Day 7 – Stripes.
Slept like the dead. That really deep sleep where you wake up and await your heart to start moving again. I’m pretty sure I left my body. At last, some really good sleep and I’m grateful.
As I’m assembling something in a stupor that resembles a clothed homo sapiens, Bucky the wonder dog squeezes under the tent flap and checks on me. “What's taking so long human?”
Have i told you about Bucky?
He's the PH's German hunting terrier that will stand on his hind feet and twirl around as a dance to beg for a piece of rusk at tea time period
He is surprisingly well trained and rides on top of the Land Cruiser until an animal is injured and then he is sent in to find them and keep them busy, while the hunters come in to finish them off. I believe the idea is to keep a wounded buffalo distracted and focused on a dancing, yipping, little dog instead of flattening the hunter.
He's also pretty cute and wants to crawl on your lap as if he’s starved for attention. I'm sure if my daughter was here, she'd have him sleeping in her bed at night and ruin him completely within hours.
What is a rusk? A rusk is literally a dried-out chunk of bread that tastes like a biscuit or a pancake and is about the size of a woman's fist which you dip into tea until it's just soft enough not to break a tooth.
It's Afrikaans based and I suspect because somebody lost a bet, but PH says it’s from the Boer days when they went out into the field and this was how they did it.
The American equivalent would be a biscotti. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure those are American, but I’m not a fan of them either, so there's that.
0545 launch.
Bombed out of the LC just a mile or two down the tree line because crusty was spotted right at the edge of the tight stuff stuffing his face. Solo. Big bull. Chatty Cathy is very excited.
For those of you that know about sailing, we were essentially tacking toward him and trying to stay downwind. I guess you could call this bastardization of terminology “tacking tracking.”
PH says he can now be proud to say he was there when we coined the term.
Ol Crusty is up sun from us and I can't help noticing how gorgeous the pre-dawn sunrise is. It has this beautiful pea green layer in the middle between the orange/mahogany lower layer and the deep blue/purple frosting layer which then shifts to become a glowing orange ember stripe and then a lemon yellow. And by that time, the best part of it is you can start to see the thorns before they hit you in the face.
PH says the bull’s face looks white to him but we need to wait until there's more light. It might be Frank. We are still too far away to shoot anyway.
A side moment for thoughts on stalking:
Between the aardvark digging pitfalls in the middle of nowhere where you can drop a leg up to the hip, the deadfall and the dodging of branches, I begin to feel that I'm witnessing some type of new age Tai chi with rifles and shooting sticks. The ducking, the bending, the high stepping, the freezing mid-step while holding one leg suspended, and the hula hoop maneuvers to avoid entanglements.
Hardest part for me in this whole thing is similar to challenges during bow hunting. Remembering to breathe.
Now since I'm allergic to just about anything on the planet with a cellulose cell wall, it is rare that both nostrils are fully open. I hear myself breathing and switch to mouth breather mode and then when that seems too loud, I hold my breath without thinking about it. Next, I'm bursting for air and realize a big gasp is not helpful to the situation.
“Innnn the nose… ouuuuut the mouuuuth Daniel-san.” - Mr. Miyagi.
It’s too dark to see the ground and I accidentally kick a rock. PH turns to me and whispers “do you like soccer?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t play it right now.”
Then he steps on some deadfall and makes a bunch of noise and hides his sheepish grin in the low light. I pretend not to notice.
Even if you have soft upper grass, there's still that small inch where it has first pushed above the surface of mother that is stiff and crackly and you get into this mode where you have a little pause as you put your weight down to find out how big the crunch is going to be before you put your full weight onto it. I hate that part.
We almost have enough light. The baby powder puffer says we're still in a good place with the wind. The slow Tai chi stealth mode march closed 90 yards in about the last hour and the Buffalo is just feeding at the edge of the black thicket. We are now facing a very bright sunrise and crusty casually eats his way in and out of the black curtain of stabby and heinous things. Then, for no reason apparent to us, he vanishes and my hope dies a little.
Prayers are uttered for crusty bottoms to stay around but it is not to be. It seems the bulls are equipped with some type of photovoltaic sensor and when the ambient light is nearly sufficient for humans to see, the signal is given and they start moving into the thick stuff. This reminds me a LOT of late season old whitetail bucks that go fully nocturnal.
We wait in hope that he changes his mind but instead, he moves deeper. The wind shifts on us (dammit.) We back out to circle around from the other side.
