Days Of Schooling. 2.

The Land Rover pulled into the farmyard, and we proceeded right to the big thatched shed where we offloaded the kudu carcass, and hung it on the slaughter pole next to the shed by its hind legs. We stowed the four tusks in a corner of the shed and covered them over with a pile of empty potato pockets. While Edward started to skin the kudu, I took the Land Rover and trailer to the pump and started to clean them washing off the blood and dust. I opened the hood and hosed down the engine and cleaned it thoroughly to make sure that no buffalo beans were stuck in some crevice to blast us when we least expected it.

Buffalo beans are the bane of a hunter's life, and the Zambezi valley was full of them. Every donga and river bed was full of this menace. These beans climb up the elephant grass and scrubby shoots always in the way of the hunter when he is creeping through the bush stalking his prey. They hang in clusters on their vines, short stubby beans almost the shape of a broad bean, and they are covered in tiny hairs which have a barb at the end. As soon as the grass stem is disturbed, a cloud of tiny hairs descend on the unsuspecting hunter and are deposited on his skin and down his neck, and soon as he starts to sweat they start to itch. Itch? No, it is a torture devised by the Devil himself. Scratching the itch only makes it worse, far worse. All sorts of remedies have been tried, calamine lotion, petrol, mud, old engine oil, and a few pharmaceutical concoctions, but none of them work. All the hunter can do is grit his teeth and wait for the burning itch to go away, and be aware of the danger for the next trip and be wider awake.

On one trip to the Valley I had two young novices with me. One was a young Italian friend named Luciano Bertonotti, and the other an English speaker named John Weinand. Luciano had a new series two Land Rover fitted with a canvas top stretched over a pipe frame. What they lacked in experience they made up for in enthusiasm. I can say that they approached the hunting scene like a bull at a gate.

We had removed the canvas top, but retained the pipe frame, and after making camp the two hunters were keen to get at the animals roaming the valley. Each wanted to bring home a buffalo bull, and each had the vision of an enormous buffalo head mounted over the bar in the den. They had new rifles of the best calibers, and had worked up their eager enthusiasm by reading articles in the men's magazines, and listening to accounts by their friends who had, or claimed to have had, experience of buffalo hunts. Consequently they were raring to go, and this was the first morning actually on the hunt. We left camp and drove along the left bank of the river; the going was easy, as the grass was quite short, and it was easy to see where we were going. Then we came across a donga running across our path into the river bank. The bottom of the ravine was full of elephant grass I was sitting at the back of the vehicle, and as we approached the donga I stood up to be able to see over the windscreen which was still erect. I had told them to remove the screen, but they knew better, and left it up. As we travelled, the windscreen caused a turbulence which sucked in all the dust thrown up by the vehicle's wheels, which was most unpleasant, and with me sitting at the back, I got the worst of it.


Here we were then ready to enter the donga, and I could see masses of buffalo beans on almost every stalk of grass. My shout of warning was lost in the urgency to crash through the donga and get to its opposite bank, and the vehicle rushed through the long grass scattering buffalo bean pods all over the place. When we reached the level ground again I was sitting on top of the frame and shouting to them, "Watch out, buffalo beans!" Too late we were through them and John turned to me and asked: "What are Buffalo Beans?" Two minutes later they found out. Luciano had stepped out of the vehicle and was starting to scratch his crotch inside his shorts, and John was scratching his neck. I also started to itch, and it grew into a burning intensity that became quite unbearable. The Zambezi River was about thirty paces to our left, and a large sand bank stretched into the water "Lets wash it off!" John shouted, and both ran for the water as if a swarm of hornets was chasing them. Diving into the shallow water they pulled off their clothes and started to rub the coarse sand over their bodies. Of course this only intensified the problem, and I ran up to them shouting for them to beware the crocodiles. They were sitting with the water reaching up to their necks, and howling at the itch.

"Stuff the crocodiles!" Luciano shouted, "At least if they catch us this burning will stop." He redoubled his efforts at rubbing the wet sand over his inflamed skin. In the meantime I rinsed their shorts in the shallows while keeping my rifle at close quarters.

"Here, put on your shorts and let us rinse out the Landie, or we will get another infestation of the pest when we carry on." They happily complied with that suggestion, and the bucket was filled and splashed over the vehicle a number of times till we decided that no more stinging barbs were present.

