by Jay Cassell
The fact that I could not hold my rifle, a D.B. 450/400, with my left hand (which I was using to retain my precarious seat on the ledge) was causing me some uneasiness, for apart from the fear of the rifle’s slipping on the rounded top of the rock—I had folded my handkerchief and placed the rifle on it to try to prevent this—I did not know what would be the effect of the recoil of a high velocity rifle fired in this position. The rifle was pointing along the path, in which there was a hump, and it was my intention to fire into the tigress’s face immediately it appeared over this hump, which was twenty feet from the rock.
The tigress, however, did not keep to the contour of the hill, which would have brought her out on the path a little beyond the hump, but crossed a deep ravine and came straight towards where she had heard my last call, at an angle which I can best describe as one o’clock. This manoeuver put the low ridge of rock, over which I could not see, between us. She had located the direction of my last call with great accuracy, but had misjudged the distance, and not finding her prospective mate at the spot she had expected him to be, she was now working herself up into a perfect fury and you will have some idea of what the fury of a tigress in her condition can be when I tell you that not many miles from my home a tigress on one occasion closed a public road for a whole week, attacking everything that attempted to go along it, including a string of camels, until she was finally joined by a mate.
I know of no sound more liable to fret one’s nerves than the calling of an unseen tiger at close range. What effect this appalling sound was having on my men I was frightened to think, and if they had gone screaming down the hill I should not have been at all surprised, for even though I had the heel of a good rifle to my shoulder and the stock against my cheek I felt like screaming myself.
But even more frightening than this continuous calling was the fading out of the light. Another few seconds, ten or fifteen at the most, and it would be too dark to see my sights, and we should then be at the mercy of a man-eater, plus a tigress wanting a mate. Something would have to be done, and done in a hurry, if we were not to be massacred, and the only thing I could think of was to call.
The tigress was now so close that I could hear the intake of her breath each time before she called, and as she again filled her lungs, I did the same with mine, and we called simultaneously. The effect was startlingly instantaneous. Without a second’s hesitation she came tramping with quick steps through the dead leaves, over the low ridge and into the bushes a little to my right front, and just as I was expecting her to walk right on top of me she stopped, and the next moment the full blast of her deep-throated call struck me in the face and would have carried the hat off my head had I been wearing one. A second’s pause, then again quick steps; a glimpse of her as she passed between two bushes, and then she stepped right out into the open, and, looking into my face, stopped dead.
By great and unexpected good luck the half-dozen steps the tigress took to her right front carried her almost to the exact spot at which my rifle was pointing. Had she continued in the direction in which she was coming before her last call, my story—if written—would have had a different ending, for it would have been as impossible to slew the rifle on the rounded top of the rock as it would have been to lift and fire it with one hand.
Owing to the nearness of the tigress, and the fading light, all that I could see of her was her head. My first bullet caught her under the right eye and the second, fired more by accident than with intent, took her in the throat and she came to rest with her nose against the rock and knocked me off the ledge, and the recoil from the left barrel, fired while I was in the air, brought the rifle up in violent contact with my jaw and sent me heels over head right on top of the men and goats. Once again I take my hat off to those four men for, not knowing but what the tigress was going to land on them next, they caught me as I fell and saved me from injury and my rifle from being broken.
When I had freed myself from the tangle of human and goat legs I took the .275 rifle from the man who was holding it, rammed a clip of cartridges into the magazine and sent a stream of five bullets singing over the valley and across the Sarda into Nepal. Two shots, to the thousands of men in the valley and in the surrounding villages who were anxiously listening for the sound of my rifle, might mean anything, but two shots followed by five more, spaced at regular intervals of five seconds, could only be interpreted as conveying one message, and that was, that the man-eater was dead.
