By Ed Stoddard and Adam Hart

This article was first published on the Daily Maverick on 2 July 2025

Instead of mourning the animals killed by trophy hunters – which in many ways owe their existence, like it or not, to the hunting industry – we would suggest tears should instead be shed for Josephi, his widow Elphina and their son, Success.

Many people in the West know Cecil the Lion, but who can name an African killed by a lion or another species of dangerous megafauna in the decade since Cecil’s demise?

Our guess is not many, and that speaks volumes to the chasm that divides Africa and the affluent West on polarising wildlife issues such as trophy hunting that were unleashed by the Cecil saga.

In the eyes of many Africans, affluent folk in the North often seem to have more empathy for the continent’s wildlife than they do for its people, especially the rural poor who have to live in the terrifying shadow of large animal attack – a precarious existence that no middle-class resident of London, New York or Toronto would wish on their kith and kin.

These cultural fault lines were brutally exposed when Cecil was felled by an American trophy hunter on 2 July 2015 outside Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park.

Cecil’s biography was well known to a handful of dedicated researchers, as he was the subject of a study by the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU). Cecil had a satellite tracking collar that would emit signals every two hours, providing his GPS coordinates.

According to WildCRU, Cecil was one of 65 lions killed by trophy hunters in the area from 1999 to 2015, 45 of which were equipped with radio collars. Two other satellite-collared lions with human nicknames were also killed by hunters in the same area in 2015.

But Cecil was popular with visitors to Hwange and park officials, and Zimbabwe launched a probe into the hunt. This, in turn, launched the affair, aided and abetted by social media, into orbit.

As the uproar in the West spread, US dentist Walter Palmer was eventually named as Cecil’s killer, and that placed him in the crosshairs of public indignation.

Jimmy Kimmel

American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, on 28 July 2015, made an impassioned commentary about the incident, choking back tears as he assured Africans that “not all Americans are like this jack hole” — the jack hole in question being Palmer, whose dental practice was already being besieged by protesters.

But in Africa, the response was pointedly different, and Kimmel’s tears – over a lion – provoked incredulity.

Asked by reporters for comment on the unfolding drama, Zimbabwe’s acting information minister at the time, Prisca Mupfumira, snapped: “What lion?”

A few days after Kimmel’s emotional outburst, Goodwell Nzou, a Zimbabwean doctoral student studying molecular medicine in the United States, had an opinion piece published in The New York Times titled, In Zimbabwe, We Don’t Cry for Lions.

American outrage over the incident, he wrote, had provoked “… the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years’ studying in the United States”.

“Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people? That all the talk about Cecil being ‘beloved’ or a ‘local favourite’ was media hype? Did Jimmy Kimmel choke up because Cecil was murdered or because he confused him with Simba from The Lion King?” Nzou asked.

“When I was nine years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside … The lion sucked the life out of the village: No one socialised by fires at night; no one dared stroll over to a neighbour’s homestead.

“We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.”

In response, Nzou received death threats, underscoring his point in a chilling and telling manner.

The floodgates

Jimmy Kimmel’s Cecil outburst opened the floodgates. The global media jumped on the story, pushing trophy hunting to the front page. David Macdonald, then head of WildCRU, said that “in terms of attracting global attention, it [Cecil] was the largest story in the history of wildlife conservation”.

In the UK, pre-Cecil, trophy hunting had barely registered in print media. When it was covered, stories frequently highlighted the complexities of the issue. Discussion of the conservation benefits hunter revenue brought was commonplace, albeit often alongside a general sense of disapproval. After Cecil, the tone moved sharply towards condemnation. This coincided with increasing NGO and campaign-led calls for hunting bans, with Cecil as the inevitable focus.

Calls to ban trophy hunting from nations like the UK ring hollow for many living in countries such as Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The hypocrisy is glaring. The UK has a thriving trophy hunting industry focused on deer, the heads of which adorn many a country pub, hotel and stately home. And these trophies can also be exported.

Meanwhile, the UK is anything but a conservation success story, in stark contrast to the successes of African nations with trophy hunting as part of their conservation strategy.

A 2017 study titled “Relative efforts of countries to conserve world’s megafauna” should be required reading for those calling for bans on trophy hunting. The top five countries were Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Bhutan and Zimbabwe. Four of the top five are southern African nations. All four are major trophy hunting destinations. The UK was 123rd.

Such facts are usually ignored by domestic politicians. Or, worse, spun to suggest the UK can manage wildlife responsibility while other nations cannot. Understandably, accusations of neocolonialism have become a fixture of public discourse on trophy hunting.

Nonetheless, there remains considerable political traction to ban the import of hunting trophies from species that are, regardless of their actual status, “close to extinction”. Evil trophy hunter, goes the media-friendly and seemingly intuitive story, are driving elephants, lions and other charismatic species to the brink. Just so they put a head on their wall. Trapped within this narrative, the easiest way to save wildlife seems obvious. Condemn the cruel and senseless practice of trophy hunting to the dustbin of history.

It is precisely this thinking that has led to proposed bans, in various stages of legislative development, in the UK, numerous countries in Europe, Australia and the US. Such global political will is backed by assumptions of popularity.

Misinformation and naivety

But what seems like a quick and easy conservation and political win is shot through with misinformation and naivety. In the Second Reading of a failed UK-based Bill to ban trophy imports at the end of 2022, analysis by a team of scientists led by Oxford University indicated that around three-quarters of verifiable statements made by MPs speaking in support of the Bill were demonstrably false. For more than a third of those MPs, every verifiable statement they made was false.

What is more, the public is far from overwhelmingly supportive, as is usually claimed. One of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s specialist groups, Sustainable Use and Livelihoods commissioned a survey of the UK public on the topic and found that, if a ban were to increase overall threats to wildlife conservation (as is very likely to be the case), only 42% supported them, and only 39% supported bans if they negatively affected marginalised communities (which they would).

The idea that more than 80% of the UK public supports bans is based on a highly leading, flawed survey undertaken by the NGO Ban Trophy Hunting. Politicians would do well to actually read such surveys – they might then realise how they are being played.

Ban Trophy Hunting – and several other NGOs – know that Cecil remains a gold mine. Prominent on its site is a red headline – “REMEMBER CECIL” – clearly displayed as the 10th anniversary of his death looms – and below, there is a tab to donate.

Cecil has been dead for a decade, but the vultures are still circling the memory of his carcass. Revealingly, there is no similar site asking people to remember Africans killed by big animals.

Trophy hunting vs extinction threat

Trophy hunting is a complex aspect of conservation, and nowhere more so than in southern Africa, where much of the northern hemisphere’s disapproval, and in many cases disgust, is directed. While unregulated or poorly managed hunting can lead to local declines, a recent analysis found that there were no species for which trophy hunting was considered a threat.

The same analysis found that for a number of species, including black rhino and lion, regulated hunting provides clear conservation benefits by producing revenue and incentivising communities to live alongside wildlife that may pose a threat to them and their livestock.