You can be sure that those two hunters would make sure that they proceed very carefully when they suspect the presence of Buffalo beans in their future hunting excursions.

The following day I went into town with the four tusks to my Greek contact to see if I could convert them into solid cash, and found him out. While waiting outside his premises an acquaintance, a certain Swanepoel, whom I knew as a hunter in the business of taking rich clients on hunting trips also parked outside the shop waiting for Raftopolous to arrive, and we started talking. It transpired that he had taken out an American, a medical doctor, and they had bagged an Elephant with two very small tusks, and he was hoping to buy something better for his client who was most disappointed at his bag. He could see the point of one of my tusks peeping out from the canvass cover, and asked me if I would be prepared to sell them to his client if they were a decent size.

"I have two pairs here, the one pair weighs ninety two pounds, and ninety four pounds each, but for them I want a lot of money as they are a perfectly matched pair." I casually flipped the canvas cover aside so that he could see the tusks. I could see his eyes bugging and he almost drooled all over the back of my vehicle.

"Follow me to the Ridgeway hotel, and I will let my client view them, and maybe we can give you a bit of a better price than the Greek would offer." He tried to sound a casual as possible.

I followed him to the parking lot of the hotel, and he virtually sprinted in to the foyer. I decided that I would accept at least double the price that they offered, and soon the two came hurrying out. I had turned the Landie around as if I was ready to pull out of the hotel grounds, and Swanepoel came running towards me as if I was ready to depart with his wife. I switched off the engine and waited for them to catch up to me.

As the client reached the back of the Land Rover Swanepoel flipped the canvas to one side exposing the pair of Elephant tusks, and while his client was examining them he came round to me and with a flip of his hand as if dismissing a fly, he said. "We are prepared to offer you one thousand American dollars in cash, which is double what you would get from the Greek."

"You must be joking." I retorted, and walked back to the rear and flipped the canvas back over the tusks. "For these magnificent specimens I want twelve thousand American Dollars. Your client is not the only one who will buy them. In fact I know of an English count who also did not bag a good pair, and he will beat any offer your client can make; but thanks for the offer anyway." I extracted my keys from my pocket and rattled them while sauntering around to the driver's side. Swanepoel opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of the water, and the American ran around to my window.

"Wait, wait." He took hold of my elbow. "We can work out a trade." He sounded very anxious.

"What sort of trade do you have in mind?" I looked as if I was looking through him.

"Well we have the tusks from the elephant that I shot, and I will give you ten thousand Dollars for your pair." He stared fixedly at Swanepoel.

"If the tusks you have are as bad as I think they are, then the Game Department will confiscate them as being undersize, and I will lose out anyway. No thank you very much." I again started the motor.

"I can only give ten thousand dollars cash." He said. "That is all I have here in travelers cheques. But I have a new rifle, a Weatherby Magnum in the .458 caliber which I will be prepared to add to the deal with one hundred rounds of ammunition. It is in a tooled leather case, and I will include an ammunition belt also in tooled leather."

"Right, bring out the goods, and the cheques, and if the rifle is as good as you say then we may do a deal." They ran back into the hotel and soon they emerged carrying the goods.

I could not believe my eyes. The tooled leather gun case was exquisite with carved scenes of Horses and Cowboys in relief, and lined in green baize. The belt was tooled harness back leather with leather loops to hold the cartridges. When I examined the rifle, my heart skipped a beat. It had a deep blue heavy barrel, and a glossy walnut stock, and looked as if it had just left the dealer's store.

"You will have to give me a bill of sale for this rifle." I told the doctor, "Let's go fetch your pair of tusks and offload this pair, and then the deal is done." I stowed the rifle lovingly on the front seat of the Landie, and set off after Swanepoel and his client to Swanepoel's office and storeroom where I deposited the tusks, and collected my bill of sale. From there I sped to the Police station where I saw an a friend of mine, Pat Murray, who added the rifle to my arms license without even asking one question. Even if I live to be one hundred years of age I will never again do such a sweet deal as I did that day.

My bush schooling was being shaped and polished, and I learnt not to give away my hard earned lucre. Although the poaching was starting to really pay off, I could not live with my conscience, and decided that although I was addicted to the chase, and loved the bush, indiscriminate hunting of elephants was not for me, and I should do something to rectify the matter, but what? I had to wrack my brains for an equitable solution. But that is another story.

Days Of Schooling 1.

