Close Calls and Hunting Adventures by J. Alain Smith
Join big game hunter and author J. Alain Smith on one exciting adventure after another as he takes you around the world hunting in his first book, Close Calls and Hunting Adventures! Grizzly bears in Alaska, Marco Polo sheep on the roof of the world, Cape Buffalo in the swamps of Tanzania and Lions in deepest Africa. Read what it's like to stay in a castle and hunt with Royalty in Pakistan, stay in a tent in a storm for sheep in Russia and sweat in the deserts of Mexico for giant Mule deer. Experience the shear terror of surviving a plane crash in the bush of East Africa.
Excerpt From Close Calls and Hunting Adventures... FIRST MORNING LION
Remote Northern Zambia...1992.
We arrived at one of the prettiest camps I'd ever seen, located on the Luangwa River. The area was called Nyampala and has been a famous hunting area for many years. Peter Capstick, Cotton Gordon, Scandrol & Swanepool and a host of other top outfits have all run hunts out of the camp over the years and it was especially renowned for its huge Cape buffalo and black mane lion. These, plus the other unique species only found in Zambia, were why we had ventured to this part of the world.
Nyampala camp is surrounded on three sides by vast national parks. These parks are the main source of game animals as they cross through the hunting concession on their travels to and from the other parks. Nyampala also holds all the water during the dry season
As we got settled into camp where Mack Padgett and I each had our own large thatched rondavul (grass hut with concrete on the floor, a closet, flushing toilet and shower, all en suite!), we met Richard. He was our P.H. Ronnie Sparrow's black tracker, camp organizer, interpreter to other tribes (although Ronnie speaks three native "lingua franca" on his own) as well as a great hunter and superb spotter of game. He became a good friend during the trip and never let us down. Richard could work. It didn't matter whether we were hanging bait; cutting trees to clear a new road, skinning or doing the marathon marches on wounded game. This guy was nonstop and always leading the way.
Ronnie Sparrow himself was no slouch when it came to working either! The life of a P.H. is one of long days, short nights, multitudes of diseases, bug bites, bad water, snakes and big game animals that would just as soon kill you, as you kill them. And a lot of African animals have the hardware to do an effective job of making your wife a young widow.
Ronnie had been in the Professional Hunting biz his whole life and loved it. The camaraderie between the hunter and the guide is essential to success and I could tell right away why Ronnie had so many happy clients. He is motivated to succeed; he possesses a great sense of humor, can hold his liquor and makes sure every detail is covered during the entire trip. Professional Hunters are their own breed and he was certainly one of the best.
Our main focus on this trip to the Zambian frontier was lion. I had never shot one before and was optimistic that this was the area where I had my best chance. Besides tracking lion and hoping to find them resting in the shade at midday, baiting is utilized to attract the lions and draw them out of the surrounding parks. Baits usually consist of hippo, zebra or buffalo haunches hung in a tree. Care must be given to the actual placement of the bait so as to get the most bang for your buck (or buffalo in this case).
Firstly, baits need to hang a good distance from villages. This stops the local non-flying human vultures from discovering the putrid meat and turning it into their dinner. It takes more than a few maggots and a smell bad enough to make you loose your lunch, to keep the local butchers from devouring the rotting bait carcass.
Secondly, you need to hide the meat from the ever-present winged vultures. This is accomplished by hanging brush over the top of the haunch, leaving only the bottom exposed. The lions will find the "ngama" by sense of smell anyhow, not by sight, so camouflaging the bait is a must.
Thirdly, the bait must be wired securely enough to prevent the lions from pulling it down and hauling it to a different location.
And fourthly, the slab of beast must be high enough off the ground to prevent the hyenas from devouring the bait before the lions can claim it, yet low enough that full grown lions can stand up on their back legs and still get chunks off the carcass.
Ronnie had a half dozen baits already up when I arrived for the hunt, left over from the previous client so a lot of our prep work had been done in advance.
At our four-course dinner that night, we ate on linen tablecloth, china plates, and silverware and enjoyed a good bottle of South African Merlot with our main course of eland. Our waiter wore a full white waiter's outfit topped off by a red fez and white gloves. What a first class camp! All this and we were 300 miles from the nearest civilization.
Up and at ç²—m early the next morning, we drove to one of the boundaries of the hunting area and got out to walk the dried up sandy river bed looking for new tracks of cats who may have crossed over from the park during the night.
Half an hour after we started walking we arrived at one of the chewed up hippo hindquarter baits that was hanging on the trunk of a huge sausage tree. Wading through the eight-foot high grass we were all caught totally off guard when the tawny form of Simba himself jumped to his feet fifteen yards in front of me.
An opening in the head high grass gave me a clear view of this magnificent specimen. No one else could get a clear view of him through the thick grass. Fully alert, taught muscles rippling across his chest, his soul piercing gaze locked onto my eyes, his black mane shook, and his deadly fangs glistened in the early morning shadows. Suddenly he let out a gut-wrenching roar that had the intended effect of scaring the hell out of me and everyone else in a five-mile radius.
