The Africa Diaries, Part 2

"Use enough gun."
— Journalist and hunting author Robert Ruark, from his book of the same title

The dry bush-veldt air was beginning to cool, finally. The sun had reached that point low in the sky when the blazing yellow-white of mid-day had faded to orange as it sank behind the screen of the leaf-less treetops. Only a few minutes of light remained before the majestic African sunset. It was the time of day when a hunter is either counting on a promising stalk coming to fruition – or counting the minutes until a fruitless one yields mercifully to the bath, the dinner and the whiskey…

This particular evening was of the latter species.

The Land Cruiser burped and bounced along the rutted road, Bud and I silently welcoming the relief from the heat we’d been marinating in for the last six hours. I was tired, 10 miles or more of following buffalo tracks that never seemed to get any fresher having taken its toll. A tap on the roof made my heart jump momentarily. "It’s nothing. They want to check out some spoor," Bud said, reading my mind.

He stopped the truck and we got out, the bush strangely quiet without the diesel soundtrack. I felt my cheeks relaxing and eyes fully opening from the squint they’d held for most of the afternoon. Taking off my hat, I arched the small of my back, stretching away the cramps from crouch-shuffling to avoid acacia thorns all day. After a moment, we began to follow at a leisurely pace as trackers Judea and Power meandered off into the bush. Bud didn’t bother with his rifle, so I didn’t either…

As we got farther from the Cruiser, I became more edgy. Being unarmed in the African bush will that to a man who enjoys his respiration — especially one who’s heard days worth of stories about how lions attack from the rear, how wounded leopards will wait in the bushes alongside a trail, and how ornery cape buffalo will sometimes circle a man in the bush and charge him from behind without warning. I remembered Bud’s words from the first day: "Always keep an eye on the backtrack." Since I didn’t have my .375 Ruger with me, that was all I could keep on it…

We’d walked several minutes, deep into the bush, when I whispered to Bud, "Shouldn’t we have our guns?"

"Nah," he said, "It’s yesterday’s spoor, nothing fresh."

I wondered what the trackers were doing. Gauging the size of the herd? Trying to figure where they were headed? Maybe they were looking for the track of a good bull to start pursuing in the morning. I looked down at the spoor myself, trying to remember what Judea had showed me the first day about how to tell a bull’s track from a cow’s. I didn’t have time to remember before Power froze us all with a hiss-whispered "Inyahti!"

There, at just 35 yards across a small clearing, stood a nearly mature cape buffalo bull. And all 1500 pounds of him was glaring at us, chin up and petulant, like the cocksure teenager that he was. He sniffed the wind, nose high, trying to get a read on us. We were sitting ducks in the sparse bush. No one moved. No one breathed. It was a Mexican standoff — except that only one half of it was armed…

That’s when Bud, in the classic unflappable fashion of a seasoned Professional Hunter, leaned ever so slightly toward me and whispered, "Now, that’s a little fresher."

Ancient rock paintings freeze stories of the hunt in time.

This story — the one about the hunters who left their guns in the truck to follow "old" spoor and almost got inyahti horns up their asses — dominated the conversation among hunters and guides over the dinner table that night. To many laughs, one of which concealed at least a small amount of nervousness…

A close encounter with a buff can have that effect, especially when one has only foul language to hurl at it. And perhaps not even that. Looking into those black, soulless eyes smack in the middle of a yard-wide double-curl of heavy, pointed horn mounted on the business end of a car-sized killer can make a man run out of spit real quick, armed or not.

But that instance hammered home to me (not literally, thankfully) the need to be prepared for anything in the African bush. Or on the American streets, for that matter. As it turns out, the Boy Scout motto really is advice to live by, no matter where you are. Ironically, I knew by heart the most relevant incarnation of this motto — hunter and journalist Robert Ruark’s immortal "Use enough gun" — even as I left mine behind in dangerous game country.

Hell, I didn’t even stick to my own core philosophy: Have a gun. It just shows what fatigue and an inflated sense of your position on the food chain can do to judgment. These two things have spelled the death of many a hunter through the ages. It would not happen again…

And speaking of hunters through the ages, the most incredible thing I experienced while in Africa wasn’t the breathtaking vistas or the hair-raising stalks, nor even the game I took. Rather, it was the ancient rock paintings that moved me the most.