The mournful cu cucu…cu… cu ..cucucucu… cucucucucucucu… call of the emerald spotted dove drifted on the slight breeze blowing over a stiflingly hot valley. It was late August, and the sun beat down on the bonnet of my old Land Rover like someone beating a rhythm with a four pound hammer on an anvil. The needle on the heat gauge had passed the "normal" mark, and was creeping into the red of the hot section on the dial. I had cleaned out the radiator and filled it with fresh rain water to make sure that no mineral deposits were present. I also knew that one did not boil a Landie's engine because the aluminum cylinder head would warp and then the engine would be good for nothing. I decided to move the vehicle into the shade of a large sausage tree so that it could cool off a bit, and it would give me an hour or so to have a sandwich and some cold tea out of my Thermos flask.

Moving onto the passenger seat, I lay back and put my feet up onto the windscreen rail, opened my sandwich tin and poured a cup of ice cold lemon tea. Munching the bread I listened to the call of the emerald spotted dove. It sounded far away and extremely mournful, as if he was mourning a death in the family. I remembered the story old Kapatula had told about the call of this dove.

"When you hear his call, you must know that he is calling to his lost love, and asking her to leave the male that stole her away and come back. You only hear the call of the male, because his female is ashamed of her conduct and is reluctant to leave the loving she has received from the new lover." He looked up to the sky and continued, "He sounds so far away, but in truth he is very near and can send his cry far into the woodlands for his lost love to be able to hear him. Yes, the denizens of the forest can project their calls over many miles to communicate with others of their own tribe.

Take the Hyena as an example; you hear his cry of "hauwee" rising and falling in pitch, and if you listen intently an answer will come from very far off. How does he achieve such distance in his call? Well he puts his nose close to the ground, and lets out the howl using the ground as a sounding board, and the sound is projected far away where the other hyenas can get the message that meat has been found, and they reply in similar fashion telling the caller they are on their way. He then continues to call, and the other members of the tribe are guided accurately to where the original caller waits next to the kill calling and guiding them in."

"It is the same with the elephants," old Kapatula said, "they let out a low rumble and the sound is transferred by the ground, vibrating for miles, and picked up by the feet of others very far off. If you stand still, and you do not have shoes on, you can feel the sound waves. But you must concentrate, otherwise you will not feel anything, and because the herd is so far away you will not even know that they are there."


I was on my way to Chief Chiawa's village to pick up Edward who had taken some leave of absence and gone home to his village. I had been fired from my job as the head mechanic in old Galaun's workshop, and when he let me go he had chased me off without pay, and I was flat broke. Something had to be done.

Galaun was a real dour fellow, with a confrontational attitude. He was an astute businessman, and had a number of businesses dotted around the countryside. I worked in his workshop repairing and servicing his fleet of crawler tractors which he used in the Kariba valley to clear land for the fishing industry which would be established once the dam wall was built, and the waters started to push back into the valley.

The method of clearing the immense trees was to have a massive iron ball linked to a thick chain, and to the draw pins of two D7 Caterpillar crawlers which would head parallel to each other through the bush pulverizing everything in their path. As the ball rolled and gathered momentum the trees were simply swept aside and uprooted in wide swaths. Two other crawlers operated behind pushing the fallen trees into windrows piling the logs upon each other in a great pile of broken branches and trunks about ten feet high .The long windrow was then left till the dry season, and when dry enough was ignited and left to burn out. To my mind it was a wasteful method of land clearing, because there were many trees with useful timber which went to waste with the burning. But time was of the essence, and they could not be salvaged. The bush clearing operation took place mainly in the rainy season for then the ground was soft and the shallow rooted trees came out easily.

The snag was that any breakdown had to be repaired in the field, and in the Zambezi valley when it rains, it rains incessantly, sometimes for days without stopping. That was when old man Galaun would send me in to pull a broken track roller or idler, more often than not in the early hours of the morning; so that his machine could not stop working and he lose the hourly rate when the machine was standing. I would have to pull the track lying on my back under a machine jacked up with a bottle jack that could move away and allow the fourteen tons to come down on me while I worked in the mud and the slush, hammering out the pins and bushes using a hammer and steel punch.

