One for the Road

Jan 3, 2024 | News

Corbett’s .275 Rigby, and mementoes of his life and career, courtesy John Rigby & Co.

By Terry Wieland

 

Top of the Tree

Jim Corbett and the Queen

 

 

By a strange coincidence, I was in the midst of re-reading all of Jim Corbett’s books about India, the jungle, and his encounters with man-eating tigers and leopards, when the Queen died in early September.  Although seldom mentioned, Corbett and the Queen had a brief but important acquaintance in 1952.

 

On the night that King George VI died, and Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth, she and the Duke of Edinburgh were visiting Kenya.  They had traveled to Nyeri, and from there to the famous Treetops, where they were engaged in game-watching.  Their guide and guardian was Jim Corbett, already world-famous as an author and hunter of man-eaters.

 

Corbett was then 77 years old.  That night, while the Princess slept in the glorified treehouse, Corbett sat up on the balcony, his rifle across his knees, while a leopard played with the access rope that dangled to the ground and was used for hoisting up supplies.  It fell to Corbett in the morning to awake Her (now) Majesty and tell her the news of her father.

 

Later, in his last book, Treetops, he wrote that “for the first time in the history of the world, a girl climbed a tree as a Princess, and came down a Queen.”

 

***

Edward James Corbett, universally known as Jim, was born and grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas, in the United Provinces of northern India.  He came from northern Irish stock, was one of a large—and far from rich—family, and became world famous late in life, with the publication, in 1944, of Man-Eaters of Kumaon.

 

Man-Eaters is one of the greatest books on hunting ever written, by anyone, anywhere.  Corbett, who was modest to a fault, did not have high hopes for it, and in fact wrote it to pass the time while he was recuperating from illness during the war.  Fortunately for us all, Lt. Col. Corbett was well connected, and his memoir was published by Oxford University Press, picked up in America as a Book of the Month, and became a world-wide best seller.  Its distinctive red and black rendering of a snarling tiger graced bookshelves everywhere, and this nightmarish image haunted my dreams from the first time I saw it at the age of seven.

 

Jim Corbett was born in 1875 and grew up in and around the hill station of Naini Tal.  When he was in his late teens, he took a contract working for the Bengal railroad, and stayed at it for the next 21 years.  He was, however, as much a child of the jungle as Mowgli and had been a hunter almost from birth.  In 1907, he was asked to hunt and kill the Champawat Man-Eater, a tiger that was terrorizing an area 

near Naini Tal.  Having succeeded where others failed, Corbett gained a reputation and was called upon many times in succeeding years to hunt man-eaters, both tigers and leopards.

 

It’s all the rage now to condemn the British Empire, root and branch, and deny that any good ever came of it anywhere.  Historians who dare to contradict this new “woke” gospel are shunned or dismissed as hopeless reactionaries, unworthy of either academic posts or publication of their work.  This is just as much a rewriting of history as occurred on a regular basis in Stalin’s Russia, where the history books were revised every time another member of the Politburo was railroaded in a show trial and went to the execution cellars.

 

Modern histories of India written by Indians, many with degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, or— like Mohindas Ghandi himself, University College London—emphasize everything bad that occurred in India during the 200 years of the British Raj, while dismissing or denying everything good.  In fact, there was a great deal that was good, and the life of Jim Corbett is a prime example.

 

Although he hunted man-eaters over the course of 30 years, Corbett stopped hunting non-man-eaters after 1911 and became a major voice calling for wildlife conservation, including the tigers he so admired.  In India today, Jim Corbett National Park, established for the purpose of providing a tiger sanctuary, gives some idea of the esteem in which he was held and, as far as I know, is still held, in the tiger country of the Himalayas.

 

Corbett never married, and he and his sister, Maggie, lived together throughout their lives.  They were astute business people, and made wise investments that allowed them to live comfortably.  In the 1920s, Corbett invested money in British East Africa and made regular trips there to oversee various projects.

 

When India became independent in 1947, Jim and Maggie left their home in Naini Tal and emigrated to Kenya.  The usual explanation for this is that Corbett may have been, by some definitions, an “Anglo-Indian” (he was born there, although he had no Indian blood), he was and always would be a British subject, unquestioningly loyal to the British Crown.

 

Undoubtedly, there was an element of this, although, ever since, Indians have gone out of their way to insist he would have been welcome to stay on.  This may be true, but it ignores the realities of the situation they faced.

 

The Corbett family went to India some years before the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and lived through that horror.  One of Jim’s uncles was captured by the mutineers at the siege of the Red Fort in Delhi, and was executed by being burnt alive; his brother witnessed this, and it became both family legend and family dread. 

 

It is common now to blame the British for the “rushed” exodus from India in 1947, and even to lay blame for partition itself on the British and not on the Muslim League that insisted on their own country (Pakistan).  It was such a complicated situation that trying to place ultimate blame is pointless.  The usual position is that, before the British, Hindus and Muslims coexisted quite happily, and it was only the British practice of “divide and rule” that caused enmity.

 

In My India, particularly, Corbett himself says that the people he lived among for 21 years, working on the Bengal railway, were Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, the odd Christian, and more than a few animists, and everyone got along fine.  When partition and independence loomed in 1947, however, violence broke out almost everywhere, with Muslims slaughtering Hindus here, and Hindus slaughtering Muslims over there.

 

Today, estimates of the dead run around two million, and much of this occurred on and around the railways.  Jim and Maggie Corbett were not worried about the people they knew in Naini Tal, but they were certainly worried about roving gangs, and there was no shortage of those.  As well, as Corbett himself wrote, in an independent India they would certainly become “second-class citizens.”  Serves them right, anti-colonialists would say, but when you are in your seventies and ailing, that is no comfort regardless of your own feelings.

 

Jim Corbett loved India, and Indians of all stripes, but he was a “sahib,” like it or not, and you do not easily shed the beliefs (and fears) of a lifetime.  In 1947, he foresaw “a second Mutiny,” and was determined to evade it.

 

As David Gilmour points out in his superb book, The British in India – A Social History of the Raj, many of the best British administrators of the Indian Civil Service stayed on after independence to aid the transition, and this was equally true down to lower levels.  There was not wholesale slaughter of Europeans, as many feared.  But that’s hindsight.

 

While Jim Corbett is remembered today mainly for his books, most of which were written between 1947, and his death in Kenya in 1955, he himself most valued his conservation work.  As an early investor in Safariland, the safari company, he promoted photographic safaris more than hunting.  He involved his many highly placed friends and acquaintances, such as Lord Wavell, in conservation efforts, and when he died his conservation work figured as prominently in the obituaries as did his killing of the man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag, which had at least 125 kills to its credit.

 

When the series The Crown was aired in 2016, I watched the early episodes to see how the producers would treat the events at Treetops in 1952.  Alas, Jim Corbett was not mentioned, even as a walk-on character, and the news of her father’s death was conveyed to the Queen by some functionary, I forget who.

 

For her part, the Queen never forgot Jim Corbett—she seemingly never forgot anyone—but he was conspicuously missing from her obituaries and the accounts of the events at Treetops in 1952 when she assumed the throne.

 

Sic transit gloria, as they say.  Still, there’s Jim Corbett National Park in India, and Man-Eaters of Kumaon still adorns bookshelves throughout the former British Empire.

 

Long live the King.

Gin-Trapped Buffalo Leads to the Fall of a Zimbabwean Icon

Jan 3, 2024 | Archive, Hunting Stories, News

The letter below was copied to me by an Alaskan hunter.

 

What made the letter particularly meaningful is that just this week something terrible happened. When you read the letter below, you will see a reference to gin traps and how terrible they are. And the link you may ask?  It was just this week that a game-farming family inadvertently felt the tragic impact of such a poacher’s gin trap.

 

A tremendous man, from all reports, someone devoted to uplifting communities and wildlife, was killed by a buffalo. The buffalo had fallen victim to one of the impoverished rural poachers’ gin traps. Wounded, suffering, and needing to be put out of its misery, the belligerent beast took out its anger and pain on the very person on a mission to help end its suffering. Digby Bristow was the target of the buffalo’s vengeance as it pummeled him – his wife Vanessa’s words in her heartfelt recount of what happened that fateful day just before Christmas.

 

While the taking of a life, the killing of an animal is hard to understand, and some even display delight in the act, and is what jars with the public in general, it is only a component of the hunt itself. The letter below is a long read, so just keep scrolling if you are busy.

 

Letter to UK Parliament regarding the Ban the Import of African Animals

Dear MP Christopher Chope,

 

After reading the article by Dr. John Ledger in the latest issue of “African Hunting Gazette” I was greatly disturbed to see a Bill by the UK Parliament to Ban the Import of African Animals.

 

It is with great respect to you after reading bios about you from different sources that you are a champion against such a Bill and that you have in the past been a champion against the many “New Age Ideas” that attempt to alter and destroy our natural world.

 

There have been times as a hunter that I have looked upon an animal that I have killed and wonder how I could take the life of such a beautiful creature. But I believe mankind should be overseers of our natural heritage, including the environment of our planet, the husbandry of our ecosystem, and the common-sense use of fossil fuels, utilized for man’s benefit. Until there is a better energy source, fossil fuel should still be our best choice for it is still in great supply!

 

The people of Africa are beneficiaries of those that come to hunt on their soil. The dollars that come to them by way of travel, licenses, permits, taxes, game meat, and trophy fees each help to educate local communities about the natural fauna and flora, and the importance of habitat in which they live within.

Normally these people in rural villages are very poor that have small gardens that will supply them with the food that will carry them through each day and each season. An elephant or herds of antelope that come to feed on their gardens, become an enemy that must be dealt with. Some may be shot with crude weapons, caught in gin traps, or taken with snares. Without education, their value as a renewable game species is unknown to them.

 

When African Countries open blocks to hunters, the benefits to the rural people are tremendous. The funds that are immediately procured become sources of income for game departments that fund species surveys, game counts, boreholes for healthy drinking water in the villages where many have died from disease-ridden water supplies. Those in these villages become part of poaching patrols.  Money is used to build schools that will educate their children about the animals that live around them.

 

A new world that suddenly opens to them, ideas become the creation of dreams to becoming doctors, seeing a world that was never envisioned.

 

Those people that had their gardens raided, will begin to see meat being delivered to their villages, and with this new resource of protein that they can depend on, begin to take an interest in the way animals will be harvested that will not only supply food for their families, but will be a dependable and renewable resource for them in the future.

 

If this Bill to Ban the Import of African Animals is passed, it will destroy the wildlife species like never before. Who will fund the needy when wildlife no longer has a spoken voice, from those that benefited the most?

 

Many of the Wildlife Parks in Africa have been saved from complete habitat destruction by those that come from abroad – to hunt. The hunting blocks, of course, are outside of these parks, but as habitat decreases many species leave to forage where habitat is plentiful. Because Animal Rights organizations will not allow the animals in these parks to be culled, the destruction of these guarded habitats becomes useless to provide life to the species living within them.