If you track the spoor of the scientific literature, there are no objective, peer-reviewed articles in any reputable journal that we are aware of that make a direct link between trophy hunting and the threat of extinction. “Studies” that make this link are usually commissioned by animal rights organisations with a transparent agenda.

When science and facts are not on your side, raw emotion works.

Conservation without money is just conversation. Lions and elephants are irresistible to photo tourists, but a very different prospect to live alongside. Without providing real incentives to communities and respecting their rights to a sustainable livelihood without reliance on the whims of overseas aid, habitat is lost and wildlife suffers.

Safari tourism may be a thriving business post-pandemic, but Africa is vast and the landscape mixed. For every Serengeti migration honeypot, there are thousands of square miles of featureless bush, unsuitable for those on a one-week trip of a lifetime, anxious to tick off the Big Five before sundowners. In many such areas, hunting remains a vital lifeline for people and habitat.

In response to calls for bans, more than 130 scientists and conservationists signed a joint letter to the journal Science, outlining why “trophy hunting bans imperil biodiversity”.

Community leaders from across southern Africa have written open letters to UK politicians calling on them to stop legislation that will harm conservation efforts and community livelihoods. The ghost of Cecil, it seems, roars far louder than the stark reality of real-world conservation challenges.

The human victims

We have been unable to find comprehensive, up-to-date data on the number of humans killed in Africa in attacks by big, dangerous animals in the decade since Cecil died, but it is safe to say that it numbers in the thousands.

In Zimbabwe, the national parks organisation Zimparks recently said that in the first quarter (Q1) of 2025, human fatalities from such attacks rose 20% to 18 compared with the same period in the previous year.

It also said its data showed that over the past five years, 300 people had been killed in wildlife encounters – an average of 60 a year. And that is just a five-year timeframe restricted to Zimbabwe.

These victims are often – unlike Cecil – faceless and nameless outside of their rural communities, where they have friends and family who grieve their loss and live in fear of the next attack. But outside their close circle, it is as if such horrifying incidents are simply the natural order of things in Africa, with Africans themselves simply the extras on the set of some Tarzan movie.

The rural Africans who have to live alongside dangerous megafauna rank among the poorest of the poor, and their poverty is both a cause and effect of this precarious existence – a terrifying socioeconomic realm that can be described as living below the faunal poverty line.

This state of affairs can also be usefully viewed through the prism of inequality. The rural poor in Africa are expected to share space with potentially menacing megafauna, a scenario that no middle-class suburbanite – including those who see red over trophy hunting – would tolerate.

This is one of the many ways in which poverty makes you prey.

Among the thousands of human victims in Africa since Cecil was felled, spare a thought for 27-year-old Josephi Kapalamula of Malawi and his family.

Josephi was among the first of 10 victims to date killed by elephants in the wake of an ill-conceived translocation of 263 of the animals to Kasungu National Park in Malawi from Liwonde National Park in the country’s south in June and July of 2022. This has transformed the landscape around the park in Malawi and neighbouring Zambia into one of fear and loathing for the subsistence farmers who toil there.

Josephi’s wife, Elphina, was pregnant when he was killed by elephants in July 2022. When Ed spoke to her in June 2024, her 17-month-old son, Success, was strapped to her back, a child who will never meet his father.

“My husband heard that there were elephants, so he went to see them. The elephants

By Lucas Paugh

“Nothing captures your heart like Africa,” was the mantra of my friend and mentor Craig Boddington. And as a young hunter I had always dreamed of hunting Africa to experience what most others only talked about, and very few Americans ever experienced.

Seeing the Big Five taxidermy exhibits at various trade shows sparked a fire in me to someday make this dream a reality. My longtime friend and hunting partner Jason Quick had previously introduced me to Alex and Johnny Thomson of Eland Safaris, a private hunting concession in the Northern Limpopo Province of South Africa, and we finally inked the date for early July 2018

We were met in Johannesburg by PH Petrie Boshoff, and on arrival at the farm were welcomed by Johnny and his family. We spent the afternoon shooting our bows to ensure accuracy, and recovering from jet lag after 26 hours in the air. Needless to say, we were ready to go experience Africa after over a year of waiting, and after an early breakfast next morning we split into our groups with our PHs. I was fortunate to have Petrie as my PH (or he was the unfortunate one to draw the short straw and have me as his client!).

One thing about bow hunting in Africa is that you will sit in blinds over water. At first, I was having a hard time with this concept, but I learned to respect and understand their hunting culture, and it wasn’t more than 30 minutes when my first encounter with an African species came straight to drink. A large mature impala ram had me at full draw, and when the arrow released that animal sprung up from the water and hightailed it out.  It was a good shot, but the “vital triangle” sits a bit forward and lower in South Africa than in our traditional North American species. This took some getting used to as my impala proved by escaping my first arrow and disappearing in the bush!

I had a sleepless night worrying about it, but the good news was that thanks to my tracker Abraham, the impala was recovered within a few hundred yards of where I had hit him.

After what felt like hours, I lined up my single pin on the first stripe running down the front shoulder, and released a deadly arrow that made a full pass through and hit the dirt before the bull even knew what hit him. I managed to double down that morning as a nice-sized blesbok also came to water and took one of my arrows. One morning and two animals in the salt!

As the days passed, I also managed to hunt the holy grail of a gemsbok, a 40” horned beauty that turned out to be just an incredible representative of the species. Although all that was stimulating and fun, it wasn’t till the last day that was for me the most exciting and entertaining.

Alex and I had previously discussed which species were on the target list, and he convinced me to acquire a baboon permit.

“You never know when that opportunity could arise,” he said. All through the plains-game hunting I had this baboon permit sitting out there, and I thought, “Why not go and see what this baboon hunting is all about?”  

So Petrie and I set out to an offset concession where the landowners were having issues with the baboons damaging their crops. After sitting in the blind for 20 minutes, a shrill shriek sounded out in the distance and my PH smiled. Within minutes a female baboon had entered the area and started feeding on the rotten tomatoes strategically placed. She was smarter than most, as she would grab a few veggies and run off. Then I noticed a silhouette in the bush walk out into view.

“A mature male,” Petrie whispered. “Take a shot if you can.”

I was committed to using my bow, which limited my opportunity as these primates are extremely clever and cunning. But this male slipped up by walking into my lethal distance. The shooting window was narrow and based on an angle did not give me much of a shot. As I went to full draw, I hoped that little sliver of an opening would be the vital zone I was looking for. One more step was needed for the baboon to give me a broadside shot…

The step was taken and arrow released. The animal immediately ran off for 50 yards till it expired with an arrow perfectly placed high in the shoulder.  Petrie was delighted, as it was the first time he had been with successful bowhunter on baboon. We laughed and celebrated all the way back to camp.

That evening, we decided on a night hunt for steenbok. This was another hunt where they had never taken an archer at night to hunt one of these common small antelope species. We met the landowner and started out flashing spotlights across the fields looking for eyes. We had looked over many small game and then found a lone male ram feeding in the distance.

