First published in 1957, Stuart Cloete’s novel is a serious work (belied by its sensational cover) guaranteed to give any herpetophobe nightmares. It’s all part of the charm.

By Terry Wieland

A Flowering of Serpents

One of the first questions you hear, when you announce that you’re going to Africa, is a tremulous, “But aren’t you afraid of snakes?”

Answer:  “Yep.  Terrified!  What of it?”

If I let my life-long dislike of reptiles deter me, I would not hunt in south Texas, I’d avoid Alabama, and Australia would be out of the question.  For that matter, I wouldn’t live in Missouri, where we have copperheads, water moccasins, and the occasional rattler.

Every so often, I sit back and count on my fingers the number of times, during 14 or 15 trips to Africa, totalling more than three years of my life, that I have even seen a snake.  I have yet to run out of fingers.  Snakes there certainly are, but they just haven’t bothered me.

Now, stories about snakes?  You done come to the right place, pal.  Where do you want me to start?  Oh, wait:  First, a word of advice.  If you are a herpetephobe, fearing snakes to an irrational degree, the first question you should ask a prospective professional hunter is how he feels about them.  If his face lights up and he assures you that he loves snakes and plays with them every chance he gets, thank him politely, back away, and sign on with someone else.  Trust me on that one.  I speak from experience.

People who actually like snakes can’t fathom people who don’t, just as cat lovers can’t relate to the benighted few who find cats repellent.  Fortunately, there aren’t that many snake lovers; unfortunately, most of them seem to be PHs.

One time in Botswana I was waist-deep in a hippo pool, which was home to (by actual count) 14 hippos and one large crocodile.  We were hunting ducks and geese, and my guide would fire a shot over the reeds, and birds would flush.  One duck came zipping by and I dropped it into the water a few yards behind me.  When I went to retrieve it, I found a large python curled around it, contemplating duck recipes.  With whoops of joy, my PH handed me his gun, grabbed the python by the tail, and hauled it ashore, yelling at me all the while to be sure to get the duck.

The python turned out to be a young one — only 12 feet long, but he looked bigger to me — and we “played” with it on the bank for an hour, then allowed it to slither back into the water, shaking its serpentine head in disbelief and making reptilian mutterings.  I knew how it felt.  We kept the duck, which I thought was a trifle unfair.

Another tiime, I was staying with a friend on the edge of the Okavango.  He had a permanent tent camp, and I had a mattress on the floor of the cook tent.  Cook tents generally contain mice, and mice attract snakes.  The night we arrived, around dusk, Clint pulled into his usual parking spot.  I opened the door and jumped out, looking down as I did at a cobra, right under my feet.  You can, I found, change trajectory in mid-air, and my feet missed the cobra by at least a yard.

“Oh,” Clint said, “I forgot to tell you.  I killed that snake this morning.  Found it behind the cook tent.  Sorry.”

It was dead, but still.  I can’t say I slept all that well the first couple of nights, but then I settled in and all was fine.  The memory receded.

My particular horror is the Mozambique spitting cobra, which rears up and lets fly a stream of venom, aimed at your eyes, and is reputed to be accurate from several yards out.  Blindness does not appeal to me.  A friend who has a game ranch outside Bulaweyo had her buildings constructed around an inner courtyard, one of which contained the shower and another a privy.  As is normal in Africa (don’t ask me why) the privy was at the far end of a narrow room, with a tiny window in the wall above.  She went out in the dead of night to do what people do in the dead of night.  The generator was not running, but there was a full moon, so she didn’t bother with a flashlight.

As she settled in, she felt a stream of cool liquid hit her thigh.  A spitting cobra was in there with her, probably right beside her in the darkness.  The room was illuminated only by thin moonlight through the high window.  What did she do?

“I closed my eyes and waited,” she said.  “Then I made a dash for the door.  Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t run with your pants around your ankles.”  The cobra also made its escape.  The privy now has its very own flashlight, hanging outside the door.

Cobras are one thing.  Mambas are another.  Mambas make cobras seem almost friendly.  Stuart Cloete, the great South African writer, wrote a blood-chilling novel called Mamba, which is about a love triangle, with the snake playing the same role it’s enjoyed since Genesis.  Ever since reading that, 40 or 50 years ago, the mamba has haunted my dreams.

At the risk of overstating, they are reputed to be able to outrun a horse (if snakes can be said to run), outclimb a monkey, be extraordinarily deadly, and have the personality of a wolverine.  There are black mambas and green mambas.  The black is the most common, and is actually a dark brownish-grey.

The editor of one of the Big Three went to Botswana back in the early ‘90s.  He was sleeping in his tent one night when something woke him up.  He heard scurrying.  A mouse.  It scurried here.  It scurried there.  Eventually, he dropped back to sleep.  In the morning, they went out hunting, and returned to camp for lunch.  He walked into his tent and out through the back to the adjoining privy, which had the toilet on one side and the shower on the other.  He glanced into the shower and there, halfway in through the drain hole, was the front half of a black mamba.  At the sight of him, it reared up, but was unable to perform with mamba-like dexterity until it had pulled itself in through the drain, which was a tight fit.  By the time it cleared the drain, our fearless editor was out through the front and calling for help.

The PH returned with some trackers and a shotgun, found the tent empty, and proceeded to beat the brush behind it.  The mamba made tracks (so to speak) and got its head blown off.

Piecing it together, they concluded that the scurrying noises the editor heard the night before was a mouse, seeking to escape, while the mamba stalked it under the bed and over the wardrobe.  This realization was too much.  The editor was packed and heading for the airport before dark, and has never returned.