 

Without wise management of our natural world that is provided for now by hunters’ dollars and certainly not by those that cry foul yet offer nothing to the poor African people that ought to benefit, the environment and its wildlife will suffer.

 

There are those that come to my home and see animals I have hunted in Africa and elsewhere. There are some that shake their heads, for they do not understand. But when I can explain about the coloration of animal skins, the unique shape of eyes, lips, and horns, some begin to understand from a fresh perspective.

I tell them about a person with a strange name they have never heard before, our tracker who we followed. I tell them about the bent stick he used to point to a hoof-print barely visible in dry and dusty ground among dozens of others, and as I recall my memories I am transported back to that place where warm winds blow and the sweet soft calls from doves are carried in those warm currents of air. A place where the joy I felt was indescribable, where calming peace captivated me in a place like no other.

 

I will recall how wonderfully surprised I was when this man pointed to the direction the animal had suddenly turned, for there was nothing to show in the sand or grass that I could see. But he smiled and nodded.

 

These wonderful trackers became masters of these skills when they were but young boys when they took charge of the village cattle into fields, through jungle and down into river bottoms among ferocious predators, when the rainy season came, with flashes of lightening from thunderstorms of black clouds and racing wind and pounding rain.

I sadly recall that some of these great men I hunted with died at a young age because of HIV/AIDs and other diseases that could not be warded off because their communities were remote and poor. There were no doctors, so none came.

 

Like the animals that have such coloration and form, the indigenous African people are different in color and cultures from our own but are beautiful and unique. They have seen what hunters’ dollars have brought into their lives, and they have learned the importance these game animals now have, and what has been added to their lives and their families that now have schools and health clinics. They have honor. They have very little, but they love their families, as we do ours.

 

They know if they let the game animals propagate, that the oldest males will be harvested, the resource will continue, and the meat and trophy fees will make their villages prosper.

 

We proclaim that our world today is superior to that of the past, but still the horn of the rhino and the tusk of the elephants have no regulated legal trade. Yet poaching has continued, with black markets stealing the lives of these animals, a practice that will continue again and again until those animals are just pictures in a book.

 

There will be no one to count the missing dead, for the game departments will close without funding to maintain the resource.

 

Some nations stopped hunting and brought in people with cameras. But photo safaris travel the same track day after day, giving wild animals no peace to live as people seek their pictures relentlessly, day after day.

 

The habitat loss becomes tremendous with roads and bridges. Non-hunters pay no trophy fees that would fund game departments or poaching patrols. Photo Safaris supply no protein to the villagers who have lost their gardens to animals that no longer are managed or cared for. They receive no funding. They receive no meat.

 

There are those that claim that Kenya is the model African country because it no longer allows organized hunting. But when you talk to those rural people that lived there before 1977, they will tell you a different story.

 

This planet is ours, we can preserve it or let it fall into destruction. True hunters, those that seek our world’s wild places, hunt not just to kill or take away, but come to preserve those things that should be most precious to each of us.

 

How wonderful if we could each hand over to those that come after we have gone, this most incredible natural world gifted to us.

 

Hunters’ dollars fund wildlife!

 

My Best Regards,

Norman Thomas

Alaska

 

 

There is a Time and Place for Everything

Jan 3, 2024 | Hunting Stories

This Texas heart shot founds its way into the vitals and we had our trophy.

By Ricardo Leone

 

While a respectable number of hunters may wish to debate the ethics of taking a Texas heart shot as your initial shot on big game – few will dispute the effectiveness of this infamous shot as a follow-up. For those who do not know what I am referring to, a Texas heart shot is simply shooting an animal in its’ south end as it is heading due north – yes, in the ass while the animal is facing away from you.

 

The first time I was party to this tactic was on my first safari, when my Zambian PH instructed me to shoot the third of three running greater kudu at about one hundred yards out while they ran past a small opening in the bush. While drawing blood, my shot was a touch low and barely slowed the kudu’s stride as it ran for cover. Before I could even discuss our next move, my PH raised his double barrel .470 Merkel and sent a 500-grain bullet directly up the kudu’s backside at about one hundred yards. The kudu ran another seventy-five yards and dropped. My PH pointed to the steep hills on our left and explained if he did not shoot then, we would be climbing those hills, in the heat, for the next few hours tracking blood and if lucky enough to find my kudu, we would then have to carry the trophy back down. As I was a novice at the time, I was grateful to have my trophy in front of me and did not mind my PH making that executive decision.

 

For those doubters of the effectiveness of a Texas heart shot, I can personally attest that a well-placed bullet will either find its way to the vitals if shot directly up the backside as was the case with my kudu or it will do enough damage to stop the animal for a quick mercy shot. In fact, this past year I had two such examples myself.  In both cases, instead of watching my PH shoot my trophy, I had no choice but to use a Texas heart shot or risk losing my trophy all together. In the most recent case, it was shoot fast or watch the animal run into an area where the guide had pre-warned, we could not track an injured animal.

 

Allow me to set the stage. My dear friend Pete and I were in West Texas chasing aoudad. Aoudads are also known as Barbary sheep which, despite its name, are neither a sheep nor a goat – it has its own genus. This may sound odd chasing African game indigenous to the mountains in North Africa, in Texas. However, aoudads were introduced to West Texas in the 1950s and have thrived ever since. A sizable number of hunters, ranchers and wildlife management professionals would say they have done too well, both crowding out desert bighorn sheep and threatening wild sheep by passing on disease. Aoudads are now considered an evasive species and can be hunted year-round. Unlike other African species in Texas that are referred to “Pasture Art” for the rich and famous, most aoudad are free range and make for a challenging hunt, where one often has to climb steep hills like when chasing desert bighorn sheep.

 

Enough about the origins of African animals in Texas – let’s relive the hunt. My initial shot was taken late in the morning with my Griffin & Howe Highlander .300 Win Mag off my small tripod while sitting with my pack in my lap for stability in a howling wind facing downhill at 350 yards. The wind was welcome as it let me fumble around in the rocks while I set up as the aoudad stayed bedded down below out of the wind and oblivious of me. When they finally moved, the guide had me follow three big rams in the herd that were grouped together. The guide initially instructed me to follow the second in line. However, when the lead ram stepped up on a rock in the open sun, I found him more appealing. In the end my guide said to pick the one I most fancied. I kept adjusting my scope for more distance as the rams meandered away from us and when the lead one stopped and turned broadside with its long chaps glowing in the sun, I took aim on its front left shoulder and squeezed the trigger. I could hear the bullet hit it, making a loud noise that sounded like the crack of a whip. My guide confirmed it was a solid hit. Before we could even think about retrieving the ram, the guide quickly turned his attention to the running herd knowing we had to get Pete a ram too. My guide told me he could see my aoudad walking off clearly affected by the shot. “We will come back for him later, he said. I was not bothered given his quiet confidence.

 

We spent the next hour or so chasing the same herd trying to get Pete an opportunity, but unfortunately there were too many eyes on us, and they could feel the pressure. We needed to back off and let them settle. We turned back towards the cliffs from where I had made my shot. From the ledge, our guide pointed way down and across the ravine to a light green bush.

 

“It is the one with the dark green tree just below it at the bottom,” he pointed out. After I confirmed I could see where he was pointing, he said the aoudad would be down somewhere near that tree. Again, I appreciated his confidence. My guide lightened his pack and Pete left his pack and rifle in the buggy. I took my pack, shooting stick and my rifle which still had two bullets in it – do not ask why I did not load a third bullet. I did remember to open the scope aperture back up and dial the distance turret back to zero. Off we went to make our way to the bottom picking our way through the loose shale. At least an hour and 45 minutes had passed since my initial shot. I walked along the bottom of the ravine, and my guide crossed it and stayed higher up than me for a better vantage point. He told me to get ready, he could see the aoudad under the tree as predicted. As he alerted me, I caught sight of the horns under the tree, and I could see the ram start to bolt.

 

This was one of those hero or zero moments. I had a small window to the right of the tree as the ravine hooked left and out of sight after the tree. I shouldered my rifle as if I were pheasant shooting, and through the scope I could only see the tail end of the ram. Without hesitation I pulled the trigger at the moving animal. I quickly moved down the ravine past the tree and could see I had dropped the ram taking out his hind legs. With my last bullet I quickly applied a mercy shot. I had my trophy. Thank goodness that my scope was reset, and I did not need a third bullet.

A fine aoudad trophy with horns more than 30 inches – note the beautiful chaps.

A fine aoudad trophy with horns more than 30 inches (note the beautiful chaps).

My second example happened less than two months prior, when I was in the Selous Game Preserve in Tanzania. After successfully chasing Cape buffalo, greater kudu and Nyasa wildebeest, we set out to find a Roosevelt sable, the smallest of the three sables, only indigenous to the Selous. On our second long drive looking for them in the hills, we followed a dried riverbed for a long while until the terrain transformed into a sea of long grass. Our head tracker spotted a set of sweeping horns within the grass. My PH instructed the driver to stop. I grabbed my Griffin & Howe Highlander .300 Win Mag and hopped off the Land Cruiser. My PH set the sticks next to the vehicle and I aimed for a neck shot given I could not see the body of the animal within the dense grass and our angle was not ideal. The sable turned and started to move away from us uphill. If sable start to run, they will keep running for a long distance, so my instinctive action was to administer a Texas heart shot in the small window I had within the grass which stopped the sable in its tracks. A final mercy shot finished the job and I had my Roosevelt Sable. It was a spectacular trophy, I must say.

 

While we are all taught how to shoot a broadside animal and, in some cases, a frontal shot, there are other shots that can be used. Again, without debating whether a Texas heart shot should be your initial shot on an animal, it is an essential shot to know if you have an injured animal that may take flight.

61-Year Dream Come True

Jan 3, 2024 | Hunting Stories

By Owen Maddox

 

The seed was planted when a young boy of ten years old was given a copy of Outdoor Life Magazine by his uncle.  During these early years, the uncle introduced him to hunting a variety of animals in Kentucky.  Among the uncle’s favorites were Bobwhite Quail and the Eastern Grey and Eastern Fox Squirrel.  Using an old, single-shot 12-gauge shotgun, given to him by his grandmother, the boy’s favorite hunting at the time was for Bobwhite Quail, that were pursued with the highly energetic and extremely tense two English Pointer birddogs that belonged to his uncle.  Nearly 12 years of age brought a new hunting experience for the boy – hunting the Whitetail Deer of Kentucky. His uncle let him “borrow” a used Marlin .336 Lever Action Rifle, which he used for several years in the pursuit of the Whitetail Deer. This quickly became his second hunting passion along with the Bobwhite Quail.  His uncle never asked for the Marlin to be returned and continued to supply the young boy with his used copies of the magazines until he got his first job, cutting a two-acre yard of the motel just down the street from his home.  At the age of twelve, with two additional jobs, delivering the Louisville Courier Journal newspaper and obtaining a TV Guide route, he then bought every monthly copy of Outdoor Life Magazine and Field & Stream Magazine.  

