write up. This is as close to Africa as some of us will ever get.
Yep! Great writing too, Doc !
"Allways speak the truth and you will never have to remember what you said before..." Sam Houston Texans, "We say Grace, We Say Mam, If You Don't Like it, We Don't Give a Damn!"
Thanks for the kind words, fellas. I write this stuff up more for my own satisfaction than for any dreams of publication. I’m too long winded for magazines, and I don’t know if anyone would publish this stuff in a book as a collection of stories. Not a real worry. BTW, this was all written straight out with hardly any editing. It’s pretty raw. And there’s some details I left out... I didn’t make enough with the Wayne Gretzky sub-theme, which was hilarious at the time, for example...
John Barsness has mentioned that stories of this type just don’t sell any more, which is why he switched over to more technical writing. This is a shame, as he writes really fine hunting stories. So do other people. But the gunzines won’t print them, and the short-attention-span readers of today won’t read them. So there you are.
Anyway... thanks for readin', guys.
I prefer the technical stories to the long, drawn, out repetitive trype, the stories usually become. Throw in the easily predicted ending, the sentimental sub plot......Oh yes! Don't forget hyping the guide service that was comped and the unending product promotion the layer stories have Included in more recent times.
You avoided all that Doc. No promotion. No points to hit, or make. You just took us along on your safari, brought us right into it.
I enjoyed it. And would gladly come a long on another.
Parents who say they have good kids..Usually don't!
Doc, I don't think I've read anything here on 24hcf that I enjoyed more than your story. Well done does not even come close to how well you put this story together. And coming from a guy that spent over 12 days hunting buff and coming home empty handed, I certainly understand how hard earned a buff can be. Even though I was unsuccessful, I've never enjoyed hunting more than when hunting buff!
Congrats to your wife on her successful hunt and for learning what it means to be a true hunter. You've obviously been blessed to have such a lady in your life.
And last, but not least, congrats to you for such a fantastic, wonderful hunt and for collecting some trophies and memories that cannot be forgotten!
Well done and well told, James! I'm very happy for you and Cate. THAT's an adventure!
I bet Kat is going to be envious as Hell about Cate and her hunting! I can't wait until she reads this saga!
All the best to the two of you and we'll catch up again. sometime soon!
Ed
"Not in an open forum, where truth has less value than opinions, where all opinions are equally welcome regardless of their origins, rationale, inanity, or truth, where opinions are neither of equal value nor decisive." Ken Howell
Great job, Doc!! Really enjoyed the entire write up. You have an amazing way with the pen - hope you have this all printed out in a journal somewhere for future generations to read.
Joe
Thanks for the kind words, Joe.
I realized after finishing this story that I have quite a collection of hunting, fishing, and backcountry adventure stories stored on my hard drives. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to put them together in a collection and see if I can get a publisher interested. Dunno if that would happen... but with e-publishing being so easy nowadays, I could just publish myself, and join RockyRaab in the heady atmosphere of the self-published but still-starving author!
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Fellas, and there's a bunch of you I would like to reply to individually here but time simply doesn't permit (I'm up in Wisco for the wedding of my eldest daughter, so there is a TON of work that needs to get done (most of which will be done by my credit card, sadly..). But a couple of quick notes here...
Tarbe.. Tim, it was really cool we got to hunt the same camp with the same PH back-to-back. I'm really happy you connected on that awesome bull! And yes, you'll be back there, too.
Dillonbuck... thanks, I didn't really think about the competing interests that seem to be embedded in every gunzine story nowadays, but you're right, it's always there, and always as annoying as feck, and I'm glad I avoided doing that with this yarn. I appreciate you pointing that out. Something to be sure I continue to avoid doing!
Dano... ya little ess aitch eye tee, if you want mama to shoot a sable, YOU pay for it!! You make more money than Dad now anyways!
test1328... man, I feel your pain! Anyone who's eaten Tag Soup after a long, hard hunt knows what a crappy meal it makes! I've been skunked on elk on 3 successive hunts, so I know it first-hand... but to do so on Cape buffalo would break my heart! Please let us know all about it after your next hunt, which WILL be successful!