Another mamba story:  I was in Tanzania on the edge of the Rift Valley, driving along a track past a Masai camp.  We saw a mamba cross the track and go into a grain-storage hut through a crack in the wall.  We stopped and advised the residents.  Soon, a bunch of budding Masai morani, complete with spears and robes, had gathered around and were debating who was going to go in after it.  Our trackers, both Masai themselves (and who insist on spelling it with one ‘a’) looked disgusted with the whole thing, and finally one climbed down, pulled aside the door frame, and went in.  There was loud clattering as he beat his walking stick against the grain baskets.  The mamba came out the way he went in, scattering the teenagers, while our other tracker nailed it.  There then began the debate about who had panicked and run first, while we drove away.

Just so there is no mistake, yours truly would not have entered that hut for a 50-inch buffalo.

By scientific analysis, per gram of venom, the boomslang is (or was) reputed to be the deadliest snake in Africa, although I believe now some obscure adder from West Africa is considered deadlier.  The boomslang (it means “tree snake” in Afrikaans) is a medium-sized green fellow with a shy and retiring nature.  Not aggressive like the mamba (I guess you don’t need to be when you’re that well armed), he is made less deadly by the fact that his fangs are in the back of his mouth, and it’s tough for him to get a good grip and inject much venom.

One time, staying on a farm outside Arusha, my PH was called to deal with “A snake! A snake!” in one of the store rooms.  Having no idea what it might be, we grabbed a club and bucket and went to investigate.  It turned out to be a baby boomslang, no more than eight or nine inches long, vivid green against the shavings on the floor.  My PH was no snake lover, but he believed that all creatures have their place.  We herded the little guy into the bucket, then released him in some brush on the edge of the farm.

I have other snake tales — cobras, mambas, puff adders — but we’ll save them for another time.  Funny thing, though, thinking about all this has made me realize that, much as I dislike snakes, Africa would not be the same without them.  If only to terrorize the folks at home.

Chapter Fourteen

The Family

Part 2

George Sibanda

When I used to visit the Landreys at Matetsi during the school holidays, one of the young “picannins” who sometimes got dragged along on our adventures was a son of the Denda Safaris “mechanic”. I put inverted commas around the word mechanic because as amazingly skilled as some of these bush mechanics were, they had little, if any, formal mechanical training. This young fellow’s name was George Sibanda. He did not attend school, instead, he helped his father in the Denda Safari garages at Matetsi, and later graduated to “spanner boy,” drawing a very meagre salary.

Anybody who has lived in the wilderness will know the true value of “bush mechanics”, and there is no short cut to being a bush mechanic – you have to first do the time as “spanner boy”.

When I returned to hunt at Denda in 1983 as a licensed professional, I bumped into George who was no longer a skinny boy, but a strong, happy young man but still spanner boy at Denda.

In 1985 when we started our own safari company, I employed a cook from Victoria Falls, named Edward Mathe. Edward had only been with us a few months when he asked me if I knew George Sibanda. I did not recall the name but when Edward mentioned where he worked I remembered him. Edward told me that George’s father said that George was ready to go out and find a job – he could “spanner boy” at Denda no more. We agreed to give him a try, and Edward sent a message up to Victoria Falls, and in due course he arrived.

This man turned out to be the best worker we ever had. Peter Sebele was a tracker, a specialist. His work situation was different to all our other employees. When there was a safari underway, he worked. When there was no safari, he went home. But George was a worker. He was a mechanic, driver, gun bearer, Number Two tracker, and general handy man. In due course he obtained his driver’s license and he became an excellent welder too. He was honest, reliable, and even tempered. He is dead now. He has been dead five years, and I miss him terribly.

Even though he could not read or write, he was a clever, gifted individual. One of those people who can patiently sit and take a gearbox apart, study it, and know how it works. He had the dogged patience necessary to lie in the hot sand underneath an ailing Land Cruiser far out in the bush, mopane flies swarming around his eyes, and make that truck well again. I cannot count the times on safari where I said to myself “Thank God we’ve got this man”.

Like Peter, George became part of the family. When he married we knew his kids. When they were sick, they went to our doctor – when they were in need, they received our help. In fact George’s second wife was the daughter of our maid who worked for us for fifteen years before she passed away. As George became more skilled, and more reliable, without our really consciously noticing it, he absorbed more of the duties which I used to have to carry out, many of which I hated. He had maturity and self-confidence – surprising in one who is illiterate.

We found ourselves passing duties on to him which basically gave more free time to me. He would drive several hours to National Parks offices and collect game scouts, or deliver ivory or collect permits. He would go with one helper to town to purchase fuel, or groceries or hardware. Much later, when we started operating in Tanzania in 1995, George would share the driving with me on that tedious five-day journey between Bulawayo and Arusha.

George loved his work. He was not much of a tracker – in fact when Peter became tired on the trail it was usually I who took over from him – but George contributed to the success of the hunt in so many other ways. He was always ready to try something different, something out of the ordinary, and it seemed that he was always the one who came up with valuable information from the locals. George spoke Shona, English, Sindebele, Kalanga, Lozwi and Mnambia fluently. When we began operating in Tanzania he quickly picked up enough Swahili to get by and later, when I went into business in Mocambique he wasted no time in learning a smattering of Portuguese. A gifted man indeed.