 

All the articles were read at least once, but the articles by one author, Jack O’Conner, completely fascinated the boy.  Jack O’Conner wrote about a variety of hunting subjects, but the most interesting ones discussed which calibers were best for the different species of game, including many African animals.  The African Cape Buffalo stood out among them all.  The boy then began purchasing and requesting African game hunting books from his family for a Christmas or birthday present.  He was then hooked on the thought of hunting Cape Buffalo in Africa with a “Double Rifle” and informed his grandmother, whom he had lived with since age six, that he would someday take a “African Cape Buffalo” with a “Double Rifle”.  That boy was me, Owen E Maddox, Jr.

 

The next 61 years were filled with school, Air Force aviation for 20 years, another 20 years with United Airlines and then retirement.

The next 61 years were filled with school, Air Force aviation for 20 years, another 20 years with United Airlines and then retirement.

 

In 2017 I once again started to think about the number one goal the 12-year-old boy had told his grandmother he was going to achieve one day.  I met six Safari Outfitters at a show in Denver that year and quickly decided on one Professional Hunter, Dave Freeburn, who runs Dave Freeburn Safaris in South Africa.  I communicated with him several times about scheduling a Buffalo hunt in 2018 but that plan was derailed due to a cancer scare.  It was finally determined that I did not have cancer, but the African planning was down the drain at that time.

 

My spouse and biggest supporter in my life, Amy Brandon Maddox. I finally brought the subject up again in the summer of 2020.  We gave the issue an abundance of dialog and we finally agreed that if I was ever going to fulfill that bucket list item, I needed to get busy scheduling the trip.  I once again checked out the references for Dave Freeburn Safaris — all with outstanding comments.  I contacted Dave and he did remember me from 2017 and we scheduled a safari hunt in August 2021.

 

In 2019 I, as a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder, sold an estate of a local firearms collector who passed away.  His wife did not want any of the firearms in her home after her husband’s passing, and 96 of the 104 firearms were sold; eight of the more expensive guns did not sell and I tried to return them to their owner.  She would not accept them into her home and offered them to me at a rock-bottom low price which I accepted.  The most prized firearm in the remaining collection was a Krieghoff Classic Five Double Rifle in the .500/416 N.E. caliber.

Before my hunt was scheduled, I knew the double rifle was going with me to fulfill my long-awaited dream.  The PH advised me to practice often, both shooting off sticks and offhand at 50 yards.  I averaged ten rounds of reloads per week for four months and got very good at reloading the double quickly even though it did not have ejectors on the rifle.  One of my best friends, Jim Madere, encouraged me through the entire process of preparing for the hunt but especially in practicing with the double.  I know he also really enjoyed shooting that rifle.

 

A month prior to my departure to South Africa, rioting, looting, kidnapping, and shootings broke out in Africa and the U.S. State Department recommended against travel to that destination.  I had already received about ten vaccinations and was determined not to cancel my “dream trip”.  Amy agreed with the decision to continue.

 

I had previously decided on going to Johannesburg two days early, to avoid jetlag on my first day of hunting.  I booked two nights at the Afton Safari Lodge, located only 15 minutes from O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.  The Afton Safari Lodge is owned by the publisher of the African Hunting Gazette and managed by Elize, who does a wonderful job in making all safari hunters feel at home.

 

My first African safari ended in total success as I took my first African Cape Buffalo with my double rifle and several other plains game animals.  My 61-year dream had finally been fulfilled.  But this story is about my third Cape buffalo hunt in Zimbabwe, so, let’s get on with that.

Departure day has finally arrived for my third trip to the Dark Continent.  Preparation has been limited this past year due to an accident in October 2022.  While building a lean-to on my barn, a 16 foot 2”x6” rafter fell, and I caught it behind my back on a ladder.  That resulted in four muscle tears around my left rotator cuff.  Surgery on the four tears was accomplished in December 2022 resulting in physical therapy for the next four months.  The surgery had to be repeated in April 2023 due to an additional tear of the bicep.  I knew immediately that would place my August 2023 safari in jeopardy.  I called my professional hunter, Dave Freeburn of Dave Freeburn Safaris, to give him the bad news.  He said there was an opening in October for the Zimbabwe hunt – and the date was set.  I had hunted in South Africa for the past two years with Dave and he thought the change in location would be to my liking.

 

Physical therapy for the following five months led to about 70% recovery, but I was still limited in my use of the left arm.  I was concerned that I miight not be able to carry or shoot my Krieghoff 500/416 N.E. double rifle.  Two weeks prior to my departure date, Dr. Mitch Seemann, my orthopedic surgeon, cleared me to make the trip but not to carry the rifle with my left hand.  I practiced shooting about 75 rounds at my club range, Buffalo Creek Gun Club, in Colorado.  I did not have the mobility nor the quickness I needed to be going up against one of the Big Five dangerous game animals of Africa, the African Cape Buffalo.  I felt very comfortable shooting off my sticks for the first shot but still had concerns for the follow-up shot which is normally required.  My decision was made – I was leaving for Zimbabwe in two weeks.

 

My wife of over 31 years, Amy, took me to Denver International Airport (DIA) the morning of October 21st, 2023, to begin my journey.  Hank, our one-and-a-half-year-old Weimaraner, accompanied us but was dropped off at his favorite play-time kennel for the day since Amy had to work at the United Airlines Training Center after our trip to DIA.  My rifle was checked through by security to Johannesburg with no problems since all my paperwork was completed correctly.  I had a great breakfast at the United Club and daydreamed of my adventure to come.  My flight from Denver to Newark was on time and uneventful and after a few hours in the Newark United Club I boarded my familiar Boeing 787, Flight number 188, to Johannesburg.  Sixteen hours later I was retrieving my bag and rifle in O.R. Tambo Int Airport in Johannesburg.  That evening was spent at the City Lodge Hotel at the airport and after the next morning’s delicious breakfast, I checked my bag and rifle for my flight to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.  Dave Freeburn and I met in the boarding area and continued our journey to Zimbabwe on South African Airlines flight number SA40.  One and a half hours later I paid $30 for my Zimbabwe Visa and retrieved my baggage and rifle.  At the front entrance of the airport, we were met by Stewart “Stu” Taylor, our Zimbabwe PH along with an apprentice PH, Kirsten, who had finished PH School and was now doing her four years of required training, on safari, with a qualified PH.  Two and a half hours later we arrived in camp, located in Matetsi, Unit 2.  Along the way we picked up our Government Game Scout, Johnathan, from his government compound, one hour from our camp.  We also dropped off Kirsten for her short walk to Unit 1, where she was working.

After unpacking and meeting Guav Johnson, a PH and part owner in the Matetsi, Unit 2, lease permit, along with a friend of his and the camp staff, which included our primary tracker, Davey, his son Giff, our secondary tracker; Johnathan, the Game Scout, Moraine, our housekeeper and Internet expert, and our waiter, Nelson, we proceeded to ensure my rifle had remained sighted-in.  One shot at 50 meters satisfied Stu, the PH, but I shot a second shot to satisfy my double was good with both barrels for the hunt.

 

The first evening was spent on a drive showing me the terrain we would be hunting and discussing how we would hunt the African Cape Buffalo in Unit 2.  This Unit is part of a huge concession of close to 1,000,000 acres with no fences.  Every animal on the concession is totally free and wild.  On that short one-hour drive, I saw approximately 250 elephants and many other plains game animals. 

 

However, everything was not all good – a lightning storm we were watching started a huge fire that burned a significant part of the west side of Unit 2.  Another fire two weeks prior to our arrival burned thousands of acres right up to our camp.  We made a quick return to camp, where Stu directed workers to the fire with equipment, including a tractor, to make fire breaks.

 

A great dinner that evening was accompanied by many hunting adventures relayed by all three PHs.  The adventurous storytelling was interrupted by the soothing sound of a lion’s gentle roar, which continued through the evening.  Little did I know at the time, but Guav Johnson is a legendary PH who has guided many famous hunters in several countries on the African Continent.  He told to me that Simba’s roar was very common in the evening at that camp.  On no other previous hunt had I ever heard that sound throughout the night.  As I lay in bed that evening, I realized that sound was reinforcing my determination to continue my African journeys.

 

The next morning we were up at 4:45am, had breakfast with Guav and his friend, and drove out of camp at 5:30 to hunt for an old Dagga Boy, an old bull that normally has outlived his usefulness in the herd and might live by himself or with a couple of others like himself.  They generally have been replaced by a younger, stronger bull in their herd. 

 

I had told Stu that my left shoulder might be a problem, but my preference was for him not to assist with shooting the Dagga Boy, if we could find one.  The exception was if I did not make a clean first shot, but hit the buff, then take him down, especially if I was not fast on the follow-up shot.  He agreed.

 

The entire morning was driving the roads looking for big buff tracks.  We saw two sets of good tracks on the dusty road, but the two stalks yielded no Dagga Boys.  We saw one large herd in the distance, but we decided not to follow it since I was looking for a big old bull that had probably been pushed out of the herd, so went back to camp for lunch.  While having lunch, Stu got a call from Guav who had spotted three big Dagga Boys at the southern tip of the unit so Stu decided to cancel our previous plan and go the long distance where the bulls had been seen.  I had a good feeling about the change of plans because we were the only hunters in the area and the three bulls would not be under any pressure and therefore would probably remain in the area undisturbed. 

We reached the location about an hour after leaving camp and set up on a rise with all of us glassing the area.  The area was vast and covered with tall grass, scrubby trees and rolling hills – it provided lots of cover for the bulls and would be hard to locate them unless they either got up from the afternoon rest to go to water, picked up our scent, which was not likely due to keeping the wind in our face, or being bumped by other animals.  This was a possible problem due to many elephants in the area.  We stalked across the plains for about one-half mile while continuing to glass the area.  A slight rise gave a good view from a slightly higher position and we spotted our Dagga Boys. 

 

They were on the move and heading to water – or so we thought.  They disappeared in a low gully as we stalked closer, where we had good cover, and the wind was still in our favor.  Thirty minutes later we reached a position where we thought we would see them again, but they were nowhere to be seen.  We were then worried that our stalk had taken too long, and the “Dagga Boys” had hastened their pace to get to the water which was beyond the southeastern edge of our area. 