One of the koppies (small, rocky mini-mountains) where we were hunting buffalo was called "bushman." I asked why it was called this, and Bud told me it was because there were rock paintings and other evidence of ancient man there. He’d never seen them, but I asked the trackers if they knew where these paintings were. Power, the "buffalo boy," said he’d take us there. I couldn’t wait.

Just before dusk one evening, we drove the cruiser to the base of "bushman." Leading the way, Power guided us up a steep climb of a hundred yards or more to a small plateau at the base of a movie-screen-sized expanse of flat vertical rock face in the shadow of a large overhang. Painted there on the rock wall were dozens of faded, but still clearly visible images of people and animals — bows and arrows in the hands of the hunters. It was a deeply moving experience, sharing this land and the hunt with them…

What made it especially surreal was the fact that we were sharing the plateau on which we stood with another kind of hunter. Under our feet were years’ worth of animal bones. At the base of the painted rock face were a pair of cave entrances, and in the mouth of these caves were hundreds of hyena tracks. The freshest of these were leading inward from the previous night’s pillaging — which means we were literally trespassing in the very dining room of an unknown number of cornered, dangerous carnivores, albeit mainly nocturnal ones. And yes, we were armed this time.

It was getting dark. We hustled down to the Cruiser.

PH Rummel keeps a wary eye on the entrance of a hyena den.

We had them this time. The wind was right. The terrain was right…

Minutes earlier, we’d tracked a sizeable herd of buffalo to the mouth of a shallow valley that led along a dry creek bed down through a tract of bush-veldt that looked remarkably like an east Texas forest, said Bud. Backtracking quickly to the Cruiser, we piled in and raced some distance ahead of them, then parked on the side of a road paralleling their course. With Judea leading, we struck off into the woods-like bush on a course to intercept.

The trees were taller than typical, and they offered us good concealment in their relative shade, yet decent visibility through the light under-story between their trunks. I brought up the rear as Judea, Bud, and Power wound through the bush ahead. As "second gun," it was my habit to vigilantly check the backtrack. After what Bud had told me about lions and buffalo, I was determined not to let any of our party be taken by surprise – by anything.

We filtered down the shallow grade toward the dry creek, crossed it, then took up a position behind some trees halfway up the hillside opposite the one we’d just made our way down. If they stayed on course – and the wind was right to ensure they would — the entire herd of buffalo would pass us on the opposite side of the creek-bed. We’d have a fine view of all of them at around 75 yards, if the daylight held out. It was what hunters call the "witching hour," about 60 minutes before dusk…

As always, Judea’s sense of direction and timing were perfect. We weren’t waiting five minutes before the first of the herd showed itself on the opposite side of the ravine, around 150 yards away. They were moving leisurely, unalarmed. They had no idea they were being hunted. Bud and I scanned with our binoculars, trying to locate a good bull. He looked at his watch, then behind us at the sun. "We need to get closer, or we’re gonna run out of time," he whispered. Sinking to his knees, he wrapped his fist around the midsection of his Merkel .470 double rifle to protect it from the ground, then began to crawl on his knuckles and knees toward another small copse of trees, about 25 yards farther down the hillside. The rest of us followed suit, single file, like a pride of lions on the prowl.

It took us 10 minutes to cover the ground and get situated behind the cover of the group of trees we were headed for. Five of those minutes were spent frozen in the open like stone statues after Bud threw up a backward-facing palm from his knees: Stop! A cow 100 yards away at the head of the herd had taken an interest in our section of the woods all of a sudden, and there stood transfixed on the position of the perceived threat — as all game animals seem to, no matter what hemisphere. Finally, she decided that whatever it was she’d seen wasn’t worth any more of her time, and she went back to grazing. We collected at the group of trees, my knees aching from holding motionless on the rocky ground…

We resumed scanning for a good bull with about 45 minutes of shooting light remaining. The herd’s progress parallel to us was steady, but slow. Just a few feet every couple of minutes. They were getting ready to hunker down for the night on the hillside. About a dozen of them were in view, but no shooters. Fifteen minutes later, we still hadn’t seen what we were looking for: A mature, heavy-horned patriarchal bull with a fully formed, hard, gnarled horn boss. We were running out of time. Just then, Bud whispered excitedly, "There’s a bull, Jim! See him?" I angled my binoculars in the direction Bud was scanning. "He’s up the hill a bit, on the far side of the herd. Kinda brownish bosses. Got him?"