George had worked for us for about thirteen years when he was helping me build a trading store for Peter out at Peter’s home near Tsholotsho. Whilst we were engaged in this task I realised that George, even though he had not yet given us the years that Peter had, was a big part of our business, and had given us sterling service. I asked him if he would like to own a store at his home near Victoria Falls. Initially he said yes, but a few weeks later he said that he would prefer it if we could help him purchase a car. We promptly gave him an old Toyota Hilux which had given us more hard safari service than Peter and George combined! A few weeks later, when George drove into my yard in a snazzy little Renault town car I asked him whose it was. “It’s mine” he replied. He had done a little work on the old Toyota, sold it, bought a much newer, more fuel-efficient runabout, and had some cash left over! After a little thought about the whole thing, I wasn’t really surprised.

When we finally phased our business into total leopard hunting, George became virtually indispensable. He was mature enough, keen enough, and reliable enough for me to be able to send him off with one helper, fuel, baits, and a long-range radio into remote areas, in order to find large unhunted male leopards. And find them he did.

I remember clearly, even today, five years after his death, watching him drive up the steep incline into the mountain camp trying his best to act bored and nonchalant as he reported his findings. Translated from Sindebele, our conversation would go something like this.

“I see you George.”

“I see you also, Baba.”

“If you have come all the way back to camp, it means that you have encountered some problem, or it could mean that you have found the sign of a large leopard.”

Delaying the finale as much as he could he would announce tiredly “I have had some problems with the radio – which is why I did not speak with you yesterday. I have looked into the piece which you use to speak, and I have seen some wires loose there. But I have not tried to fix it.”

“George. You have come all the way here, a three-hour drive, to tell me that the radio is broken? Why did you not go to Mr. AJ’s house and ask to use his phone?”

Now he would be battling to suppress his grin. George had prominent top front teeth with a large gap between them, and he had an infectious open laugh to boot. He would reach into his top pocket, but I already knew what was in there. With great ceremony followed by suppressed laughter, and egged on by the watching staff, he would hand me the two sticks representing the length and width of the front track of a supercat.

“This leopard fed on my bait last night” he would announce. (I liked the “my”) “He ate much meat. I cleared a shooting lane before placing the bait, and there is a good position for the blind.”

Sometimes George positioned the blind site in a spot slightly different than the place I would have chosen but most times he had it dead on. He was an observant man and very seldom had to be shown something twice. He took great pride, and I believe pleasure, in being able to successfully coerce leopard onto bait. He was content in the satisfaction of knowing that he was doing his job well.

When 2002 came around, George, like forty percent of all Zimbabweans, must have been carrying the AIDS virus. A bout of malaria left him emaciated, and his painstakingly slow recovery had us worried. We took him for tests and the news was the worst. Unlike Peter at a later stage, George never really seemed to accept, or believe that with good food and antiretroviral drugs he could still live a good life. It was upsetting to see such a once strong, alert, willing person, try to tackle his job with his tank on empty.

I was on safari in Tanzania when my wife told me via the radio that things had taken a dive for George. He was on a hunt at Marula with our friend Neil Lindsay when he “went crazy”. Neil said that his sense of balance had deserted him and he had a wild look in his eye and he was talking gibberish.

My wife went out to Marula with her friend’s son along to help, and she brought George back to town. She said that journey was heartbreaking. She put him in hospital in Bulawayo but the care and attention he received there was so poor that we put him in a cottage at our home, and hired a nurse to attend to him. His mind cleared, but maybe sitting there helplessly in the morning sun, like an old man with nothing to do, sapped his spirit as much as the hospital did. George’s wife died in July and I believe he saw the end coming. I was out in the bush when my wife decided he was just too ill and we could not give him the medical attention he needed, and he was admitted to the infectious disease’s hospital. I came back from safari and sat with him at the hospital trying my best to convince him not to give up, but he died of meningitis in August.

We drove his body up to Victoria Falls and we attended the funeral, where I was asked to speak. But I could not. All I could see was George’s happy face, his gap-tooth smile, the countless fires we had shared, the camps we had built, and the mishaps, adventures and triumphs we had seen during seventeen years of safari together.

I promised myself that one day I will return to George’s grave and there I will place a headstone:

‘George Sibanda. Born 3rd June 1963 Died 23 August 2002. Honest, brave, gifted, a much loved man who never shirked a job. Rest in peace.’

Bee Ngwenya

In 1989 we returned to the Matobo Hills, and began construction on the camp at the southern end of AJ’s property on the Ingwezi river. It was a beautiful, tranquil place tucked in against a big koppie, right on the edge of the Ingwezi which was mostly just white sand for most of the year. Giant acacia albida trees shaded the spot.

The bush telegraph directed a stream of men from the neighbouring communal lands to our camp. They were looking for work and we hired about a dozen of them.

Homesickness, drinking problems, wanderlust and poor work, resulting in firing, thinned these people out and kept bringing in new faces. One of the few who survived right from the beginning was a fellow named Bee Ngwenya. I had very little to do with Bee in those early days. I was running the big game concession up at Matetsi in the far northwest of the country and a fellow named Gerald Oosthuizen was building the Ingwezi Camp. Gerald gradually took Bee under his wing when he began exploring the area and cutting hunting roads, and as it turned out, Bee knew the place quite well. It was obvious that he had been actively poaching these ranches on and off for some years. He knew most of the waterholes and just about all of the overgrown bush roads. His knowledge was valuable and he was an asset to Gerald, and of course to our operation.

Bee knew nothing about safaris, leopard hunting or trophy hunting, but he was a hunter none-the-less, and he was quick to learn. Gerald took some beautiful big leopard in those early days and it was a learning curve for both Bee and Gerald.