 

Our hopes faded the longer we glassed the area for them and finally Stu sent Giff, the youngest tracker, up a tree some distance behind us.  Still no sighting of the bulls.  After 30 more minutes of glassing, Dave told Stu that he would return directly to the location where we had spotted them from a good, elevated position.  He hurriedly returned with a big smile and informed us the bulls were lying down in the tall grass right in front of us at 150 yards.  Stu told us to stalk directly into the wind toward the bull’s position, very slowly across the area that had minimal cover for us.  We had to stalk low the entire way, only rising to ensure the bulls had not stood up.  At 100 yards from their position, the two trackers and Game Scout, remained behind a few bushes and Stu, Dave and I continued the stalk to 50 yards.  At that point Stu set up the shooting sticks for me and told me to shoot the bull to the left of a small tree when he stood up.  I focused the rifle sight on the tips of horns, which I could see protruding from the golden grass.  After 10 minutes, (it seemed like forever), the bulls started to move their heads around and I saw the tail swish of the bull I was focused on — I was ready for him to stand, and finally he did, but he and the other two bulls immediately turned the opposite way than I expected.  I held my shot to avoid hitting two bulls and at the same time Stu and Dave said, “Don’t shoot him, the bull on the right is bigger.” I had no time to get on the other bigger bull because they were intermingled.  They all three ran to the west, away from some elephants which had spooked them out of their afternoon rest and which, in my concentration on the bull with the horns protruding through the tall golden grass, I had not even been aware of.

 

Stu picked up the shooting sticks and all three of us ran in a direction to cut off some distance to the bulls.  We paused once to check on the bulls which had slowed to a fast walk.  They were 180 yards away and Stu asked if I was comfortable making a long shot if necessary.  I said, “No, it has to be close to 100 yards or closer with my double.”  We kept moving and then we saw elephants coming towards the bulls from the west – the bulls slowed which allowed us to get to 110 yards from the bulls where Stu set up the sticks once again and I got my rifle sight on the big guy, but they were still moving from right to left.  From behind me, Dave bellowed twice, the first was not loud enough for the bulls to hear at 110 yards, but the second bellow was loud, and all three bulls stopped to look our way — the biggest Dagga Boy stopped at a perfect side position view, and I was on him with an immediate shot through both lungs.  He jumped a couple of times before crumbling to the ground – he was done.  The other two bulls did not immediately leave him but did so after several seconds.

 

Even though my Krieghoff kicks hard, I did not feel anything but elation in knowing instantly that I had make a good shot at 90 yards and I had seen him jump when hit by the 400-grain soft-tip Nosler bullet.  I immediately reloaded with a solid in the right chamber, exactly like the cartridge in the left chamber.  We walked to the bull but could not see him in the dense grass until within 25 yards, where I placed an insurance bullet into his spine.  I know Stu knew the bull was finished because he did not intervene when I walked up and placed the tip of my barrel on the bull’s right eye. 

I unloaded and said a short prayer over this magnificent creature which was much bigger that my previous two bulls taken in 2021 and 2022.  Everyone arrived from their hide in the bush with broad smiles and congratulatory hands reaching out. The old Dagga Boy was then pulled out of the tall grass and positioned for many pictures with our entire crew.

 

The process of loading the bull onto the vehicle was like art in motion by the entire crew as I watched the one-ton buffalo being loaded in the Land Cruiser.  Arrival back in camp was a joyous occasion – the celebration started with a shot of Port and was followed by repeated stories of the stalk and how lucky we were, in so many ways.  Dinner and bed followed but the adrenalin was still flowing throughout my body and finally the last look at my phone showed midnight.  I awoke again at 05:00 to start another day in the bush.

 

Because I had filled my tag with a tremendous African Cape Buffalo just short of 43” and did not have any other species on my list, Dave asked if he could use my rifle for some hunting of his own.  Of course, I had no objection, and each day we searched for a tuskless cow elephant and possibly a trophy bull, which we had not yet encountered.  Every day that we hunted, we saw many herds of elephants consisting of 10 to 50 in each herd.  However, we never found either of the two desired animals.  Dave also wanted a good bushbuck which we found, and he took one afternoon. I had never considered a bushbuck, but it has a beautiful set of spiraled horns, so I may consider it on future hunts. 

 

The whole time pictures were being taken I was in my own world thinking about taking the life of this magnificent animal and justifying it by knowing many others will live out a full life, as this one had, due to the money that the hunters like me pay toward keeping and growing the numbers of animals living and thriving in the wild.  Without the hunters’ money going into this type of adventure and curbing the massive amount of poaching, the animals would lose their value to many of the local people, and they would be killed for subsistence and eliminated quickly.

While sitting around the fire that evening I told Stu and Dave I would be interested in taking a baboon and a warthog if we could find one bigger than the one I had previously taken on my first safari in 2021. I had pictures on my iPhone so both could see the size I was looking for.

 

On our next few days of hunting, we continued to see numerous elephant herds but not a single tuskless cow or trophy bull. We saw many warthogs, but most had offspring with them. Several males were available, but the tusks were smaller than I wanted. A lone male lion watched us that afternoon from a ridge about 150 yards away. Afterward, we busted three lions resting in a thicket as we were on our way to check out another waterhole. They did not look happy to see us. We ended our trek to the waterhole and headed back to the truck. Many stories of our adventure were told over dinner and sitting around our relaxing fire that evening.

 

On Saturday, the sixth day of hunting, we were on our way to a well-used waterhole when we spotted a troop of baboons along a riverbank in thick trees and started a stalk toward them. With 30 to 40 in the troop, it’s almost impossible to get close to them without at least one seeing you. The troop was quickly alerted and kept lots of distance between themselves and their enemy – us. We followed them at a distance for 30

minutes and then headed back to the riverbank with the trees, where they had initially been spotted.  We hid in the bush and waited in a nice hide.  They did not disappoint and returned to the area.  Again, one or more spotted us and once again they ran but this time from our right to left.  Stu quickly realized the big male was going to cross an opening between two trees on the riverbank and let me know to shoot when he was visible.  I was ready for the big guy when he appeared and let a 400-grain solid fly as soon as I saw his fur hit the opening.  The big bullet connected, and he was finished.  After pictures were taken, we headed to the waterhole for a chance at a big-tusked hog.  We built a perfect blind in the thicket 50 yards from what seemed to be the favorite mud-bath location.  We were prepared to wait most of the day for the right opportunity.  Although nothing appeared that we were satisfied with taking, we did see13 warthogs, 29 sable, a giraffe, a herd of 20 impala and a herd of zebra visit the water hole within the next four hours.  We packed up after the visitors went about their daily visit and hit the trails again to check out our possibilities before heading back to camp at sunset.

 

On my last day in Zimbabwe, I again awoke at 04:30, even though I did not have to be up before 07:00.  Nelson, as was normal routine, had a pot of coffee and a kettle of hot water sitting on the open fire situated in the middle of the concrete outdoor porch.  I poured a cup and sat outside in the cool darkness waiting for the sun to rise.  The fire had mostly been subdued and the hope for rain looked promising in the overcast dark sky.  I listened intently for the beautiful and soothing sound of Simba in the calm cool morning of darkness.  Simba’s soothing sound did not come, probably because the huge fires drove most of the animals away from Unit 2 and into the surrounding areas which had not been touched by the fires.  Knowing Simba was not near, I immediately started glassing the plains in the distance to the east and northeast in search of the herd of roan antelope which we had watched just prior to sunset the previous evening.

The 20 roan included two young calves which were fun to watch trying to keep up with their moms in the herd.

 

They were nowhere to be found that morning which did not surprise me.  What did surprise me was I saw no elephants, where I normally saw herds of 20 or more, off to the east prior to the burn areas.  A couple of kudu cows did show up a short distance from camp as the sun continued to rise.  I had already finished my coffee and oatmeal with toast when Stu and Dave arrived.  On the previous night I had counted out tip money for the camp employees and after Dave and Stu had finished breakfast, the employees came into the dining area one at a time for me to thank them and say our goodbyes.

 

Packing to leave this beautiful country left me with many mixed thoughts and emotions.  However, the one that I will embrace is that I will be back in a few months to start another great adventure on here, once again, looking for an old Dagga Boy.

 

We left camp after the vehicle was loaded with all our gear and trophies.  Our first stop was at a government facility where the Cape buffalo, baboon and bushbuck skulls were dropped off to be recorded and measured.  At the facility, we once again saw and talked to Kirsten who was delivering many animal skulls for recording, including two elephant and two lion skulls.  Jonathan was then delivered to his home in the government compound located another 30 minutes away. 

 

When we finally got back on a tar road, Stu quickly picked up speed for the 40km distance to Victoria Falls Airport.  After unloading and saying our goodbyes, Dave and I headed toward the check-in counter for South African Airlines.  Afterward is when the delays started – we waited 25 minutes for the Zimbabwean police to show up to clear my rifle.  Eight of them took me, with my baggage, into their small office and went through the paperwork for at least 15 minutes, then counted each bullet remaining that I possessed to take back home.  I was finally released to exit the room with my rifle and case being carried to the proper location for weapons to be loaded onto the flight leaving Zimbabwe.  I had to retrieve my rifle in JNB after our flight from Zimbabwe and recheck it for the flight back to Newark.  I then went through customs and rechecked my bag and rifle, all within the two-hour layover I had before my final flight that day to Denver, Colorado. 

 

Although I am 76 years old, I will continue to hunt the African Cape Buffalo in one of the many great countries of Africa for my remaining years.  Hunting it is at the top of my list of adrenalin-pumping adventures which I can accomplish.  All of this would be impossible without the outstanding dedication of the many great professional hunters and their staff.  My experience in hunting the African Cape Buffalo only extends back to 2021 when I hunted with Dave Freeburn of Dave Freeburn Safaris in South Africa.  Both 2021 and 2022 with Dave were outstanding, professional, and successful hunts, resulting in two old Dagga Boys.

 

This year’s hunt, 2023, took place with Classic African Hunting, located in Zimbabwe, Matetsi, Unit 2, with PH Stewart “Stu” Taylor.  Stu is a mild mannered, totally professional PH.  He conducts your hunt at your pace and ensures you know exactly what is needed from you and himself for the hunt to be successful, while at the same time getting all the excitement and enjoyment from your hunt that you deserve.

 

Next year, 2024, is shaping up to be one of my most enjoyable hunts with Dave Freeburn Safaris when I hopefully can take two additional hunters and friends to Dave’s Silent Valley Camp. 

 

I encourage all of you hunters, if you have not yet experienced an African Safari, to start your preparation now for the hunt of a lifetime.  My only regret is that I did not start down this path until later in life.  However, I am quickly making up for the adventures lost.

 

 

Hunting With an Old-Timer

Dec 18, 2023 | Hunting Stories

The hunters looking for springbuck on the plains below them.

By Piet van Rooyen

 

The springbuck ram stood quartering towards us at just over 200 meters, its impressive set of horns clearly outlined against the background of yellow grass and granite outcrops. My son, Chris, had the 30-06 Ruger Hawkeye rifle steady on the sticks, with Robin giving extra support with his left shoulder, his well-worn floppy hat shading his eyes from the slanting sunrays. It was just after 10h00 and we had been following different groups of springbuck since early morning. The hunting method was to drive to a promising area on Robin’s almost 26000 hectares hunting farm, climb up to a vantage point from where we could glass for springbuck, and then approach via one of the dry river beds in the broken terrain. We were a group of four: myself, my son, Robin Hurt and Gabriel, Robin’s tracker. The animals were tame enough, with Robin only accommodating a minimum number of hunters each season, and allowing nobody to shoot from a vehicle.

