PhotoCollector73
AH veteran
PART 1: THE HISTORY OF SAFARI HUNTING IN BOTSWANA
In 1962 the Botswana government allowed organised 'East Africa-type' safaris to be run for the first time in the country and granted huge hunting concessions to four different companies on a sole-usage basis with a renewable three-year lease. Most of these companies were comprised of professional hunters from the East African outfitting companies and some opened branches in Botswana for the East African parent company. The famous 'Ker, Downey, and Selby' being one, of which the well-known professional hunter, Harry Selby, was the manager. The other three companies were 'White Hunters Africa,' 'Botswana Hunters' and 'Safari South.' The hunting concessions were situated in the Okavango Delta, along the Selinda Spillway, and in the Kalahari Desert and were operated out of Maun, with the final one, bordering on Southern Rhodesia's Wankie National Park, which was operated out of Kasane. This last mentioned concession belonged to 'Botswana Hunters,' the company owned by Alan and Ian Henderson, who also owned a large ranch in Rhodesia and later became one of the pioneer game ranchers of Africa. In addition, they had a swamp concession in the Linyanti Swamps where they hunted the two species, lechwe and sitatunga, which I mention because I did a lot of my early hinting with them, particularly for lechwe and sitatunga.
All the concessions were 'virgin' country from a hunting point of view and abounded with many species of game. Botswana at that time had the highest concentrations of game anywhere in the world and it was a paradise for trophy hunters, there being wide scope for the acquisition of many new record trophies and for getting your name into the prestigious 'Rowland Ward's Records of Big Game,' the record book started in 1892 by Rowland Ward, the famed taxidermist of London, and which was then it its 13th edition. Safari Hunting was a very different sort of hunting to that which I was used to, all my own hunting having been done either on game control work or for the government (I was an honorary warden and was frequently called out by the game department to deal with cattle-killing lions in the Serowe area), or for sport and meat for myself and my family. When shooting for the pot, one ideally selects an animal in prime condition which usually means a fat female or a youngish male. Safari clients were interested in the exact opposite, only looking for older animals with the biggest and best horns or tusks. While not all safari clients are interested in getting their trophies measured and entered in The Book, being content to shoot 'representative' heads to be mounted in their trophy rooms with their motives being more to savour the memories of their safaris and of the hunts, the majority, however, are looking for the best trophies available. These, in the case of antelopes and bovines, are animals with the greatest length and breadth of the horns, the size and weight of elephant tusks, and the overall length of lions and leopards from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail.
This type of hunting almost always means that the animals taken are not only the biggest but also the oldest, so the old males are out of the way so the up-and-coming breeders can spread their genes. At this time, in order to qualify for The Book, except in the case of cats which have to be measured unskinned in the field, all trophies must be measured after a 60-day drying out period by a qualified and registered measurer, according to the rules of Rowland Ward. With the cats, the word of the professional hunter has to be taken into that the measurements are correct. When guiding a safari client, usually from overseas and mostly from North America, who was specifically a trophy hunter, the professional hunter must be experienced enough to judge the length of the horn to within half an inch through his binoculars at 200 yards and, in species where both the males and females have horns, to be able to accurately sex the animals, especially in the case of gemsbuck in the Kalahari where a female in a herd often has longer horns than the attendant males. And when hunting elephants, he must also be able to judge the weight of ivory to within a few pounds and judge the size of lions and the size - and sex - of leopards. Many a large female has been taken on a safari having been mistaken for a male. Lone gemsbuck are nearly always males but hunters in the flat open spaces of the Kalahari need to know that this type of country can deceptively magnify the size of an animal. I have seen this for myself on many occasions. I once drove slowly up to what I took to be a small herd of far-distant wildebeest in the flat open spaces of Nxai Pan, only to find, when I got closer, that they were four ground hornbills - black birds no bigger than turkey!