As we approached, my good friend Jason Quick helped me range the animal as I focused on making the shot in the dark. I recall hearing 48 yards, I set my pin, and the visible lumenok vapor trail traveled over the back of that ram. It ran off and went out quite a bit farther out of my effective range. We slowly moved forward and Jason whispered out another range of 38 yards. We followed, and after setting my pin I let an arrow fly and watched the ram buckle up hard and run about 20 yards before folding up. I was ecstatic at what I had just accomplished. Never had I thought this was achievable, but again proved these animals could be taken with archery equipment. We spent that evening under a sprinkle of rain taking photos and enjoying the beautiful winter’s night under the stars. 

I’d like to thank Eland Safaris for making our experience incredible and providing world-class accommodations, and special thanks to our camp of hunters and friends: Dave Kelner, Bob Anderson, Jason and Wyatt Quick, Brandon Williams, Derek and Meredith Franklin.

Africa certainly captures your heart unlike any other place in the world. For a hunter or someone just looking to experience the culture or sheer beauty of the country, it offers everything one could ever imagine – and some. The density and diversity of wildlife is unlike anywhere else I have ever seen. On that last evening watching the sunset, the enjoyment of our final dinner was bittersweet as we broke bread with some amazing people from all walks of life and backgrounds. But all good things must come to an end, and I had memories that will last a lifetime.

By Cassie Carstens, Secretarybird Conservation Manager, BirdLife South Africa.

As with most large bird species across the globe, the threats that Secretarybirds face are varied and widespread. Loss, fragmentation, and habitat degradation have the most significant impact, with the open savannas and grasslands they prefer having seen dramatic changes over the past few decades, with the most prominent expansion of agricultural and residential areas. Land use changes have caused smaller pieces of veld to be suitable, and even the protected areas where these birds are supposed to flourish appear to be too overgrown with tall grass, encroaching trees and shrubs. Fatal collisions with powerlines, fences, and wind turbines also negatively impact them, with the potential addition of secondary poisoning also playing a role.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), over the past 15 years, this iconic African species has gone from being considered Least Concern to Endangered. The IUCN’s Red Data grading system reflects the conservation status of species worldwide, and the plight of the continent’s birds of prey is especially dire. In South Africa, Secretarybirds are still hanging on, with an estimated population of 5,500-11,000 birds remaining in the wild. Across the rest of their Sub-Saharan distribution, however, they are disappearing at a rapid pace. That decline is slower here, but immediate action is required to ensure their survival.

Breeding movements

Once independent, the youngsters disperse long distances, with one individual travelling from Gauteng to the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana and back. Another moved from the nest near Warden in the Free State all the way to Amanzimtoti in KwaZulu-Natal!

With the data gained from this first phase of the tracking study, the first conservation actions could be implemented, and this entailed the recommendation to buffer an area of 1,6 km in radius around nests during the development of wind energy projects. However, the lack of adult movement data was a key shortcoming. A second phase of tracker deployments was conducted from 2020 to 2021, with 12 more units used. Four of those birds and the tracking units they diligently carried managed to survive, and for the first time, adult movement during breeding attempts was recorded!

The results show that the 1,6 km distance is inadequate, with adults moving an average of 3,5 km from the nest. This newly gained knowledge will improve the mitigation measures, with the hope that their survival rate will improve.

Future work entails the deployment of several more trackers in a third phase of the study. Additionally, the sharing of bird-friendly grazing and burning regimes with the farming community will also be prioritised. A wildlife-friendly fence design is also in the works, with which we hope birds and mammals will be protected without compromising the needs of livestock farmers.

Should you know of any Secretarybird pairs in your area, if you know the location of a nest or two, or even if you just want to learn more about these amazing birds, please get in touch with BirdLife South Africa’s Secretarybird Conservation Manager at cassie.carstens@birdlife.org.za.

Chapter Four

Return to The Hills

As the Rhodesian war blazed into 1980, a ceasefire was brokered, and to keep us soldiers busy and out of mischief we were allocated various tasks throughout Mashonaland in support of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife. These anti-poaching and patrol duties were a far cry from our recent violent assaults into guerrilla camps in Chimoio and Mapaai in Mozambique, but we enjoyed them. They were relaxing, and our support gave the Wildlife people a chance to catch up on duties long neglected in “hot” areas during the war. We were deployed at Kariba, then Mana Pools and then at the Umfurudzi National Park, enjoying the wilderness areas without having to live every second expecting mayhem of some sort. When the elections were over there was suddenly a huge number of surprised young men who had not contemplated life outside the military but who were now staring it in the face. What options were there for young white ex-Rhodesian soldiers in the new Zimbabwe? Many left the country but others, like myself, had not even thought about life in another land.

We were young, fit, and highly trained in the use of several weapons and in combat. We could survive easily in adverse conditions, and we were rich pickings for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife. I was coerced into signing on and extending my army contract for one more month. An old Rhodesian tradition, a rugby match held once a year between the army and the air force, had fallen away during the last few hectic years of the war and someone wished to revive it. I was “asked” to commence training with the army squad and it was actually a pleasant surprise once I was back on the field. I had captained the School of Infantry rugby team at Gwelo and vice captained the Provincial under 21 side only eighteen months or so before, so it was not that big a step to get back into the game. The match was a cracker and ended 28 all. A good result, many of us thought. During that month of rugby training, after thinking back on the work we had done with Parks and Wildlife, I decided to join them. My troop sergeant had already joined the department and he wasted no time in getting stuck into his new job. I reported to the Department offices in Harare and filled in all the relative application forms and two weeks later was called in for an interview.

My interviewing officer was a pleasant gentleman, and once it had been established that I had been at boarding school at Reps and Plumtree, (both his old schools) the rest was just waffling. He knew many of the folks I had grown up with in Victoria Falls, including the Landreys, and after a pleasant half hour chat I was accepted. I was briefed on what would be expected from me and what general direction my life was going to take. He ended with “Welcome to the Department, young man. Let me get this all processed and I will call you within two weeks to give you your posting.”

I stayed with Margie and her family in Harare and awaited my call. Four weeks later, bored to death, I decided to drop in at the Parks offices and see what the delay was. I approached the office where I had been interviewed and found someone else seated there.

The door was open, but the busy fellow failed to acknowledge my presence in his doorway, so I knocked on the doorframe. The head lifted slowly and I saw immediately that we were not going to get on. The terms bureaucratic, stuffy, pompous and rude all sprung to mind. This fellow could have been anywhere between forty and sixty. He was grey haired, skinny-necked and his glasses made him look like an owl. “What do you want?” He said. I explained my whole story to him; he listened without expression or comment. When I had finished he gestured at a pile of forms on the corner of his desk, “Fill in one of those.” I picked up the form and looked at it. This was the same application form

that I had filled in six weeks previously before my interview! I do not have a quick temper, but I have other faults. One of them is that if l detect, or even think that I detect, that somebody is deliberately harassing me for their own personal gain or amusement, I begin to boil. It got me into box-loads of trouble at school, it got me into hot water in the army and I could feel it coming now. “Excuse me,” I said. “This is the same form I filled out before. I’ve already been through this – I’ve been accepted!”

“Your paperwork appears to have been lost,” this stuffy old goat told me, “do it again.”