 

Once he identified a suitable ram, Robin took the lead in the slow approach to the springbuck, sometimes crouching low, but often walking in plain sight of the springbuck, in a wide, gradually closing half-circle, with the springbuck staring at us from a distance, without taking off in full flight. I realised that Robin knew exactly what he was doing, with habits ingrained from many years of hunting experience. He carried a modern Winchester .300 Short Magnum as the backup rifle, but his shooting sticks were in a class of their own – no modern fancy-folding stuff, but sticks made from the indigenous Salvadora tree, prevalent in the nearby Gaub River. “It’s difficult to teach an old dog new tricks,” said Robin when he saw me smiling at this setup.

 

I am an old-timer hunter, hunting many animals in my lifetime of seventy years, among others some good specimens of the big five. All of these hunts were self-generated, often with the help of an indigenous tracker, whom I could trust, and on whose instincts and knowledge of the veld and of animal behaviour I could depend. I never had the desire to hunt under the guidance of a formal professional hunter (PH). This probably stems from my individual personality, and from a jealously-guarded emphasis on my personal freedom to make decisions the way I prefer, and not to be told what to do, unless I specifically ask for advice. The main drawback in this regard was that the tracker/guide usually had a strong craving for fresh meat and would urge me to shoot, whatever the consequences. On this basis I made many mistakes in the hunting field, leading to wounded animals and hours of painstaking tracking work, which should have been avoided.

Chris and the tracker at the hunting vehicle at Groot Gamsberg.

Robin Hurt under his well-worn floppy hat glassing the terrain.

I am, at the same time, an avid reader of stories, especially those on hunting and adventure. The well-known Hemingway story, “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, has always been one of my favourites. From this, it is evident that the relationship between the professional hunter and his client/s is often a complex one. Since the proliferation of good-quality hunting videos on the internet I also became a dedicated viewer of these. Professional Hunters like Jeff Rann, Ivan Carter, and others, became a hallmark of how a successful hunt can be conducted. In this regard, one must probably take into account that only the successful outcomes will be presented to the audience.

 

A few years ago, I also watched the full-length big-screen movie “In the Blood’ about the growing up of a young boy and his “first blood’ in the hunting fields of Africa, in which Robin Hurt as Professional Hunter for the expedition plays a prominent role as the guide and mentor of this boy. The stories and video clips awakened in me the desire to see how such a “guided” hunt is conducted in practice, and to allow myself to participate in such a hunt.

 

Some may call it ccoincidence, but I call it serendipity that myself and Robin Hurt became neighbours on our respective farms in the Khomas Hochland of Namibia, since some fifteen years ago. Robin Hurt has guided successful hunts for clients on hundreds of trophy elephant, buffalo, lion, leopard and other animals over his decades’ long hunting career in Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. Known as “the hunter’s hunter” for his dedication and professionalism, he became a legend in his lifetime. Hunting organisations like Safari Club International, rightly so, view Robin as one of the top living professional Hunters in Africa.

Myself and Robin built a solid neighbourly relationship over the years, often jointly attending to the normal day-to-day management of our respective pieces of land, attending to challenges like wildfires, poaching, stray animals, broken fences, etc. Robin is nearing eighty, but he is still amazingly fit for his age, with hunting still very much alive in his blood. He, however, himself admits that hunting dangerous game in often politically disrupted countries higher up in Africa has become too much of a risk, and a burden on body and soul. He, therefore, bought himself the hunting farm, Groot Gamsberg, in Namibia to come “retire” on, inviting his old-time clients, now also older, slower, and more cautious, for plains game hunting here.

Springbuck in their habitat on Robin’s land.

My son, Chris, nowadays lives and works in Australia. He has a much more accommodating personality than myself, and is much more willing to take and follow orders. When he and his family came to visit us here in Namibia for a week or two, I thought the moment ideal to put the possibility of a hunt under guidance of a Professional Hunter to the test, and in which I could participate as an objective observer. When I asked Robin if he would take us, he was immediately willing to do so, on the basis of our friendship and neighbourliness. The hunt would be for a good springbuck ram from his herd of altogether almost 600 springbuck.

 

The terrain was mostly quartz-strewn undulating plains, not heavily bushed, with granite outcrops in between and dry river beds winding down via the contours. The massive Gamsberg, one of the highest mountains in Namibia, at over 2300 meters high, was a blue-hazed presence in the near distance. It was clear from the start that this was to be a different sort of hunt than what I was used to. The decision-making was in somebody else’s hands. That, to me, was a liberating experience that I did not experience before. For the first time in my hunting career I did not feel the pressure to make decisions. All decisions, up to the moment of the final squeezing of the trigger, now depended on the Professional Hunter. Robin knew his hunting area, he knew his animals, he had confidence in his abilities. He calmly surveyed the land and the animals below through his binoculars before starting to move out. His calm assurance also affected us. I experienced none of the former highly charged adrenaline rush and frantic movements as when on a self-guided hunt. I think that this calmness also affected the animals which we were stalking, and they moved away only slightly before starting to graze again. In this way we could approach to within shooting distance before setting up the sticks.

Chris with his ram showing the “death pronk”.

Chris and Robin with the trophy ram after the hunt.

The final shot was almost an anti-climax. The buck stumbled head-down for a few meters before succumbing. Robin gave my son a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. “Good shooting!” he said. That was all that was needed. I again realised that the essence of the journey lay in the whole hunt, not in the eventual kill only.

 

The trophy was of exceptional quality, thick, symmetrical horns curving back at the tips, and measuring nearly fifteen inches a side. I already prepared a special place for them on my verandah wall, mounted on an indigenous piece of wood, the outlay indicating the lucky triangle of father, son and PH.

One for the Road

Dec 6, 2023 | Hunting Stories, News

Elephant in the Okavango.  Botswana has one of the few remaining healthy elephant populations—healthy to the point of threatening their own well-being through habitat destruction.  Proper elephant management is difficult because of international opinion, made all the worse in the age of the Internet.

By Terry Wieland

 

Pachydermia

The fading symbol of Africa

 

To the wide world, the elephant is the symbol of Africa.  Hunters might hold out for the lion, and the greater kudu has it advocates, but ask the average person what animal he thinks of when you mention Africa and the answer will almost always be “the elephant.”

 

This fact is important when you consider the coverage given to game conservation generally by the mainstream media.  The mountain nyala may be seriously endangered, or the eastern bongo, or giant sable, but mention those to the average journalist—or, more to the point, the average editor—and you will likely get nothing more than a strange look.

 

Every couple of years, The Economist, London’s highly respected international news magazine, remembers the elephant and sends someone to take a look at its status.  One expects high quality journalism from The Economist, and usually gets it.  Its most recent articles on elephant are broadly excellent, but with one curious blind spot:  Nowhere that I can find do they mention legal trophy hunting, either as a means of raising revenue or controlling elephant numbers.  And nowhere do they credit hunting organizations such as Safari Club International for their efforts to save wildlife in general, and the elephant in particular.

 

The Economist’s writers, who are anonymous, seem to operate under the same biases that afflict journalists everywhere.  Certain subjects are taboo.  Saying anything good about big-game hunting is one such.  The corruption and venality of African politicians is another, especially if that politician was somehow connected with “freedom fighting.”

 

For example, in the 1970s, Jomo Kenyatta’s wife (one of them, at least) was acknowledged to be one of the biggest traffickers in illegal ivory in East Africa.  Was this ever mentioned in The Times when it wrote about the massive elephant slaughter that occurred back then?  Never, that I know of.  Kenyatta, one of the least admirable of all the immediate post-independence leaders, was given almost saintly status, and this particular wife enjoyed the same untouchable reputation.  I knew foreign correspondents in Nairobi back then who were well aware of the situation and filed stories about it, but these were invariably spiked or all references to Frau Kenyatta removed.

 

Twenty years ago, Gray’s Sporting Journal dispatched me to Africa with instructions to come back with an in-depth story on the status of the African elephant, which was widely believed to be seriously endangered.  Of course, it was not endangered in the least.  At the time, the numbers were estimated at about 750,000 remaining—a far cry from 2.5 million, or even the 1.5 million estimated in the 1970s, but still a long way from endangered.

 

Certainly, in some areas, notably Kenya, numbers were down drastically due to poaching, but in other areas, like Kwando in Botswana, elephant numbers were burgeoning to the point of serious habitat destruction.

 

I spent time with various elephant biologists, and all told the same story:  The major obstacle to any positive action on behalf of elephants was public misconceptions about the actual situation.  No question, the situation was dire, and probably terminal in some areas.  But in others, circumstances were totally different, and totally different actions were required—actions that were blocked by supposedly well-meaning people who thought they knew best.

 

The essential problem, I was told, lay in one fact.  In the mid-1800s, when Europeans began arriving in central Africa, they found islands of people in a sea of elephants.  Today, there are islands of elephants in a sea of people.  That’s fact number one.  Fact number two is that, historically, these vast numbers of elephants moved in continuous migrations, covering thousands of miles.

 

Fact number three is that elephants, all their admirable qualities aside, are intensely destructive animals.  They kill and uproot trees, devour vegetation, and generally devastate their environment.  As long as they were migrating, this was not a problem; quite the opposite, it was an essential part of regeneration, just like periodic veld fires.  Once they could no longer migrate, however, once they were confined to a particular area, the devastation became intense, not only to their detriment but to all the other animals, birds, and reptiles that called it home.

 

This is really an insuperable problem, since the expanding human settlements and infrastructure of Africa block migration routes, and this is almost certainly going to get worse.

 

Some do-gooder conservation groups look at this situation and suggest that the answer is to take elephants from where there are too many and relocate them to areas where there are too few.  This is an attractive proposition, especially when it conjures images presented in movies of a baby elephant in a sling beneath a helicopter, squealing with glee as it is transported to its new home.

 

First of all, where do you put them?  When elephants have been eradicated from an area, it is usually for a reason.  Either they threatened the human population or they were easily vulnerable to poaching.  Will those people want elephants returned?  Unlikely.  Would they be safe from poachers?  Unlikelier still.

 

As for relocating them in the first place, it’s a massive, expensive undertaking fraught with difficulties.  They need to be relocated in family groups.  They need to be transported in a sedated condition, in heavy vehicles, for long distances, over bad roads, with veterinarians in constant attendance, and even then they can only be sedated for short periods.  Intelligent elephants may be, but they don’t seem to accept the explanation that all of this is for their own good.

 

Ask the average person about legal hunting, or even culls, to reduce numbers, versus relocating surplus animals, and everyone will say they should be relocated.  When was the last time you saw an article in The Economist, The Times, or anywhere else, about the realities of relocation?

 

In its most recent article about African elephants, The Economist concluded that the causes of elephant poaching were poverty and bad governance and law enforcement.  No kidding.  Really?

 

In another Economist article several years ago, looking at the plight of elephants and rhinos in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya (the NFD, as it was known years ago), the writers concluded that the animals needed somehow to be given economic value in order to encourage the local tribes, like the Turkana, to protect rather than poach.

