by Jay Cassell
That was my season. I didn’t see that ten-pointer again, and I missed my only shot of the year, a 35-yarder at a forkhorn that sailed high. Such is deer hunting.
So now I was returning home from my trip. I walked in the door at midnight, quickly read through some mail on the counter, soon slipped into bed. My wife rolled over and whispered, “Don’t forget to wake up James before you go to work. He really wants to show you that rack.”
The alarm went off at 6:30, and I got up to take a shower.
“Psst, Dad, is that you?” came a sleepy voice from my son’s room.
“Yes, buddy, how are you?”
“Wait here, Dad!”
Before I could say another word, he jumped out of bed, put on his oversized bearpaw slippers, and went padding down the stairs to the basement. When he returned, he had the biggest grin on his face that I’ve ever seen.
“Look, Dad!”
And there it was, half of the ten-pointer’s rack. A long, thick main beam, four long, heavy points, the back one eight inches. Amazing. And that buck will be there next year.
“Dad, can I put it on my wall?”
“Of course.”
“And can we go look for the other half of his antlers tomorrow, because tomorrow’s Saturday, and I don’t have school, and you once told me that their antlers usually fall off pretty close together. Please?”
“Sure, James. If you’re good in school today.”
The deal was made. We never found the other half of the shed, though. It snowed, and we couldn’t really look. Mice probably ate the other half.
But you know what? I think maybe my future hunting companion was born this past season.
On Stand
JAY CASSELL
The air is still and cold. The breath rolls out of my mouth like a wisp of fog, hanging there as if frozen before finally dissipating. My gloved hands, tucked deep inside my pockets, have had no sensation in the fingertips for almost an hour. My toes are numb little clubs, stored in boots that seem detached from my body; if I wiggle them, needlelike sensations stab through them. I shiver uncontrollably for a minute, then force myself to stop. Something is coming.
Swish, swish. Swish, swish, swish. Ever so slowly, I roll my eyes to the left, toward the direction of the sound. Now I swivel my head, an eighth of an inch at a time. After what seems an eternity, I’m looking toward the old rock wall just uphill from me. The deer trail comes through a broken-down part of that wall, straight in front of me, 15 yards away. This is where the buck will come, when it’s time. Swish, swish, crunch.
A doe appears, cautiously headed down the trail. She’s followed by two smaller does. No buck. Their gray, ghost-like forms move at a deliberate pace in the fading light. They stop ten yards from me and look around nervously. The last doe stares directly at me. I avoid eye contact and don’t move and, eventually, she pays me no more attention. I’m not a threat. They continue down the trail. The sounds of their hooves swishing through the frozen leaves grow farther and farther away, then are gone. I’m alone again.
I’ve been sitting in this stand from 2:00 until dark for the past four days. I’ve seen eight does, more squirrels than I care to count, one red fox and a red-tailed hawk overhead, screeching. I did see one large deer body moving through the woods some 70 yards away, but my grunt call made it run from me, tail up.
I think about my family, my job, friends, places. Christmas is coming soon and, once again, I’ve put off shopping until the last minute. I’ve got to put up the Christmas tree, put the lights up outside; I haven’t even taken the screens out of the windows yet. Yet here I sit, a frozen man in a frozen tree.
I’ve logged a lot of days in a lot of tree stands over the years. There was the stand up on the Neversink, the one that I built after patterning a buck for more than two years. I shot that ten-pointer the third year I was after him; he was five and half years old.
Then there’s the stand I use in the Catskills during rifle season. It’s an old one, one that I found and fixed up. I’ve hunted there for two years now and still haven’t taken anything from it. But it overlooks a well-used trail, and I’ve got a good feeling about it. It just looks too good not to produce. If I’m persistent, sooner or later I’m going to take a deer out of it. I know.
I remember the V stand, made out of cut saplings wedged between two trees and a boulder, the one with the red Dellwood milk crate as a seat. I shot a seven-pointer out of that stand five years ago. A new hunter in our group, Ken, came over at the shot and helped me drag that buck back to camp, and we’ve been friends ever since. But the days I really remember in that stand are the cold ones, the 10°F days when the wind was howling. That stand was out in the open, and it seemed as if every wind in the mountains funneled through that spot, whistling between the cut saplings, before continuing up the mountain. One day it snowed hard for four hours, yet I didn’t budge because deer were moving all around me. When Ken came by to pick me up for the hike back to camp and lunch, he laughed at my appearance. Said he thought I was dead, totally covered with snow, ice-rimmed beard and mustache, and not moving.
It’s 4:20 now. The last faint glow of the sun has disappeared from the leaden winter sky. I survey my surroundings. This is a mixed hardwood forest, grown up on land that was farmed 60 years ago. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could have scratched a living out of the rocky soil in this area. In the fading light, all the trees appear the same—vertical black lines stretching upward, lines that blend together as one if you stare at them long enough.
