6

images

Africa

Man … can understand a lion, because a lion is life in its simplest form, beautiful, menacing, dangerous, and attractive to his ego. A lion has always been the symbol of

challenge, the prototype of personal hazard. You get the lion, or the lion gets you.

ROBERT RUARK

USE ENOUGH GUN (1952)

• • •

images

… the sparkling torrential rains, the sweeping thunderstorms, the grass fires creeping over the veld at night like snakes of living flame, the glorious aspect of the heavens, now of a spotless blue, now charged with the splendid and many-coloured lights of sunset, and now sparkling with a myriad stars, the wine-like taste of the air upon the plains, the beautiful flowers in the bushclad kloofs—all these things impressed me, so much that were I to live a thousand years I never should forget them.

H. RIDER HAGGARD

AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1925)

• • •

The chance of shooting—over a kill—an animal that has in all probability become a man-eater through a wound received over a kill, is very remote, and each succeeding failure, no matter what its cause, tends to make the animal more cautious, until it reaches a state when it either abandons its kill after one meal or approaches it as silently and as slowly as a shadow, scanning every leaf and twig with the certainty of discovering its would-be slayer, no matter how carefully he may be concealed or how silent and motionless he may be; a one in a million chance of getting a shot, and yet, who is there among us who would not take it?

JIM CORBETT

“THE THAK MAN-EATER” IN
THE MAN-EATERS OF KUMAON (1946)

• • •

Cape buffalo do not bluff a charge. When one of them comes at you, he’s not voicing an opinion—he wants to meet you personally.

PHILIP CAPUTO

“SHADOWS IN THE BUSH” IN FIELD & STREAM
(JULY 2005)

• • •

I knew, coldly and outside myself, that I could shoot a rifle on game as well as any son of a bitch that ever lived. Like hell I could.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA (1935)

• • •

I am one of the last of the old-time hunters. The events I saw can never be relived. Both the game and the native tribes, as I knew them, are gone. No one will ever see again the great elephant herds led by old bulls carrying 150 lb of ivory in each tusk. No one will ever hear again the yodelling war cries of the Masai as their spearmen swept the bush after cattle-killing lions. Few indeed will be able to say they have broken into country never before seen by a white man. No, the old Africa has passed, and I saw it go.

JOHN A. HUNTER (1952)

IN SAFARI: A CHRONICLE OF ADVENTURE

BY BARTLE BULL (1988)

• • •

images

A wounded leopard is both cunning and fierce. Once hit, he will dart into the thickest available cover and lie low. If he perceives that conditions are favorable, he will not hesitate to charge. Often he lets the hunter approach to within a few yards before revealing himself, and then, at the last moment, makes a lightning dash for his pursuer.

JAMES MELLON

AFRICAN HUNTER (1975)

• • •

A very small minority of the sportsmen who journey to Africa today to hunt have any skill whatever in rifle marksmanship. Most are utterly unable to place their shots with precision. Riflemen are made, not born. Moreover, unless a man has considerable skill with and reliance in his weapon, he will not remain cool in the presence of dangerous game close by … Thus, for both safety and success it is very necessary for all present-day hunters to employ the heavier calibers of modern rifles for such dangerous game, namely those of at least .416 bore or larger …

COL. TOWNSEND WHELEN,
SOMEDAY FARM, WOODSTOCK, VERMONT (1960)

• • •

images

images

In my experience haste in firing and flinch are the commonest causes of spoilt or inadequate shots; I mean those requiring one or more subsequent shots to kill outright. I myself am naturally of a rather highly strung nature and I suffered greatly from the eagerness that so easily leads to abortive shots. I found that if I kept in good training bodily and forced myself to count ten slowly I then brought off many good shots and a few brilliant ones.

W. D. M. “KARAMOJO” BELL

ON RIFLES AND SHOOTING (1950)

• • •

I speak of Africa and golden joys; the joy of wandering through lonely lands; the joy of hunting the mighty and terrible lords of the wilderness, the cunning, the wary and the grim.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, IN KHARTOUM (MARCH 15, 1910)

• • •

The leopard had bitten through my left arm, breaking it above the elbow with a crunch I can still hear. My mauled arms and hands burned as if dipped in acid. Some people say that serious injuries leave a fellow numb and shocked but not in severe pain. With me it was just the opposite. There’s an old Chinese torture called the “death of a thousand cuts”—well, I know what that feels like.

ERIC RUNDGREN

“MY FIRST LEOPARD MAULING” IN

AFRICAN HUNTER BY JAMES MELLON (1975)

• • •

Nothing in the war terrified me so much as walking up to my first elephant, and I was reasonably terrified during the war.

ROBERT RUARK

IN TRUE (SEPTEMBER 1963)

• • •

I would place Old Jumbo on top of the list of big game and also as the most dangerous. When hunting elephants you are up against an intelligence not found in any other animal. Tembo lives to a very old age, probably considerably greater than the average span of man, and he learns as he lives.

ELMER KEITH

AFRICA’S BIG FIVE (1960)

• • •

I had loved country all my life; the country was always better than the people. I could only care about a very few people at a time.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA (1935)

• • •

For the most part man gets on with crocodiles about as well as he did with dragons; he will banish them from all but the remotest parts of the earth.

PETER BEARD AND ALISTAIR GRAHAM

EYELIDS OF MORNING (1974)

• • •

In a serious charge, the elephant comes quietly and at full speed, his trunk lowered and ears pressed tight against his head. In which case be prepared to shoot or to run the three-minute mile.

JAMES MELLON

AFRICAN HUNTER (1975)

• • •

images

When you’ve hunted big game for several decades all over the world, you take for granted occasional discomfort and even hardship. But dangerous situations arise very seldom, and when they do, it is nearly always the upshot of folly. Nine times out of ten, when an animal injures a hunter, it’s because the hunter has bungled. But that tenth time, all your skill and experience count for exactly nothing.

DR. W. BRANDON MACOMBER

“A DOUBLE LION MAULlNG” IN

AFRICAN HUNTER BY JAMES MELLON (1975)

• • •

I don’t know what there is about buffalo that frightens me so. Lions and leopards and rhinos excite me but don’t frighten me. But the buff is so big and mean and ugly and hard to stop, and vindictive and cruel and surly and ornery. He looks like he hates you personally. He looks like you owe him money. He looks like he is hunting you.

ROBERT RUARK

HORN OF THE HUNTER (1954)

• • •

If a herd [of giant eland] runs away, you often have to chase the animals on foot for a half mile or so, until they stop to look back. And it’s not so easy to shoot offhand at an animal standing two hundred yards away in a big herd, when you’ve just run several hundred yards yourself and are gasping for breath. You know that if you miss, maybe another two weeks will go by and you’ll walk a hundred and fifty miles more before getting another crack at one.

JAMES MELLON

AFRICAN HUNTER (1975)

• • •

images

images