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
God bless Texas----------------------- Old 300 I will remain what i am until the day I die- A HUNTER......Sitting Bull Its not how you pick the booger.. but where you put it !! Roger V Hunter
Safari Day 2: Buffalo Stalking, Dagga Boys, and The Elephant Man
The morning chill in Africa is hard to believe if you haven't been there. In the heat of the day each afternoon the mercury may rise well above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the dry air parches your burning throat, and the slightest breeze feels like a kiss from Heaven, and you can't imagine what it's like to be cold. Yet at 0530 on a BVC morning, you'll be damn glad to have long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a heavy fleece jacket, and a felt wool hat as you sit down to your breakfast porridge.
On SD2 we tucked into our breakfast of porridge (that's oatmeal to you heathen Yanks) and eggs and toast, and then we limbered the rifles and went out to the truck, keeping moving to ward off the chill. The trackers shambled over to meet us in their heavy insulated hooded parkas, with the standard African greeting: "Morning, morning," but always with a big smile for the Memsahib.
Then off we went to look for the mighty Cape buffalo!
Buffalo are the damnedest critters. A Cape buffalo bull is close to two tons of sinew and horn that can kill you more ways than you can think of, if he's of a mind to do so. He can see better than you, hear better than you, run faster than you, and in every way is your physical superior. But he knows that men have thundersticks, and are as deadly as lions, his ancient and deadliest enemy, so he fears you, and will run from you if he so much as gets a hint of your presence. He is at once the most dangerous of Dangerous Game, and the most shy and retiring of the plains game, the hardest to stalk close to, and the least likely to give you a clear shot on any given day. So chasing the mighty buff is three parts hoping you can get close, two parts hoping you don't get too close, and one part each of raw fear of his power and lust to hang his great meathook horns on your wall in constant competition with each other.
Once you've hunted buffalo and won, you'll never hunt anything else without comparing it to this. As our 24HCF compadre Ingwe says, "One hunts buffalo in order to have hunted buffalo."
I've described the process before, in my 2015 account. The short version is this... You drive around looking for tracks at waterholes; he trackers identify a group of bachelor bulls (dagga boys); and you follow the tracks. After 2 to 4 hours of walking in the mopane bush, eventually one of 3 things will happen: 1) you'll get a good look at the bulls, and none of them will be shooters, so you'll back off; 2) you'll get a good look at the bulls, and one of them will be a shooter, and you'll shoot him; or most likely, 3) the bulls will catch your wind and run off, or an oxpecker will scream an alarm and the bulls will run off, or a rhino will get startled and run you over in his (literally) blind panic to get away from the African Boogeyman, or any other number of bad things will happen that prevents you seeing or shooting a bull.
Number 3 is what happens most times you stalk buffalo. By this time it's usually close to noon, you're hot and thirsty and dusty, and the mopane flies (which are actually little non-stinging bees) swarm all over your face and around your head, and as you trudge back to the truck you can't help but think what a lucky damn sonofabitch you are to be doing this. There is nothing like hunting buffalo.
Sometimes you see a herd, though, which is a magnificent sight. Herds in the BVC run anywhere from 50 to 200 cows and calves, with a good sprinkling of herd bulls around them. The herd bulls are youngish fellows, sexually mature, and obsessed with the need to breed cows. They run anywhere from 3 to 6 years of age, I'm told. The cows come into season at all times of the year, so the young bulls hang around all the time to take advantage a horny cow's random randiness. Herd bulls are not usually shooters, being younger, and their horn bosses are not fully formed and hard. They are huge as a rule, however, and may have impressive spreads. In the BVC they don't encourage shooting bulls in herds, mostly because bullets may pass through the targeted bull and wound or kill a second animal. You can do it if needs must, but they'd rather you hunt the bachelor herds.
By the time the bulls hit age 5 or 6, though, they've got tired of the constant drama of hanging around with females, and wander off on in bachelor groups of three to five to half a dozen or so. Sounds familiar, doesn't it gentlemen? These bachelor buffalo are called dagga boys, and the oldest and gnarliest bulls are to be found here. This doesn't mean they don't breed a cow now and then, they just don't hang with the females on a full time basis. Herd bulls sometimes join the dagga boys (bachelor night out, sort of thing), but quickly return to the cows. Dagga boys sometimes rejoin the herds when there's a lot of hot females in season.
