Fear & Death Above the M'Kunga
from Chewore Safari Journal by John Bascom
Chapter 9
In
our tent the next evening I had difficulty falling asleep. I'm one who dreams often and vividly, but who
seldom remembers even the clearest or most remarkable dream for more than a
day. Still, over the last several years
I recalled a kind of dream I had again and again, one not really recurring in
the sense the same details are repeated time after time, but more a dream with
an oddly common theme but varying circumstances. In it I would be going about my business, perhaps
at home, at the shopping mall, or work, or taking a walk. But an animal would always be strangely
present—on one occasion a bear, a wolf on another, and then a hyena. Intimidating animals by their nature, to be
sure, but in the dream they never moved to harm or even threaten me. They simply were always there, facing me,
whatever I did or whichever way I turned.
Watching and waiting.
And lying on my bed that
evening, trying to drop into sleep—half sleeping and half awake—in our dark,
comfortable tent on the bank of the Chenje River, well into our safari and
anxious to resume our buffalo hunt in the morning, I had such a dream. I was working in our yard back in
Michigan. This time the animal was a
Cape buffalo bull. Not huge, but muscular
and fit, with elegant spreading and symmetrical upward-curling horns. His boss was distinctive and protruding. His tough, dark, dirty hide rippled from the
massive bones and chiseled muscles contained beneath. As in all these dreams, the animal turned
slowly to face and stare at me no matter where I moved. When I left the area, he would suddenly be
there with me once more. His expression
was not so much threatening as contemptuous and focused intensely on me. And I couldn't possibly have imagined that
this time, with this dream, I would face that very buffalo in much the same
setting the next afternoon.
In the morning we set off
again through the hills and across the savannahs of the Chewore searching for
buffalo sign. The sun just beginning to
creep over the horizon was a dull burnt orange, the sky a line of pink just
above and extending to each side. The
air in the faint dawn light appeared to shimmer.
“There'll be a hunter's sky
today,” Wil commented absently as we drove along.
I looked at him
quizzically.
“When the heat haze is so
thick the rising sun looks dark orange and the morning sky an odd red like
this. It means it's going to be bloody
hot. The game will lay up much longer in
the heat of this kind of day but will then have to move to water in the late
afternoon when it starts to yield a bit.
More likely to ambush something going for their drink just before
evening under a hunter's sky.”
Even though we had only a
few days of hunting left, I was more excited than concerned about getting my
buffalo. We had, after all, come upon
them with some regularity. And the
safari overall had been anything but uneventful. I had already taken six animals, most of
them impressive trophies, and we had seen many more. If anything, I was overwhelmed by the action.
It was getting hot and
close to noon when Wil picked up his handheld radio and spoke into it.
“Matt's on his way back
from the wildlife department camp. We're
going to meet him on the trail up ahead beyond where he just finished fixing
that leopard bait on the M'Kunga. The
one visited by the tom and then disturbed by our chain thieves.”
About twenty minutes later
Matt came rumbling down the track toward us in his safari vehicle. Two camp staffers were in the back. Each vehicle squeezed to a different side
until they stopped with the cabs close beside one another.
“We hung some kudu ribs and
reset the cameras. No sign of new
leopard tracks, though. I'm doubtful.”
“I thought as much,” Wil
said. “Worth a go, anyway.”
“Showed our pictures to the
rangers at the wildlife service,” Matt said.
“They don't recognize the fellows, but I'll join their poaching patrol
this afternoon. See if we can't track
them back to their village. The chief
ranger said if we come upon them armed in the Chewore, we're to shoot to kill.”
Wil nodded. Just then one of our trackers leaned around
from the back and said something to Wil in African.
“We'll see you this
evening,” he said to Matt. He put the
truck in gear, and we continued slowly down the two-track.
“The trackers said they
thought they heard something up ahead in the brush. We'll move up a ways and check.”
After only a hundred yards
we stopped and got out in a small clearing.
Elsewhere the jesse was thick and bare-limbed on both sides of the
trail. Wil and the trackers moved off
cautiously to one side of the little road and I followed at the rear. We had walked only some forty yards from the
truck when everyone stopped and dropped to a squat. They ducked low to look under the willow
limbs and listened carefully. I saw and
heard nothing. After a few minutes, we
returned quietly to the truck.
Another
dead end, I thought before Wil spoke.
