THE ELEPHANT THAT VANISHED

CHAPTER 10

A professional hunter’s license was officially called an “Assistant’s Permit” in Kenya. It entitled the holder to assist visiting sportsmen in hunting various game animals, as the law required, and it was not issued lightly. In the first place the applicant had to have hunted at least three years on a resident’s full license before he would even be considered. Then his file, which contained the game registers he was required to submit every year listing all game animals he had taken or wounded, and details of any actual or suspected infringements of the game regulations, would be thoroughly scrutinized. The next step was a written examination, mostly on the game laws and regulations of Kenya and the duties of a professional hunter thereunder. The minimum passing grade was 100 percent. Survivors went before a board consisting of the assistant chief game warden, a couple of game rangers, and two or three senior professional hunters. These gentlemen would examine and cross-examine the applicant mercilessly until they felt that they had probed the depths of his experience and competence thoroughly, and would then make a recommendation to the chief game warden.

A period of apprenticeship under an established PH to learn how to organize and run a safari properly might be required. Very often the recommendation would be for the issuance of a restricted permit, allowing the neophyte professional to guide for nondangerous game and, usually, buffalo. Buffalo were by far the most common of the dangerous game. The bag limit was three or four a year, and the licenses were inexpensive. Besides, the restrictions were waived where the animals were damaging crops on private land, so most of us had ample experience with buffalo. But quite commonly the board would feel that we needed to prove ourselves a little more on some of the other dangerous game before they would set us completely free to safeguard the lives and well-being of innocent visitors.

Finn with .375 and skull from a buffalo he took on a solo hunt. Note the lion skull on the mantel.

My partner Joe Cheffings and I had reached that stage. Because we had already been running our own outfitting business (mostly photo safaris) for a couple of years, we were excused the apprenticeship requirement, but Joe had to take another lion, and I both a lion and an elephant, before they would lift the restrictions on our permits. We decided to get it done, so we booked hunting block 26 near Voi and arranged to hunt Ray Mayer’s one-hundred-thousand-acre ranch in the vicinity at the same time. Ray’s property marched with Tsavo National Park, and the elephant were constantly coming in and destroying his concrete water tanks by standing up on their hind legs with their forequarters and much of the rest of their weight resting on the rim of the structure while they endeavored to reach the water with their trunks. Lion killed Ray’s cattle with appalling regularity as well, so we were not unwelcome.

Accompanied by my wife, Berit, we made camp half a mile from Ray’s house, under Mangu hill, and then set out to reconnoiter Block 26. Away down past Kasigau Mountain, at a crossing over the Mwatate stream, we came upon a few local chaps who were burning charcoal for sale as cooking fuel in Mombasa and Nairobi. They said that they heard lion every night, and as it was a nice, uninhabited section of wild country with a fair population of zebra, eland, and hartebeest, that seemed not unlikely. We saw a black serval cat here, only the second melanistic one I had ever come across. (They were protected, but we would not have considered killing it in any event.) There was little elephant sign, though. So Joe and my tracker Kinuno came back with a spike camp and hunted lion there for several days while Berit and I remained at Maungu and looked for elephant on Ray’s ranch.

It was toward the end of an exceptionally good rainy season, and every twisted, stunted tree and thorny bush in the Taru Desert was frantically engaged in putting on several years’ growth in a few weeks. The weather was hot and humid, and the normally sere, gray brush was a brilliant, vibrant green and was as impenetrable in places as a Hollywood jungle. All the buffalo, rhino, elephant, and warthog, newly plastered with shiny wet mud, were exactly the same color as the red termite hills.

One evening we came upon a shiny, wet, red elephant ambling along one of the ranch roads. Its ivory appeared quite decent; it would sell for enough to cover the cost of the license, and would most likely pay part of the expense of the safari as well, a matter of some importance to impecunious resident hunters such as ourselves. (In those days ivory was worth about one pound sterling per pound, and the license fees were set accordingly.) I trotted after the bull, then ran out to one side until I had a broadside shot. Because it was moving I did not risk a brain shot, but instead thumped it with the .458 close behind the front leg when it stretched it forward while walking. It immediately spun around and plowed into the brush. I got off a second, very hurried shot as the vegetation closed around it, trying without success for the spine just above the root of the tail. Then it was gone.