I realised that I was only twenty years old, but I had been commanding a troop of more than twenty hardened soldiers in combat, in life and death situations for more than a year, I wasn’t going to take this rude behaviour from a “civvy” (civilian). “You know what?” I told him – crunching the form up into a ball and flipping it onto his desk, “I’m glad that you came here, that you took over this office – because now I can see that I don’t want to work for a department that has rude useless old pricks like you in positions of power.” I said two more words to his staring owl face and left. When I returned to Margie’s parents’  house I made a telephone call to Major Don Price at Beit Bridge. I don’t know how many times over the years I look back at that fateful day and thank my lucky stars. No doubt I would have gone into professional hunting at some time later on, like many ex-Parks people did, but how much I would have missed!

Don bad been Officer Commanding Three Commando, Rhodesian Light Infantry, whilst I was a subaltern in One Commando. Our paths had crossed in Fire Force duties in those hectic months toward the end of that bloody war, and Don had offered me a job if and when hostilities ceased. Don was a respected officer and effective Fire Force commander, and the recipient of The Bronze Cross of Rhodesia.

Don formed a safari company with a colleague of his and named it Inkunzi (The Bull) Safaris, and I went to work for him in the Nyamandhlovu area near the confluence of the Khami and Gwaai rivers. This was my first year as a professional hunter and I enjoyed that exciting season in a remote, beautiful part of Matabeleland.

In 1982 I found safari work up at my old home area – Victoria Falls, where 1 worked for Fanie Pretorius (Westwood Wildlife) and then for Dan Landrey of Denda Safaris, at Matetsi. By 1983 I had my full professional hunter’s licence and I free-lance hunted for several companies, including those of Clive Lennox, Piers Taylor, Dan Landrey and Dave Masson.

In 1983 a Scandinavian by the name of Soren Haagensen formed a partnership with Dan Landrey who at this time secured the Chewore north hunting concession in the Zambezi valley. With their Matetsi Safari area Unit Five and the Chewore area, the Landreys were able to offer a lot of big game safaris, and Soren Haagensen, as part of the Denda organisation, landed a sizeable chunk of the quota. The Zambezi valley bad been closed to any commercial and public operations during the Rhodesian war, and now, when it hesitantly opened some areas for the first time, the hunting was spectacular. In those days it was not possible to walk after buffalo or elephant without encountering black rhino. There were many of them. Today, there is not a single one of them left in the valley. It is the end of an era.

Soren Haagensen was a dynamic man and he forged all sorts of connections throughout Matabeleland which enabled him to offer a variety of both big game and plainsgame hunts to his Scandinavian clients. It was a busy, hectic time for me, being based at different times on a piece of land Soren was buying in Matetsi, the Chewore concession and Bulawayo. One of the associations Soren made was with the Greenspan family, who were very big landowners in Matabeleland at that time. I took several safaris onto the Greenspan ranches at Nyamandhlovu where sable were plentiful, and good general bags were collected without much difficulty. Little did we know in those days that we were taking this abundant game for granted. Twenty years later, there is very little left in those once game-rich areas.

I did not know the Greenspan family, and I did not know where all their properties were situated, so it was with surprise that 1 received instructions from Soren to take several safaris down to some ranches about thirty miles south of Graham’s family ranch at Marula. Back to the hills!

Graham entered agricultural college near Harare at the end of the war, and once he qualified there an urge to roam took him to England and then on to Australia. His parents were resident at the farm at this time, and Margie (who was Graham’s cousin and by this time my wife) and I used to visit them there occasionally. by the Chinese. It should be remembered that the Matabele, or Ndebele, are an offshoot of the Zulus. They were war-like people, and when they settled near Bulawayo in 1836 they wasted no time in plundering the Shona and Shona affiliated peoples who quickly came to fear and hate them. This tribal hatred continues to this day. When the war ended the country went to elections under the banner ‘one man, one vote’. The Shona, the overwhelming majority, won hands down. When Mugabe formed the new government, the Matabele thought that they did not receive a piece of the pie which was commensurate with the effort that they had put into the war. Trouble followed, and some of the Matabele guerrillas who had been amalgamated into the new army, deserted. These people unearthed weapons which they had hidden during the Rhodesian war, and basically they became bandits. Their efforts were not cohesive, and they carried on exactly how they had during the Rhodesian war – attacking defenceless white farmers!

If a certain party had a bone to pick with the government, and they attacked the government by ambushing police, or soldiers, or government employees, or sabotaging dams, or power lines, or bridges, I could understand it. But these people did not. They attacked and murdered defenceless, innocent citizens! And they murdered lots of them. Matabeleland lost more white farmers during “the dissident troubles” from 1983 to 1985, than it did during the whole of the eleven years of the Rhodesian war! And the new army was not trained to combat this kind of guerrilla action. They had recently been guerrillas themselves; they did not know how to effect anti-guerrilla operations, and the pillage and robberies and rape and murder went on unchecked. As it turned out, there were only ever about one hundred and twenty of these dissidents, a very small number when one considers the cataclysmic events which their actions caused.

There are more facets to all this. In African politics there always are. But I must resist trying to explain the whole confusing mess, since it is a story in itself, unrelated to our early safari beginnings and our endeavours in the Matobo.

As it turned out, this sordid chapter of dissident activity in Matabeleland.

The hunts on the Greenspan ranches went well. Soren Haagensen was not big on technicalities like adequate and comfortable camps for his clients; he operated on a shoestring, so the equipment we used was very basic. Often we stayed in the various farm managers’ houses, but this didn’t seem to bother the clients. I had learned the ropes at places like Denda and Trophy Hunters Africa at Matetsi, and this was a far cry from those operations.

However, my role was to find the game, not question the operator. I was young (twenty three) and enjoying my job, and I couldn’t have cared less if Soren wanted his clients to sleep in the open on the ground. Surprisingly, I do not remember any of those Scandinavians complaining about the accommodation or food. Maybe they were paying a really small daily rate. 1983 brought the “dissident” era. When black Rhodesians commenced guerrilla war against the white government of Ian Smith there were two main factions, separated on tribal lines. The Matabele, in the west of the country, were led by Joshua Nkomo and were trained by the Russians. The Shona, the majority tribe, from the eastern half of the country, were led by several people, the last, and most prominent, being Robert Mugabe. This faction was trained was also influenced by some kind of shady special operations group from what was still, then, white South Africa. These people were training and supporting and supplying the dissidents! Apparently they backed off (too late) when they began to tally the numbers of whites being killed by these dissidents. These bandits even murdered a group of six international tourists on the Victoria Falls road! All this in a country “at peace”!

Violent death is no stranger to people growing up in Africa. I saw it as a boy growing up in Victoria Falls (the town was attacked many times by mortars, rocket and machine-gun fire), I saw it, in obscene amounts during my two years in the army, I saw it first-hand during the dissident years when I was asked to assist in follow-up operations after white ranchers were butchered, and then, most recently, when the white farmers ( once again) were torn apart during the 2000 land take overs. I will not say that here, in Africa, you become used to seeing, and dealing with death by fellow man, but you certainly are less surprised by it than someone who has grown up in a civilised environment. But I suppose, looking at it all with the wide view, or “big picture,” it’s not that big a deal. Someone living in Beirut, or Afghanistan, or Bosnia, or Iraq, or Palestine, or Rwanda, or Sudan, would surely trade places with me in a flash. Their lot is much, much worse.

