This story is from my best African Safari. I invited my brother and his son as well as my two best friends from my high school days and their sons. Of course my own son came along too, and I was even able to get my three daughters to release their husbands for the most exciting 2 weeks of all our lives.
Our hunt took place at Chete, on the south shore of Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. Our guides were my mentor from South Africa, Neil plus my old friend Attorney Richard. Also joining us on this hunt were my very good friends Big Robert, Pastor John, Bruce Almighty, Seed-Bearing Bob, Car-Selling Jim and Senator Larry from my church. A lion was one of the animals we were after. This was not that big a deal to me in some ways because my home in the Northern California foothills is not unknown for our share of mountain lions. Every now and again these cats will visit a nearby ranch. These lions take out sheep or attack a horse. But, those are 200 pound cats. This hunt is about the 600 pound king of beasts.
There are two ways of hunting a lion here. One is to find a recent track and follow it. The other way is to put some baits up. When a lion comes and feeds, the bait is generally replenished, and a blind is built to sit in to get that lion.
There are two ways of hunting a lion here. One is to find a recent track and follow it. The other way is to put some baits up. When a lion comes and feeds, the bait is generally replenished, and a blind is built to sit in to get that lion.
I have shot three lions on previous hunts and actually had to deal with a mountain lion with just a butcher knife once, in my imagination, and all these giant cats were tracked. Here in Africa we've put up baits on previous hunts, but we never managed to get any to come and feed while we were there.
We follow a very simple procedure here in Africa. I do the hunting and my guests do the shooting. This plan has worked over the years. I just tag along a step behind my guests. On this occasion I decided that we should put up a bait in a dry river bed about 200-300 yards from the Lake. I had some lions feed there before, and thought others might do the same. We built two blinds, one on each hill overlooking the river. This should give us a better chance to approach the blind, depending on the wind direction.
We shot a zebra and put it up for the lions. Next morning we left the camp at about 3:30am to be able to get to the blind before daybreak. We stopped the truck about ½ a mile away and walked the rest of the way to the blind. No luck this time, as nothing has come to the bait.
Big Robert, a seasoned hunter, was a bit nervous but I managed to calm the big guy by explaining that the big cats are no different than the our cats in Northern California, just three times bigger and a lot hungrier. That didn’t help Big Robert much, but it made me feel like a hero just to tell the big guy and act like I was the bigger man. Of course everyone on the hunt, my son in laws included, knew I was just blowing smoke. After all I don’t shoot anything anymore on these hunts, that is nothing but a Nikon.
The next day we passed by our bait and found that the zebra had been eaten. It was late in the afternoon, and we needed to get a fresh bait up quickly. We could hear a hippo making some noise in the lake not very far from where we were. And my son-in-laws Anthony, Clinton and Shane suggested that we go and get that hippo. We tried, but the hippos did not co-operate. They stayed too far off shore.
As luck would have it, Senator Larry shot an elephant the next day, and Car-Selling Jim put one of his legs up in a tree for the lions to feast on (not Car-Selling Jim's leg - the elephant's leg). We decided to try to get into the blind in the afternoon, as the lions might decide to have an early dinner. Seed-Bearing Bob and Bruce Almighty heard some noise coming from behind us, and then all was quiet. The sun went down and we had to go back to camp. Big Robert thought a lion probably made the noise, as he might have smelled us on his way to the bait. So another early start in the morning was on the agenda.
Again, we left camp at 3:30am, and when we got close to the bait we could hear lions feeding. Our excitement mounted. We got to one of the blinds, and we could see a lioness walking away from the bait. We thought she must have been the last one to leave the bait. There was still quite a bit of meat left, although the aroma coming from it was not very pleasant.
A few yards from the blind we could hear some growling at the bait, which shot our pulse up. It was our lucky day! As we could see a very large lion standing on his hind legs feeding very noisily. We watched him for a few minutes. He got down and turned towards us at a slight angle. I am not so sure he suspected anything, but I did not wait any longer. I aimed my Nikon at the big cat as Big Robert and two of my son in laws and even Pastor John set their sights on his neck and left shoulder.
It was Big Robert that sent a 300-grain Barnes X bullet into his neck. Everyone else was so over excited they either hit the tree or just missed altogether. He flopped over, got up, and walked a couple of yards and started rolling on the ground and biting himself (not Big Robert but the cat).
Before Big Robert had a chance of giving him another bullet, he disappeared from our view into a gully. We could hear growling for a couple of minutes, and then all was quiet.
The lion could be lying there stone dead, or he could have just followed that gully into the hills, or he could be waiting there for one of us to appear to even the score with us. My son Andrew, to my surprise, jumped out into the open and darted towards the last place in the gully we saw the lion. The rest of us decided to go up the hill on the other side of the gully, and try to see if we could see him from there. We made a detour and went up the opposite hillside. We could not see the lion, but we could see an awful lot of his blood on the ground where he was flopping around.
Then Andrew disappeared into a thicket of tall grass. That gave us a bit more encouragement, because the likelihood of the cat being alive after loosing all that blood was very remote. I was a little concerned about my son, but then remembered he had spent more than 20 years living in lion country at our Northern California ranch-ette.
Yet with a lion you really do not want to take any chances, we got back to the side where we had originally shot from, and went into the gully looking for Andrew and the lion. Rifles loaded and ready. But now we had two problems. A wounded lion or Andrew could easily mistake our noise in the brush and charge or shoot.
By this time our trackers had arrived, as we had left them at the truck. They came over as soon as they heard the shot. Big Robert was about 5 yards from the lion, but he could not see it. Then Andrew popped up from seemingly nowhere, he saw it. We were all very relieved to see it was dead, and especially relieved to see Andrew was out of danger. We found that Big Robert’s bullet hit it exactly where he had aimed, going through his neck, and coming out from just behind the opposite shoulder. We loaded up our lion, and headed back to camp, to share our trophy with the rest of the gang there.
Just as Bruce Almighty and Seed-Bearing Bob were loading the lion into the truck and pulling out to head for camp, my alarm clock went off. Darn! It was just another dream! Now it's time to get up again and get ready for another dangerous day at my office talking to senior citizens about long term care planning.
Well my best African Safari Dream must have been triggered after exploring the Internets African Safari list last night before I went to sleep.
How dangerous were your dreams last night?
(My fabricated dream was inspired from a real hunter's story - Ganyana Safaris, Zimbabwe- Africa 1999)
No comments:
Post a Comment