As we stood there listening, Berit suddenly said, “I hear it—it’s down! Did you hear that bellowing and gurgling? It’s dead, I’m sure of it!” Almost immediately a frightful clamor broke out, a cacophony of trumpeting and screaming as a mob of elephant deeper in the bush panicked and began stampeding back and forth in total confusion. We waited patiently until at last they moved away, and then went in to retrieve our prize.

We could not find it. There was not a drop of blood, but I was able to follow its tracks easily, until they were abruptly wiped out where the other terrified jumbos had run back and forth. We searched until dark in the direction of the sounds Berit had heard, without becoming too discouraged. The shrubbery was thick enough that in many places one could pass within ten yards of an elephant and not see it, but by persistence we would surely find it on the morrow.

That night it rained hard enough to wash out the tracks—and any blood there might have been. We persisted all the next day and the day after, and found not a sign of our bull. Now I was seriously worried. Could I have missed it completely? No way! I may not be the world’s best shot, but I don’t miss a whole elephant at thirty paces. I went over every detail of the hunt again and again in my mind. I could clearly recall the white bead hanging firmly on its chest as the shot went off. Because I had pulled a little ahead of the bull before stopping to shoot, the bullet might have angled back toward the rear of the lungs more than I allowed for, but even so it should have been mortal, and Berit had heard it die. But the jumbo had vanished without a trace, like a puff of smoke, or as if we had dreamed it all. Even the vultures refused to give us a clue.

On the morning of the third day we were hopelessly searching the area one more time before giving it up when a faint odor struck our noses. Stink ants! I thought. They are common during the rains, and when disturbed they give off a stench like rotting carrion. The smell came and went, and then gradually strengthened. We followed it upwind until we came to a strange red termite mound under a big tree. Only it wasn’t an anthill—it was our elephant, three days dead, down on its belly and leaning against the tree, which held it upright. I grasped the left tusk, jerked it up and down a few times, and then pulled it easily from its socket. But the weight of the head was on the other tusk; eventually we had to chop it free. There were lion tracks all around the elephant, and they had been feeding on it behind the ears, where the skin is soft and thin.

Berit with tusks, weighing 70 and 66 pounds, from the elephant that vanished.

Berit and Joe Cheffings with the two lions shot off the elephant that vanished.

Shooting at night was strictly prohibited in normal hunting, and rightly so. But the rules did not apply when crops or livestock were being threatened on private land. Ray knew from bitter experience that lion quickly learned that cattle were much easier to catch than zebra and such, and when he heard the news about lions on his ranch, he gave us a six-volt flashlight and insisted that we sit up for the lion that night and rid him of the vermin before they started on his cows.

Joe and Kinuno got back from the Mwatate area about noon the same day. They had seen a beautiful big leopard, but no lion. They had heard lion the first night, and in the distance on the second night, but then no more. Apparently the pride had moved on, and the men had been unable to make contact with them again. That evening Joe, Kinuno, and I left the Land Rover by the road and walked in half a mile to the elephant following a trail that Berit and I had blazed. We found a suitable spot to sit about thirty yards from it and cut down a few intervening bushes, which we placed in a half-circle behind us.

Then we sat down and waited, Kinuno with the flashlight and Joe and I with our .375 H&H Winchester rifles. Mine, although newly acquired because I had been without a “three-seven-five” for a while, was a twenty-year-old M70 fitted with a Weaver K2.5 scope that was so ancient its reticle did not remain centered when the adjustment knobs were turned to zero it. Nevertheless, the old scope was vastly better for any form of night shooting than the iron sights on my .458. Joe had an aperture receiver sight on his well-used Winchester.

The lion came as soon as it was full dark. We heard an odd sort of thumping noise from the elephant. I nudged Joe and then Kinuno, who put the flashlight on. A lion was on the elephant, tearing at the meat behind the ear. As the light hit it, it let go its hold, allowing the elephant’s head to thump back down to the ground, then stood up and sprang off the carcass before I could get my sights on it. Darn it—had we blown our chance? We turned the light out and waited again.