 

Nowhere in the article did they even mention legal sport hunting as a possible means of helping to do so.

 

Legal hunting has been a thing of the past in Kenya since 1977.  That is not going to change, and the idea that rich eco-tourists will want to visit the hostile environment of the NFD, and pay enough money to make it worthwhile, is a pipe dream.  Other Economist articles have stressed how dangerous it is to even approach the NFD, and it’s been closed to outsiders because of that, off and on, for years.

 

The advantages of having a legal hunting infrastructure are well known:  You have camps with armed men in them, you have regular patrols as hunting vehicles crisscross the territory, you provide permanent employment and a source of hard currency for the locals, and you give the game department more revenue with which to hire and pay game scouts.

 

The abolition of legal hunting in 1977, with the resulting elimination of all of these benefits in and around protected areas, was a major factor in the explosion of uninhibited poaching of elephants and rhinos in Kenya in the late ‘70s and ‘80s.  There was little to stop them.  Yet the hunting ban was widely applauded as a positive move toward game conservation when, in fact, it was the polar opposite.

 

The other advantage of having such a hunting community is that it gives it hunting a constituency, and a constituency has a voice in government.  No voice in government?  Then no one cares.

 

Would a big-game hunter pay big bucks to hunt elephants in the NFD?  Probably he would, but once you start looking at all the different aspects and difficulties of such an idea, the possibility is extremely remote.

 

In an area where tribes depend on cattle, where grass is scarce and water scarcer, trying to convince herdsmen to value elephants and rhinos over cattle and goats is a waste of time.  To my mind, probably the best use of the mountains of “save the elephant” donations held by the big wildlife funds would be straightforward bribes to the tribesmen, along with giving modern weapons and substantial salaries to the guards, and instituting a shoot-on-sight anti-poaching policy.

 

The alternative is having game scouts and guards who are outgunned by the poachers, who have no qualms about shooting anyone in uniform—or anyone else for that matter.

 

In today’s environment, the surest way to raise an outcry is to have some predominantly white organization try to tell a black government what it should do.  In between the black and the white lies the grey of the elephant, at the mercy of politics, political correctness, and irrevocable change.

Classic and Contemporary African Hunting Literature

Dec 6, 2023 | Archive, News

Rhino War

Major General (Ret.) Johan Jooste with Tony Park (Ingwe Publishing, 2022, 268 pages)
Reviewed by Ken Bailey

  

 

Rhino War is a fascinating read describing the staggering level and sheer brutality of rhino poaching in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, and one man’s Herculean efforts to stem the losses.

 

In 2012, Johan Jooste, a retired South African general, was hired to lead Kruger’s anti-poaching efforts. He was selected for this role in large measure because of his military experiences, as South African National Parks (SANP), desperate to reduce the overwhelming rhino losses, wanted to introduce a paramilitary-like approach to combatting poaching. Jooste describes in great detail the unanticipated challenges he faced, from opposition within some ranks of the SANP system and a reluctance to change by many of the park rangers, to chronic underfunding, and a largely unsympathetic government in Mozambique, from where the vast majority of poachers originated.

 

Co-written by Tony Park, an established Australian writer of thriller novels and non-fiction biographies, the crisp and clean writing style encourages the reader to continue turning the page – there’s no fluff here.

 

Jooste quickly discovers that protecting Kruger’s rhinos isn’t merely a local operational issue, it’s heavily influenced by national and international politics, and success requires that he become a rhino ambassador, mingling with government officials, royalty, the media and wealthy patrons as he strives to garner the support and funding required to fulfill his vision and, ultimately, save the last great rhino herd on earth.

 

Jooste is clearly a man of many talents. Not only does he prove to be effective in recruiting support at the highest levels, he also shows himself to be a capable boots-on-the-ground leader, describing in fascinating detail many of the thrilling and dangerous anti-poaching operations he took part in, side by side with the unheralded rangers who risked their lives on a daily basis. And make no mistake, as Rhino War teaches us, anti-poaching is, often times, literally a kill or be killed exercise, reflective of the huge money in the rhino horn trade coupled with far too many poor and desperate people willing to do anything to feed their families.

 

Overcoming myriad hurdles along the way, after several years Jooste is not only able to put the brakes on what had been a growing problem, but with the help of technology, generous private funding, a revitalized and recognized ranger team, and the true grit of a military man unwilling to fail, he ultimately succeeds in reversing the tide.

 

Rhino War will interest anybody with a passion for Africa’s great wildlife. It provides an insider’s look at the insidious challenges of poaching, how vast an impact poaching can have on both a local and regional scale, and how significant the personal and financial resource requirements are to conserve our threatened wildlife for future generations.

A Night in Hippo Heaven

Dec 6, 2023 | Hunting Stories

By Donald J Stoner

 

It is said that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal (if you exclude mosquitos).  But does that qualify them to be classified as dangerous game.  I have certainly had my doubts until, that is, an experience I had one night in a farmer’s field.  There is no question that an animal that weighs two tons, can run up to 20 mph and has huge teeth, has the potential of being dangerous.  The danger is highest if you happen to catch a hippo on the land.  Water is their preferred environment and they seem less threatened there.  I don’t think any predator will attack a full-grown hippo in the water, although a big croc will certainly snatch a small hippo given half a chance.  On the other hand, lion, especially a large pride, will attack a hippo if they catch it on land.  This may have something to do with hippo temperament when they are away from water.  Threaten a hippo on land, and it will head straight for the nearest water and run over or through anything foolish enough to get in the way.  This is usually not “charging”; it is simply escaping.  Of course, if you happen to be between the hippo and the water, the effect for you is not much different.  He will not hesitate to kill you as he goes by.

 

Since I have never really considered hippo “dangerous” game, I have never had a great desire to hunt one.  Shooting a hippo in the water, while it can be challenging, is hardly dangerous.  Thus, hippo was never on my “wish list”.  However, in 1996 when on safari with my wife, an unusual opportunity arose that changed my opinion of hippo.

 

I had a wonderful safari in a game-rich area bordering the Kruger Park. During that safari I had taken both lion and leopard.  The leopard had not been planned but the opportunity came due to heavy predation on a nearby farm.  The hunt for lion and leopard consumed almost all of our three weeks scheduled safari time, but in addition to taking a lot of bait, I had also taken several quality trophies.  I was well past satisfied with the success of the hunt, so I had packed up my rifles and gear and planned to enjoy another couple of days in camp before catching the plane home.

 

On the morning of our next to last day in camp, my PH excitedly came to our room and asked if I would like to take a hippo.  “Well, not exactly!  But I will listen to your proposition.”  He then explained that a sweet potato farm in an area about an hour from our camp had just called him because they had been given a problem permit to kill a hippo that had been raiding their farm every night for two weeks. 

This was a real problem because the hippo was consuming an estimated 450 pounds of potatoes a night and doing great damage to the remaining plants.  He then explained that the farm was near a reserve that was fenced off from private farm land to protect the crops.  The fact that the hippo was leaving the reserve indicated it was probably a young male that had been driven out of the pod by the dominant bull.  When displaced, they can become quite a problem as they search for new territory.  Because of this behavior, my PH thought the offender would not be a trophy bull, but since the price was right, he suggested we take the job.  He explained that we would have to be certain we killed the culprit and to do that we would have to catch him 

feeding on the field at night.  He explained that we would have to wait till late evening and then, every hour or two, we would start near the river and walk the fields, working our way toward the back of the farm moving in absolute silence and darkness.  We would find the hippo by sound since they make a lot of noise chewing up potatoes.  Once located, we would get as close as we could and then turn the lights on him.  That would trap the hippo.  He would have to come by us to get back to safety and would probably try to kill us as he went by.  His selling point was not the trophy, but rather that it was indeed a dangerous hunt.  OK!  Now you have my attention.

 

I unpacked my .375 and solid ammo and my PH began making the arrangements with both the farmer and the game management department.  Late in the afternoon we drove the hour or so to the farm where we met the farmer and his farm manager.  They showed us around the farm just as it was getting dark.  In doing so, we surprised a sounder of bush pigs which they also needed to remove, and I made a lucky shot from a moving vehicle at a running pig and put him down.  It was a good start to the evening.

 

After we surveyed the farm and developed our strategy, we parked under an old tree near the riverside of the farm and had some coffee and a light snack. It was a clear, cold night and the miles of plowed fields soon were shrouded in darkness.  I was then given strict instructions that I will never forget. 

 

“You must remain absolutely silent until we locate him and get the light on him.  As soon as the light hits him, you start shooting.  Shoot for the head or neck, but get as many shots into him as you can.  I will be standing next to you and the second I don’t see empty cases flying from your rifle, I will start shooting.  This is serious and you must put him down quickly or someone will get hurt.  Do you understand?”  OK, I think I had the picture!  I better shoot fast and well or you are going to do it for me and if I mess up, we will all be in a lot of trouble.  I got it.  Yea, right!  Can I go home now?  This was not exactly what I expected.  Stumbling around in the dark with a hippo, not to mention all the other interesting things you might stumble into like mambas, cobras, adders and who knows what else, scarcely seems like fun.

We waited until it was black dark.  About nine pm we made the first round of plowed fields with uneven footing, varied smells, feet sinking into soft soil in places, and stumbling on lumps of solid clods at others.  It took forty-five minutes to walk the rows of crop, probably about half a mile, and then we returned to the truck where we sat, talked, and shared coffee.  By now it was getting quite chilly, so the hot coffee was very welcome.  We repeated the same drill at ten and eleven and then returned to find an invitation to join the farmer at his house for a cup of hot chocolate and some snacks, a welcome invitation.  Upon arrival, everyone went in ahead of me and closed the door almost in my face, which seemed a bit unusual.  As I opened the door, I was confronted by a huge leopard, claws out, jaws open in mid-spring right in front of the door.  Needless to say, it gave me quite a start until I realized it was a beautiful mount of a big leopard arranged to give any unexpected guest just the scare it gave me.  Of course, everyone got a laugh out of my sudden frozen step and surprised look. 

 

Shortly after midnight we were back walking the rows and rows of planted sweet potatoes.  Several times we heard movement and maneuvered to be ready but each time it was some unknown animal that heard, or smelled, us and simply vanished.  Still, every noise caused a heightened awareness and adrenalin surge. 

On this round of the farm, about half way across an immense field, we heard noise and there was no mistaking the source.  Whatever was making the noise had to be huge, so obviously it was hippo, elephant, or rhino.  Since there had been no problem with either of the latter, we assumed it was the hippo.  My PH moved to my right, almost touching my shoulder, and then whispered, “ready”.  At that the light came on and illuminated an immense form about thirty yards away.  With a speed that was little short of unbelievable, the hippo swiveled to directly face us.  I could see his head lower and bulk start to move toward us.  Almost as quickly I fired, squeezing the trigger at the same instant the crosshairs crossed his eyes.  There was no conscious aiming, just a snap shot.  Thankfully, I had been doing a lot of practice with moving targets.  As I fired, the huge mass slammed down into the ground chin first as his forward foot failed to move as he rushed forward. 