This particular Monday morning I failed to turn up for work as I had been out in the rurals buying some cattle, and I had a blowout of the rear wheel on my way there, and on my way back the front wheel picked up a sickle thorn and went flat. Without another spare I had to pull the inner tube and repair the hole by applying a patch. Well, I had no tyre levers, and had to get the tyre off the rim by using two large screw drivers. This took most of the afternoon, and I was obliged to sleep over to get the wheel fixed and put on the next morning. The sun was near its zenith by the time I got going towards home, and it was late afternoon by the time I pulled into the city. It was too late to go to work, and the next morning old Galaun, in a rage, fired me and there I was flat broke. So some thing had to be done, and soon.

I remembered the pair of elephant tusks that I had sold to Raftopaulos, and thought that it was an easy way to pick up some cash for a bit of a nest egg while trying for a new job which I was certain would not take me long to find. I decided to head back into the Zambezi valley, find Edward and see what elephants I could poach. Raftopaulos did not ask too many questions, and my lack of the necessary permits was no obstacle.


There I was then, listening to the mournful call of the emerald spotted dove, and contemplating the task ahead of me. I had now turned elephant poacher, and I thought it was an easy way to make some money. How wrong I was! I had never shot an elephant, but I grew up on the books of the great hunters, Karamojo Bell, Bvekenya Barnard, William Finaughty, and all their contemporaries. But although I had come across many elephant in the bush, I had never had one in my sights. I had spent hours listening to the stories of the hunters in my circle of friends, and many theories about elephant hunting had been absorbed, but I was yet to put them to the test. I trembled at the thought.

Arriving at Chiawa's village late the afternoon I set up camp beneath a big old Marula tree, and strolled over to see the Chief and get his permission to shoot two elephant. He was pleased to see me, and granted me two bull elephants, but insisted that I shoot a cow for him.

At the first crack of dawn Edward arrived with his gear, and we set course for old Wasu's cave. I had a full bag of maize meal for him, twenty pounds of coarse salt, and a bottle of cape brandy. On my last visit I had rigged a rope pulley with a small platform and a swinging gantry from his cave to the bottom of the precipice so that provisions could be brought up to him without his having to walk down a number of times. The rope was long enough that he could operate the lift from the top. We loaded the provisions, and Edward went to the top, carrying the brandy, soon the platform started to move, and within a minute it was rising steadily to the cave. I then started the climb up. This time I was a lot fitter, and got there just as they were swinging the platform over onto the ground at the cave entrance.

Old Wasu stood in his army greatcoat helping Edward offload the bag of maize meal and the salt, and together they carried them into the cave. I could only marvel at the strength of the old man He carried his end like a young man. When he emerged from the dark cave he came over to the fire and sat on a stool. "What is it you seek to hunt here in our valley this time?" He queried.

"This time we are after two Elephants, and I would also like to take home an antelope for fresh meat." I replied. "Also the Chief wants a cow elephant for the village."

Wasu stood up and entered the cave, and when he emerged he was carrying his bag of bones. Sitting back on his stool he opened the bag and scattered the contents on the ground. Taking up his stick he started to turn the slabs of bone and to move other pieces around while muttering to himself. Suddenly he sat upright and looked at me.

"You will come across many antelope, but do not shoot at any because the elephant is capable of hearing and interpreting a gunshot many miles away and they will take off out of the area as fast as their legs will carry them." He bent down and moved two knuckle bones to one side and looked up at me. "You will find two bull elephants near Chiawa's village. One is an old bull almost ready to lie down for the last time; the other is a young bull in the prime of life. The young one is the Askari who looks after the old one, picking and feeding him the young and tender leaves, and the sweet tips of maize in the fields of the villagers, also plucking the sweet potato runners and feeding them to the old bull. He is very cheeky, and will not hesitate to charge if he perceives danger to his elder .So take great care, you will have to shoot them both, but they will carry good ivory, and the Askari will not leave the old bull when he goes down and then you can get a shot at him too. Take your time with the first shot and you will have them both. When they are down, call Chiawa's villagers to cut up the carcasses for meat, and bring me the whole trunk of the Askari. The antelope you will get before you head back home."

We rose and started down the track to the Land Rover and back to the village where we put up camp next to the marula tree. Next morning a deputation of villagers came into camp and told us that the elephants had raided their gardens during the night and had moved off towards some reed beds in a small tributary of the Zambezi River, and they were afraid that once the two were satisfied from grazing in the reed beds they would cross the River and be off. I took up my 8x60 Mauser, made sure that the magazine was loaded with full jacketed rounds, and put another twenty rounds in the pockets of my bush jacket. With one man guiding us, we set off for the reed beds he was talking about. They were about half an hours walk from Chiawa's village, and we approached them down wind.