“Definitely buffs in that
jesse. They weren't moving and in all
likelihood will bed in this insufferable midday heat. It would be folly to walk in there now. We'll have our lunch and come back around
three. They should have started feeding
again by then. There're a few damp
elephant digs in the shade of the high cut banks of the M'Kunga at the base of
these hills, some with little puddles still in their bottoms—the only water
around here. They'll need to feed down
toward that before evening on this kind of day.
Is that all right?”
It was the first time Wil
had asked my opinion on anything during the entire safari.
The thought of simply
walking away from buffalo, particularly with only a few hunting days left, was
difficult. But I recalled his
unlikely-seeming strategies over the past days that had always put us on game
in the end.
“Sure,” I said. “Just about everything you've suggested has
worked for us. Let's do it.”
We drove several miles
through and down the hills, over the riverbank, and back up through the dry,
soft sand of the M'Kunga river bottom for another mile. Then we turned up into a narrow, tree-lined
dry creek bed and stopped in the shade about seventy yards upstream from where
it had joined the river. A nice breeze
blew across the riverbed and directly up the creek, providing some level of
relief from the heat. The staff set up
folding canvas camp chairs for Nickie and me and spread our lunch on the tops
of coolers before us. Wil, Nickie, and I
ate together, but as always the black field staff had leftovers off by
themselves, down where the creek joined the river, watching for game as they
rested and waited. After lunch Nickie
and I took brief naps in our camp chairs as best we could. At one point, a parade of guinea fowl marched
from the woods, across the creek mouth, and out into the M'Kunga where they
strutted back and forth in the sand. I
was aware those buffalos were likely still up above in the hills, and the
waiting was difficult.
Nickie was wearing her
watch, so I knew it was just after three when the staff began gathering
everything and stowing it in the back of our truck. We took our rifles, and I loaded a round,
safety on, as Wil, Levitt, me, Favor,
and Gibson—in that order—set off down the little creek, across the wide,
scorching hot bed of the M'Kunga, and toward the sharply rising, sun-baked
hillside above its opposite bank. Nickie
and Marusi remained with the truck in the relative coolness of the little
tree-lined streambed. Each day that we had
lunch at one of the camps, I checked the thermometers that sat in the shade
before setting out for the afternoon hunt.
The most extreme reading had been one hundred six, but it was far hotter
today. The sun was high, the air above
the sand of the riverbed wavered dream-like under the oppressive temperature
below the hunter's sky.
The climb up the hill was
steep and tiring in the heat, through a mixture of big mopanes, scruffy mopani
bushes, thornbush, and jesse. We hiked uphill
at a brisk if measured pace for at least a mile before stopping in a small
clearing by a hunting road. I recognized it as the spot we had checked out
before lunch to scout the buffalo the trackers had heard in the jesse. Everyone paused, stooped, craned, and
peered.
Then Wil, saying nothing as
usual, took off at a fast trot away from the jesse thicket that spread roughly
parallel to the M'Kunga, the river now out of sight far below, and across the
two-track, moving away from where we had found the herd in the morning and deeper
into the bush. After ten minutes he
turned hard left to parallel the road and river, both invisible to us now. We continued for another half mile before he
turned back again in the direction of the road and jesse.
As he approached the trail
and brush, he became cautious once more, searching carefully. Levitt was with him and I bent low a few
yards behind. It was obvious they were
looking at or listening to something, but I saw and heard nothing. Then they scuttled in a low squat back toward
me before standing and heading off at a good pace away from the road and jesse
once more. We repeated the paralleling,
moving up, searching, and retreating maneuver once again. The third time, as we had moved back across
the road and to the edge of the heavier bush I imagined held the buffalos, Wil
continued looking for a long time. I
knew there was something promising out there as he put his field glasses to
his eyes. Then he set the sticks and
waved me up with his fingers.
“There's a good bull near
the front,” he said. “They're milling a
bit, but it's about the third animal from the lead.”
It was the first I had
heard him speak to anyone since leaving the creek bed more than an hour and a half
earlier.
We had been squatting, but
I rose slowly and placed the forestock of my rifle in the pocket formed by the
crossing of the three sticks near the top.
I adjusted their height to a steadier shooting position, as I had
learned to do after missing the first impala ram. A herd of buffalo stretched from left to
right before me. There was less jesse
here and more mixed brush with scattered big mopanes. Broad open areas between the trees and bushes
provided a good view of the animals as they grazed across my field of view,
moving to my right.