I had not spoken to my men from the time we had first heard the tigress from the ridge. On my telling them now that she was dead and that there was no longer any reason for us to be afraid, they did not appear to be able to take in what I was saying, so I told them to go up and have a look while I found and lit a cigarette. Very cautiously they climbed up to the rock, but went no further for, as I have told you, the tigress was touching the other side of it. Late in camp that night, while sitting round a camp-fire and relating their experiences to relays of eager listeners, their narrative invariably ended up with, ‘and then the tiger whose roaring had turned our livers into water hit the sahib on the head and knocked him down on top of us and if you don’t believe us, go and look at his face.’ A mirror is superfluous in camp and even if I had had one it could not have made the swelling on my jaw, which put me on milk diet for several days, look as large and as painful as it felt.
By the time a sapling had been felled and the tigress lashed to it, lights were beginning to show in the Ladhya valley and in all the surrounding camps and villages. The four men were very anxious to have the honor of carrying the tigress to camp, but the task was beyond them; so I left them and set off for help.
In my three visits to Chuka during the past eight months I had been along this path many times by day and always with a loaded rifle in my hands, and now I was stumbling down in the dark, unarmed, my only anxiety being to avoid a fall. If the greatest happiness one can experience is the sudden cessation of great pain, then the second greatest happiness is undoubtedly the sudden cessation of great fear. One short hour previously it would have taken wild elephants to have dragged from their homes and camps the men who now, singing and shouting, were converging from every direction, singly and in groups, on the path leading to Thak. Some of the men of this rapidly growing crowd went up the path to help carry in the tigress, while others accompanied me on my way to camp, and would have carried me had I permitted them. Progress was slow, for frequent halts had to be made to allow each group of new arrivals to express their gratitude in their own particular way. This gave the party carrying the tigress time to catch us up, and we entered the village together. I will not attempt to describe the welcome my men and I received, or the scenes I witnessed at Chuka that night, for having lived the greater part of my life in the jungles I have not the ability to paint word-pictures.
A hayrick was dismantled and the tigress laid on it, and an enormous bonfire made from driftwood close at hand to light up the scene and for warmth, for the night was dark and cold with a north wind blowing. Round about midnight my servant, assisted by the Headman of Thak and Kunwar Singh, near whose house I was camped, persuaded the crowd to return to their respective villages and labor camps, telling them they would have ample opportunity of feasting their eyes on the tigress the following day. Before leaving himself, the Headman of Thak told me he would send word in the morning to the people of Thak to return to their village. This he did, and two days later the entire population returned to their homes, and have lived in peace ever since.
After my midnight dinner I sent for Kunwar Singh and told him that in order to reach home on the promised date I should have to start in a few hours, and that he would have to explain to the people in the morning why I had gone. This he promised to do, and I then started to skin the tigress. Skinning a tiger with a pocket-knife is a long job, but it gives one an opportunity of examining the animal that one would otherwise not get, and in the case of man-eaters enables one to ascertain, more or less accurately, the reason for the ani
mal’s having become a man-eater.
The tigress was a comparatively young animal and in the perfect condition one would expect her to be at the beginning of the mating season. Her dark winter coat was without a blemish, and in spite of her having so persistently refused the meals I had provided for her she was encased in fat. She had two old gunshot wounds, neither of which showed on her skin. The one in her left shoulder, caused by several pellets of homemade buckshot, had become septic, and when healing the skin, over quite a large surface, had adhered permanently to the flesh. To what extent this wound had incapacitated her it would have been difficult to say, but it had evidently taken a very long time to heal, and could quite reasonably have been the cause of her having become a man-eater. The second wound, which was in her right shoulder, had also been caused by a charge of buckshot, but had healed without becoming septic. These two wounds received over kills in the days before she had become a man-eater were quite sufficient reason for her not having returned to the human and other kills I had sat over.
After having skinned the tigress I bathed and dressed, and though my face was swollen and painful and I had twenty miles of rough going before me, I left Chuka walking on air, while the thousands of men in and around the valley were peacefully sleeping.
