Safari Kill

Safari Kill

Silently, in the cross-hairs of my takedown safari rifle, I watched the white hunter in the distance, kneeling in the high savannah, the scope of his .338 Winchester fixed on the sleek leopardess some fifty yards away. He sat patiently in the sun, perfectly still, while she warily divided her attention between the herd of buffalo drinking at the small watering hole up range, and a nearby stand of Acacia trees where her three young cubs kept a close eye on her from their passing refuge.

On this expedition I’d managed to stay in the savannah undetected for almost six months, well into the high heat of the Zambian summer. But now my time was running out, and my pack almost empty. I was slated to meet Jim for supplies in three days, and that left me but one day to bring down this kill before heading out to meet him at Victoria Falls. I’d been on the scent of this kill for over a week, stretching my dwindling supplies to their limit, but now that I had the hunter and leopard in my sights I was glad I’d stayed in the hunt. She was truly a magnificent creature with regal green eyes and a striking breastplate of white growing to lightly golden at her back overlaid with piercing black rosettes dappling her muscular lines like inlaid jewels of black onyx. Her three small cubs were equally gorgeous, with their fluffy downs still intact.

I put the rifle down long enough to take a swig from my canteen and wipe the sweat from my brow with the soft brim of my worn safari hat, and I sat thinking how I would have liked nothing more than to be out of the baking sun, drinking a cold glass of sweet tea in the breezy shade of my front porch back at my old compound; and how this next kill would surely seal my fate, permanently and forever, as the “Black Hunter”, the dark epithet the press had laid on me in recent weeks. I might of packed it up right then, but I knew there was no turning back, not even with the high bounties now on my head.

***

I’d long admired the big cats of the savannah ever since I first came to Africa as a young man twenty years before. I at once fell in love with the continent’s vast interior in all its wildness, adventure, and mystery; and I knew from the moment I laid eyes on  my first lion that I must have a trophy.

I never returned to America after that. Africa was now my home. After making the voyage east across the Atlantic I’d landed on the west coast of the Congo in the port city of Pointe Noire and I lost no time heading up the Congo River toward the  capital city of Kinshasa.  I’d manage to land a precarious seat on the edge of a tugboat pushing barges of floating markets and a makeshift shantytown that was the permanent home for hundreds of Congolese.

After several days of pushing upriver the thriving metropolis of Kinshasa suddenly emerged from around a bend—a hectic, vibrant wash of color and chaos known as the New York of Central Africa. As alive and bustling as the city was I wasted no time in securing a place on the first Safari I could join; and on that first expedition I not only landed my first trophy, but I also met the man who was to become my most cherished friend, George Hemming.

George was an excellent guide and first-rate hunter who’d come to Africa in the mid 50’s when there was still plenty of game, and vast stretches of uncharted country to explore. George and I soon became best friends. When I arrived in Africa I had no idea I would become a Safari guide, but in the months and years that followed I grew to love hunting and George became my mentor, teaching me everything he knew about tracking and being a good safari guide.

On that first safari our small cadre of foreign hunters and locals boarded a paddleboat in Kinshasa and charted a course up the Congo River into the heart of the jungle. As we pushed our way against the increasingly deep, heavy and turbulent currents I quickly realized why the 3,000-mile Congo is known as the most dangerous river in Africa. The Congo is the deepest river in the world, and with every few miles the river’s swirling, raging waters and sudden rapids grew angrier and more treacherous. Shifting sand barges lurked inches below the surface keeping the Captain of our small paddleboat on a constant state of alert. More than once he saved us from capsizing on the many cataracts that tossed our boat around like a small matchbox.          

To the last man we knew we owed our lives to the experience of our capable Captain, and after several more days of tramping upriver we were grateful to see the last of  the deadly waters of the Congo, and to find ourselves paddling down a small, slow moving  tributary known as the Kasai River.

But our relief soon turned to awe and dread as we  felt ourselves drawn deeper and deeper into the mystical and mythical jungle. Inching our way along the Kasai into the impenetrable rainforest was like traveling back to the primordial earth in all its mystery, and the deeper we plunged into the darkness the greater our fear and dread. We were now in the bowels of the African jungle so long ago mythologized by the famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley as the “Heart of Darkness.” This was the fabled land of the Arab slave and ivory traders, pygmies, mythical beasts, dreadful plagues, and head hunting cannibals that still lived and hunted there.

Our creaking boat sputtered and gurgled through the now still waters passed hippos the size of a truck and alligators that looked as if they could swallow our boat whole. Man-crushing pythons and angry monkeys watched us from the shadowy veil of the river’s murky bank. Every gruesome insect known to man seemed to swarm and land all around us on the boat. For days we continued snaking our way down the winding river through the indomitable jungle, and I could see no end to the hellish swamp, when suddenly claustrophobia turned to exhilaration as the thickness of the jungle opened up onto the wide-opened savannah of the African plain. 

After several more days of  stagnant water and stifling heat we disembarked on a desolate stretch of the savannah and made our way across the vast grassland in search of big game. Within days we were spotting the cats we’d come for. On the third or fourth  day into our hunt I spotted  a magnificent lion, and I have George to thank for landing me my first big trophy.

In the wild and wide-open expanse of the open savannah I found myself living a dream I never knew could be mine. Without fully realizing it when I first left America I’d escaped the mindless struggle of so-called civilization for the total and complete freedom a man can only know on the African plain. I hunted, breathed, and lived the wild, roaming freely across all of Zambia, Zimbabwe and The Congo, and in time I became one of the most sought after safari guides on the continent. It was the best life I could ever have imagined for myself, and from the day I first set foot on the golden-blue of the savannah I thought of no other life than that of soaking up the African sun.