So, on the morning of SD2 we drove from water hole to waterhole, and while we didn't identify any good bachelor groups, we did see a couple of good herds. We stopped to glass them, just because. In both cases the herds were out in the open so the process was relatively easy; but when you're looking over a herd at close quarters in the bush, it's a whole nother deal... more on that process later!
This was Cate's first up close and personal look at buffalo, and she was impressed, to say the least. The game viewing in general was very good this morning. We saw two groups of eland cows, and one youngish eland bull, a ton of giraffe, impala, and a lot of waterbuck. This latter was encouraging to me, as waterbuck had been added to my wish list after I saw them in the BVC in 2015. We also saw a good selection of warthog, kudu cows, and some young elephant bulls.
After lunch, we had a chance encounter that justified the expense of hiring a videographer for the whole trip, as far as I am concerned. If you recall, I debated hiring a videographer in '15 but decided against it. As a result, I have no footage of the amazing close encounters with bull elephant and black rhino we had on that trip, and I really regret that to this day. But this time we had Rayno along, and he caught many of those fleeting experiences. Today's event was one of them. saw We were cruising a two-track that paralleled the Bubye River, when about 5 o'clock Lovemore spotted a mature bull elephant in the bush. John stopped the car, and we watched him, a scant 60 feet off in the bush. At first he seemed oblivious to our presence, but then he turned his head and looked right at us, flaring his ears out: talk about enormous! He lifted his trunk to get our scent, and whether it was the sweet smell of diesel exhaust or the subtle fragrance of the Memsahib, he decided we were an object that seemed close enough to Cow Elephant that he ought to make some courtship gestures.
His courtship gestures consisted of extruding his enormous schlong so that it dangled inches from the ground, then spraying urine all over the ground and his feet and legs as he walked around the bush to get a better look at us. Let me tell you, boys... if you've never seen a 5-foot length of 6" black PVC sewer pipe hanging under a 12-ton wrinkled grey body, you don't know what the definition of "sexy" is!! The old boy finally stepped out into the roadway no more than 10 yards behind the truck, waving his trunk and his dick at us simultaneously, and spraying urine all over the place, before he finally decided we would probably be a lousy lay, and shambling off into the riverine foliage.
Once we were assured we weren't going to be charged and/or raped by the bull elephant, we all broke into laughter. It was a pretty amazing sight.
Oh, and I must say it was a bit of a boost to my ego, at least at first, when my lovely wife thereafter referred to me as The Elephant Man. The other guys were similarly impressed, believing as I did that she was referring to the size of my own equipment; however, it turns out she was alluding otherwise, as she told me in private that evening in our chalet. She was referring to my apparent inability to hit the toilet bowl with any decent degree of accuracy most mornings, she informed me, crushing my fragile male ego into the dust.. I did not inform the other fellas of this distinction, preferring to maintain some shreds of my dignity for the duration of the trip...
To be continued...
"close to two tons of sinew and horn", eh?
Man, they grow them Cape buffalo bulls big in that area.
Man, they grow them Cape buffalo bulls big in that area.
Obviously a typo, don't be a dick..
A good principle to guide me through life: “This is all I have come to expect, standard lackluster performance. Trust nothing, believe no one and realize it will only get worse…”
That was a thoroughly enjoyable read and some beautifully vibrant descriptions that, should I get the opportunity to go some day, I’d surely never forget. Because of your wonderfully told story and many others like it posted by the gentlemen here that have shared their successes and failures my wife and I think that might be in cards in a few years. Maybe after the kids are off at college we’ll get together for a family trip so that they too can partake in that experience before it’s lost forever.
Thanks for the enjoyable read and I wish you and your wife many more trips to the Dark Continent and many more dreams fulfilled.
Best regards, Bill
�Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.� �General George S. Patton, Jr.
Aces&Eights... glad you enjoyed it! And I sincerely hope you get a chance to make a similar trip with your wife and/or family.
It’s really never too late, you know. I never dreamed I’d be able to afford such a trip until my late 50’s, and when I went alone the first time in 2015, it felt incomplete. Returning this time with my wife closed the circle. Best wishes in your plans and preparations!
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
I went alone the first time in 2015, it felt incomplete. Returning this time with my wife closed the circle. Best wishes in your plans and preparations!
