Day 10
We awoke for our final day of hunting, with a touch of melancholy, but with a sense of satisfaction. The hunt was not too short and we felt ready to go home. I especially was happy that in about forty eight hours I would be seeing my wife, who was in the last few weeks of pregnancy. The clock was on. At the same time, like every day hunting, we were just happy to be out there. Nonetheless, Africa became a fleeting thing for us. We could see it slipping away, aging like the ghost of Christmas present. A windy night had pushed away all the clouds and the sunrise came quickly.
“We’re going for that big warthog today. We’ll head on out and set up the blind,” Nathan said. Nathan threw his camouflaged mesh net and a few bright red plastic chairs into the bed of the truck and we loaded ourselves to drive out for our last morning.
I tried to savor the drive. I reflected on how, for a proper plains game hunt, ten days is really the minimum. By the time you account for travel days, it is really a two week trip. Gone are the days of the three month safari. Those of us with deep pockets can spring for those 21 day trips to Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and really anywhere that will take your money to pretend you are Teddy Roosevelt and to shoot the full bag that cost a speedboat. But for the common man, ten days feels right. Seven is too short, and five days is a crime.
We pulled into the familiar spot where Nathan spotted the tusker the day before. Setting up the blind at the base of a round top acacia tree, I could immediately tell that we had arrived a bit too late. The sun was up, the breeze was flowing, and it felt like a wonderful day for a picnic. It was the kind of day that made you feel optimistic about your life, but in this case, pessimistic that mister bacon would grace us with his presence.
We sat down for the long haul and took in the view. The shooting alley faced the old cattle gate from where we came, with a sprawling field to our left leading to an old metal water pan from the cattle ranching days. If the shot was to happen, it could be crossing from right to left. He would emerge from some scrubland on the right from the other side of the dirt road. He would cross over, enter the field, and make for his morning coffee at the water pan. That is, of course, if he did what we wanted him to do. I then realized he could easily come from behind us, and if he did, it would be over.
We sat for what was nearly an hour and watched the sun change the shadows and the branches of the trees dance in the wind. It was peaceful, and held none of the annoyance and dread of the previous kudu blinds.
Suddenly a troop of mongooses began to cross the field, looking circumspectly. They maneuvered like an infantry platoon as a wave, popping up, bouncing and slithering across toward the water pan. “Mongi!” I whispered and Nathan chuckled. Mongi was the logical word linguistically for the plural of mongoose, though I suppose mongeese is more correct for some, but they would be wrong.
Time continued to pass when suddenly a bird began to alert in the tree above us. It cried out repeatedly, alerting the entire veld to our presence. After what was probably five minutes, Nathan was over it. He rose silently, bent down for a stick, turned and chucked the stick at the bird. The stick flew tumbling in the air like a tomahawk, smashing into the tree, striking a bough adjacent to the bird and ejecting him with the crashing of tree bark. The bird streaked off into the stratosphere. “I hate those things…” Nathan muttered, taking back his seat.
In the newfound silence, I detected some motion to our left. Tentatively, a sizable roan came walking out of the heather toward the water pan. Nathan’s eyes widened. “That is a very nice roan if you want it. People go their whole lives looking for a roan like that.”
I studied the creature. He looked very much like a sable, though lighter in color, with much smaller horns than the monsters we had seen in the days before. Moreover, he had distinct elf ears, festooned with little tassels. I admit, before this trip I had not seen many images of roan. Though I have studied game just for the sake of learning about Africa, I had missed this one.
“How much?” I said. Nathan stated the price, which would effectively double the cost of the trip, to which I politely declined. “Suit yourself…,” he said with feigned disappointment. I got the impression that Nathan knew we were not big spenders and could not be spontaneous with our packages. “Take what Africa gives you,” people say. Instead we said, “I hope Africa gives us this and if it doesn’t we will keep the change.”
Sure enough, the sun came to a high position, the cool wet morning air burned off, and it was obvious that mister piggy had either come early, went right instead of left, or had moved on. I thought about how it took more than just good genetics to grow ivory that long. He was a survivor. Oh well, maybe next time.
“Well what now?”
“For your add on package, you still have an impala, springbok or blesbok and warthog left. We may get another chance at a warthog. We will see. We will rat patrol around the property and see what we see,” said Nathan. I smiled to see Nathan adopt our lingo, and thought how these moments and stupid phrases were ammunition for his future clients. “I once had these Americans…” he would say and share some of our stupidity.