When we pulled out of the Matetsi concession and decided to expand the operation at Marula, I began to do more of the leopard hunts myself. I had Peter as my number one tracker and George as my right-hand man, so there was no real need for Bee as part of my own hunting staff. But he was extremely useful in helping other professional hunters who were unfamiliar with the area. Bee was always keen. In all the years we have known him that is the one trait in his character that stands out – his eagerness and his keenness to take on a task, no matter how daunting or unpleasant, nor how far that task may be.

As Bee’s safari experience grew, so his tracking ability improved. He had many opportunities to work with Peter and this gave him the confidence he needed to step into the role of genuine safari tracker.

With the decline of Peter’s health and the demise of George, we found ourselves more and more reliant on Bee. Although he never possessed the mechanical aptitude that George had, he developed into a very good reliable driver and he took on the leopard baiting duties with enthusiasm and, surprisingly, with good success.

The highlight of Bee’s safari is when he has baited a large leopard and, just like George used to, hands over the measuring sticks to me with great ceremony, beaming from ear to ear. Excited, pleased, and proud.

Bee is a great character at our leopard parties. Sometimes the staff will stage a play after the singing where they act out the whole hunt. Bee always takes the part of myself and he takes the opportunity to portray my character, especially my bad qualities, mercilessly. He pretends that the staff have made stupid mistakes when building the blind or hanging the bait, and he remembers every insulting phrase or curse word I have used in all the years he has known me, and he uses them to berate the others. It is hilarious. He is a pretty wild dancer too and he stamps up a good dust storm during the festivities.

In my years as a soldier and as a professional hunter, I have not come across many native Africans who are proficient riflemen. But Bee is one. I commenced teaching Peter, George and Bee to shoot at around the same time, but Bee progressed a lot more quickly than the other two. This was an added bonus for me when sending him on baiting duties because he could hunt and kill impala, and shoot bait cattle without having to return to camp for bait meat.

Like his mentors, Peter and George, Bee is not loud, obnoxious, unreliable or a troublemaker. He is a pleasant, keen talented hunter and he has a good future ahead of him in the safari industry. The guard is changing, but I feel certain that Bee Ngwenya will forge his own special place in safari life in the western Matobo, and I am proud to be able to say that we were able to start him on that path.

Luka Maphosa

In 1989 after finalising a deal with the incumbent concessionaire on Matetsi Unit Two, we commenced operations in that well known big game area. The concessionaire, Innocent Dube, already had several of his own staff in place at the camp near the Guyu River, and one of these was a cook named Luka Maphosa. At that time Maphosa was about 27 years old. He was a hardworking individual who got along with everybody, and like Bee Ngwenya, no task was too much to ask of him. Maphosa’s cooking skills, however, were of the very basic garden variety. If Maphosa were a car, he would be the go forward never-give-up Land Rover. But he would not be the Porsche or the Maserati. But that was fine with me. Hard working and good natured would always take my vote way ahead of brilliant-but-temperamental.

We did our darndest to decrease the weight of Maphosa’s bread rolls and add a bit of zest to his stew. We tried like hell to imagine the moisture still in the roast. But the food stayed the same. Medium, okay, Land Rover food. I’ve never been one for fancy starters and four-course safari meals. I am usually just too damned tired once we return to camp. I suppose it is a failing of sorts. I’ve hunted in many safari camps where the vittles laid on would not be out of place in the Ritz. They were wonderful. But unfortunately not in my camp. But I liked Maphosa and he liked us and for eighteen years very few of my clients have ever complained about the food. I go to bed at night with a full, happy belly and I would say that just about all of my clients have too. When we left Unit Two in 1995 Maphosa came with us, much to the chagrin of Innocent Dube. In safari camps there is usually an order of rank, or structure of hierarchy. Of course not all operations are the same, but most have a similar arrangement. Sometimes there is a native camp manager who is top dog amongst the safari staff – especially up in the East African hunting areas – but in many operations this post is also held by the chief cook.

In our outfit the most respected and senior man has been Peter, but he has always eschewed any managerial “head man” type roles – he just does not need or want the extra responsibilities. So Peter, George and Maphosa have evolved purely by circumstance, into “head staff’ in our company and Maphosa I think, enjoys that role a lot more than the other two do.

Luka Maphosa has been a faithful hard-working part of our safari life for many years and I hope he remains with us for many more.

In our years of running safaris in four different countries we have worked with many natives, and it’s not my intention to bore everyone to death by giving the life story of each one of them. We have seen so many amazing, funny, good, and often bad, incidents over the years with our staff and other peoples’ staff, that I could fill another book recounting them. But I cannot resist briefly mentioning just a few.

Graham’s tracker, Tshani, is a tall gangly unkempt individual who loves to show off in front of the other staff. He also loves strong drink, and at one of our leopard parties up at the mountain camp one of the clients offered Tshani some whisky. “Hot stuff’ as Tshani calls it.

Tshani answered “Yes, please Suh!” He then commenced downing whiskies chased with beer, becoming louder every minute, regaling all the other workers with his many adventures and tales of derring-do. Needless to say he was unable to present himself for hunting the next morning, and Graham set off without him.

That night, Tshani had still not returned and nobody at the camp, or at Graham’s ranch headquarters, knew where he was. The next evening, forty-eight hours after the leopard party, Tshani presented himself for duties. His eyes were blood red and his woolly hair and scraggly beard were matted with grass and dirt. He had also lost his shoes. White mucus crusted his eyes, nose and lips.

“Where have you been?” Graham asked him.

“I have been in the bush Bwana,” he replied, “the drink.”

He stood there like we were all supposed to know exactly what had happened.