I refocus my eyes, moving them from right to left across the drab forest floor, searching for movement. Darkness is setting in. When you’re in these stark December woods, and you’re watching daylight slowly turn to gray and then black, the feeling is almost as if you’re going to sleep, except your eyes are open. There are maybe 15 more minutes of shooting light, and then I’ll have to lower my bow and pack to the ground, climb down, and hike out to my car in the dark. I can hear the noise from the interstate a mile away. Traffic’s picking up, people are heading home from work. A train whistle knifes through the stillness. I wonder if my wife is on that train.
I wiggle my toes, move my fingers, suppress another shiver. The cold is freezing on my beard, and I suspect that I again must look as if I’m frozen dead . . . .
To me, the one thing that all stands seem to have in common is that they’re cold. Maybe in the beginning of the season the weather will be warm, and there will be pleasant days spent watching the woods, seeing the sun rise, the wildlife start to move. But as the season moves on, the cold creeps in, inevitably, uncaring. And those are the days you remember, the days you suffered, pinning your hopes on the chance that this might be the day he will come down the trail. You can envision him coming now, a big buck that walks right in front of your stand, his rack magnificent, his coat thick, his visage majestic. You can see the cold air billowing from his flared nostrils. You picture yourself slowly settling the sight pin on his heart. Then you let go and . . .
I fish a Milky Way out of my pocket, pulling the paper off with one hand to minimize my movements. Inching my hand to my mouth, I pop the candy in and slowly force my hand back down into my pocket. The bar is frozen, but I work it with my teeth and soon finish it.
Swish, swish. Another sound, one I didn’t hear over my teeth crunching the candy bar. It’s almost dark, but something is definitely coming . . . not down the trail, though, but through the thickets behind me. I deliberately remove my hands from my pockets and wrap them around my bow. My arrow is nocked. Swish, crack, swish . . . stop. He’s right behind me now, maybe 15 yards away, probably with his nose in the air, warily checking the wind, maybe catching my scent. He’s probably looking right at me. Should I try to move? Try to swivel around slowly? Should I stay still, on the chance he’ll keep coming and walk right under my stand?
I decide to pivot around, slowly, very slowly. Maybe I’ll get a chance at a shot. First my eyes, then my head. My heart is in my throat. Swish, sw
ish, swish, swish. The tension is unbearable, but this is a feeling that only hunters know, a feeling that hunters live for. My fingers tighten on the bowstring. . . .
The gray squirrel suddenly decides to run down a log next to my tree. He hops on the crunchy, leafy ground and bounds away. I relax and let out a deep breath. The shivering returns. It’s almost too dark to see now anyway. I put the arrow into my quiver and stand up, letting the blood flow down my legs, making them tingle unbearably. I tie my bow to the rope with stiff fingers, then lower it to the ground. I undo my safety belt and begin to climb down.
Tomorrow he’ll come. I’ll be here.
PART IX
Africa and Asia
Karamojo
W. D. M. BELL
I.—Into the Unknown
MY earliest recollection of myself is that of a child whose sole ambition in life was to hunt. At a very early age I conceived the idea of hunting the American bison. With this end in view I gathered together a few oddments, such as the barrels of a double-barrelled pistol, a clasp knife, a few bits of string and all the money—chiefly pennies—that I could lay hands on. This bison-hunting expedition was prematurely cut short at the Port of Glasgow by the critical state of its finances, for after buying a pork pie for twopence its treasury was found to be almost empty. This was a sad blow, and it was while thinking it over on a doorstep that a kindly policeman instituted proceedings which resulted in the lost and crestfallen child being restored to his family. But the growth of years and the acquirement of the art of reading—by which I discovered that bison no longer existed in America—my ambition became fixed on becoming an elephant hunter. The reading of Gordon Cumming’s books on Africa finished the business. An elephant hunter I determined to become; this idea never left me. Finally, after all kinds of vicissitudes I arrived in Africa and heard of a wonderful new and unexplored country called Karamojo. Elephants were reported by the black traders to be very numerous with enormous tusks, and there was no sort of administration to hamper the hunter with restrictions and game laws. Above all there appeared to be no other person hunting elephants in this Eldorado except the natives, and they had no firearms. My informants told me that the starting point for all safaris (caravans) was Mumias, a native town and Government Post at the foot of Mount Elgon, which formed the last outpost of civilisation for a traveller proceeding North.
At the time of which I write Mumias was a town of some importance. It was the base for all trading expeditions to the Lake Rudolph basin, Turkana, Dabossa and the Southern Abyssinia country. In the first few years of the trade in ivory this commodity was obtained for the most trifling sums; for instance, a tusk worth £50 or £60 could be bought for two or three shillings’ worth of beads or iron wire. As time went on and more traders flocked to Karamojo to share in the huge profits of the ivory trade, competition became keener. Prices rose higher and higher. Where once beads and iron wire sufficed to buy a tusk, now a cow must be paid. Traders were obliged to go further and further afield to find new territory until they came in violent contact with raiding parties of Abyssinians away in the far North.