"Yeah, I see him. Can’t tell how wide, though. Wait a second." He looked good, dominant, noticeably larger than the other inyahti around him. My heart started to pound, and all of a sudden my hat felt a shade too tight. This could be it, I thought…

"Use your scope, it’s more magnification," Bud hissed. Letting the binoculars hang back on my chest, I slowly picked up my Ruger, dialed the magnification ring on my 3-9 power scope to full strength, and mounted the gun from the kneeling position I was in. The hold was steady, and out of reflex, the crosshairs fell neatly on the near shoulder. I tracked them upward toward the horns. Heavy mass. Solid, gnarly boss. I couldn’t quite tell the width because he was side-on.

And then he turned his massive head directly at us, looking down over his herd. Bingo! Thirty-eight, maybe thirty-nine inches. Deep curls, nice tips. A definite shooter, at 90 yards and slowly closing. A touch farther than I wanted to be for excitement’s sake, but an easy shot nonetheless. I could put five holes into the ace of spades at that distance…

"He’s a good one, Jim!" Bud said excitedly. Even after 40-odd years of hunting, the thrill of the kill still got his blood pumping.

"I’m on him," I replied, game face on and thumb on the safety. "Let me know when you want me to shoo-" I never got to finish the word.

OOORRRAAAGGGHH! From less than half a mile behind us, a tom simba cut loose with a roar that would make the MGM lion’s testicles shrivel up like a pair of raisins. In an instant, every living thing in the bush-veldt that didn’t wear a mane went on code-red alert. The buffalo began to shuffle and grunt, clustering up around their mewling calves. I had no shot on the big bull anymore, as he evaporated into the far side of the now densely packed herd…

Not that I even cared about this — like the rest of my party, I’d spun 180 degrees and was carefully scanning the bush with eyes as wide as half-dollars. We were exactly where you DON’T want to be: Downhill and downwind from a hungry lion, and smack in between him and his favorite inyahti steaks. At dusk.

Bud looked at us and said, "I’d call that a day, huh?"

A magnificent simba tom guards his fresh-killed meal.

Which brings me to the lions. Of all that I saw and experienced in Africa, the lions were the most captivating — and the most bone-chilling. The camp and land concession where I stayed doubled as a lion-rearing and breeding facility. Some of the lions there are quite approachable. You can enter their enclosures, and even walk out on the veldt with them.

It’s an incredible thing to go into one of these enclosures with two fully grown young male lions. Semi-tame or not, if they don’t recognize you, they pace back and forth quite closely and stare you down appraisingly, especially if they haven’t been fed recently. You can just see them thinking, "Hmmm. Here’s a meaty one. Nice, full rump and chops. A bit tough, perhaps…" When they’re hungry, they look at you as though they’re contemplating which wine would go best with your bones…

Honestly, I may not have had the stones to go in with this pair had I not done so before being introduced to one of the wild lions they keep in captivity for breeding purposes, a magnificent, black-maned male in the prime of life. A true mikulu madota. Every ounce of 500 pounds. Every ounce pure malevolence, unmistakable in his eyes.

A lion’s eyes (their faces, for that matter) are very expressive. To an extent, you can tell if they mean you harm by their countenance. What this simba conveyed with his burning, soulless, amber-hued eyes went far beyond harm — it crossed into the realm of evil. He snarled continuously from the moment any man loomed into his sight until well after he was gone from it. "Snarled" isn’t the right word, really. More like "rumbled." The volume and timbre of this warning, deep and staccato, must be experienced to be believed. It reminded me nothing so much as the idling of my Harley Davidson — about the same tempo and volume, except punctuated by occasional deafening cough-roars…

They say a lion scares a hunter three times: When he first sees its spoor, when he first hears it roar and when he first sees it. Make that four times: When it first charges you flat out and cough-roaring at full volume from the other side of a flimsy twig and chain-link fence. This bad old boy would do that every time if you got close enough.