I looked at the lead
buffalo, a big, full-horned cow without a boss, and counted two then three
back. The third and fourth were a cow
and calf passing other animals. I
checked through my scope to be sure. The
fifth back was a juvenile, a half-grown cow.
The next few animals were mostly obscured by brush. The herd was moving as it grazed, buffalos
shifting positions as some stopped to eat while others moved forward. They seemed completely unaware of our
presence.
“Between the two trees,”
Wil said, realizing I hadn't seen the bull yet.
There were trees and buffalos everywhere.
I looked at the next animal
on the left, the next one back. It was
the closest, directly in front, and was stopped, facing toward us. It stood motionless between two mopane trees
about seventy yards to our front.
It was staring exactly as
in my dream the night before. Big,
thick, protruding bosses crowned its forehead.
Its head was held high, the very top roughly level with its big, long
back. The horns dropped down, then
curled out and up in perfect symmetry, ending in sharp, shiny and inward-turning
points. The ears were partially up and
out to its sides in the alert position, not drooping as were those of the big
cows. The tips of the ears ended well
before the upward rise of the outermost portion of its horns. The bull was quartering toward me, facing
almost head-on but with enough of a cant in its position to expose its back
flank and reveal a penis near the rear of his underbelly. His muscles were full and chiseled beneath
the dark hide.
It's been famously said a
bull buffalo looks at you like you owe him money, and that was true enough with
this one. His stare revealed neither
fright nor hostility, but appeared more as a superior and surly glower, the
animal seeming unthreatened but confident in its ability to handle any trouble
this small, pathetic intruder might bring.
His gaze was unsettling, as it had been in my dream.
I picked up the center of
the buffalo's chest in the crosshairs.
Still, Wil had said the third one from the front and this one was only
slightly farther back in the shifting herd.
I wasn't sure.
With the bull's quartering
stance, I realized a center-chest hold, if pulled accidentally only slightly to
my right, would risk angling between the brisket and away-shoulder, mostly
missing the heart and lungs and raising the chances of a dangerously wounded
Cape buffalo. I moved the crosshairs over
a few inches, between the brisket and shoulder positioned more forward and to
my left, steadied the rifle, exhaled, drew a half-breath and held it, then
smoothly squeezed off a shot.
As the magnum jumped and
roared, I lost sight of the bull and most everything else. When the rifle came down a half second later
and I could again see over the top, all the animals were running to my right in
a black, surging jumble. It was
impossible to pick out the bull at which I had fired. As they stampeded across the face of the hill
and just slightly down toward the M'Kunga, they compressed into a dense,
shifting black gob. All the buffalos
were gone in seconds, and it was strangely serene once again.
Everyone was oddly quiet
for several moments.
“It didn't look hit,” Wil
said.
“I had a pretty solid hold
on his chest,” I said.
“Are you sure you hit it?”
“Pretty sure.” How
could I possibly miss a standing Cape buffalo bull at seventy yards shooting at
my seventh trophy in a week—all previous ones smaller and most at longer
ranges—from perfectly aligned sticks?
I didn't realize at the time my rifle was a few inches high, as I would
learn after the hunt had ended, but that would not be enough to ruin a shot on
a buffalo presenting as huge and stable a target as did this one.
We all moved down to the
area where the herd had been. The
trackers—everyone—searched the ground methodically. No blood or hair. No sign of a hit of any kind.
Levitt and Favor led us
along the track the buffalos had taken.
Their compressed hoof prints and the trampled ground were obvious. We worked along their trail for about twenty
minutes, about three hundred fifty yards or roughly a quarter mile by my
estimate. The trackers would cast to the
left or right occasionally to see if an animal had straggled or stumbled on
the edge of the herd. The bush had
thinned, but there was thicker jesse just ahead as we paused to consider our
next move.
“You're sure you hit
something,” Wil said, more as a statement seeking a reassuring response than a
question. “We can't find anything.”
I was beginning to doubt
myself.
“Wait here,” he said. “The guys and I will double back to be sure
an animal didn't cut off to the side back there. They do that sometimes if they're wounded,
break away from the rest of the herd. We
checked that while moving down here, but we need to be certain.”
The junior tracker, Favor,
waited with me, unarmed. All the others
disappeared back up the hill. I knew I
couldn't have missed that buffalo, and was struck by the fact I was alone but
for the young, inexperienced, gunless tracker—with every possibility there was
a wounded bull Cape buffalo hidden and seething in the dense jesse that
stretched ahead. Don't want an inexperienced client—any client—alone out front with a
wounded buff in the jesse, Wil had said a few days earlier. And there I was, imagining his charge from
the brush and what I would do. I had
reloaded after my shot and now brought my rifle to the front, finger on the
trigger and thumb on the safety. I
waited.