I have come to the end of the jungle stories I set out to tell you and I have also come near the end of my man-eater hunting career.
I have had a long spell and count myself fortunate in having walked out on my own feet and not been carried out on a cradle in the manner and condition of the man of Thak.
There have been occasions when life has hung by a thread and others when a light purse and disease resulting from exposure and strain have made the going difficult, but for all these occasions I am amply rewarded if my hunting has resulted in saving one human life.
Second-Best Buffalo
CRAIG BODDINGTON
One of the wonderful things about hunting Cape buffalo is it is all about the experience. Any buffalo taken in fair chase, on foot, offers the stuff memories are made of, and any mature bull taken under such circumstances is a great trophy by any definition. That said, most hunters would prefer a big buffalo. That’s easier said than done. Any area that has a lot of buffalo will have a few exceptional bulls, but finding them isn’t ever a certainty. It’s a matter of time, patience, and the hunter’s greatest imponderable, plain old luck.
Over the course of thirty years of African hunting I have been very lucky with big buffalo. Let’s put it another way: Lady Luck has been a major factor with almost all of my really good bulls! On the other hand, she has been most fickle. There have been a number of hunts where I have tried extremely hard to find the kind of bull buffalo hunters dream of: wide spread; deep hooks; and the wide, heavy, and completely hard boss of a mature bull. I have never taken such a bull in such an attempt. The great bulls I’ve taken—enough that I do consider myself charmed on buffalo—have almost always come on days when I’d have been perfectly happy with any mature bull.
The biggest one came on fine October day in Tanzania’s Masailand, in the famous old Mto wa Mbu block that straddles the Great Rift Valley north of Lake Manyara. That particular hunt didn’t exactly fall into either of the above categories, and I’m not even sure luck was on my side. You can be the judge of that.
It started on the first day of a three-week safari with Geoff Broom. Our primary goal was to strike far to the west on the Upper Ugalla and prospect some new country that should hold sitatunga, roan, sable, and some cats. But we started with a few days in Masailand, and on that first afternoon, still jet-lagged, we drove across dusty plains and started up into the cooler hills above the valley floor. We hadn’t gone far before we spied a nice herd of buffalo feeding along two ridges to our south. As I recall we weren’t specifically hunting buffalo at all, just enjoying a quick first-day outing. But I had buffalo on license, three to be precise, and Geoff Broom loves to hunt buffalo as much as I do. Even if you don’t love them, when you see a herd you will stop and look—and if you have a buffalo on license, you will probably stop whatever you’re doing and approach for a closer look.
We scrambled up and over the first ridge, and the herd was spread out on the next ridge, feeding slowly upward. It was a nice herd, perhaps sixty buffalo. They were too far for a shot, but just right for a really good look. There were several younger bulls, but on the left side of the herd there was one bull that stood out. He was a herd bull, with his horn tips still sharp, but he was hard-bossed and fully mature. His horns were coal black and extremely wide, almost certainly forty-four inches, with a nice curve. Most distinctive were those sharp tips, not curving in or back but jutting straight up like long spikes.
We were pinned down, unable to move until the buffalo crossed that next ridge. They took their time, and it was almost sundown before we could move. We dashed down the ridge and up the next and we caught the van of the herd at close range. Had that bull been there we would have shot him with no hesitation, but he was not. We maneuvered a bit, but the quartering wind was dicey and the light was starting to go. We backed off without spooking them, certain we could find them again in the morning.
The sun was just hitting the hills when we pulled up to an old Masai well on the valley floor and began glassing the ridges above us. Geoff found buffalo almost immediately, feeding along far above us. They weren’t all that far from where we’d left them, and the number looked correct; it almost had to be the same herd. The wind was coming down the hills, so we climbed straight up from the well, hoping to come onto them from the valley side.