“Where are your shoes?” was Graham’s next question.

“I do not know Bwana, I cannot find them. First I lost my shoes, then I lost myself, but now I am back.”

His simple explanation coupled with the simple look on his bemused face was too much for Graham and I and we just cracked up.

When I was still hunting for our friends the Landreys up at Matetsi, Kim returned late one evening from the lion blind. They did not have the lion but they did have a funny story.

Between camp and the blind Kim and his client came across a large waterbuck bull which the client shot. They loaded the trophy and continued on to where they had the lion feeding. Kim parked the vehicle about a mile downwind from the bait, and he and the client walked quietly to the blind, leaving the tracker in the car. The francolins fossicked around getting ready to roost. The first hyena called. Lion hour approached quickly.

But on this particular day the lion decided not to approach Kim’s bait via the elephant trail that it had been using for the previous two days. It decided to use the road which had fresh droplets of blood on it – the waterbuck blood which had seeped out from the back of the Land Cruiser! Kim’s tracker was asleep up on the hunting seat when a thud and a snuffling noise, coupled with the squeak of the sagging Land Cruiser springs woke him. He looked down – three feet away at the tailgate, a huge full-maned lion was standing there with its front feet up on the truck, its giant fluffy dark head monstrous in the twilight as it found the source of the blood.

The lion saw the tracker move and grunted in surprise, dropping back down onto the ground where it began to growl ominously. Time to go. The tracker leapt out of the Land Cruiser and he must have streaked through that mopane woodland as if on fire.

Kim and his hunter, oblivious of the goings on back at the vehicle, sat quietly in the blind being eaten by mosquitoes. Finally they had had enough and walked back to the road. The lion by this time had moved off. Kim was puzzled as to the whereabouts of the tracker. He whistled for him a few times but received no answer. Maybe, for some reason, he had gone back to camp, but that was unlikely. It was a long walk in the dark, with all sorts of nasties wandering around the bush. Kim started the vehicle, turned it around, and suddenly heard a shout. He turned the car off and then he heard the shout again from the high branches of a mopane tree about fifty yards away. “What are you doing there?” Kim asked the tracker “Why do you not answer when I call you?”

The tracker told Kim about his unpleasant meeting with the lion and he said that he did not want to answer for fear that the beast was still nearby. He refused to come down until Kim drove the vehicle near to the tree: He then sprang straight from the branches down into the truck. From that day on he refused to wait in an open Land Cruiser at night. A Land Cruiser with cab and doors was fine.

We were sitting around the fire down at our Bubye River camp in the southern lowveld enjoying our drinks waiting for the cook’s call for supper. We were trying out a new “town” cook who had assured us that he could cope with safari life in the bush.

I heard George’s hysterical laughter up near the kitchen, followed by Peter’s muffled chortling, so I wandered over to see what the occasion was. George was sitting on a box by the kitchen fire with his hand to his mouth, doubled over with suppressed laughter. The new cook, however, was not wrapped up in fits of mirth and was going about his business with a bemused frown.

“What’s the joke George?” I asked, and to the cook, “Come on Joseph, we’re all still waiting for our snacks!” This sent George into renewed spasms and he rolled about with Peter following suit.

Finally when he could speak, he answered, “The new cook says he doesn’t want this job Bwana” more laughter.

“Why?”

“He came back from speaking to you at the lounge and told us that you had told him to ‘hurry up and bring the snakes!’ – now he says he doesn’t want to go out in the bush to find the snakes you want, he says he is scared of snakes!”

At this they rolled about in more laughter while I just stood there with my beer in my hand contemplating Africa.

Snakes, Snacks.

I shook my head. Was it possible that this fellow really believed that I wanted him to go out into the bush at night and collect snakes?! Needless to say, he never made it.

By Terry Wieland

Old-Time Wisdom

In his book, African Rifles and Cartridges, John “Pondoro” Taylor often mentioned “cheap Continental magazine rifles,” and his comments were usually disparaging.  Taylor set great store by reliability, not only of the rifles he used, but the cartridges and bullets they employed.

The two major names in “Continental magazine rifles” were Mauser of Germany, and Mannlicher-Schönauer of Austria.  No one could knock either on the grounds of workmanship or materials; they were legendary then, and they’re legendary now.  Where Taylor did have a point was with Mauser sporters (or sporterized military rifles) chambered for some eminently forgettable cartridges.

Today, most hunters have never heard of the 10.75×68 Mauser or the 11.2×60 Mauser.  There were several, mostly rimless, in the 9mm to 11.5mm range (.358 to .44 or .45, roughly.)  In the case of the Mauser, many appeared in East Africa between 1919 and 1939, built on surplus military actions, and produced in one- and two-man shops across Germany.  These were most likely the rifles Taylor had in mind.

In the years after the Great War, the British gun trade was struggling and the German trade was desperate.  Tanganyika, of course, had been a German colony until 1919, with many European settlers.  Once it joined Kenya and Uganda in what came to be known as British East Africa, the greatest big-game hunting region in the world, it was natural that German gunmakers would look there for new markets.  And, with ex-military Mausers readily available, those naturally became the basis for building inexpensive hunting rifles.

If you look at the cartridges themselves, there is nothing much wrong with them except bullet construction.  Often, the bullets were flimsy, flew apart, and didn’t penetrate.  This was not true of all, but there was enough to lend the rifles a nasty reputation.

John Taylor himself was not anti-Mauser, by any means.  His Rhodesian friend, Fletcher Jamieson, owned a .500 Jeffery on a Mauser action, which Taylor used and like very much.  If a Mauser-actioned rifle came with the name Rigby, Jeffery, or Holland & Holland on the barrel, it immediately got Taylor’s vote.

