TokkieM
AH fanatic
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2012
- Messages
- 997
- Reaction score
- 1,566
- Location
- Sweden/South Africa
- Deals & offers
- 2
- Media
- 63
- Articles
- 3
- Hunted
- South Africa,Zimbabwe,Sweden
We all started somewhere or somehow with shooting guns and hunting. I did not come from a hunting family so myself taught lessons were not always the mirror image of success, here are a few extracts.
I don’t know how old I was, all I can remember is my brothers and I sneaking into my grandfathers chicken pen with intent. Under that big old weeping willow tree we three had plans, our plans included one big flat rock, one round head pin hammer ( liberated from my grandfathers building toolbox of the back of his Toyota Stout truck) and five shiny unfired .22 rounds, swiped, collected or traded from friends and cousins. The chicken pen was chosen due to its distant location from the farm house, no doubt due to the stench and flies that inhabited the area. Well we were happy to have some fresh chicken manure squirt through our toes like sloppy mud as long as we could remain unseen and unheard. Like everything else in nature, the strongest had the right of way and in this case it was my oldest brother Louis who had the first opportunity of swinging the hammer onto a .22 cartridge followed by my brother Pieter and then myself. I can clearly remember waiting my turn and with every swing of the hammer that missed that little shiny object I would feel like Santa Clause had died. With one brother always keeping a look out from behind the willow tree towards the house just in case we had to run for cover, we did once duck right into the chicken coup and I got covered in so much chicken shit my dad wouldn’t let me go into my granddads house before making me strip and washing me down with the garden hose. Getting back to those shiny cartridges, as my brothers each had their turns, they got two cartridges each (Bastards) I finally had one beautiful shiny cartridge all to myself. Like these things go, with age comes coordination, I could catch a ball and swing a bat, but hitting those little cartridges took more coordination than I had at the time. I got extremely excited and just started whacking away at the little shiny object my whole world revolved around right then, with every missed hammer strike the cartridge would jump and move facing a new direction and sending my brothers flying for cover, I hardly noticed. The eventual and unexpected bang shook me out of my swinging delirium, the smell of gun powder filled my nostrils and I smiled from ear to ear, that is until Louis noticed the dead chicken. To this day I console myself that it was a poor specimen of a chicken and it would have passed away with Newcastle disease shortly anyway, we did give it a proper burial though, no one would ever have found it. My obsession with the hammer and cartridges cost me dearly; I blew away my favorite toy car and shot a hole into our new cars tire. Soon it became well known that all ammunition was to be kept under lock and key when I was around, not that there was so much of it those days anyway. On the few occasions I laid my grubby little paws on some 30-06 rounds I could for the life of me not get them to detonate with a hammer, I flattened the whole cartridge except for the rim, which was beyond my strength with a hammer. I did however manage to pry the bullet out and extract the little sticks of cordite; they lit up nicely with a match.
We moved to a small neighborhood with a torrential river being the border of the property at the back, beyond the river lay miles of bush and beyond the bush an old derelict quarry. At that time we had maybe five to eight houses in our street and our playground extended right to the quarry. There was an abundance of birds, snakes and more important opportunities for a developing shooter/hunter to learn some skills. My arsenal consisted of a homemade catapult, I had cut the Y stick myself and the red inner tube of a tire I traded from a friend who’s father owned a garage, the leather came from my left school shoe Tung (my Mom still doesn’t know this), also in my arsenal was a “knobkerrie” (a traditional African weapon cut from a straight tree sprout with a large ball of the root attached), in later years a blowpipe and BSA air rifle were added. An Okapi pocket knife was my constant companion, even during the days I actually went to school and to my mom’s constant distress. I spent hours decimating the local bird life with a catapult, little masked weavers, laughing doves; rock pigeons and the odd red nosed hornbill were great trophies. The single most important weapon of my youth came with the acquisition of a BSA air rifle, albeit with a younger stepbrother attached! I learned about aiming, conserving ammunition, bullet drop, ballistics and safety. Safety I learned the hard way, bent over a wooden bed with my enraged father doing his utmost to beat my ass into something resembling the decorations on an army generals chest, the red, green, yellow and deep blue so proudly displayed by these mustached men. I will admit though, shooting my baby sister (she came with the stepbrother, who came with the BSA) in the back of the neck was not the smartest thing to do, although in my defense, she should have known better that to run across a live firing range.