It’s astonishing how fast these big cats can cover ground, and simply indescribable how terrifying it is to be on the receiving end of a full-on charge. A lion doesn’t gradually ramp up to speed like a cheetah — he explodes from stillness like a linebacker, reaching full speed in mere feet, his mane laying back from the wind and acceleration of the rush. He comes in low, long bounds, the cyclical action of his massive front legs and shoulders forcing loud, abrupt coughs of air out of his bellows-sized lungs, Grugh! Grugh! Grugh!

Contrary to what you may think, it’s quite simple to stand fast in the face of such a charge. It’s simply a result of one’s knees ceasing to function. The trick is maintaining function of the bladder and bowels.

It was a cool, gray, moist, wintry morning in the bush, around 55 degrees, and in no real hurry to warm up. Perfect hunting conditions, especially to one from the eastern U.S. It was Day Nine of a 10-day hunt, and Bud, Judea, Power and I were stalking cautiously on the trail of a decent-sized herd of inyahti. We’d cut red-hot spoor from the road a half-mile back, and were expecting to run right into them any minute. The bush was dense, and I was on high alert, of course — but somewhat distracted…

I kept flashing back to Day Five of the hunt, when I’d shot my buffalo bull — a fine 36-incher with heavy, gnarled horns and bosses. It had happened quite unexpectedly as Bud, Judea, Freedom, Power and I approached a water hole late on a hot morning to check for fresh spoor we could pick up after lunch. Instead, we found the herd there, with a fine bull right out in front — 35 yards away and out in the open. I had the .375 Ruger up in a flash, safety off, waiting for a smallish cow to clear the bull on the backside. I was in the zone when I heard Bud say "Shoo-"

KA-WONG! I unloaded 300 grains of round-nosed solid into the left rear flank of the quartering-away bull, slipping the round in behind the last rib and forward into the vicinity of the heart and lungs. I heard the gun go clack-chack! as I unconsciously jacked another round into the chamber, the bull bucking like he had a rodeo rider on his back. I tracked him for half a second, then KA-WONG, KA-WONG, sent two more solids whistling into the big bull’s boiler-room, throwing the Ruger’s bolt as fast as physics would allow, hearing the rounds thunking home as the bull whirled and disappeared into the bush…

Moments later, we heard the death bellow — long, low, and forlorn. He’d piled up 50 yards away, less than 30 seconds after the first shot. No tracking, no nerve-wracking follow-up shooting needed, as is so often the case with cape buffalo. Bud and the trackers seemed glad of this. I was, too, yet some part of me was sad that the adventure was over. Or so I thought.

The dinner table talk that night was all about our hunt — especially my shooting, to both my pride and slight embarrassment. When they gutted the bull, they’d discovered that the first bullet had found its mark, penetrating fully five feet of rumen to neatly punch through the top of the bull’s heart. Judea had brought the heart to show me, his thumb and forefinger holding the cantaloupe-sized organ like a six-pack through both holes the bullet had made. The other two shots had been deadly lung and artery hits, too, but simply insurance. The first one had sealed the deal. Another guide hunting nearby had heard the action, and at first refused to believe the shots had come from a bolt-gun. The second pair, he said, were so close together he’d have bet a month’s pay they’d come one-two as follow-up shots from Bud’s .470 double rifle…

Of course, I was happy. Bud, Judea, and the other trackers had shown me a lot of great hunting, and a fine trophy. I ate and drank, waxed and regaled, listened and laughed with the now-full camp of clients and guides, grateful. I couldn’t help but want more, though. All those days of stalking, glassing, and flirting with danger in the midst of inyahti herds had me dreaming of taking mine deep in the bush, boots to the ground, face-to-face. Oh well, next time.

But little did I know that "next time" would be just four days later, and that it would be exactly the hunt I’d dreamed about — the one where I’d finally get an inkling of what I was made of…

Stay tuned adventure lovers, hunters and even all you high-and-mighty gun-phobes and meat-haters. The most exciting chapter is yet to come — as is my double-barreled response to those of you who wrote in to excoriate me for going on safari. It’s all coming in Part 3, the thrilling conclusion to my Africa series.

Freedom, Power, myself, and PH Rummel with a fine inyahti bull.

On target, and aiming for the heart,

Jim Amrhein
Freedoms Editor,
Whiskey & Gunpowder

September 28, 2007