This, then, was the dissident problem. And the safari operators (admittedly there were not that many in 1983) were trying to run safaris in the thick of it! What were these clients thinking? Were they not doing their research? Maybe the daily rates were really low.

I picked up two clients from Bulawayo for what was to be our third safari into the Greenspan properties in Marula south. A friend of mine from the army was assisting me on this hunt. We packed two of Soren’s Land Cruisers with camping equipment, workers, our luggage, food, drink and fuel and headed south. I do not remember the Danish clients’ names. They were an odd pair. One fellow was short and slim while the other was big and fat.

These two travelled in the front of the vehicle driven by myself, and we arrived at the Greenspan ranch “Thornville,” at dusk, after a tiring three hour drive. We pulled in to the manger’s house and briefed him that we would be hunting there, and we asked for suggestions on where we might camp. It was dark by the time we fired up the cruisers and said our goodbyes. I had my arm and head out of the window, looking behind, as I reversed. We had not moved five yards when automatic gunfire split the night! I had not been out of the army for that long and I knew immediately what was going on! That crack and thump of fire directed at one can never be forgotten. The first few rounds came through my side window hitting the top of the steering wheel, the windscreen and the clients’ (passenger) window, which was closed. I remember the crackthump, the steering wheel jerking in my grip and something stinging my left hand (plastic from the steering wheel).

“Get out!” I screamed at the clients, opened my door leaving the car running and the lights on. I hit the ground at full speed! I knew all about this unpleasant stuff. I sprinted around the front of my Land Cruiser, across the face of the house – about twenty yards, – and around the corner, and I didn’t stop until I ran into my friend at the back of the house! “Where are the clients?” He yelled.

“I dunno, I told them to get out – they were on the side away from the gunfire, they should be okay.”

We entered the back of the house and were relieved to see the clients, unscathed, lying on the floor of the kitchen next to the farm manager. After the incident we had a good laugh at the picture that this had presented. The big fat client, flat on his belly, made a target close in size to the one offered by the short client when standing up!

The automatic fire still chattered and cracked in the front yard, and looking through the little kitchen window we saw that the cottage adjacent to the house was now on fire. Tracer rounds fired into the thatch had set it alight and it was burning brightly. The sound of the gunfire changed. They were moving away. My friend and I snuck back to my vehicle, keeping it between us and the bad guys and we unloaded two rifles with which we fired into the bush in the direction from which the attack had come. But it was over. I whistled and looked around frantically for my dog. We had purchased two bull terrier puppies when we were still in the army, and these two, now about three years old, had accompanied us on this ill-fated safari. We found both dogs inside the house, unscathed. My friend had debussed from his vehicle while it was moving, and it now stood, lights still on, jammed against the security fence which ringed the farm compound. It, too, was badly shot up.

It was absolutely amazing how little damage had resulted from this ambush. My car had myself, the two clients, one drum of fuel, luggage, groceries, one worker and my dog, inside or on top of it. The other had carried the luggage, camping equipment, three workers, a drum of fuel and the dog. Nobody was hurt, no dogs, and thankfully no fuel drums had been hit either. The vehicles had taken a pasting though, and the next day we had to cannibalise parts from one, in order to get at least one running, with which we towed the second one. The clients were badly shaken and wanted to go home. Their passports, paperwork and clothes were badly shredded by bullets. Quite frankly I don’t blame them for wanting to go. I wouldn’t have come in the first place, no matter how low the daily rate was.

One side effect of the ambush was the loss of a young, very promising tracker. Apparently he had been seen streaking past the house, straight into the security fence which had knocked him down. He came up, quick as a flash, clambered over the fence, and was never seen again by any of us. Our enquiries for him came to nought. Where he disappeared to I have no idea. We had phoned the police at Marula (about two hours away) after the attack and the next day, at about eight o’clock, an army contingent arrived. My friend and I, being ex military, were interested to see how the follow-up was going to be conducted, and we stood near the soldiers as they approached the ambush position, which was right against the security fence, next to the entrance gate. We needn’t have bothered. Weapons slung, smoking and laughing, this rabble ambled over to the spent cartridge cases and promptly wandered around sullying and damaging any and all telltale clues. It was clear that there was going to be no follow up at all. This kind of response coupled with several other factors which came to light during this dissident era, started many people saying that the government was behind a lot of these attacks. The theory went that if enough damage could be done by the “dissidents,” then the government would be justified in carrying out what was coming. And it came all right. Mugabe sent a brigade of his closest soldiers, who had been trained by the North Koreans, into Matabeleland. These were Ndebelehaters of the first order, and they were given carte blanche. The press were banned from Matabeleland, all rural shops were closed thereby cutting off food supply to the whole rural population, and the soldiers moved in. This operation was named “Gukurahundi” which in Shona means “the flood which sweeps all debris before it”. And they swept. In less than two years nearly thirty thousand Matabele men, women, and children perished. They were tortured, raped, gutted, burned, and beaten to death. In many areas the piles of dead were not allowed to be buried. They were left where they fell as a lesson. The years of Matabele predation on the Shona in the 1800’s had been avenged. Accurate accounts of this genocide can be seen in The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace 1984 and Peter Stiff’s book Cry Zimbabwe printed by Galago Press 2000.

Years later, when confronted for the umpteenth time on the Matabeleland slayings, Mugabe shrugged. “It was a moment of madness,” he said. No apologies, nothing. Life in Africa.

Almost the same number of souls that had perished in eleven years of the Rhodesian war, were slain in Matabeleland, in two years, in peace time, by their own government.

Back to our incident. It seemed that four AK 47’s and one RPD had been used in the previous evening’s misfortunes and close to three hundred rounds had been expended. “Lucky” doesn’t even begin to describe walking away unscathed. Soren Haagensen must have been some salesman though, because the following year I bumped into these same two clients up in the Chewore camp! They had a schnapps and a good laugh over the retelling of the tale. I was tempted to remind them of the amusing tableau that the two of them had presented in the kitchen.

Soren pulled out of Zimbabwe in 1985 and I started my own company. We secured hunting leases at Kenilworth, about sixty miles north of Bulawayo, and shortly after that we moved down to the lowveld, south of West Nicholson, on the Bubye river. These were good plainsgame areas and our business grew. Our clients were satisfied, and we were, by this time, taking some leopard. When I worked for Don Price, back in 1981, we had done some hunting on a beautiful little farm called Gladstone, which was situated near Reps school, at the foot of World’s View, the koppie on top of which Rhodes was buried in the Matopos. Our quarry then had been sable. Now, in 1985, I returned to this farm and met with the new owners. We secured the hunting rights there and took some nice sable and reedbuck, and an absolute beauty of a leopard. This cat exhibited the most pronounced, clear example of what we would later dub ‘mountain-type’ colouring. I was back in the hills and it felt strange operating my own business right up against my old haunts from so long ago.