One year in mid September we experienced some heavy rainfall; the river bordering our house came down in flood and brought with it a new species to hunt. The large water monitor was close to four feet in length and from the first time I spotted him basking on a rock in the sun I knew the BSA was going to be too little gun for him. It took me a while to solve the problem, but within a week I had the perfect conversion to turn the BSA into a dinosaur killing rifle. One tube of contact adhesive and a stolen .38 special round was all I needed to complete the conversion. I made darn sure the primer of the .38 special round was centered perfectly over the tip of the BSA’s barrel before I glued it into place. With my conversion completed I headed for the spot the monitor favored in the afternoons, like all great safaris I had an entourage of friends and family to witness my sleighing of the monitor. It didn’t take long for me to sneak up on the unsuspecting target animal and at a distance of 10 to 12 yards I raised the converted BSA and took careful aim. The trigger broke crisply and the resulting explosion sent the monitor and my whole entourage heading for cover, the .38 special brass case had ripped open on the side when fired. Instead of propelling the bullet forward at great speed, it simply exploded and the bullet dropped 5 feet ahead of me into the water, another lesson learnt about ballistics. The little BSA never did shoot the same after that!
The old male Vervet had obviously been dethroned as the troop leader; he would sneak into houses, especially kitchens and raid them. If by chance you stumbled upon him he would either proceed to shit the whole kitchen or bare his teeth and want to attack you. Having younger siblings in the house my father had a genuine concern for their well being with the marauder around. He casually mentioned to me to shoot aforementioned monkey when I see it as he left for a business trip. I considered my options, air rifle, catapult, blow gun, they all seemed somehow a little light for this monster and in all my eleven years of existence I had enough experience to seek a greater weapon, the one neatly hidden in my dads cupboard under his old rugby jerseys, the ones he whore when he played rugby for the police and the mines. There under all that history lay a cold blue .38 special revolver with six cartridges in the cylinder. It was a Wednesday; I know because the young gardener came on Wednesdays, I was sweeping under the big Ngwenia tree in the back garden when I heard the maid scream. I knew why she was screaming too, my marauder was back, I rushed into my dad´s room and grabbed the revolver, it seemed heavier than I remembered. When I got outside he was perched in the top of a tree and I knew I could not shoot up into the air like that, I rushed back into the kitchen and grabbed what was left of the loaf of bread, it was going to be my lunch, shit! I threw the bread no further that twenty paces from where I was standing and he took the bait in the blink of an eye, as he came down I cocked the hammer, by the time he reached the bread I had him in the centre of the chest and the revolver bucked in my hands. The gardener was not expecting a gun shot in the back of the garden and the way he had cleared that six foot wall still amazes’ me. I saved the monkey skull for many years.
I don’t know how old I was, all I can remember is my brothers and I sneaking into my grandfathers chicken pen with intent. Under that big old weeping willow tree we three had plans, our plans included one big flat rock, one round head pin hammer ( liberated from my grandfathers building toolbox of the back of his Toyota Stout truck) and five shiny unfired .22 rounds, swiped, collected or traded from friends and cousins. The chicken pen was chosen due to its distant location from the farm house, no doubt due to the stench and flies that inhabited the area. Well we were happy to have some fresh chicken manure squirt through our toes like sloppy mud as long as we could remain unseen and unheard. Like everything else in nature, the strongest had the right of way and in this case it was my oldest brother Louis who had the first opportunity of swinging the hammer onto a .22 cartridge followed by my brother Pieter and then myself. I can clearly remember waiting my turn and with every swing of the hammer that missed that little shiny object I would feel like Santa Clause had died. With one brother always keeping a look out from behind the willow tree towards the house just in case we had to run for cover, we did once duck right into the chicken coup and I got covered in so much chicken shit my dad wouldn’t let me go into my granddads house before making me strip and washing me down with the garden hose. Getting back to those shiny cartridges, as my brothers each had their turns, they got two cartridges each (Bastards) I finally had one beautiful shiny cartridge all to myself. Like these things go, with age comes coordination, I could catch a ball and swing a bat, but hitting those little cartridges took more coordination than I had at the time. I got extremely excited and just started whacking away at the little shiny object my whole world revolved around right then, with every missed hammer strike the cartridge would jump and move facing a new direction and sending my brothers flying for cover, I hardly noticed. The eventual and unexpected bang shook me out of my swinging delirium, the smell of gun powder filled my nostrils and I smiled from ear to ear, that is until Louis noticed the dead chicken. To this day I console myself that it was a poor specimen of a chicken and it would have passed away with Newcastle disease shortly anyway, we did give it a proper burial though, no one would ever have found it. My obsession with the hammer and cartridges cost me dearly; I blew away my favorite toy car and shot a hole into our new cars tire. Soon it became well known that all ammunition was to be kept under lock and key when I was around, not that there was so much of it those days anyway. On the few occasions I laid my grubby little paws on some 30-06 rounds I could for the life of me not get them to detonate with a hammer, I flattened the whole cartridge except for the rim, which was beyond my strength with a hammer. I did however manage to pry the bullet out and extract the little sticks of cordite; they lit up nicely with a match.