I was told the rather embarrassing story of a new Safari South professional hunter from over the border, who had done all his hunting in bushveld conditions, where shots are seldom taken at ranges of more than 200 yards, and who was a complete novice to open Kalahari conditions. He took his client on a long stalk up to what he took to be a large gemsbuck bull standing under an equally large camel-thorn tree, which they shot, only to find it was a sub-adult male with 21-inch horns that was standing under a fairly small camel-thorn tree. A 'representative' gemsbuck head has horns of more than twice that length and I would always advise new hunters not to take lone gemsbuck but to rather take them out of a herd where you have others to which you can compare your chosen quarry. It goes without saying that every licensed professional hunter must also be an expert skinner and caper and know all about 'field dressing,' packing, and shipping of the client's trophies so that they arrive at the client's chosen taxidermist in a healthy and wholesome condition without any hair-slip on the skins. He must be an experienced 'bush-mechanic,' capable of keeping his hunting car on the road when many miles away from the nearest garage. He must be able to deal with emergencies in case of snake bite, sickness, accidents, or wounds, be a good raconteur, able to keep his client amused with stories during the evening 'sundowners' round the fire, and be a good conversationalist with a fair general knowledge of his country's history and politics and of world affairs.
And last but not least, he must be an expert exponent with his rifle and have a complete knowledge of bullet placement, what to do in a dangerous situation, and be capable of stopping the charge of everything that comes. In fact, he must be a rather unique character, because he must also have the tact and patience of a saint. The old adage, 'A professional hunter is ten percent a hunter and ninety percent a head waiter,' is, from my experience, remarkably accurate. I will relate the story of a typical safari as an example of how we operated in those days taken from the entries in my diary.
PART 2: DENNIS' FIRST SAFARI
When I first started full-time safaris, all the hunting concessions had been allocated and I worked initially as a contract professional hunter for Botswana Hunters, who had a concession near Kasane in the northeast of the country. Botswana Hunters was owned by the Henderson brothers, Alan and Ian, who owned a big game ranch in Southern Rhodesia but, at that time in the country's history, 'sport hunting' was still illegal, so they opened in Botswana. They ran an extremely well-organised safari company and were very considerate to their guides. The clients on my very first safari were Jess Beal and Gayle Retting, who had booked a 21-day hunt and taken licenses for all the species on offer. I guided Jess, who was one of the nicest people you could meet. He had brought over a well-used .458 Winchester Magnum and an equally well-used .300 H&H Magnum and was certainly the finest shot I had ever seen; always cool, calm, and collected, even when facing dangerous game. Gayle hunted with Bert Milne, a professional hunter from East Africa who was now a permanent contract hunter with Botswana Hunters. Gayle had brought with him a .378 Weatherby Magnum, which he swore by, but which did not perform as well on this safari as we were led to believe it would. More of that later.
Bert and I went over the border into Southern Rhodesia to the nearest airport at Victoria Falls on the Zambezi river to meet the clients on their arrival. Our first hunting camp was named Nunga, which was a four-hour trip from the falls and situated inside Botswana, bordering on Rhodesia's Wankie National Park, from which a residue of game drifted into our Nunga concession. The camp consisted of double-sleeper Kenya-type 'Manyara' tents for the clients and professional hunters, with a thatched dining room with mopane pole walls and a similarly-built skinning shed, kitchen, ablutions, and storeroom. These were situated in a grove of giant mopane trees and, as is common in 'mopane country,' the ground consisted of a type of river sand which is clean and free of dust. There was a huge variety of bird life dominated by the four species of hornbills, the red - and yellow - beaked, the trumpeter with its raucous trumpet that sounds like a baby bawling, and the ground hornbill which is always around making its different calls. For the clients' convenience, the Hendersons had constructed a landing strip about two miles from the camp on which light aircraft could land. Ian had his own Cassena 206 with which he ferried clients around and brought in urgently needed supplies to each of the four camps within their concessions; Chobe, Jari, and Kwando being the names of the other three. Each camp had a permanent and well-trained cook, waiter, skinner, and camp hands and was equipped with two-way radio communication between the camps, their office in Victoria Falls, and their headquarters in Bulawayo. We had scheduled calls every evening so that we could keep in contact with the other hunters, swap information on game movements in the respective areas and find out when it was convenient to move to another camp for different trophies. Some of the camps were in swamplands and others in the mopane bushveld and in the Kalahari sandveld, all of which harboured different species and the policy was to allow each client to hunt for a period from each camp.