The impact was so hard that I could not only hear it but I felt it in my feet.  My shot had severed his spine just at the back of the head.  He was already moving so fast that my bullet, intended for between the eyes, hit about four inches further back severing the spine at the base of the skull.  A spine shot explained his sudden and complete collapse.  As I stood trying to determine if I needed to shoot again my PH slapped my back so hard I almost had an accidental discharge.  He was absolutely thrilled.  So were the trackers.  The relief was palpable and the enthusiasm at the size of the brute was off the scale.  I had been warned not to expect a trophy-sized hippo, but he was certainly a trophy bull and proved to be the largest hippo killed in that province over the last five years.  He was indeed battle scarred and it appeared he had lost his fight to maintain supremacy which probably accounted for his behavior. 

 

I was simply astounded at his size.  I had been assured that we would recover the animal in the truck we took, but this bull was so huge, we barely managed to get the severed head into the bed of the truck.  We had to leave the body in the field to be recovered the following day.  No wonder they were losing four hundred plus pounds of potatoes each night.  The area where he had been feeding looked like a bulldozer had been at work.  The farmer was jubilant, my PH was thrilled, and I was simply ecstatic.  It was a remarkable trophy, taken on land at night, and done with one fast shot.  What a night to remember.

 

As we returned to the camp, I was in hippo heaven.  That night remains a wonderful memory and one I certainly will never have the opportunity to repeat.  I just thank God it ended safely and that I had the experience of such a hunt.  And, “yes”, I now consider hippo dangerous game. 

Karamojo Bell and his Small Bores – Stubborn Resolve or Logical Choice?

Dec 4, 2023 | Hunting Stories, News

This highly ornate Rising Bite double rifle was refitted in Rigby’s London shop for a second barrel set in 9.3x62mm to accompany the original .350 Rigby Magnum barrels. The extension seen at the breech end of the barrels fits very precisely into the action face where a bolt rises into the slot on lock up to form the rising bite. This lock up is very sound, although Bell had mixed feelings for doubles and was cautious of their reliability in harsh conditions where grit may hamper lockup. He often sought out wet areas with tall grass when in pursuit of elephant and preferred a well-made bolt feed that would lock up if covered in silt and grit.

By Doug Manzer

 

It’s near 70 years since Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell left this world, but I do wonder if his opinions on rifle and calibre selection were well reasoned, especially for the time he lived? He certainly wasn’t afraid of voicing an adversarial view, but was there more to it than stubborn Scottish resolve and a desire to make his own path?

 

Bell is a highly regarded if somewhat contrarian figure in the modern history of hunting sportsmen. He is one of the most accomplished hunters of his era and did so with an unorthodox approach in his choice of arms. He also enjoyed poking fun at his contemporaries, especially those in what he termed as the double barrel big bore camp, which he categorized as the “DBBB gang”. He clearly had fun with this, and generally shrugged off the advantages offered from big bores against the disadvantages they imposed for his style of hunting.

Before his name became associated with the .275 Rigby, Bell bought, used, sold, and traded a plethora of rifles and calibres. He went through an early period of trial and error that shaped his views on hunting as well as the rifle and calibre combinations most capable of filling his needs. These early days primed his quest for a reliable and easy shooting arm that would perform as expected when matched with the available ammo.

 

Born in 1880, Bell’s formative years occurred during a period of heightened change in arms development. The patent houses were in a flurry of activity, and many of the lockup and extraction mechanisms that we enjoy today were established during this period before WW1.  Black powder was being phased out, and advances in primers and smokeless propellants made ignition and burn rates more reliable.  Even so, powders were still evolving, and their stability varied across the broad range of temperatures where firearms were being used. Cartridges developed in the temperate areas of Europe were being tested by explorers, hunters, and military regiments in much hotter zones near the equator, often resulting in heightened pressures.

 

One Shot

 

When age 16 and after much persuasion, Bell convinced his guardians to outfit him for East Africa in 1897 where, by sheer pluck, he talked his way into a paid position as hunter for a survey crew on the Kenya-Uganda rail line. He’d left Edinburgh with an elegant Fraser falling block .303 that performed beautifully in the moderate temperatures of Scotland.  His cartridges were filled with nitro-glycerin based smokeless powder commonly known as cordite, that when combined with the precise chambering in the Frazer, led to extraction issues in the heat of the equatorial sun.  Once fired, he often had to ram the spent hull from the chamber with a rod before a second shot could be made. This certainly made him aware of his imposed limitations and helped ignite his inclination toward one shot kills.

 

After continuous extraction issues he traded the Fraser .303 for a less refined gun, but one he thought would extract more reliably in the heat: a single shot Winchester .450 that used a long-tapered case filled with black powder. The transaction included a stash of hollow-point copper bullets which, on the surface, appeared to be a fair deal. This combination worked well enough on lighter plains game, although he soon found that selective shot placement was critical on heavier boned animals. The shortcomings of those soft-core bullets eventually came to a head with an event he describes as his first true run-in with a lion.

 

Bullet Construction

 

Bell took on his first lion just months before the Man Eaters of Tsavo effectively halted construction of the railway in 1897. He took a head shot from 30 yards when, instead of dropping, it turned tail and headed into cover. He hoisted himself into a tree for a look, while at the same moment the big cat lunged forward, missed his dangling feet, and put chase to his companion.  He immediately dropped down and took the lion on the shoulder as it turned to grab his friend. That shoulder shot should have been the coup de grâce, but instead the lion made cover once again. Bell later found that his first bullet entered below the left eye and shattered the lower jaw, while the second broke apart on the front shoulder without penetration. He finished the lion with a third round at very close range, which all told heightened his attention on bullet construction and its importance for penetration. He went back to a .303 soon after this incident, but in a magazine rifle with nickel-jacketed 215gr. solid bullets.

 

Jump forward a year and Bell was in the opposite extreme facing the cold as a market hunter for the Klondike gold rush. He’d acquired another falling block from Fraser while on route to Dawson City, although this time in .360 calibre without concerns for heat affecting pressures.

 

He spent the winter on snowshoes harvesting moose and caribou, while methodically relying on one-shot kills to stretch a stash of 160 rounds through the winter. His partner was making 25-day return trips on dogsled to market the meat but didn’t return for the last run and swindled Bell of the entire poke.  Left with few options, 18-year-old Bell hawked the rifle for cash and headed south to Calgary, where he joined the Canadian Mounted Rifles and soon embarked for South Africa and the Boer war.

 

Bell amassed a small pool of savings from his stint in the army, and from this outfitted his kit for hunting in Uganda. He truncated his initial selection of rifles in 1902 to those with a military pedigree. He’d come to recognize that military arms and loads were being scrutinized for their dependability under prolonged and hard use, and their development advanced by the deep pockets of nations.  He surmised that military calibres were more consistent and less expensive than those designed primarily for hunting and favoured them heavily over the next 10 years.

 

The battery for this first well-organized expedition into Uganda included two 10-shot Lee Enfield sporterized 303s. They had shortened barrels with pistol grips and cost £8 each. In true Bell fashion his initial hunt on elephant left an impression. He came upon several bulls in the mud and, following spurious advice of an acquaintance, carefully placed shots in the upper dome portion of their heads looking for brain shots. He was surprised to see very little response to the noise or bullet placement, so he also shot one behind the shoulder. That bull reacted to the body shot with cries and groans, and even though it was anchored the others fled immediately.

 

Determined to learn why his initial shots hadn’t worked, Bell borrowed a large saw and with his team, opened the scull vertically for a rudimentary post-mortem. This exposed the brain far lower down and to the rear of where he’d assumed, and roughly 3 to 4 times the size of a human brain by comparison.  He made sketches of the brain within the surrounding head, and calculated shooting angles that would take a bullet to the mark from any position around the skull. He soon put this knowledge to the test and at the next opportunity dropped a bull with a single brain shot from the side. He again noted that the bulls nearby were not particularly alarmed, and this provided the origins of his tactical approach for shooting two or more elephants from a group at the same encounter.

 

Recoil and Accuracy

 

Before Daniel Frazer’s untimely death in December of 1901, Bell spent time with him regulating the barrels of big bore doubles at the bench. He found the recoil unpleasant and readily acknowledged that this left a lasting impression. His groups would spread apart through a day of shooting, while in contrast Frazer’s would tightened up as the barrels were regulated. Bell recognized early on that recoil affects people differently and the negative influence it had on his own accuracy.

 

The Uganda Battery

 

His initial time in the Unyaro area of Uganda in 1902 was a financial success. He took 63 bull elephants averaging 53lbs/tusk, which then enabled him to outfit his first safari into the Karamojo region of North East Uganda. He again took a .303, but added his first bespoke .275 Rigby Mauser, as well as a .450/400 double rifle suggesting he remained open minded about big bore doubles even after his experience on the bench.

 

John Rigby & Co. began collaborating with Paul Mauser in 1897 and soon released the .275 Rigby on the Mauser 98 action. The .275 Rigby as many will recognize is also known as the 7x57mm or 7mm. It has a bullet diameter of .285”, but Rigby took a different approach using the distance between the lands (.275”) to rebadge the round in a brilliant marketing strategy that appeals to many anglophiles to this day.

 

The Mauser action and 7x57mm rimless cartridge were first designed by Paul Mauser in 1891, and widely sold as a military arm where it earned an early reputation. The case shape was designed to feed and extract reliably in extreme field conditions from both bolt action rifles and automatic machine guns. The common barrel twist rate was quite high at 1 in 8.7”, which enabled the 7x57mm (.275) to stabilize its long and relatively heavy 173gr. jacketed military bullet. It moved these along at 2300fps, and Bell concluded this moderate pace was associated with enabling these long bullets to penetrate deeply while holding their course without deformation.

 

Over the next seven years and four safaris into the Karamojo, Bell gained a graduate degree in the practical application of dispatching game. He favoured three calibres with each coming from strong military roots while fed a steady diet of solid bullets. It’s no surprise the .303 remained on his list with its 215 gr. solids. The .275 Rigby also gained a spot, and through time excelled to account for 75% of his lifetime harvest of elephant. He favoured the reliability of German DWM cartridges with 173gr. round-nose solids. The .275 burned more efficient Ballistite smokeless powder compared to the cordite in the .303s, which gave the former greater performance. Third, and perhaps used more than the other two for harvesting camp meat, was a .256 Gibbs Mannlicher with long-nosed 156 gr. solids.  Later on, Bell also obtained a light-framed .256 Mannlicher-Shoenauer that had been refined by Frazer, which he suggested had a “snaky feel” that made it a “pleasure to handle” at just over five pounds.