We moved to a small neighborhood with a torrential river being the border of the property at the back, beyond the river lay miles of bush and beyond the bush an old derelict quarry. At that time we had maybe five to eight houses in our street and our playground extended right to the quarry. There was an abundance of birds, snakes and more important opportunities for a developing shooter/hunter to learn some skills. My arsenal consisted of a homemade catapult, I had cut the Y stick myself and the red inner tube of a tire I traded from a friend who’s father owned a garage, the leather came from my left school shoe Tung (my Mom still doesn’t know this), also in my arsenal was a “knobkerrie” (a traditional African weapon cut from a straight tree sprout with a large ball of the root attached), in later years a blowpipe and BSA air rifle were added. An Okapi pocket knife was my constant companion, even during the days I actually went to school and to my mom’s constant distress. I spent hours decimating the local bird life with a catapult, little masked weavers, laughing doves; rock pigeons and the odd red nosed hornbill were great trophies. The single most important weapon of my youth came with the acquisition of a BSA air rifle, albeit with a younger stepbrother attached! I learned about aiming, conserving ammunition, bullet drop, ballistics and safety. Safety I learned the hard way, bent over a wooden bed with my enraged father doing his utmost to beat my ass into something resembling the decorations on an army generals chest, the red, green, yellow and deep blue so proudly displayed by these mustached men. I will admit though, shooting my baby sister (she came with the stepbrother, who came with the BSA) in the back of the neck was not the smartest thing to do, although in my defense, she should have known better that to run across a live firing range.
One year in mid September we experienced some heavy rainfall; the river bordering our house came down in flood and brought with it a new species to hunt. The large water monitor was close to four feet in length and from the first time I spotted him basking on a rock in the sun I knew the BSA was going to be too little gun for him. It took me a while to solve the problem, but within a week I had the perfect conversion to turn the BSA into a dinosaur killing rifle. One tube of contact adhesive and a stolen .38 special round was all I needed to complete the conversion. I made darn sure the primer of the .38 special round was centered perfectly over the tip of the BSA’s barrel before I glued it into place. With my conversion completed I headed for the spot the monitor favored in the afternoons, like all great safaris I had an entourage of friends and family to witness my sleighing of the monitor. It didn’t take long for me to sneak up on the unsuspecting target animal and at a distance of 10 to 12 yards I raised the converted BSA and took careful aim. The trigger broke crisply and the resulting explosion sent the monitor and my whole entourage heading for cover, the .38 special brass case had ripped open on the side when fired. Instead of propelling the bullet forward at great speed, it simply exploded and the bullet dropped 5 feet ahead of me into the water, another lesson learnt about ballistics. The little BSA never did shoot the same after that!
The old male Vervet had obviously been dethroned as the troop leader; he would sneak into houses, especially kitchens and raid them. If by chance you stumbled upon him he would either proceed to shit the whole kitchen or bare his teeth and want to attack you. Having younger siblings in the house my father had a genuine concern for their well being with the marauder around. He casually mentioned to me to shoot aforementioned monkey when I see it as he left for a business trip. I considered my options, air rifle, catapult, blow gun, they all seemed somehow a little light for this monster and in all my eleven years of existence I had enough experience to seek a greater weapon, the one neatly hidden in my dads cupboard under his old rugby jerseys, the ones he whore when he played rugby for the police and the mines. There under all that history lay a cold blue .38 special revolver with six cartridges in the cylinder. It was a Wednesday; I know because the young gardener came on Wednesdays, I was sweeping under the big Ngwenia tree in the back garden when I heard the maid scream. I knew why she was screaming too, my marauder was back, I rushed into my dad´s room and grabbed the revolver, it seemed heavier than I remembered. When I got outside he was perched in the top of a tree and I knew I could not shoot up into the air like that, I rushed back into the kitchen and grabbed what was left of the loaf of bread, it was going to be my lunch, shit! I threw the bread no further that twenty paces from where I was standing and he took the bait in the blink of an eye, as he came down I cocked the hammer, by the time he reached the bread I had him in the centre of the chest and the revolver bucked in my hands. The gardener was not expecting a gun shot in the back of the garden and the way he had cleared that six foot wall still amazes’ me. I saved the monkey skull for many years.