Suddenly we saw the old bull climbing out of the reeds and walk over to a large Msasa tree about one hundred paces from us. I gasped when I saw the size of his tusks. As he walked he held his head up high and the tips of his tusks were almost brushing the ground. Where they emerged from his mouth they were thicker than my thigh. A regal prize indeed! He walked up to the tree and wearily rested his head against the trunk as if trying to rest the vast weight against the tree for a few moments. I crawled forward till I came to a clump of Mopani scrub about fifteen paces from the old bull. My heart was pounding so loudly that I was sure the beast could hear me, and my hands trembled uncontrollably. I raised the rifle and set the barrel in a fork of the scrub in front of me, sighting the foresight onto the fold of skin at his ear hole. I can remember my mentor old Oom Tom Ferreira telling me that the foresight had to be sighted finely in the vee of the rear sight. Taking a deep breath I let it out slowly and aligned the sights with that fold of skin, slowly squeezing the trigger. The shot sounded extra loud as it went off, and I nearly jumped from fright. The old bull sat back on his haunches and slowly toppled over onto his side away from me. It seemed as if everything happened in slow motion, but I saw a cloud of dust rise as he rolled onto his side

I reloaded the rifle, and stood up straight intently gazing at the fallen bull, and I could see him give two slight kicks and then he lay still. I was just about to walk closer when I heard a piercing scream from the reed beds, and saw the Askari come rushing towards the old bull. As he passed us at about fifteen paces, I sighted behind his shoulder and gave him a lung shot. He arched his back and came to a stop about four paces from the fallen bull facing away from us. I immediately gave him another shot on the root of the tail, and he sat down abruptly, with that he had swiveled broadside on to us, and I let go another shot between his eye and ear, and he collapsed onto his side.

We approached the two carcasses cautiously, and I gripped the younger elephant by the tail and sliced it off close to the base of the spine, then walking over to the old bull did the same. That was an age old tradition, and signified ownership while at the same time made sure that the animal was dead. Next we inspected the tusks, and they were magnificent. The old bull's tusks would be close to one hundred pounds each and the younger one's would push the scale to about sixty pounds each. Not bad for a weekend's work. The next big job would be to cut out the tusks without nicking them with the axe, as such nicks would immediately devalue them considerably.

While we were still sitting next to the old bull's carcass, the first group of villagers started to arrive. How they knew that the carcasses were there or if we had been successful in our hunt I cannot imagine, as we had not sent a message to them, and yet there they were complete with containers and tools for stripping off all the meat. Without further ado they started to cut out the tusks while one opened the stomach and started to pull out the entrails. Within minutes the rest of the village started to arrive firstly in ones and twos, but soon in droves and the butchering began in earnest. Not long and the noise was deafening with men and women squabbling over what they termed the best cuts of meat. Some even crept into the stomach cavity and emerged with large chunks of liver and heart. One man in his haste to get a wide slice off the ribs stuck his sharpened spear into the meat and penetrated the ribcage and plunged the point of his spear into the shoulder of one inside busy cutting out the lungs. He came out at speed and went for the spearman with intent. I had to fire a shot into the air to bring them to order, and then I designated two senior tribesmen to maintain the peace.

The tusks were carried to our camp, and I took the Land Rover back to the elephant carcasses to collect the trunk and delivered it to Wasu. The trunk was so heavy that it took three of us to stow it onto his lift platform and to pull it up the precipice.

Back at camp the butt ends of the tusks were opened and the nerves were extracted, these were a whitish grey conical mass tapering from the round butt end to the fine wiry string at the point. The Tribesmen believed that when they were removed then the cavities should be stuffed with grass to prevent demon spirits entering and taking up residence.

We were off before the sun rose, as I wanted to get the tusks to the buyer, but true to old Wasu's prediction, before we started to climb the escarpment we saw a magnificent Kudu bull which seemed spellbound staring at us with his nose in the air. He fell to a well placed shot to the neck, and after bleeding him; we loaded him onto the back of the Land Rover, and headed for home.

Those were my first two elephants, and the hunt had progressed without any mishap, but the future would show me that my schooling with wild elephants had just begun.