In 1987 we secured the hunting rights on Debshan, the de Beers ranch south of Shangani. De Beers is the world famous diamond mining and diamond trading company situated in Johannesburg. This was a safari operator’s dream. The open rolling plains were easy to hunt, and they were packed with game. Our business was growing steadily and our success with leopards was starting to improve.

Graham returned from his wanderings in Australia with a lovely woman named Doris whom he later married. She was a vivacious blonde who had no problem at all adjusting to, and accepting, an often-difficult life in Africa. On his return I talked Graham into taking his Provisional hunter’s exam, which he did, in the process winning the award issued to the “best” or “most accomplished” examinee on the course. Graham’s parents were still living on the family ranch at this time, so he set up a home in Bulawayo, started a landscaping and garden-maintenance business and commenced hunting for us as and when his business allowed. At this time I was spending most of the hunting season up at Matetsi safari area Unit Two, which we had leased from an African concessionaire. Graham ran most of the plainsgame hunting at Shangani as well as assisting us when we needed another hunter in the big game area. My wife stayed in Bulawayo and ran the administration and resupply for the Shangani operation.

More and more of our clients were asking for leopard and we had to start looking for new areas. Debshan gave us a quota of two per season and occasionally, when a cattle killer became a big problem, we would be allowed a third. This was not enough.

Graham and I spoke about the possibilities of hunting the leopard on his family ranch at Marula, but we dismissed that option due to the “educated” nature of the cats there. Little did we realise then how valuable and important to us that leopard population would become. We were not as experienced then as we would be a few years later, but I still look back at the failure to grasp that opportunity as poor judgement on my part. After all, the sooner we matched wits with these huge Matobo cats, the sooner we would have found ways to outfox them! Graham’s father, like his neighbours, was still trapping and poisoning cattle killers. I remember one particularly bad year in which he

accounted for five of them!

We investigated information that we received about a cattle ranch in the Mberengwa district, south of our Debshan area, that reported good numbers of leopard. This ranch was owned by the Knott family, and we enjoyed a pleasant relationship with them for about three years. We built a beautiful camp on their property. This camp was situated three quarters of the way up the biggest mountain in the western half of the country, and what a view we enjoyed from that beautiful spot. This mountain consists primarily of red ironstone, and we used these attractive rocks to build our camp. Mberengwa was a poor plainsgame area but did yield us some good leopard trophies. But it did not give us what we needed – large populations of huntable leopards. But, as so often happens, a solution to a problem is sitting right there in front of you patiently waiting to be recognised.

Ian Lennox, a freelance professional hunting friend who also lived in Bulawayo, came to visit me one day in the off-season. He and l were enjoying a few Castle lagers on the lawn and dissecting our hunting season. When I told him that we were needing more good leopard areas he asked me if I knew the Bradnicks who farmed near the Botswana border, south of Plumtree. “I know them well,” I answered. I had been at school with two of the brothers, both at Reps and at Plumtree. AJ is the same age as Graham and I, and the other brother we knew, Bruce, a year younger. One other brother, whom I barely remembered from school, was older than Bruce and AJ. “Well, I did a hunt down there last year” Ian said. “We were after leopard and plainsgame. We failed to take a leopard, but we saw plenty of leopard sign. I was only there for a week, and none of our baits had been found by a cat. You should give them a call.”

I called AJ, briefed him on our problem, and asked him what he thought. “You’re welcome to come down,” he said. “We have a lot of leopard; they kill our calves quite regularly. We’d be glad to see some of them shot.” And thus started a long successful business relationship, and a valued family friendship. The Bradnick family have always, right from the beginning, been hospitable, helpful hosts and neighbours. It has never been too late, or too early to call on them for help, and I think that they epitomise the welcoming kind of hospitality for which farmers and ranchers are so well known. Although the Bradnick properties are only about thirty miles south of the village of Plumtree, they are at “the end of the line” so to speak. There are no white farmers south of the Bradnicks. Their property borders onto communal land which stretches over a hundred miles all the way down to the Shashe river, upstream of where it joins the Limpopo, and forms the border with South Africa. This living “out on a limb” has put the Bradnick family at risk for many years. The Rhodesian war escalated in about 1973 and ended in 1980. The dissident problem ran from 1983 to 1985, and then the brutal land takeovers started in 2000. That AJ’s family have come through all this physically unscathed is surprising, and damned good luck. Of course they have lost ninety per cent of their land, so “good luck” is probably the wrong word to use, but they are physically unhurt and, at the time of writing this, are still living in their family home.

AJ’s maternal grandfather came over to Africa from Scotland in about 1910 and settled in the Port Elizabeth area in South Africa. When the First World War broke out he served in what is now Namibia, against the Germans. After the war he worked for the Meikles Group, a large department store in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia. AJ’s grandfather was a successful trader (Scottish blood!) and with his profits he purchased a ranch south of Plumtree.

Years later, AJ’s father, who was from the Johannesburg area in South Africa, married AJ’s mother and moved onto the family’s ranch. The family business, which was primarily a chain of general stores set up throughout the Communal Lands, thrived, and the Bradnicks expanded into the cattle business. AJ and his two brothers grew up on the ranch and at the end of the Rhodesian war the eldest brother moved to South Africa. It was not easy for young Rhodesian men who had to serve their country as conscripts in “National Service” for eighteen months after leaving school, to then go to university and get back into the “learning mode”, but many of them were able to do this. I take my hat off to them. AJ was one of these and he completed a degree in agriculture. Not only did he obtain a degree at that university, he met a beautiful blond girl there named Debbie who became his wife. AJ moved onto the family ranch expanding the cattle side of the business whilst his younger brother Bruce (a qualified diesel mechanic), ran the mechanical and maintenance side of the ranch. AJ and his wife put their soul into the ranch life and carefully put away savings in order to one day purchase their own land. It is painfully ironic that when they finally did get their own land paid for (sixteen thousand acres) it was the year before the land takeovers! They actually owned their land for one year before they lost everything! I mention this condensed background of the Bradnicks because of the significant role they played in the growth, or success of our leopard hunting business. The Bradnicks, like most rural agricultural families of the period, were, surprisingly, not really avid hunters. They shot the occasional kudu and impala for the pot and for biltong in winter, and of course they shot trapped cattle-killing leopard when they had to, but they preferred to enjoy the wildlife on their ranches for the pleasure that observing it and caring for it gave to them.

When we first started hunting there in 1989 the plainsgame was present in fair numbers. It was not in the same densities we had found on the Greenspan properties in the early 80’s, but it was there. The animals were wild because of the constant poaching from the communal lands which surrounded AJ on the north, west and south, but it was poaching that was not yet out of control. On a ten-day safari on AJ’s ranches, in 1989, we could, with a little hard work, take a leopard, a kudu, an impala, duiker, klipspringer, wildebeest and a zebra. A good bag, and a happy client. From 1989 onward, until the land takeovers in 2000, the game situation became better and better. Our activities throughout the hunting season curbed the poaching and the game trickled in from areas where they were persecuted. The plainsgame, of course, was not our focus. Leopards were our focus, and they were abundant. We wasted no time in learning their haunts and their habits and we were on hand to react to calf kills, so I think it was with some surprise that AJ received the news that we had utilised his whole leopard quota on his properties in that first year of operation. The farmers put away their traps and poison for good and we now realised that huge areas that everyone had written off as “too educated”, and “too difficult”, regarding leopards, were, in fact, rich grounds for us. We began leopard hunting with a vengeance.