This is where it becomes very tangled, because all the actions in those days were made by Mauser at Oberndorf.  Firms like Rigby and Jeffery used them to build some pretty flossy rifles.  So what do you call them, a Jeffery or a Mauser?

And the cartridges?  The .500 Jeffery is actually the 12.5×70 Schuler, designed in the 1920s by the firm of August Schuler to create an elephant round that could be chambered in a standard military Mauseer 98.  W.J. Jeffery adopted it and renamed it, yet when Taylor was writing, and praising the cartridge at length, the only ammunition available came from Germany.  Conversely, the .404 Jeffery was probably a Jeffery design, but it was adopted by Mauser as a standard chambering, and renamed the 10.75×73.

As you can see, there was considerable cross-over and adoption of each others’ designs.  The great London gunmakers had nothing but respect for Mauser Oberndorf, and the compliment was heartily returned.  Both probably considered the periods 1914-18 and 1939-45 as highly inconvenient impediments to trade.

After 1946, the supply of Oberndorf-made Mauser 98 bolt-action rifles dried up, although other manufacturers stepped in to produce Mauser actions, and sometimes entire rifles.  The London trade built rifles on whatever they could get — the Enfield P-14 and P-17, Brevex Magnum Mausers from France, Czech Mausers from Brno, Santa Barbara actions from Spain.  Even with Rigby or Holland & Holland engraved on the barrel, however, these never carried the cachet of, say, a .416 Rigby, made in St. James’s Street, on an Oberndorf magnum action.

Since the war, a lot has happened with both Mauser and its first and greatest associate in London, John Rigby & Co.  The Mauser factory was razed in 1946 on orders of the French occupation forces, and its name and trademark passed through various hands before, in 2000, becoming part of Michael Luke’s Blaser conglomerate based in Isny im Allgäu.  Rigby also changed hands, and was moved to the U.S in 1997.  There it became the centre of varying levels of fraud and ignominy before being purchased in 2012 and moved back to London.  The purchaser was the Blaser group, which put Rigby under the management of Marc Newton with a mandate to return the Rigby name to glory.

One way to do this was to resume manufacture of the famous Mauser 98 action, so that Rigby could once again built its .416s on an action with the Mauser banner on the ring, and make its traditional stalking rifles in .275 Rigby (the name Rigby bestowed on the 7×57 Mauser when it adopted it in the early 1900s.)

Since 1946, the various owners of the Mauser name steadfastly refused to make any of the company’s most famous (and, in my opinion, by far the best and greatest) product:  The turnbolt 98.  Even after it took up residence in Isny, making the 98 once again was not on its immediate list of projects.  As far as I know, it was not until the Rigby acquisition that it began seriously looking at it.  Whether it was Marc Newton who persuaded Mauser, or whether that was the secret plan all along, hardly matters.

Around 2010, Mauser had taken a hesitant step towards making a 98 again.  Using a magnum 98 clone produced by Prechtl, Mauser made a few .416s, but with a price tag of $40,000, I don’t imagine they sold many.  Then they acquired Rigby and, in a surprise move two years ago, Mauser announced it would once again make the magnum action, supply it to Rigby, and also make entire rifles in Isny.  Now, they have added the standard-length action to the line.  In London Rigby is using it to make its Highland stalking rifle in .275 Rigby, while in Isny, Mauser is chambering it in the venerable 7×57, 8×57 JS, 9.3×62, .308 Winchester, and .30-06.

Whatever John Taylor might think of these, he could never call them cheap.  The standard model in the less expensive “Expert” grade lists for $9,100.

All of these calibres are familiar to Americans except, perhaps, the 9.3×62.  This is an old and highly respected big-game cartridge in Europe.  It was designed in 1905, and became a standard Mauser chambering.  Even John Taylor thought quite highly of it, with the right bullets, and today ammunition is loaded by Norma, among others, in a wide variety of bullet weights and types.

Now, for the first time in many years, a hunter can go to Africa with a complete battery bearing the Mauser banner — a .416 Rigby for the big stuff, a 7×57 for plains game, and a 9.3×62 for in between.

* * *

It’s a funny thing, but in 1956 when Winchester introduced the .458 Winchester Magnum, and hired East African professional David Ommanney to tout the rifle for them, all predictions were that this was the end of the line for the big nitro-express cartridges, for the magnificent double rifles that fired them, and for all those “archaic” rounds like the .404 Jeffery.  The .416 Rigby was consigned to the trash bin, and even the .375 Holland & Holland was put on the list of threatened species.

It’s now 60 years later, and look what’s happened:  The .416 Rigby came roaring back, and has become a standard chambering; the .375 H&H is stronger than ever; there is a very vigorous market in double rifles, both old and new.  Many of the nitro express cartridges are being made by Kynamco, loaded with Woodleigh bullets from Australia.  The Mauser 98 — an action that is now 120 years old — is still the most popular bolt-action basis for a dangerous-game or plains-game rifle.

Anyone who buys a new Mauser, however, is not merely wallowing in nostalgia.  There is still no better, more reliable, or versatile action on which to build a rifle, whether you’re culling wildebeeste or pursuing pachyderms.

Through the 1960s, African Rifles and Cartridges and even John Taylor himself were disparaged.  As an ivory poacher, Taylor did not command the reverence of professionals like Sid Downey or W.D.M. Bell.  He died in 1955, and his books, Big Game and Big Game Rifles (1948) and African Rifles and Cartridges (1948) went out of print.  It seemed to be the end for everything.