Part of the Nunga concession consisted of a large completely open basalt area in which the elephants would 'slosh' about after it had rained, leaving a myriad of 'foot-holes' six inches to a foot deep when the plain dried out to its dry-season concrete-like texture. Motoring over them was extremely uncomfortable and earned them the rather vulgar name amongst the hunters of 'The Haemorrhoidal Plains.' There was a considerable amount of game in this area which included some very heavily tusked elephant, buffalo, lion, sable, kudu, impala, and the other smaller species. It was also free of tsetse fly which made the hunting more comfortable. Being 'African' I had developed an immunity to the effects of their bites but most of the clients would come up in red and angry-looking itchy bites where one had punctured the skin to suck the client's blood. We reached Nunga camp at about half-past-two in the afternoon and, after a light lunch, the clients had unpacked their gear. We took them to our sighting-in range. We took with us some 9-inch targets with a 1-inch bull's eye which we set up at 75 yards and told them to both take a rest on the Land Rover's bonnet to ensure their rifles and scopes had not been knocked 'out' by rough handling on the journey. Well, to my surprise, Jess declined to take a rest, taking five shots off-hand from the shoulder and scoring a 2-inch group with his scoped .300 and then all but repeating the score off-hand again with his open-sighted .458. I gulped, hoping I wouldn't have to demonstrate how well I could shoot with my .458, which fortunately I didn't have to do. But I still had to how well he would perform when shooting at live game - and particularly dangerous game when the adrenaline can be running high.
Jess and I then left Gayle and Bert at the range for him to zero his .378 Weatherby and we took a drive to see what we could find, coming upon a grey duiker ram which the cook had told us he wanted for camp meat. Jess shot it cleanly from 100 yards. We then returned to camp to find that Gayle had bagged a nicely tusked warthog with which he was very pleased. After a hot shower, we chatted over sundowners round the fire till the cook called us to a dinner of tomato soup, roast leg of steenbuck (shot by a previous client and most deliciously marinaded) laced with bacon and served with crisp roast potatoes, and tinned peas, followed by tinned pears and cream. This excellent gourmet meal was enhanced by a bottle of fine red South African Pinotage. Coffee was served at our brightly burning mopane log campfire to the accompaniment of the usual music of the African night drifting to us from the far surrounds, filling me with a grand feeling of contentment and happiness. The aura of that evening, my very first as a practicing safari professional hunter, was intense and I knew that I would take to this like like a duck to water. Then Gayle remembered he had brought along a tape recorder and he hurried to his tent to fetch it. Gayle and Jess recorded the events of their respective days while Bert and I sat listening and interjecting from time to time when we thought some point had been missed. How grand those tapes sounded with the background chorus of the fiery-necked nightjars' haunting 'Good lord deliver us' lament, the gruff yet melodious hoots of a giant eagle-owl and its mate from the branches of the mopane trees around us, the distant and dismal wails of the black-backed jackals crying like lost souls in the wilderness, the occasional whoops and cackles of hyenas and even the occasional distant roar of a lion. We stuck to this routine every evening and Jess, Gayle, Bert and I now have a taped record of the whole safari. What nostalgic memories they bring back when I listen to them and feel the magic of those times around the nightly campfires.
PART 3: JESS, THE MARKSMAN
The next day Jess got a fine Burchell's zebra with unusual markings (like human fingerprints, no two zebra skins are the same) that had absolutely no brown shadow stripe. Jess was very pleased with it. He also took a steenbuck for meat for the camp staff and a young warthog for the kitchen, the latter we had roasted whole over the coals on a spit and it was absolutely superb to eat.
We got back to camp that evening to find Gayle and Bert sitting round the fire with huge grins on their faces and they asked us to guess what they had shot.
"Must be a really fine sable," said Jess.
"Nope," answered Gayle. "You try, Dennis."
"Well," I answered, "with those huge grins I guess it has to be a lion."
"You got it," said Gayle, "and wait till you see his huge black mane."
We then celebrated till late in the night and drank a few too many beers but I was sober again by morning. The following day Jess came upon a really splendid sable bull with long sweeping coal-black horns, and after a long hard stalk, Jess gave him what we all thought was a well-placed heart-shot, putting the bull down where he was standing. As we walked up to him, I was congratulating Jess and telling him what a fine shot he was when up the sable jumped and headed for the far horizon as though he had actually just awakened from a snooze. Jess, who was completely confident of his shot, was so astonished that he just stood there with his mouth open instead of firing again. Before Jess could recover himself the sable was out of sight - which was a damned good lesson for both of us. Never presume an animal that collapses 'like the proverbial bag of beans' to a shoulder-shot is really down and out. The bullet may have gone a little bit too high and just nicked the spine, momentarily stunning it and putting the animal down all right, but usually not for long...