The wise old lion knew better than to show off any longer and started to spin on his heels and get as far away from us as possible. As he made his move, I was bringing my Winchester 375 H&H to my shoulder and let fly with a 300 grain Nosler Partition. At such close range, the bullet seemed to have no effect on the beast. I worked the bolt in a nanosecond but had no chance for another shot as the cagey veteran instantly vanished into the tall grass.
"Did you hit him?" yelled Ronnie. He had been off to my left the whole time and did not have a clear view of any of the proceedings.
"The shot felt good" I replied in a shaky, uncertain voice. The grass was so thick I couldn't even see Ronnie ten feet away.
He walked over and asked me where I hit him. I apprehensively explained that the lion was quartering away as he turned to run and I aimed behind his ribs, trying to angle a shot through his heart and into his far shoulder.
"And did you hit him there?"
"Yes," I coolly replied.
This is always a tense part between guide and hunter. The PH needs to know exactly what happened because his life and his trackers' lives may depend on the results of how hard the shot absorbing man killer has been hit.
The client on the other hand rarely admits a lousy shot and almost never concedes a miss. Ego is a fragile commodity and the inexperienced hunter may have his bruised if the P.H. verbally doubts his clients shooting abilities or hunting prowess.
It had all happened so fast it was hard to sort out the details to Ronnie, but you can always "feel" a well-placed shot and I felt confident in saying I had hit him. Exactly where was another issue
Now we had the unseemly task of following up the wounded beast into grass that swayed higher than our heads in the slight breeze. Before we started, Ronnie sent the trackers to the other side of the grassy thicket to see if the lion had crossed over the dry sand bed of the river, leading to the park. If the cat made it into the park, he would no longer be mine and Ronnie and the game scout would have to follow after him on their own and give the hide to the park officials after they finished him off. Oh, and I would still get to pay for it.
The trackers yelled and said he had not crossed the riverbed, so we walked over to cut him off in case he decided to make good his escape. Richard climbed up a tree to get a better look into the two-acre thicket that the cat had disappeared into, but could see nothing. Since we had the escape route covered, the other trackers threw rocks and softball sized dry elephant dung into the thicket trying to get a response of some kind out of the cat.
Nothing.
Ronnie called Mack and I together and said, "Okay, we need to go in and sort him out. Are you ready or would you rather wait out here and cover him if he tries to cross the sand?"
"Let's go in and get him," we both replied with a strange vibrato in our voices.
å…¸his is the real deal, I thought to myself. This isn't for fun anymore. This is serious business. One mistake and someone is going back to the States in a box.
By this time, the heat had reached blast furnace temperatures and the combination of this and tension had us all sweating like pigs.
Ronnie quietly organized us with our shoulders touching each other, him facing forward, me facing to his right and Mack facing left. His last whispered words before we started into the dense thicket were,
"Stay close together and be ready. He will come fast."
One slow silent step at a time, we slinked into the thicket.
My eyes were moving constantly looking for any sign of the naturally camouflaged lion. Their tawny hide matches this dry grass perfectly.
I find the exhilaration of a moment like this hard to explain or understand and can only relate the feeling to the same feeling as you have during extreme athletic competition. You block out all unrelated thoughts. You obtain clarity of mind and a complete awareness of your surroundings. Your concentration on the terrifying task at hand is complete. I get an almost euphoric, peaceful type of mindset that lets you focus on any movement or deadly change in your surroundings instantly.
Step, look around for three or four minutes, another slow step, scan the grass so intently your eyes ache and then another step. Sweat was running down the middle of my back. You talk about focused! Talk about all your senses being on full alert! Step and look. Concentrate Al, concentrate. Be ready!
After what seemed like an eternity of this, but was more likely twenty-five minutes, I (unbeknownst to me) happened to step on a wrist sized black curved stick lying under the carpet of dead grass. As I put my weight on it, the branch rolled under my foot and caused the end, five feet away, to pop three feet up in the air, causing all three of us to swing our rifles towards it simultaneously. First, we thought lion and then black mamba! It's amazing that one of us didn't shoot from the hip at it. Damn, it was tense!
As we calmed our nerves and had a silent snicker, we eased ever more slowly into the deadly morass of cane like grass. With an abrupt halt midway into his next step, Ronnie brought us to a silent pause. I turned my head ever so slowly to see what he saw and showing ten steps in front of him was the lion laying on it's belly with it's head resting on it's front paws. As Ronnie brought his rifle to his shoulder, Mack and I did the same, completely covering the king of beasts, expecting a charge at any moment.
On this day, the lion didn't come. He had died waiting to pounce on the bastard who had shot him through the heart thirty minutes earlier, but his time had run out.
For more information or to purchase a book from J. Alain Smith's go to his website at www.jalainsmith.com