The ridge was taller, steeper, and rockier than it had looked like from the well, so the buffalo were long gone by the time we got to the top. No problem. The spoor was fresh and we took it, keeping to the left side for the best advantage with the wind. As we dropped down into a little korongo a very good lesser kudu bull jumped, ran a few yards, and stood and stared at us, iron gray with bright white side stripes and wonderful spiraling horns. A primary reason for being in this area was because my hunting partner desperately wanted a lesser kudu—but he was off hunting elsewhere. I didn’t want a lesser kudu, and he never saw one. We continued on after the buffalo.
We caught them quickly enough, but they must have fed on the open ridges through the night, because although it was still early they were already in heavy thornbush on the benches beyond. So began the game of cat and mouse that is one of the best parts of hunting buffalo. They were moving slowly, already seeking a place to bed, and we worked along with them, circling and cutting as we tried to locate that big bull with the high, sharp tips. We got very close, smelling their cattle smell and hearing them break branches, but it was very thick and we were seeing only bits and pieces of a few animals at a time, blacker animals in black shadows.
With a half-century of experience in Rhodesia’s even thicker thornbush, Geoff Broom is a master at this game. We stayed with them for a couple of hours, and although a couple of cows spotted us now and again we had the wind and they never spooked. On the other hand, we couldn’t find that bull. The day heated quickly, and in the late morning they found what they were looking for and lay down in a really nasty patch of thick, green bush.
We crawled this way and that, glassing clumps of buffalo through thorny screens from thirty or forty yards, but we just couldn’t find that bull. A couple more hours passed and we had done what we could. We weren’t sure we had seen them all, but we couldn’t press any farther without spooking them. So we backed off to our own patch of shade and lay down, clumps of buffalo still plainly visible.
Now it was early afternoon, and we had a problem. Expecting to stroll up the ridge and shoot a buffalo, we had committed the cardinal sin of leaving the truck without water. We rested in the shade for a bit, quietly weighing our options. The buffalo would get up and start feeding and might give us a better look . . . but that might not happen for another three hours. It was very hot now, and by late afternoon we’d be in trouble. It would have been worth
the misery if we knew that big bull was there, but Geoff and I were of the same mind: though in bits and pieces, we’d seen the herd pretty well. It seemed all too likely that he had split off during the night, and we were wasting our time.
The Rhodesian, now Zimbabwean, hunters grow up tracking buffalo in dense cover, where the biggest problem is always seeing the bulls in a herd. They have a lastditch tactic for this. We rested for a while, decided it was time, and then we crept a bit closer, stood up, and charged the herd. Buffalo erupted from their beds, milled for a few seconds, then stampeded off in panic. We ran with them, not quite keeping pace, and in a little clearing on the far side they did exactly what we had hoped they would do. Uncertain of the danger, and having not caught our scent, they turned and faced us, a solid wall of shifting black bodies.
We pulled up short and got our best look. The bull we wanted wasn’t visible. The standoff lasted for a few seconds, and then the herd turned and thundered off, down a little cut, up the far side, and lost in the thorn. Geoff scratched his head. “Craig, I don’t think he’s there, but they were so packed we couldn’t see the last of the herd. They shouldn’t go far, so let’s give them one last go.”
The tracks led us over that low ridge and another, and then to the edge of a deep, steep-sided brushy ravine that cut all the way down to the valley floor. We stopped, glassing the ascending ridges beyond, hoping to see black bodies moving. Nothing. Then, almost simultaneously, we glanced down the korongo to our left, and we saw something black. It wasn’t the herd, but it was three buffalo feeding on the far side, almost at the bottom of the cut. Even at five hundred yards two of them looked very big.
This was the simplest stalk I have ever made on a buffalo—or most anything else. All we had to do was stroll down our side of the ravine, then follow a little finger straight to the buffalo. In ten minutes we were sitting on a little open patch of gravel overlooking the bottom of the ravine. Little more than a hundred yards below us, on the far side, three black forms were partially visible in a little patch of green bush.