And then began one of the longest follow-ups that I had ever been on. The sable soon stopped bleeding and showed us that those hooves were made for walking, giving us only occasional glimpses of himself. Still, we followed, knowing now that he was not badly wounded and the likelihood was that we would lose him. Much later the sharp-eyed Shorty spotted him about 300 yards away where he had joined a herd of zebra, no doubt sticking to them for protection knowing that many pairs of eyes spot danger more easily than one pair. The zebra were all looking in our direction, turning around and then back to stare in our direction again, showing all the signs of being about to spook. Only a rifleman of Jess's calibre could have taken such a shot. Having checked the bull with my binoculars and confirmed he was ours by the smudge of blood on his shoulders, Jess quickly brought his rifle to his shoulder and pulled off another of his spectacular off-hand-shots, which could not have been that easy to do after walking in the heat for all those hours. The bull went down again like the proverbial bag of beans while the zebra thundered off and, this time, the bull stayed down. As we supposed, Jess's first bullet had just touched the spine, causing entry and exit flesh wounds only, from which I believe he would have soon recovered.
I have had experiences of similar shots which only stunned the animal. Always I believe from shots that only nicked the spine. This kept the animal down till we had walked up to it, at the lightest touch of a hand, the beast instantly awoke and ran away if you were not quick on the trigger. This has to be a part of their survival system. I have seen it happen too often for it to be coincidence and, once when I had put down a wildebeest that must have been in similar circumstances, Shorty gave its tail a playful tweak as he walked round to cut its throat. It immediately came back to life and took off after him with blue murder in its eyes. It was lucky that Shorty was fleet of foot because both he and the wildebeest were running directly in my line of fire and I couldn't shoot the wildebeest without the risk of also shooting my faithful friend and tracker. Eventually, just when it looked as if I was going to be in the market for a new tracker, Shorty grabbed the trunk of a sapling and swung around it to come sprinting back towards me while his very-close pursuer went thundering on. We never did get that wildebeest and I suspected Shorty of deliberately losing the spoor. I think he'd seen enough of it for one day.
To continue with the safari: A few days later we moved down south to Jari camp which was a day's drive through heavy Kalahari sand. As were in our concession we could hunt on the way so the day wasn't wasted. We saw four different lots of elephant but there were none that were shootable. There were several pans and depressions that held water from the rains and we visited each one on the way to see what had been drinking there. Most of the pans had already dried as it was then late winter but a few still had a muddy remnant left where game had been drinking. Jari pan, which was close to the camp, has a natural spring in the centre of it and always holds water but we refrained from shooting near it as this was the only drinking water for the game within the vicinity. Jari camp was in the Kalahari and had many different desert species available on licence and, on our second day, Gayle shot a fine gemsbuck after some hard stalking through the scrub cover of the desert, which set Jess and I a challenge. The next morning we left camp before sunrise and took the Bushman Pits road looking for a gemsbuck. Not long into the morning Shorty, who was sitting on the roof of the cab, dipped down his 'compass stick' to instruct me to stop. He had seen a herd of four gemsbuck but they were spooky and started running even as we stopped. We drove slowly in the direction they had taken and came up on them again about 300 yards away. I stopped and Jess got out and stalked closer while I stayed in the stationary hunting car, hoping they would continue to stare at it as they were now doing and decide it held no danger for them. But the buck kept moving away, keeping a 300-yard distance between them and Jess. Eventually, they moved right away so we followed along again in the Land Rover and, sometime later, when we came on them again, Jess again slipped out and stalked forward through the scrub, from where he pulled off a long shot. Shorty and I could no longer see the buck, which had moved behind some cover but we both heard the bullet strike.