As it turned out, the books were reprinted, first by Trophy Room Books and The Gun Room Press, respectively, and Taylor’s reputation was gradually rehabilitated.  Today, anyone interested in the history of African hunting and the actual performance of rifles, and of bullets on big game, should read Taylor.  His earlier, smaller book, Big Game and Big Game Rifles, is unfairly neglected, in my view.  I bought it from Ray Riling Arms Books in 1966, for $6.  I was absorbed by it then, and still go back to it now when I want to recapture some of the magic.

What the old-timers learned and knew is still worth learning, and well worth knowing.   Many years ago, boxing writer A.J. Liebling wrote in the New Yorker, quoting Heywood Broun, an even earlier writer, “After all, the old masters did know something.  There is still a kick in style, and tradition carries a nasty wallop.”  It seems that every new generation of boxers needs to learn this, and while Liebling and Broun were both writing about boxing, it could just as well have been big game and big-game rifles.

By Larry Collins

My Namibian safari was the best vacation/hunting trip my wife Pat and I have ever taken.

We left Atlanta, with the usual long flight via Joburg to Windhoek where, after collecting luggage, we met my PH, Dirk de Bod, at the Firearm Check-Out office. He collected our firearms and luggage, and we were soon in his SUV on our way to his hunting area.

On arrival, we went to our tent and unpacked. When I say tent, it was more like a luxurious one-bedroom apartment. Apart from the king-sized bed, large bathroom with a big shower and usual furniture, there was a safe, small refrigerator, and an air conditioner.

After unpacking, we walked to the hunting lodge for drinks and sat around the fire pit until supper and talked hunting.

Dirk asked what my point of aim would be, and when I told him I normally tried to make a heart shot, he said he had trouble with American hunters shooting too low and recommended aiming three or four inches higher than the heart shot, toward the center of the lungs. I told him I had Leupold VX6HD 4×24 Rifle Scope with a custom CDS Ranging dial, and he offered to set it for me before the shoot. We had supper and we were tired from the trip, so we called it a day.

The next morning we woke to find the temperature had dropped below freezing overnight and dressed in layers accordingly, then walked down to the lodge for breakfast.

For the morning hunt, Dirk, the two trackers, the two tracking dogs, Pat, and myself loaded into a Toyota truck with a shooting bench over the cab built into the bed of the truck. We drove for about two hours and saw giraffes, guinea fowl, and other animals. I was feeling a little uncomfortable and found I had an upset stomach. For lunch the others had sandwiches while my lunch was an Imodium!

On the afternoon hunt we saw many animals including giraffe, zebra, waterbuck and gemsbok.  At about 5:00 p.m. Dirk spotted three Cape eland, and the oldest was a shooter. We tracked them up a wide canyon and the two younger bulls moved to the right side of the canyon; the older one moved to the left.  I had still not seen them at that point, but we walked in single file up the canyon about 800 meters.  Dirk set up the shooting sticks and said the animal would be coming out from behind a set of bushes on the left about 120 meters in front of us. I got set, Dirk steadied me on the sticks, and about 15 seconds later the eland came out and stopped broadside to us, his fatal mistake.  I squeezed the trigger, and he took off running over a small knoll. The shot was good. The tracking dogs heard the shot and came running past. About three seconds later I heard a sound I hadn’t heard since I was a teenager squirrel-hunting with my uncle’s dogs: 

“Yap, Yap, Yap, Yap, Yap.”  I knew what it meant.  We walked over and there was a nice Cape eland bull about 50 meters from where I shot him, about 1800 pounds according to Dirk. I got extra credit for dropping him about 10 feet from a road!  I was on an adrenaline high. Dirk and the trackers loaded him in the back of the truck and strapped him in.

We returned to the hunting lodge for drinks around the fire pit, hunting tales, and another three-course meal. But Dirk’s future daughter-in-law, Anka, made a “from scratch” tomato soup that was perfect for me. 

The next day after toast and coffee for me, we loaded into the Toyota. We saw several animals not on my list – gemsbok cows with horns bigger than the bulls, groups of kudu cows, then Dirk and the trackers spotted a sable bull at about 250 meters out. Dirk stopped, I got out, a tracker handed me the rifle.  Dirk adjusted the CDS dial on the scope, and I adjusted the parallax dial to match. I squeezed the trigger.  Nothing happened. I had forgotten to release the safety. I moved the safety to “Fire”.  Yanked the trigger.  Missed the shot. We went to check but found no animal, no blood, no nothing.

For the afternoon hunt, we sat in a raised blind and saw a few animals but no shooter bulls. Later we had another great evening at the lodge.

to fire.  I squeezed the trigger and the bull disappeared. Dirk figured where the bull had gone. He took my gun and he, the trackers and the dogs went after the animal.  About seven minutes later I heard the dogs start barking. The bull had traveled about 100 yards and was standing in a bush.  Dirk fired a finishing shot and we returned to the lodge for another pleasant evening.

The following day we bade farewell to Ace, then worked our way back through hills and valleys, sighting several herds of animals as many as 50 each – gemsbok, impala, kudu, roan, sable, waterbuck, wildebeest, and hartebeest, cows and bulls. We did not find the old kudu bull we were looking for and decided to try again in the afternoon.

We saw lots of everything, but nothing worth shooting, so returned for our sundowners and supper.