Now, as I sat in the high grass, eyes fixed on the hunter and leopard, I weighed how different things had become from the days when I roamed he savannah so carefree. Now I was no longer only the hunter. I had become the hunted, and the most wanted man on the African continent.

As I watched the deadly dance playing out before me I thought of how the small, everyday decisions I’d made in my years on the plain had brought me to where I was in this moment. I remembered every hunt, every kill, every watering hole, every jungle path, every escarpment and every arduous counsel with government officials over the loss of life all a round me that had brought me to this one place, this one time, and this one hunter and leopard. And I knew that tomorrow would bring another, and another, and that still they would come, and that they had not yet begun to heed the mountain of clarion calls that had rung out across the plain to now.

For there is nothing like the thrill of hunting dangerous game to make a man’s heart race, to make him feel alive; and the more challenging and dangerous the game, the more thrilling the kill. Hunting leopards is especially thrilling for leopards are the hardest of all the big cats to track and spot. Powerful and graceful, the leopard is the master of stealth and survival. Unlike lions, who hunt by day and live in prides, leopards are solitary predators. Their black spots and coloring make excellent camouflage as they move about their range in the dark, seldom staying in the same area for more than a few days. Shy and nocturnal, they are quite modest for a cat that can climb, swim and live in a wider range of habitats than most other wild cats. They can run at speeds of up to 35 mph, and are extremely agile jumpers.

Still, leopards today—like all the big cats of Africa—are basking in their last sunset on the African plain and this bleak horizon cast a dark shadow across the path of the lunar goddess so coolly and curiously standing before me that day in the hot glare of the African sun.

That same shadow now darkened my own troubled path, and I felt my own sunset drawing near. Zambia, Zimbabwe and The Congo all had high bounties on my head, and every hotshot wanting the tribute, or wanting to make a name for himself, was coming for me. So like the leopard, I had now become a shy, nocturnal creature, donning evasive spots whenever I emerged from the wild, making sure to steer clear of small towns and villages, where a white man stands out like a search light on a cloudy night.

Whenever I did come in for supplies I made my way to either the Zambian capital of Lusaka, where I could easily blend into the vibrant background, or I headed south to the tourist town of Livingstone, where my good friends Jim and Sonya could get the supplies I needed while keeping me relatively safe. The town of Livingstone, named for the famed English explorer, was once the Zambian capital, but now it was best known as the gateway to the spectacular Victoria Falls that cut across the great Zambezi River to the south, where I was to meet Jim in a few days, once I’d made this kill.

Bringing down dangerous game from any distance of more than a few yards demands a weapon of strength, accuracy and immense stopping power, a rifle with enough force to target not only to kill the animal, but to turn or stop a charge if necessary. In Africa that weapon has long been the bolt action repeating rifle, the only choice of experienced hunters for over a century.

When it comes to the biggest game—elephants and rhinos for instance—this means something like the .450 Nitro Express or the .458 Winchester takedown rifle. A well placed shot with either cartridge will stop an elephant dead in his tracks or take a man’s head clean off.  It’s a powerful feeling when shooting one of these monsters: but for any of the big cats you don’t want such overwhelming firepower. You want something lighter, like a .350 Remington, or a .338 Winchester Magnum.
                                                                     

***

As he sat studying the leopardess I could see the hunter had chosen well. The .338 Winchester he held in his hands was an excellent choice for bringing down such a magnificent cat. As for me, I was after bigger game, and a bigger trophy. My trophy would not hang on any wall or cover any floor. It would not don the back of any chiefton or any dignitary. Nor would it stand on any shelf. The trophy I sought would find a place only in the minds of people across the globe, and be splashed worldwide across tomorrow’s headlines.

I can’t give you the bulls-eye moment when it happened. There was no spiritual epiphany, no thunderous crack, no revelatory coming of Christ. It came almost unnoticed, like soft raindrops, with the gradual falling of numbers, one-by-one. It came with the slow loss of beauty and dignity, with the gradual realization of what the world was losing and would never see again; and then  after years of wrangling with government officials over tourism versus conservation it became clear that the only way to end the tragic loss was through loss itself.

The sun sat savagely high in the sky, baking the grass and everything in sight. The leopard took one last glance at her cubs before moving in for the kill, stealthily moving in on the buffalo as they drank, completely unaware of her presence.  The hunter nudged and steadied the butt of his .338 in the crook of his shoulder. A drop of sweat fell from his brow, but he didn’t seem to notice. His bony forefinger massaged the sensual curve of the trigger guard, and as he slid it back, laying it gently on the trigger, I felt the electricity pulsing through it.

I’d taken the measure of so many cats from this vantage that I could see and feel everything the hunter saw and felt: the barrel of the gun keeping pace with the leopard’s shoulder; the cat’s steady breathing as she stealthily approached her quarry: and the scope’s cross-hairs slowly scanning the cat’s lithe, muscular lines and black oscillates, landing on the kill-spot, just before the shot rang out. 

The blast thundered through the savannah louder than any .338 I’d ever heard as it came from the .448 single-barreled elephant gun I was holding. As the echo flew back to curse me I saw the hunter’s head splay in all directions and his body hit the ground as the leopard and her cubs disappeared into the grass . I knew in that moment that tomorrow’s headlines would explode with the news that the “Black Hunter” had struck once again, racking up yet one more safari kill.