About fifteen minutes had
passed when Wil and the others returned.
“We didn't find anything
back there.”
Everyone was just standing
around, waiting. Wil lit a cigarette. No one made eye contact with me.
It was Gibson, the despised
game ranger, who moved forward toward the leading edge of the thick jesse stand
that stretched as far as one could see. Gibson,
the optimist, thinking outside the box, with his positive attitude and
friendly disposition. Gibson, who liked
and generally wished to help people.
Who liked and helped me.
He moved up about thirty
yards and a few yards to our left, then stooped to better see beneath the
overhanging jesse bows. He stretched his
neck and head forward, paused, and pointed with his finger.
We all rushed over. I squatted and looked beneath the jesse in
the direction he was pointing. There,
some eighty odd yards ahead, lay the unmistakable black carcass of a Cape
buffalo.
We quickly moved up through
the jesse stand, stopping about thirty feet from the big animal lying lifeless
on his side. Wil approached the downed
buffalo carefully and nudged his head with the barrel of his rifle.
I surprised myself with the
overwhelming feelings of joy and accomplishment that swept through me. I was ecstatic, beaming I'm sure from ear to
ear. I walked up near the animal to
admire him. He was as magnificent in
death as he had been staring sullenly at me up near the crest of the hill a few
minutes before. He had gone perhaps four
hundred yards before collapsing in the thick brush. I knew an average human track runner could
cover a hundred yards in just over ten seconds. With the speed at which that herd took off at
my shot, it couldn't have been over forty-five seconds, well under a minute,
for my buffalo to run down here and die in this jesse stand. I was glad it had been quick.
“Nickie's going to go
crazy.” I meant to say it to myself but
realized I had said it aloud.
I moved closer to the bull
and inspected him carefully. My shot had
hit very near my precise point of aim, slightly above by only a few inches and
perhaps an inch, if that, to the left.
The bloody wound on his chest between the brisket and the animal's right
shoulder displayed the track of the bullet on his hide. It had entered from the front, angling in
such a way it would travel through its body back and across to the organs
behind on the other side. It was clear
the right lung had been raked from front to back, the crossing bullet probably
hitting the rearward portion of the left lung as well, and going on deep into
the body through its liver and beyond.
There was no exit wound. I doubt
the bull ever really knew what hit him.
My spirits were soaring,
the adrenalin doing its work more so than during the stalk or the shot. I had thought upon our arrival in Africa
taking a buffalo was secondary to experiencing the bush and its animals. But I understood then I had been wrong. This was the thrilling and fulfilling
culmination that had turned our safari into an unforgettable experience.
At that moment a visible
change came over Wil. A smile spread
across his face, something that had not previously occurred while we took game
together. He spontaneously clasped my
shoulder, another first.
“You came here to take your
buffalo and you did it,” he blurted. “You
kept pace during our climb and while we maneuvered in on that herd. It wasn't an easy thing, especially for a man
who has reached seventy and has had health issues. And your shot was spot on. It was quite the achievement.”
He was grinning the whole
time, his demeanor all at once joyful and spontaneous, like mine. It was as if the death of that nyati in the
thick jesse in the hills above the dry M'Kunga River had caused something in
Wil and me to die along with it. For Wil,
it seemed to be the awful weight of command, the fear of failure, purged by my
joy at taking my buffalo bull. A perfect
completion of our safari. It was as if
the anger and discontent that seemed to simmer beneath Wil's surface had died
along with that animal.
And for me the thing that
died on the hillside was the fear that I, battling cancer and reaching seventy,
had passed a tipping point. That I no
longer could do the things I loved or achieve the things I once had. I felt redeemed and resurrected by the sacrifice
of my beautiful Cape buffalo bull. And I
somehow knew my strange dreams had become a thing of the past.
“It was an exciting kill,”
Wil grinned, “with its twists and turns.”
“Fear and death in the
hills above the M'Kunga,” I laughed.
Perhaps I should have phrased it …
the death of fear.
Wil lifted his radio to
call in Marusi with Nickie and the truck.
I couldn't wait for her to arrive.
________________________________________
Next week the conclusion of Chewore Safari Journal
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