We built a rough rustic camp on the banks of the Ingwezi river in the south of AJ’s property, and it was a beautiful, tranquil spot beneath giant shady acacia trees at the foot of a majestic koppie from which baboons often barked their defiance in the evenings before they settled in for the night. The other sound that always reminds me of that camp is the soothing monotonous prrrrp! of the tiny Scops Owl.

We were back in the Matobo hills, (albeit on the western edge) and the same excitement, the sense of being at the edge of some new unexplored valley, some new range of koppies or ridge, that so fired my imagination as a youngster, had me in its grip once more.

Picture an irregular square about twelve miles along each side. If you stand at the south side, the bottom side, and face north, the Ingwezi river, on your right hand, or east side, forms the boundary. Our camp sits down here, at the right hand corner. AJ’s headquarters is situated way up north, at the top of the square. On your left, or west boundary, is a strip of communal land about eight miles wide which is between our square and the Botswana border. The eastern third of the ranch consists of the huge rugged granite koppies that embody the Matobo hills. As you move west, toward Botswana, the koppies become fewer, more isolated, until finally there are none. The vegetation is mainly mopane woodland, acacia savannah, and Mangwe sourveld. Several seasonal streams and rivers wind through the ranch, and these are lined with slightly thicker riverine vegetation.

As stated previously, the north, west and southern sides of the square are communal land. On the east, on the other side of the Ingwezi river are the properties mentioned elsewhere in this book, which were once white ranchland, then ARDA land, and finally African “A2” farmers which we later formed into “The Project.” We successfully hunted leopard throughout AJ’s property, from the thick broken hills in the east all the way to the more open flat mopane to the west. These animals hunted and travelled long distances during the night and we were often surprised when cattle were killed in areas where we had assumed that leopard were absent.

Once our operation was firmly established on the Bradnick’s ranches and we began to outwit educated cats, we decided to have another look at Graham’s family ranch at the Mangwe Pass. Maybe we had been too hasty in our perfunctory half-hearted efforts there. We were taking farm leopards at the Bradnicks, only twenty miles away, why couldn’t we do the same at Mangwe?

Graham and my wife Margie, as mentioned elsewhere, are cousins. Their grandfather, one Newton Webster Whitehead, was born in South Africa, in the Eastern Cape area, in 1897. He married a woman named Lorna Plumber, who had been born in Cairo; her father was employed on the Suez Canal at the time. Grandpa Whitehead fathered no sons. They had eight daughters, the last of which was Margie’s mother Lucy. The Whiteheads were farming near Winterton in Natal when Grandpa decided to head for pastures new. Lucy Whitehead was barely three months old and Molly, Graham’s mother, was about ten years old when the family were loaded up into the old Chevy truck and turned north towards Rhodesia in 1939.

Grandpa Whitehead had been offered a job at the Matopos Research Station farm Lonsdale, about five miles away from Reps school, and this is where the family stayed until 1946 when he purchased Garth Farm at Marula. Garth Farm had belonged to a fellow called Ingram who had let the old farmhouse fall into a derelict state, but Grandpa Whitehead refurbished the place and installed the first flush toilet and first running hot water in the whole district! He purchased another three farms in the district and when Molly, Graham’s mother, married Bill Robertson, he and Granny Lorna moved into Maholi, a beautiful farm on the western boundary of Garth, and Molly and Bill took over Garth Farm.

Grandpa Whitehead was a character. He was a tall thin man with huge hands that sprang from his wrists like racquets. When I first met him in Bulawayo in 1981 he was an old fellow, bent in body but crisp in mind. He told me many captivating tales from the old days, all of which ended in hilarity and he would guffaw quietly on the veranda at the telling of them. Graham’s Dad, Bill, told me once about one of Grandpa Whitehead’s farming practices that had me in stitches but also admiration. Apparently he needed several holes made in some heavy teak railway crossties that he was using as gateposts. Whether he never had an auger or drill, or whether he was just impatient, I never found out, but he promptly held his .303 rifle to the posts and shot holes in them. Dangerous? Huh! Job done. No problem. This kind of behaviour is right up my street.

When I knew him he used to love to listen to the radio. On Sundays, in cricket season, he would dress up in his whites and with his hands folded over the top of his cane; he would sit in his chair, wispy old head cocked to one side listening intently to every ball bowled.

How I would have loved to explore the Matobo hills in Grandpa Whitehead’s day. Leopard, way back in the “old days” were a big problem with the cattle, just as they are today. In 1965 Grandpa had a calf taken on his farm Sterkfontein (Strong Fountain). When he found the carcass, he laced it liberally with arsenic and left it in the hope that the cat would return. The leopard did return and ate the poison, but arsenic is a slow killer and sign showed that the cat had entered a cave nearby. An impatient Grandpa Whitehead proceeded to light fires around the cave’s entrances in a bid to smoke the leopard out. The leopard came out and attacked one of the farm workers who fell into a crevasse. Grandpa was armed with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with number four birdshot and he blasted the cat in its side. With no effect from the shotgun evident, the leopard went for Grandpa in a rage. He held the gun up in an attempt to ward the cat off but the stock snapped and that cat was on him.

A severe mauling followed and Grandpa was badly bitten and ripped on the shoulders, arms and back. Fortunately there were two local cur dogs there and the persistent pressure from these eventually drove the leopard off Grandpa and back into the cave, where it was found dead by local farmers the following day.

It’s hard to believe, but back in those days, 1965, the rural telephones worked! Today in “modern” Marula the phones have not worked for more than six years! One of the African staff ran to Maholi where he was able to phone Garth Farm for help. Luckily for Grandpa a unit of soldiers was carrying out training exercises on Garth at the time and these people were able to call in an army helicopter which casevaced Grandpa Whitehead to Bulawayo. There he was patched up and hospitalised for six weeks. One story I love about old Grandpa Whitehead is one involving a black mamba. He and Ernest Rosenfels were out riding one day when a black mamba reared up next to the horses. Grandpa always used to wear this great big flat-brimmed veldt hat and apparently he took it off his head and flung it at the snake in order to try to distract it while he and Ernest rode off. The hat – according to the tale – sailed over and landed directly on the mamba’s head and Ernest Rosenfels and Grandpa Whitehead made good their escape! We never could tell if Grandpa Whitehead actually expected us to believe that story.

Graham’s folks were still resident on Garth Farm when we decided to try to take a leopard there. I had made a few half-hearted attempts over the years, but I had not yet learned all the devious tricks that are necessary to outwit these leopard and we had not met with success.