When most of the dead ivory in the country had been traded off the only remaining source was the yearly crop of tusks from the elephants snared and killed by the native Karamojans. For these comparatively few tusks competition became so keen and prices so high that there was no longer any profit when as much as eight or ten cows had to be paid for a large tusk, and the cows bought down at the base for spot cash and at prices of from £2 to £5 each. Hence arose the idea in the brains of two or three of the bolder spirits among the traders to take by force that which they could no longer afford to buy. Instead of traders they became raiders. In order to ensure success to a raid an alliance would be made with some tribe which was already about equal in strength to its neighbours through centuries of intertribal warfare. The addition of three or four hundred guns to the tribe’s five or six thousand spearmen rendered the result of this raid by the combined forces almost beyond doubt, and moreover, conferred upon the raiders such complete domination of the situation that they were able to search out and capture the young girls, the acquisition of which is the great aim and object of all activity in the Mohammedan mind.
Complete and magnificent success attending the first raiding venture the whole country changed magically. The hitherto more or less peaceful looking trading camps gave place to huge armed Bomas surrounded by high thorn fences. Everyone—trader or native—went about armed to the teeth. Footsore or sick travellers from caravans disappeared entirely, or their remains were found by the roadside. Native women and cattle were heavily guarded, for no man trusted a stranger.
Into this country of suspicion and brooding violence I was about to venture. As soon as my intention became known among the traders at Mumias I encountered on every side a firm barrage of lies and dissuasion of every sort. The buying of pack donkeys was made impossible. Guides were unobtainable. Information about the country north of Turk well was either distorted and false or entirely withheld. I found that no Mohammedan boy would engage with me. The reason for all this apparently malicious obstruction on the part of the trading community was not at the time known to me, but it soon became clear when I had crossed the Turkwell and found that the peaceful, polite and prosperous looking trader of Mumias became the merciless and bloody Dacoit as soon as he had crossed that river and was no longer under European control. Numbering among them, as they did, some pretty notorious ex-slavers, they knew how unexpectedly far the arm of the law could sometimes reach and they no doubt foresaw that nothing but trouble would arise from my visit to the territory they had come to look upon as theirs by right of discovery. It surprises me now, when I think of how much they had at stake, that they resorted to no more stringent methods than those related above to prevent my entry into Karamojo. As it was I soon got together some bullocks and some pagan boys. The bullocks I half trained to carry packs and the Government Agent very kindly arranged that I should have eight Snider rifles with which to defend myself, and to instill confidence among my Baganda and Wanyamwere and Kavirondo boys. The Sniders looked well and no one knew except myself that the ammunition for them was all bad. And then I had my personal rifles, at that time a .303 Lee-Enfield, a .275 Rigby-Mauser and a double .450- .400, besides a Mauser pistol which could be used as a carbine and which soon acquired the name of “Bom-Bom” and a reputation for itself equal to a hundred ordinary rifles.
While searching through some boxes of loose ammunition in the store at Mumias in the hope of finding at least a few good rounds for my Snider carbines I picked up a Martini-Henry cartridge, and while looking at its base it suddenly struck me that possibly it could be fired from a Snider. And so it proved to be. The base being .577 calibre fitted perfectly, but the bullet, being only .450 bore, was scarcely what you might call a good fit for a .577 barrel, and there was, of course, no accuracy to the thing at all. But it went off with a bang and the propensity of its bullet to fly off at the most disconcerting angles after rattling through the barrel from side to side seemed just to suit the style of aiming adopted by my eight askaris (soldiers), for on several occasions jackal and hyena were laid low while prowling round the camp at night.
Bright and early next morning my little safari began to get itself ready for the voyage into the Unknown. The loads were got out and lined up. First of all an askari, with a Snider rifle very proud in a hide belt with five Martini cartridges gleaming yellow in it. He had carefully polished them with sand for the occasion. Likewise the barrel of the old Snider showed signs of much rubbing, and a piece of fat from the tail of a sheep dangled by a short string from the hammer. Then my chop-boxes, and camp gear borne by porters, followed by my boy Suede and Sulieman, the cook, of cannibal parentage be it whispered. As usual, all the small loads seemed to be jauntily and lightly perched on the massive heads and necks of the biggest porters, while the big loads looked doubly big in comparison to the spindly shanks which appeared below them. One enormous porter in partic
ular drew my attention. He was capering about in the most fantastic manner with a large box on his head. From the rattle which proceeded from the box I perceived that this was the cook’s mate, and as I possessed only a few aluminium cooking pots, his was perhaps the lightest load of any, and I vowed that he should have a good heavy tusk to carry as soon as possible. This I was enabled to do soon after passing the Turkwell, and this splendid head-carrier took entire charge of a tusk weighing 123 lbs., carrying it with pride for several hundred weary miles on a daily ration of 1 lb. of mtama grain and unlimited buck meat.
Usually when a safari started from Mumias for the “Barra”—as the bush or wilderness is called—the townsfolk would turn out with drums and horns to give them a send off, but in our case we departed without any demonstration of that sort. We passed through almost deserted and silent streets, and we struck out for the Turkwell, the trail skirting the base of Elgon for six days, as we travelled slowly, being heavily laden. I was able to find and shoot enough haartebeeste and oribi to keep the safari in meat, and after two or three days’ march the boys became better and better and the bullocks more and more docile. I purposely made the marches more easy at first in order to avoid sore backs, and it was easy to do so, as there were good streams of water crossing our path every few miles.