Presently we heard a quiet padding sound, a few feet behind us. The lion had circled around downwind and stalked us, as if to find out what was causing this business of the light. Now what? Perhaps we could stand up suddenly, whirl, try to catch it in the light, and shoot instantly. But the lion was so close that if startled it could have been among us long before we had completed the maneuver. We sat tight, in tense, frozen immobility. There really was nothing else to do; the lion had the ball. It sniffed a couple of times, and exhaled in a long sigh. Then it padded softly away.

Shortly it was tearing at the elephant once more. This time a second lion was standing on the ground beside the jumbo, but again they leaped away as soon as the light came on. They were both young adult males, sleek, powerful, and in fine condition, but almost maneless, as Tsavo lion often are. They were undoubtedly park lion that had not learned to fear man. Upon reaching maturity they had been driven out of the pride and, finding no unoccupied territory within the park, had to seek their fortunes elsewhere. It was simply unfortunate for them, and a very sad thing, that even outside the park there was no longer any room for them.

They came back to the elephant as soon as we switched the light off. This time we gave them a quarter of an hour to get well stuck in to it before Joe, who had taken over the flashlight, turned it on again. The one on the elephant sprang up immediately, but then hesitated a second too long. The post in the scope found the center of its chest, directly above the fore-leg. At the shot it jumped down behind the elephant with a roar, growled and moaned a few moments as it thrashed the bush, then was still.

We knew it was dead, but gave it a few minutes anyway. As we started walking toward the elephant, Joe and Kinuno heard a sound over to our left and flashed the light in that direction. There was the second lion, moving back toward the elephant carcass. I swung up the .375, and as the lion passed a gap between two bushes the reticle settled so beautifully on its shoulder that I had to shoot. The lion grunted, and then was gone. We heard it crash through the brush a little way, and that was all.

Joe was somewhat taken aback. “You shot awfully fast,” he said, accusingly. True. But the sights had looked to be perfectly placed when the gun went off, so the beast should have been well hit. One can never be absolutely certain of that, though, until he is standing over the animal and has poked it cautiously in the eye with the muzzle of the rifle. Trying to find a possibly wounded lion in the black of night with a dimming light was going to be interesting, perhaps suicidal.

We climbed up on the elephant and shone the light around, but could not see either of the lion. The flashlight was fading fast, its battery almost dead. Joe and I looked at each other and voiced the same thought simultaneously. The only sensible thing to do was to fetch the Land Rover and use its headlights and spotlight to find our cats. Or else leave it till morning, and hope the hyena did not find them in the meantime.

We fetched the Land Rover. Kinuno had to hack a lot of brush with his panga (machete), but eventually we got the rig in to the elephant, then quickly found both lion lying within about twenty paces of each other. With some difficulty we heaved them up into our vehicle, drove home, woke Berit, and watched her astonishment as we dumped a Land Rover full of lion at her feet.

It may be worth noting that despite having a very large aperture on his receiver sight, Joe had not been able to get on to the lion nearly as quickly as I could with the scope. I used Winchester ammo with the 270-grain Powerpoint bullets, which have always given me excellent results. Two lion with two consecutive shots is not a shabby start to any rifle’s career, and that .375 went on to become my most favorite “old Betsy.” We shared many other little adventures afterward.

Two young lions came to the elephant that vanished.

The elephant tusks weighed 66 and 70 pounds, which was fairly respectable even in those days and would be considered very good almost anywhere in Africa nowadays, I believe. They more than covered the cost of the license, and since we sold the lion skins as well, we about broke even on the hunt. Kinuno and Nzioka (the cook) rendered down all the fat from around the lion’s internal organs and got a good price for it from members of the Asian community, who regarded it as a specific for gonorrhea and rheumatism.

This tale has no moral, except perhaps that it is not the trophies that make the hunt. We gained no trophies from it, yet it remains among my more memorable experiences. There is a lion skull on my mantelpiece, but I no longer remember whether it came from one of these animals or from another that killed one of my own cows not a quarter-mile from our house, and it really does not matter. In those days we hunted mostly for the sake of the hunting, and that is still the way it is with me.