I took an agent down to the ranch, and I was determined to make the first score. On about the third day of the hunt, at about ten o’clock in the morning, the trackers stopped the truck. They had seen a leopard crouched on top of a koppie about one hundred and twenty yards away. It was sitting there watching us. This fellow took a dead rest on the bonnet of the car and shot over the cat. It stood up and slunk off before we could take another. We had failed and we looked incompetent. Still no success on the Robertson ranches. Bill Robertson, Graham’s father, had purchased two more farms adjacent to Garth Farm. Garth Farm, like all the farms demarcated in this area after the Matabele Rebellion, is six thousand acres in size. With the two additions the property was now just over twelve thousand. Garth is an unusually shaped piece of land. If you took a square, and stood it on one of its points, and put your hand on the top point and pushed down, nearly flattening it, you’d be left with a laterally long, narrow shape. With Prescott and Mangwe Outspan added to the bottom, or south side of Garth, however, the Robertson properties now regained a more regular shape becoming almost square.

The old pioneers’ road cuts through the property almost through the centre, in a north-south line. The Mangwe Pass sits in the middle of the property, whilst the homestead is situated in the middle of the section which is west of the main dirt road. It is a beautiful piece of land. The Kalanka range (a giant line of fortress koppies over a thousand feet above ground level) marches in an east-west line, and its majestic crags and castle boulders can be seen from anywhere on the farm. This rugged ground harbours numerous secret caves and overhangs and we “discover” previously unknown bushman paintings there frequently.

Graham, his elder brother Ian, and his younger sister Louise were raised on this beautiful ranch, and Graham’s sons, Justin and Andrew, would have been the fourth generation to own and run it. The twelve thousand acres has, like all other white owned land in Zimbabwe, been haphazardly cut up and parcelled out in the recent land takeovers, one section going to an army officer, another going to a cluster of new villages and another is used willy-nilly by whichever important “personality of the moment” who wants to be a weekend farmer. Graham has been left with the farmhouse and three thousand acres.

Unfortunately, the beautiful granite and thatch camp which Graham and Doris had so painstakingly built on the top of a koppie east of the pass, is onthe piece of land allocated to the villages. We still utilise the camp but now I have to pay a rent to the local government offices in order to do so. Apart from the gut-wrenching blows of having your land and belongings taken away from you with no compensation at all, there is also the constant anxiety that the few remaining farmers have to live with, day in and day out, not knowing if they will be living there in a months’ time or not. The constant worry and threat is not easy to live with. It is day to day. No long-range planning can even be considered.

Graham was the first to score on his family farm with an American hunter called Ron Zielin. He took a huge male leopard on the Maholi boundary, and this was proof for us that we were doing the right thing – one hundred yard blinds and spending the whole night in the blind was working. We now had AJ’s properties and Graham’s family ranch producing big leopards. We began to build our reputation for leopard hunting and several American and European booking agents contacted us. Business was picking up. After eleven years of boarding school in the Matobo, life’s currents had swept me into the army and then into the safari business at Victoria Falls, Chewore, Nyamandhlovu, Shangani and the lowveld. But now I was back in the brooding purple hills and hidden secret valleys, and it felt like I was home.

My first bumbling efforts, back in the early eighties, came to nought. I can only think, looking back now at the first leopard I took, that it must have been absolutely desperate for food. My client and I were lying on our backs on a boulder about the size of two motorcars, about thirty yards from the bait. No hide, nothing. Just me, the client, his rifle and my flashlight. It’s hard to believe that I was that naïve about leopards. We killed that cat, and I can still remember today, 24 years later, the excitement that thrilled through me that night as I ran my hands over that beautiful silky pelt.

Built by Al Biesen to be a perfect hunting rifle, this is a .270 Winchester on an FN Deluxe action with every custom feature.  The ergonomics are superb.

This article first appeared in Shooting Times, October, 2017.

By Terry Wieland

The ideal big-game rifle combines a number of virtues:  Adequate power and accuracy are a given, but beyond that it needs to be ergonomic.  The right weight, shape, and balance for the shooter to make it an extension of his body.

A deer rifle should handle like a fine shotgun, for quick, accurate shooting at sudden, fleeting targets; a mountain rifle should be accurate, but still light enough to carry; a dangerous-game rifle should come to the shoulder in an instant, like a Purdey game gun.

Barring luck, the only way to get a rifle that fits that way is to have one made to measure, or buy a factory rifle and have it altered.  Alas, very few of today’s production rifles even come close.  They are too heavy or too awkward; the grips are too large, and most forends are more suited to target shooting than carrying in the field.

One would think, after more than a century of building hunting rifles with modern chamberings, that every factory rifle would be perfect, but cutting corners, reducing costs, and taking the easy way (as with composite stocks) have actually taken rifles in the other direction.

Most of my acquaintances look at these statements and mutter “Well, I shoot factory rifles pretty well.”  Maybe, and maybe not.  Unfortunately, most hunters today, having never handled a rifle that really fits them, and was built to be the best possible hunting rifle, have no idea what’s good and what isn’t.

You can’t appreciate the driving qualities of an Aston Martin if you’ve never driven anything but a John Deere tractor.  Another alas:  Once you have driven an Aston Martin, anything less will never quite satisfy you.

Al Biesen, Jack O’Connor’s “genius of Spokane,” was a custom gunmaker who aspired to make perfect hunting rifles.  Not works of art, or glitzy artifacts to sit in a glass case — real hunting rifles.  It was my good fortune to acquire one of his .270s last year, a rifle from the 1980s on an FN Deluxe action.  Although I’ve handled a good number of fine rifles in my life, with names like Holland & Holland and John Rigby, the Biesen was a revelation in several ways.

The grip was small compared to production rifles, and fit my hand perfectly.  Similarly, the forend is slender and slightly pear-shaped.  The checkering wraps completely around, giving as solid a grip as anyone could wish.  By today’s factory standards, the grip and forend are almost dainty.  But, combined with the weight and balance of the rifle, they cause everyone who picks it up to say “Wow!  I’ve never felt anything like this.”

The rifle is as responsive as an Aston Martin, and feels alive in your hands.

Every detail, from the custom shroud with a Model 70-style safety, to the Canjar trigger, to the cheekpiece, is fashioned with hunting utility in mind.  The walnut is lovely but not gaudy, with straight grain through the forend to ensure stability.  Overall, it has the lines of a racing yacht: Lean and efficient but beautifully fashioned.

Over the past century, some factory rifles have been produced with these qualities.  The Winchester ’92 is as good a close-range deer rifle as anyone has ever made.  The Mannlicher-Schönauer Model 1903, in 6.5×54 M-S, is an excellent mountain rifle straight from the factory, and has been used on everything from chamois to sharks to elephants.  And — a pleasant surprise — the current Winchester Model 70 Featherweight is right up there, too.  One in .270 Winchester may not match my Al Biesen, but it’s not far behind and incorporates one or two features Biesen pioneered.  Another good modern hunting rifle is the Ruger 77 Hawkeye “FTW Hunter.”

It can still be done, and you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a good hunting rifle.  You just have to know what that means, and what you want, and keep looking until you find it.