I was tempted to start this journey down memory lane with the recollection of a charging wounded Cape buffalo, since that is a fairly rare encounter, or the first time a wall of buffalo kept jostling up to face my hunting party, moving up three times along with my heartrate. Instead, I want to go first with a childhood memory that was more than a little bit instrumental in my unquenchable desire to visit Africa some day. I was about age 11.
I don't know the name of the show on TV, or if it was a replay of some film by Osa Johnson or others, but absolutely branded in my mind is the film sequence in which the wounded lion has to be followed up by the PH, while the person filming catches it all from a nearby tree. Some of this has to be remembered almost in slow motion because so much happened so fast that the mind has to take the extra time to unpack it all. The lion was barely visible in waist-high grass (barely visible from ELEVATION--no doubt Invisible to the hunter at ground level) and it crouched with front paws outstretched gaining a grip on the turf. When it launched its charge it was so fast that it almost could seem as if it were pulling the ground forward to it like you would try to yank the carpet out from underneath someone. I was unaware a lion could move so fast, and as inexperienced as I was, it was instantly terrifying. A shot rang out with no effect whatsoever on the oncoming lion. I was amazed at how the PH immediately stroked that rifle bolt and at the same time the lion made its first airborne bound. It had made such a fast rush that to sail airborne actually seemed to slow it down, and as the PH was breaking the trigger on the second shot, the lion did the seemingly impossible...it yanked its fore end to the left and then snatched its rear end to the left like some kind of funky dancer (all this in mid-air) so that the shot passed right by with seemingly a foot to spare! This happened in mid-air so fast that the PH had already committed to the trigger squeeze, but again, without ever having raised his head from the rifle, he smoothly stroked the bolt back and as it was almost forward the lion ran into the end of the barrel, knocked him out of view of the camera, and there was a much too long, pregnant silence as the tree in which the cameraman was perched shook and vibrated a few times. Then a jaunty, cheery voice narrated, "Well, that was a close one. The rifle went off just as the lion struck the barrel. The camera shaking was caused by the final death throws of the lion"...tho we never saw the hunter afterward. Not until Capstick described such things was anything else even close to the jolt that film gave me...and yet strangely it engrained in me that that was exactly where I had to go someday.
If anyone knows what that film was, I would love to see it again as an adult.
I don't know the name of the show on TV, or if it was a replay of some film by Osa Johnson or others, but absolutely branded in my mind is the film sequence in which the wounded lion has to be followed up by the PH, while the person filming catches it all from a nearby tree. Some of this has to be remembered almost in slow motion because so much happened so fast that the mind has to take the extra time to unpack it all. The lion was barely visible in waist-high grass (barely visible from ELEVATION--no doubt Invisible to the hunter at ground level) and it crouched with front paws outstretched gaining a grip on the turf. When it launched its charge it was so fast that it almost could seem as if it were pulling the ground forward to it like you would try to yank the carpet out from underneath someone. I was unaware a lion could move so fast, and as inexperienced as I was, it was instantly terrifying. A shot rang out with no effect whatsoever on the oncoming lion. I was amazed at how the PH immediately stroked that rifle bolt and at the same time the lion made its first airborne bound. It had made such a fast rush that to sail airborne actually seemed to slow it down, and as the PH was breaking the trigger on the second shot, the lion did the seemingly impossible...it yanked its fore end to the left and then snatched its rear end to the left like some kind of funky dancer (all this in mid-air) so that the shot passed right by with seemingly a foot to spare! This happened in mid-air so fast that the PH had already committed to the trigger squeeze, but again, without ever having raised his head from the rifle, he smoothly stroked the bolt back and as it was almost forward the lion ran into the end of the barrel, knocked him out of view of the camera, and there was a much too long, pregnant silence as the tree in which the cameraman was perched shook and vibrated a few times. Then a jaunty, cheery voice narrated, "Well, that was a close one. The rifle went off just as the lion struck the barrel. The camera shaking was caused by the final death throws of the lion"...tho we never saw the hunter afterward. Not until Capstick described such things was anything else even close to the jolt that film gave me...and yet strangely it engrained in me that that was exactly where I had to go someday.
If anyone knows what that film was, I would love to see it again as an adult.
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