 

Bell preferred light guns that he could carry all day long and for months on end, literally. He estimated that he walked 70,000 miles pursuing game! He also valued a short bolt-throw and accredited this feature as being critical for rapid shots under pressure in close proximity. When encountering a group of elephants, he often took the first two or three within yards of each other, but then pursued the rest at a brisk run, and often for miles. He suggests this base approach favoured a rifle that was both light and shouldered quickly, with shots often taken from the side and behind at an oblique angle. He carried 35 rounds on his belt daily and submitted that large bore ammo with heavier arms simply weighed more for the same desired one-shot kills.

 

Up Close in Tall Grass

 

Rather than heading back to town for the rainy season in 1902, Bell established a camp on a hill that enabled him to frequently glass for bulls in the tall grass below. The low-lying ground was wet with deep water-filled holes that resembled puddles, and occasionally swallowed him “to the armpits” while stalking bulls in the tall grass. Bell and crew would follow the tunnels carved by elephants as they fed through the swamp, which made tracking easy but the going slow. He gave high praise to the Mauser action in these situations, as the Rigby would cycle reliably even when coated in the silt gleaned from blades of tall grass where the elephants had pushed through. In contrast, he criticized a double in these situations where this grit could prevent the action from locking up due to the fine tolerances at the breech face when closed.

 

The tall grass was well above head level, and Bell came to rely on a system of shooting while perched on the shoulders of his gun-bearer. They’d move in close while hidden by cover, and his tall gun bearer Manzema would stand erect with Bell up top for an unobstructed shot. Light recoil helped them both retain balance, and stocks with a short length of pull improved Bell’s range of motion and mount for off-angle presentations. Once a bull or two dropped, he’d run to the fallen animal and climb onto its back to gain more height for additional opportunities. Pursuing elephant in the tall grass and getting in close to multiple bulls became his base tactic and, in my mind at least, textbook Bell.

 

 

Above & below: Bell wasn’t content with the configuration of the first .416 Rigby he received in July 1913 and had another built later that same year. Rigby reused the stock and lengthened it 1/4” by fitting a wood extension. They also removed the original peep sight and fitted it to the new action along with a barrel 1” shorter than the first. The second rifle weighed 10oz less coming in at 9lbs14oz. Rigby shipped the rifle to Bell in October of 1913 in care of Hatton & Cookson, French Congo, along with; one .220 High Power, one 30 loop canvas belt for .416 cartridges, cleaning rod and accessories, turn-screws, leather front-sight protector, 10 tins of rape oil (stock conditioner), and 500 rounds of “Special” .416 solids.

Established in 1775, John Rigby & Co. has detailed sales ledgers that track the orders of Bell and his contemporaries. The ledgers of gunmakers are a fascinating history of sporting heritage.

The lockup on a Rigby double includes a top extension that secures the barrels to the breech face. This is known as the Rigby & Bissell Rising Bite, patented in 1879, and is a highly refined and secure locking system where this third grip is engaged by a bolt that rises into the slot in the extension. The Rising Bite double is still available today as a big bore, or as a shotgun like the vintage 12-bore displayed here.

A .275 Rigby Mauser in the John Rigby & Co. London shop with three-position safety that rotates over the bolt axis as Bell would have used.

The three-leaf rear sight on a .275 Rigby set for 100, 300, and 400 yards. The leaf pack can also be ordered in a traditional 65-, 150-, and 250-yard setting, which seems practical when running the rifle without a scope.

A .275 Rigby Mauser in traditional specification with fold over three-position safety, hooded front sight, and three-leaf rear sight.

Rigby rifles in varying stages of refinement taking shape in the London shop. John Rigby & Co. has finished rifles available but is also very willing to undertake bespoke orders in much the same way they accommodated Bell more than a century ago.

Rigby has a full stable of big bores available today just as it did before WW1.  Bell tried quite a few big bores in his day and was highly impressed by the stopping power of the .416 Rigby, although he preferred a Mauser bolt action.

Short Bolt-throws

 

In 1908, Bell traversed Abyssinia and the Omo River valley moving west toward southern Sudan. He was pursuing elephant once again and had good success. He’d been out for some time and about to move on, when asked to deal with a rhino that had killed a woman from a local village. He’d brought along a long-action .350 Rigby Mauser that hadn’t seen much use to date, so he tackled the rhino with it.  In true Bell fashion, he followed the animal into tall grass and took the first shot head on and just yards away. Bell worked the bolt and took the second shot with the barrel touching the neck as the mammoth rushed in – the striker fell on a spent primer. He’d short-stroked the bolt and re-loaded the spent case! This apparently led to a dicey few moments before a killing shot was made. The man had an ample portion in the kahuna department!

 

Cycling an action is a sub-conscious response in a perilous moment, and the longer bolt stroke of the .350 was outside his normal pattern.  Bell made a point of cycling and dry firing his normal carry-rifles constantly, and recognized what this did for creating calm in a pressurized situation. He didn’t have the same familiarity with the longer action of the .350, but acknowledged that with sufficient practice a longer stroke would be reliable, if a bit slower.

 

Big Bores

 

Bell ordered guns through several leading British gunmakers of the time and often sought new models and calibres as they became available. It would be easy to assume that he forged an unwavering opinion favouring small bores over large very early in his career. Although, his purchase history did not bear this out as he bought and used large bores well into his 30’s, including a .450/400 Frazer double rifle along with at least two renditions of the .416.

 

He purchased the first .416 in July 1913 from John Rigby & Co. on a Mauser magnum action, but shortly thereafter sent it back requesting a different configuration (see sidebar). The second rifle had a new action with the barrel shorter by 1”, with Rigby instructed to fit the original stock and lengthen it by 1/4”.  The second rifle was made a half pound lighter at 9lb 14oz. He closed out the order with 500 rounds of .416 ammo and a 30-loop canvas belt suggesting he intended on using the calibre a fair amount.

 

The new rifle was shipped to the French Congo where Bell was searching for new grounds (see sidebar), and exploring the river system in a small purpose-built steamboat. If you think “African Queen” you wouldn’t be too far off, and he used the craft to great advantage as a mobile camp. He was again focused on elephant, and I wonder if he considered the additional weight of a .416 less of an issue with his water-based transport? This was two years after Rigby launched the .416 in 1911, and only one after Holland & Holland patented the .375, with both offerings on bolt-action frames. Bell was quick to give the former a go.

 

Any time spent reading Bell’s anthology reveals a fastidious nature. He continually sought improvement from his shooting, and refined the balance, handling characteristics, and sighting apparatus of his rifles and weighed their utility through a particularly narrow lens. Bell took elephant with the .256, .275, .303, .318, .350, .450/400, and .416 and compared their virtues.  By all accounts he was a remarkable shot, and described by noted contemporary Colonel Townsend Whelan as the best rifleman in Britain with only one or two peers in the US at that time.

 

In his last known published work from 1954 and only months before his death, Bell gave praise to the .416 as a “grand killer” with serious penetration and considered his Rigby well balanced while “not feeling its weight”. His reservation as with all big bores to be fair, was that it did not suit his fast-paced style of hunting or the affect recoil had on accuracy and delaying the next shot.  He argued that dead is dead regardless of calibre, and the big bores didn’t provide him with enough advantage to make up for the extra weight, recoil, and cost of ammo.

 

Room for the Middle Weights

Bell also regarded the medium bore .318 very highly, noting it as the “deadliest weapon of the push-bolt type” known to him. He preferred 250gr. bullets for their penetration, being especially adept at coursing through hide and tissue on quartering away brain shots. He kept detailed notes and credited the .318 with a slightly better shot-to-kill ratio compared to the .275 when used on oblique brain shots from the rear. He selected the .318 (.330” actual) as the main battery for his water-based adventure on the Bahr Aouk river by canoe in 1918. 

 

He clearly liked the .318 and picked up 6,000 rounds of ammo along the way to support this favour.  Unfortunately, the batch was faulty with many misfires, so he used the ammo for practice as well as taking birds at distance on the wing.

 

A man of his time

 

In later years Bell recognized that his leaning toward small bores was heavily influenced by his early success with their use. He notes that if he had experienced similar results with big bores early on, he may well have found himself in the other camp, extolling their virtues with similar enthusiasm.

 

My own conclusion is that Bell was a pragmatist at heart, and selected his battery based on the evolving supply of reliable ammunition, and early on this brought him to calibres from a military pedigree coupled in light-framed actions. He selected rifles with the intent of getting in close in harsh quarters and taking several animals in quick succession, rather than selecting one individual as occurs among hunters today. He remained willing to adapt and trial different calibres well into his 40’s, although even in his 70’s, he still considered the advantages of a short bolt-throw and low recoil to outweigh the penetration advantages offered by the heavy weights. He was a highly accomplished rifleman and, given his ability to place shots under pressure, his preference for small bores made perfect sense – for him.

BIOGRAPHY

Doug Manzer is a life-long hunter and conservation scientist, and can be found on Instagram @doug.manzer and his website https://www.journeyafield.ca/

Classic and Contemporary African Hunting Literature

Nov 10, 2023 | Archive, News

Wato

Brian Watson ( 2019, 321 pages)
Reviewed by Ken Bailey

  

Brian Watson’s Wato is purely and simply an enjoyable read. I suspect that’s in part because he’s one of us. Like many of us he took a fancy to guns, shooting and hunting as a child, and he grew up in Australia reading about hunting in Africa and dreaming that one day he, too, could make the pilgrimage. He’s been a working man his whole adult life and had to save his shekels to make those dreams a reality—again, just like most of us.

 

Throughout the book, Wato, as he’s affectionately called by his friends and associates, demonstrates remarkable recall of his many safaris to Africa, in addition to a handful of hunts in other parts of the world. Each chapter describes an individual safari experience or a specific animal he has hunted. Over time he’s taken most of the key species in southern Africa, including the big five, though elephant hunting is clearly his passion and is the subject of several of the chapters. He’s also a bit of a gun nut, and if you enjoy reading about firearms, Wato won’t leave you disappointed. He even serves up a little meat for the wingshooting and angling fraternities.

 

What I really found compelling is that Watson has landed on just the right amount of detail in describing his various adventures. That’s a fine line to walk—too much detail and a reader gets bored before the climactic scene; too little and the stage isn’t set properly, we can’t imagine we’re walking side by side with him. Wato tiptoes along that line perfectly.

 

Watson is clearly a naturalist and conservationist at heart, and his appreciation for wild places and the flora and fauna they support, shines through; it’s evident throughout the book that it’s all about the experience for Watson, he’s not stepping off the plane with a tape measure in hand.

 

For those seeking a little eye candy, Wato is illustrated with 15 pages of colour photographs showing many of the people, places and hunts he describes in his stories.

 

If I have one beef with Wato, it’s that there’s too much passive, rather than active, voice. I find that a little distracting and cumbersome, although it’s not all that unusual in self-published books; a thorough editing would have cleaned that up.

 

Notwithstanding that little nitpick, I encourage everyone who appreciates contemporary African literature to pick up this book. It’s all very relatable and would be a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend those long air hours on the way to your next safari.

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