Before the next day’s hunt we traveled to the utility area and helped load some meat for workers and drove around the 10 sections adjacent to the utility area for several hours.  We saw four groups of kudu bulls and in the last group, one of the trackers noticed something in the brush. It was an old kudu bull standing dead still in the shadows of a bush, difficult to see.  He was 100 meters away, and Dirk got me on him, a shooter.  At first, I only saw a silhouette that looked like an animal. He was facing the base of the bush he was standing under and his horns looked like a tree branch. Dirk said, “Take him.”  The bull looked back over his right shoulder. I saw the “V” of his horns and as he took a step to the right and presented his shoulder, I took the shot.  He ran off less than 50 yards.  Dirk started after the bull with his dogs. He didn’t take my rifle along; he knew the kudu was down. There was a small problem, though. The animal was piled up in the middle of a bunch of catclaw bushes.  Dirk got on the radio and called in reinforcements to help hack the kudu out of the brush.

On the way to the lodge for lunch we went for some guinea fowl with my Benelli SBE shotgun. We drove up on a group of about 100 birds. I pointed to the middle of the group and fired once and got 10 birds. Pot shot.

On the afternoon hunt we drove through the “Nursery” where Dirk had hundreds of breeding stock to supply the rest of the ranch with huntable trophy animals.  Then we drove around the ranch shooting guinea fowl. I fired a total of eight shots, and we came away with a total of 25 birds.

After the hunt, we returned for drinks at the Fire Pit, and another wonderful meal of eland steaks.

On the way to the lodge for lunch we went for some guinea fowl with my Benelli SBE shotgun. We drove up on a group of about 100 birds. I pointed to the middle of the group and fired once and got 10 birds. Pot shot.

On the afternoon hunt e drove through the “Nursery” where Dirk had hundreds of breeding stock living there supplying the rest of the ranch with huntable trophy animals.  Then we drove around the ranch shooting guinea fowl. I fired eight shots, and we came away with 25 birds.

After the hunt, we returned for more drinks at the fire pit, and another wonderful meal with eland steaks.

Zoltan Boros was born in Szabadka, Hungary in 1976. Nature and animals fascinated him since his early childhood. Zoltan began drawing at a young age, developing his talent by drawing the local wildlife. Later, he began to paint with oils and watercolors and continued to draw using graphite pencils and chalk. After grammar school, Zoltan attended the Agricultural University of Gödöllő. There, he received a degree as a Certificated Agricultural Engineer of Environmental Management with a major in Wildlife Management.

Zoltan spends as much time as possible in the outdoors, observing nature and the behavior of animals in their natural environments. Through his art, Zoltan is able to capture the uniqueness of his subjects, and the situations of their existence. 

His time in nature stirs his imagination, and his creations reflect a close relationship with his subjects and their habitats. “The movements of animals, the breath of ancient nature, original state, those are the things that I want to introduce with my artwork,” he says.

Zoltan has received international recognition for his wildlife art, with pieces appearing in exhibitions around the globe. These include the Weatherby Auction in Reno, Nevada, Holt’s Auction in London, and exhibitions in Spain, Germany, Austria, Canada, the Netherlands, and his native Hungary. In 2020 he got one of the most prestigious awards (Mr. Peter Balogh Grand Prize for Art) for his wildlife art in Hungary.

Find him on www.borosart.hu, or connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Enjoy a selection of Zolton’s African animal portraits.

For more artwork, click here.

By Ken Moody

The subject of what constitutes a trophy Cape Buffalo is one that causes me great irritation. There is a contingent of hunters who firmly believe that for a buffalo to be considered a ‘trophy,’ it must be at least 15 years old, a day away from death, and sport a scrumcap on top of its head. These are the keyboard warriors who chastise, belittle, and criticize every photo posted that doesn’t depict a buff up to their nonsensical standards. These are also the very same hypocrites that will shoot a mature whitetail buck or elk in the rut, even though the animal is still of breeding age. These guys really don’t know what they’re talking about, but somewhere along the line, have listened to some disgruntled professional hunter who likely only hunts a handful of buffalo each season, bemoan and cry about all the breeding age buffalo bulls being killed. Trust me, these guys aren’t buffalo gurus, they simply like to appear to be.

The bottom line is this…the MAJORITY of Cape Buffalo killed on safaris will be mature bulls of eight-plus years in age, possess reasonably hard bosses, and likely still be capable of breeding. This is a fact and anyone stating otherwise doesn’t know buffalo hunting. Here’s another fact. There is absolutely nothing wrong with shooting a mature bull regardless of its age.

‘Hard bossed’ is another misnomer that is not fully understood by the uninitiated. Some mistakenly believe that a hard boss is one that is solid completely across the top of the buffalo’s head, with no gap or hairline present. While this horn configuration represents the ultimate in Cape Buffalo, horn density and growth are primarily a result of genetics, not age.

Many buffalo bulls and their offspring will never fully close on top of the horn and always have a gap between them, sometimes with a thin line of hair showing. These are not immature bulls, per se, but bulls genetically predisposed to grow horns the same way, generation after generation. Other considerations when discussing trophy buffalo are client preferences and likes. Some clients prefer to hunt the oldest buffalo that can be found regardless of horn size, while others insist on hunting for a bull with great drops and width. These are generally 10- to 12-year-old bulls that are fully mature and in their prime, but not yet past the point at which horn deterioration occurs. The professional guiding these clients is not there to satisfy his own ego, but to hunt for buffalo consistent with the wants of the client, though advising the client on area production, genetics, and what to expect is advisable. In my many years of operating a safari company, I’ve found that most clients just want a great hunt with a good buffalo bagged at the end of it. For me, that means a mature buffalo bull regardless of age