Upon the walk back to the LC, Bucky looks particularly disappointed in us.
I think he's just pissed off that we didn't give him the whole rusk.
We come upon a very large sable bull that appears about 20 yards from us.
When you first walk up on a sable you could be fooled that they are a domestic animal because they don't really run away in fear. But that would be a mistake.
It seems upon further inspection that they're kind of an arrogant bastard that will stare you down. It reminds me of being in a pen with a domestic bovine bull. Some of them will come at you and some won’t and you never really know.
Today Mr. Sable decided he was going to back off but I did notice the PH tensed up and took off his safety. Noted for later.
I did get a good picture of him showing his butt to the camera and strangely, with a weird grin on his face.
On the way around to take another go at crusty we see some zebra and decide to go for a stalk and let crusty bottoms get settled in for the morning.
There are tsessebe and go away birds everywhere in a sort of grid formation. They're like some perverted motto from the visa card commercials. They are everywhere you DON’T want them to be. They seem to exist to spook everything you're trying to stalk and call attention to the fact that you're there. I begin to have visions of a cull hunt where all I do is massacre go away birds and tsessebe.
PH says to be sure to invite him because he has some payback to dish out.
The zebra runs. Busted by a bird. PH asks if I want to see what a 458 win mag has on a go away bird.
Suddenly the realization snaps into place. They both function as forward reconnaissance for the Buffalo in exchange for not being brutalized. The whole lot of them are organized. Next time I kill something I'm going to check for earpieces and neck mics.
We circle around to the backside of the thicket but are never able to find any more tracks of the Buffalo. However, as Ze Germans say, Das ist besser als ins Hemd zu scheißen.
Time for lunch.
The crow’s nest spots a herd of zebras a few miles down the road and we drive on past, cut the engine, and drift to a halt and then circle around a few 100 yards away for a downwind approach.
Today's core exercise and yoga routine involves some type of crawling on hands and knees to cover ground. I find I prefer this to the Buffalo Butt Shuffle.
It seems the devil is controlling the wind but we manage to get within 100 yards and stand up behind a tree that looks like the singing bush from the Three Amigos. Only with thorns. Lots of thorns. And thankfully it doesn't start singing because that would just be weird.
A big zebra that we think is a good stallion finally steps kindly into a position that gives us a shot and I drop him. However, upon inspection, it turns out he is a she. It’s my first zebra though so I'm still happy even though I would have preferred a stallion.
What I'm not happy about is the song that jumps into my head.
“I met her in a bar down in West Soho where they drink champagne and it tastes just like coca-coooola. C O L A Cohoola.
*Pushes the button to switch tracks*
(Also… eww)
“Well you should see polythene Pam. She’s so good looking but she looks like a man!”
Hmmm… that’s not much better John. We’ll move along with no music please.
After we get the zebra to the skinning yard, the conversation turns back to our primary quarry. PH is getting a bit worried and I think he's worried that I'm worried. Lots more comments about clients getting Buffalo on their last day. Don't be anxious. This happens all the time.
I reassure him I won't be soul crushed and planned to go down swinging but if he has anything in his bag of tricks, now is the time to pull it out.
He still looks nervous but I leave it alone. He’s working his ass off.
On second thought, I don’t leave it alone. What this guy needs is a dose of obnoxious client to keep him in the game.
I proceed to tell him there are no real bulls in this area. I’ve only seen black blobs that I can't quite make out with my naked eye before dawn.
He mentions that we saw Frank at the waterhole near camp with the spotlight in a mildly concerned “is this guy serious?” manner.
I tell him Frank is probably animatronics like at an amusement park and maybe he and the tracker are excellent actors that put on a good show after they “see” them and I don’t.
I mean I haven't actually had proof of life of Buffalo to this point. Perhaps someone straps on some Buffalo hoof clogs and runs around like the crazies that would make big foot footprints in the woods.
After an initially alarmed face he realizes I'm messing with him and the tension breaks and we have some good chuckles including one story he shares about a client from Germany that is hunting with a friend and wounds an animal but after they don't find it for the next day proceeds to gaslight everyone telling them that he missed and refuses to pay for it. So he asks me not “to go all German on him.”
Agreement reached.
We walk up the back mountain behind the lodge in the failing light to see if anybody snuck in on us. We run some tracks all the way into the moonlight but come up with nothing.
Dinner, wine, early bed.
Quote of the day:
“Don’t go all German on me.” - PH