I agree 100%, my first trip was with friends to Namibia in 2016. Great trip, but something missing. Wife and I went to Zambia in 2018 and it was simply fantastic. Will not go again without wife, period. Would really like the boys to go also.
I understand completely about “closing the circle” and having a more fulfilling experience when sharing that with your wife. I’ve more or less closed the circle on all my big adventures. I’ve been blessed to have some epic adventures in the wilderness and in the Alaskan bush but as time went by I realized that everything was perfect except for one very large component was missing, my wife. Sharing in some of the most unspoiled gifts that nature can provide with my dear friends was wonderful but it was missing a very important person/s, my wife and children.
I want to be able to sit in our rocking chairs on the front porch in 30 years drinking coffee and reminiscing about our life’s adventures and the times we spent together. I couldn’t take such a big trip without my wife there to share it with me. My friends are great but as I get older I have come to understand what is TRULY IMPORTANT.
�Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.� �General George S. Patton, Jr.
Listen, I had no idea about this sort of thing until a couple-three years ago. My first (now ex- and deceased) wife did not care for hunting. She was uninterested in going with me, and tolerated my hunting in the early years only because her Dad and brother were hunters and liked to come up to hunt with me. But if her family was not involved, she always resented the time I spent away from home hunting, wouldn't eat the game I brought home and cooked, and so on. But that was really only symptomatic of our overall incompatibility, which dragged on for 34 years. Hunting and shooting became excuses for me to get out of the fecking house and away from the wife, although the joy of the hunt was always a bigger draw than anything.
I know a lot of guys stuck in marriages like my first one. They are miserable more than they realize, and put up with it because they think they have to. They don't, but nobody can tell you that when you're in it.
In the past half decade I've learned that a true wife will embrace her husband's love of hunting and enable it, not inhibit it, and she will participate in it at multiple levels. She may not actually be "all-in" to the point of making the kill herself, but like Cate did, she may find out she loves it.
I could have married a woman like that when I was young, but I didn't... I didn't know. Young men really don't know enough to be getting married, really. I sure wasn't! But I've been given the opportunity to get it right this time, and it's wonderful. I have a fishing and hunting companion now that I never even dreamed of having for most of my life. It's pretty cool.
So more power to you and your wife, A&8's, I've always thought you came across as a sensible fecking man. Cheers!
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Thanks Doc. I always appreciate your insight into the many and various topics that you’ve discussed and I enjoy your tales of adventure. You’re definitely one of the good guys here. 👍
I did get lucky by finding the perfect woman to spend my life with. Hunting, fishing and the outdoors have always been a huge part of me and “who” I am since as far back as I can remember. I always knew, even as a kid, that the woman I married would have to be comfortable around firearms and not “weirded out” killing, cleaning and eating the game I brought home. As luck or divine intervention would have it God answered those prayers and some of our earliest dates found us not in dance clubs in the city but rather Chukar hunting in Eastern Washington or hunting quail and pheasant on the cold autumn mornings where the sage smells so strong the fragrance counter at Nordstrom’s puckered with envy. 😁
My wife didn’t grow up hunting but she did grow up in a conservative, gun owning home and her dad did hunt A LOT having been raised in Alaska so it just goes with the territory, literally because at that time Alaska was not officially a state. Having that exposure to the outdoors and not assigning a stigma to killing and eating your food made “introducing” her to hunting all the more easier for me. My wife still enjoys bird hunting and all things outdoor related but instead of carrying a shotgun she carries a Canon. 😁. My wife is an extremely gifted photographer which compliments our team since I’m not. The memories live forever in our minds but it’s nice to have pictures to go along with the stories since oftentimes seeing something in a picture triggers another story and another......😁
I never thought of hunting and fishing as something I did with only the “boys” or that it was boys only club, quite the opposite actually. Hunting and fishing is something that runs through my veins and my time spent outdoors is a deeply spiritual necessity for me, because it is I want to share that with those I love. I never felt like I needed to “get away” from my wife instead I’ve always wanted to “get away” with my wife. From reading your excellent tales of adventure I believe you know what I’m talking about and I believe you and I feel the same way about hunting with our spouses.
There’s nothing as special and wonderful as having a wife that’s TRULY your best friend.
�Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.� �General George S. Patton, Jr.