We loaded into the Hilux and drove around the concession. Now at full noon there was not much moving around. We tore through some old roads and ultimately saw nothing. We headed deeper into the concession into that familiar scrub blocks. The sun began to move toward mid afternoon and suddenly some impala busted across the road, exiting one impenetrable bloc and springing into another.
“Let’s give them a try,” Nathan said.
We dismounted, pursued slowly, only to hear crashing and the jumping red-khaki backs disappear into the thicket of thorns and leaves. We humorously flushed two large warthogs walking about in a situation where our observer was momentarily walking into a thicket while we stayed up on the truck, and a warthog exploded from underneath him and holed up in a nearby bush. We approached and he charged out, going a mile a minute, running feet away until obscured by vegetation, never to be seen again.
Ultimately we found the grouping of impala again at a distance down the road. They moved slowly, unfrightened, into a block. “They haven’t seen us,” said Nathan, and we slowly pursued them.
In entering the bloc and following for about two hundred yards at a slow crouching walk, we saw them begin to split. Two rams broke to the right while the females, unbothered, lazily worked to the left. The rams caught on to our pursuit and high tailed it. Without giving up we followed them forward, crossing a dirt road into another section.
We walked for about fifty yards into this new block when Nathan suddenly froze. To our left at about ten o’clock, a big male walked forward to our right, freezing at about seventy five yards. Nathan, without a word, opened and offered the sticks, holding them on the right side. I had my rifle already in my hands, safety on and round in the chamber. I slowly but smoothly got on the sticks, flicked the safety, and kept both eyes open to maintain my visual fix on the ram.
I saw the crosshairs move onto the shoulder for a moment. Altogether it was about five seconds. The world slowed down as it always does in these moments. I was certain the impala was going to flush at any second. I could see his black eyes locked onto me, his horns black and what looked like green and khaki rising up wide. He stayed looking at us with some confusion as a large tree was partially breaking up our outline. I pressed the trigger, the rifle fired, and I chambered another round. When I could see again, roughly half a second later, the impala was gone, but a trail of dust and crashing debris betrayed his flight.
“How did it look?” I asked. “It looked good,” said Nathan with absolutely zero confidence in his voice. It was the sort of “it looked good” a PH would say to be kind when you shoot an animal in the spleen. This confused me, as I was sure I absolutely belted him. I knew the rifle well enough to know when it felt like a good shot, and that was the neural feedback I had received.
We walked forward to the spot of the impact. “Look, blood,” said Nathan, pointing to big bubbly blobs of red goop. “Definitely got some lung there,” I said.
Nathan began to bird dog into the woods, and I heard the truck pull up to the open road behind us. Amon, my dad, and our observer had heard the shot and came running over. I followed at Nathan’s heels for about twenty yards.
“Aha, here he is,” said Nathan, pointing to the thorniest bush I have ever seen. Sure enough, folded up like an origami crane, was a beautiful impala ram. His blood dotted the leaves of the bush like a Jackson Pollock painting in a grim spectacle of a passionate and panicked end.
The shot was good. He was struck in the heart and through both lungs, yet he still ran for twenty yards and chose to throw himself into the deepest, most hostile bush he could find. No doubt, in his impala mind, he was looking for a place of shelter to wait it out and hope this moment passed, but part of me thought he also chose to take whatever revenge he could against me and deliberately chose a place that would force a painful recovery.
The bush took its pound of flesh, cutting my hands and arms in retrieving him. I crawled in alongside Nathan, who did the very same in shorts, I must add. We grabbed him by the horns and pulled him out of there. We dragged him back to the semi-clearing where he was shot to set him up for a photograph.
In staging him up, I really took in how beautiful he was. He did not have the largest rack, but it had a beautifully gentle swoop, good length, and lots of rings at his base. He was a proper impala ram, and not one of those pinching culls you sometimes see, and above all he was mine, given to me from Africa.
I was again proud to have given him a good death, clean with one shot, unmangled. I also appreciated the gentle justice of the impala mangling me in the slight way that he did. It is just how it goes.
“She sure is a beauty,” said Dad.
We took some photos and loaded him up for our return home for lunch.