When Jess beckoned to me, I drove up in the car, picked him up and we drove forward to find the buck, which we saw from a distance was down having been cleanly shot in the shoulder. We didn't pace it, but judging by the distance I drove from Jess's shooting position, I believe he had taken the shot at well over 200 yards, and, knowing him, I bet this one was off-hand too. I have never been hunting with such an incredible marksman. We took photographs of Jess's trophy and then loaded it into the Land Rover and drove back to camp with it, pleased to see on our arrival at the skinning shed that it had beaten Gayle's trophy by a narrow margin, although Jess being the sportsman that he was, never mentioned this fact.
The next day we again departed early from camp and came upon a lone elephant that looked shootable through his binoculars. So we left the Land Rover and followed it, eventually getting close enough to do a proper appraisal. To my disappointment, we found it was only about 40 pounds aside and so decided to leave it. However, while walking back to the hunting car, we came upon a lot of very fresh lion tracks. I mentioned in passing to Jess that it was a pity the elephant had not been a good one as he might have got a good pair of tusks and a good lion that was attracted to the carcass. "Hell man, Dennis," Jess exclaimed, stopping and frowning thoughtfully at me but with an undecided look upon his face. "What do you think? I've already shot a seventy-pounder in Angola so I'm not that fussy about the tusks. Do you think if we shoot the elephant and leave the carcass for bait that the lions will scent it and be attracted to it?" "The lions don't need to scent it to know that it's there," I told him, "They are still around and as we leave the vultures will start congregating above it and then start spiralling down, which the lions will be bound to see and they will come to check. And if they don't see the vultures, they sure as hell will hear the hyenas squabbling over it tonight and we'll likely find them in the morning." "That does it," said Jess, nodding determinedly. "Let's go get him, Den." We walked back to where we had seen the elephant which we followed. It hadn't moved very far and Jess put it down with a clean shot to the brain. Shorty had been following behind us filming the stalking with Jess's cine and he got the whole hunt, although a little shakily. Trying to film and walk quietly when he couldn't see what he was walking into could not have been easy. We chopped out the tusks, removed the tail and feet, and opened the gut cavity, pulling out some of the intestines to spread the scent around.
That night there was a regular chorus of hyena whoops, howls, and hysterical-sounding giggles of laughter coming from the elephant carcass so we knew the hyenas had found it. In the early hours, I heard a distant lion grunt but an inspection in the morning revealed that no lions had been there. Perhaps they had strayed too far away from it. Nevertheless, I assured Jess that now the hyenas had opened up the carcass, the vultures would soon be there and, with luck, the lions would see them spiralling down and come to investigate. So we went off in search of a kudu. We were unsuccessful but, on returning to camp in the late afternoon, we drove past the carcass and spied vultures sitting in the trees, a sure sign that a lion was feeding or the vultures would have been down on the ground to gorge. We left the Land Rover and stalked slowly forward, being extra cautious not to alert the vultures which would then fly off and alert the lion of our approach. When still about 350 yards away from the carcass, I saw a slight movement beyond it, and, looking through the binoculars, I saw a big male lion sitting on his haunches. The movement I had seen was its long mane blowing in the breeze. We managed to stalk up behind a termite mound to within about 150 yards without disturning the vultures but then, to our surprise and consternation, we disturbed a young lion that was lying near by. He ran straight towards the male with a loud 'woof' and I thought we had blown it. With this, the big male stood up and stared in our direction, looking to see what had frightened the youngster, He was just turning about to take off himself when Jess took a snapshot at him with his .300, again off-hand. The dull 'thump' of the bullet striking told me he had hit the lion somewhere in the body.
The lion ran speedily off into some cover and we cautiously followed, Jess now carrying his .458, worried that we might not find him as it was just beginning to get dark. If this happened, we knew the hyenas attracted to the elephant carcass would find him in the night and tear his skin to pieces. But then we heard him ahead of us, growling and snapping at the bushes around him. We quietly stalked up to him. When he saw us he immediately pulled himself up to charge but he was unable to take more than a single leap toward us as Jess put a shot into his chest with his .458 which put the lion down for good. It was a really beautiful lion and Jess and Shorty stayed with him while I went back to fetch the Land Rover, not getting back till well after dark when Gayle got his camera from the vehicle and took some flash photos of it. Were we happy! It was a grand lion taken after a really exciting stalk while we wondered every second if the light would last just long enough for Jess to get a shot.
