PhotoCollector73
AH veteran
PART 1: (FATHER) GAVIN BLACKBEARD
Any cattle post owner in the early days had no option but to shoot lions and I've shot my share. I started my lion hunting with my dad, Dennis, at one of his cousin's cattle posts when I was still in my early teens. My first cattle-killing lioness put on a great display that frightened me half to death and nearly put me off lion hunting for good.
Dennis was using his Jeffery .333 and I his Westley Richards .318. A pride of four lions - a male, a female, and two sub-adults - killed and fed on a cow that night. At first light, we took the spoor with Shorty tracking, and not long afterward we came up on them. They had fed well and, when the sun grew hot they looked for a place to sleep. I must say that Shorty had an extraordinary knack for seeing lions in the bush and he brought us up to within an easy shooting distance of them. Dennis fired first, putting down the lion, when the lioness jumped up and peered around her, looking for the source of trouble. I was ready and waiting and put a bullet into her lungs and she went completely berserk.
She was standing next to a tree, which she seemed to blame for the attack because she hurled herself at it with a series of loud roars, snapping and tearing off branches, then scrambling some distance up it while continuing her attempted slaughter of it. I was completely overawed. If that's what a lioness can do to a tree...! I kept wondering why Dennis didn't shoot her but there was such a flurry of leaves and flying branches that I suppose he couldn't see her well enough. Then she fell from the tree, jumped up, and saw us. With ears laid flat and tail lashing she crouched in readiness to charge, at which moment Dennis put a bullet into her chest which laid her out flat.
Dennis said it was my lion as my bullet in her lungs would have killed her and was probably the reason why she had fallen out of the tree as she was already weakening.
My last lion was at my cattle post. Up to this time I had shot a lot of females, sub-adults and young males with scruffy manes but never shot a really grand male lion with a heavy mane, which I had always wanted to do. On this occasion I was hunting with Ronnie and walked right onto the lion of my dreams lying at the edge of a thicket. He leaped up and loved off. I whipped up my .458 and fired for the base of the tail but my shot went high and, just as he lifted his forequarters for his next bound, my bullet took him in the top of his neck, breaking his spine and killing him instantly.
He was magnificent, the biggest lion I had ever seen with an enormous body and huge mane that hung nearly to the ground. Funnily enough, after achieving my dream of shooting such a trophy, I lost all interest in shooting lions. My son, Luke, was growing up and had shot a lot of game, including buffalo, before he had reached his teens. Predator control at the cattle post became his job. I have since been on a number of lion hunts when lions have been shot but I have never shot another. I took The King of Kings and no other could match up to it.
PART 2: (SON) LUKE BLACKBEARD
I have had some superb lion hunting in the Okavango Delta but missed out on the much more interesting lion hunting of the Kalahari. The game department suddenly decided that the lion population was dropping in the Kalahari caused solely by the depletion of their natural prey because the game had been fenced out of their areas by the veterinary fences and not by hunting - and lion hunting in the Kalahari was closed completely. Quotas everywhere else were dramatically reduced. While I consider wounded leopards to be highly dangerous because they always charge and come like rockets, I have always regarded a wounded lion to be the most dangerous because they are more than capable of administering a quick lethal bite. My best hunting experiences in the delta were my 21-day lion safaris. All professional hunters have their own strategy when hunting lions, some prefer baiting, but tracking was the most exciting for me and all my Okavango lions were hunted in this way. Tracking is the most important part of hunting lions and my passionate interest in this art since my earliest hunting days has benefited me. The more you track, the more you learn but I don't think I will ever learn it all as I'm always noticing something new. As BDF enjoyed hunting lions as much as I did, there was always a good vibe between us.
I have found that, in the delta, your best chance of meeting up with lion was in the early morning when they seemed to be tired from a night of hunting and tended to be less wary and more relaxed. Lions like to walk along roads and this was the best place to look for spoor. When I found one I would drive along it till the spoor peeled off, when we would leave the vehicle and follow on foot. On cold mornings they would usually head for open country where they liked to sun themselves on the side of a termite mound, making them easy to see but hard to shoot as any animal that was lying down was not an easy target. Where there was one termite mound there were usually others, which could offer the means for an easy stalk and, when my client was up in a good shooting position, I would imitate a reedbuck's alarm whistle. The lion would usually stand up, often standing side-on while looking towards us to see what had alarmed the reedbuck, and would give my client an equally easy shot. Hunting lions on cold days was generally not as easy as hunting them on hot days. On cold days they didn't sleep as well and they were not as easy to approach, while on hot days they would stretch out in the shade and pass out. Natural noises did not disturb them with the result that you quite often almost walked right onto them before you saw them and would have to then silently back off. I like it when this happens because the client had a good close-up look at this target and had the time to settle down and plan his shot. But these are only generalities and every day presented different opportunities. No two lion hunts were exactly the same.
I was once hunting lions at Chitabe with an American client named Chuck, who had brought a friend as a non-hunting companion. While we were having breakfast one morning, we heard lions roaring a few miles from camp, hastily swallowed our coffee, and got out after them. We saw a really big lion with a magnificent blonde mane just disappearing into a palm island. There was a chain of these small palm islands and, as the wind was right, we quietly circled the island and sat down to see if he would come out to cross over ahead of us when we suddenly saw him standing watching us through a small gap in the thickets. He offered a perfect shot but Chuck put a good one into him and he ran back into the island. We waited for a while for the bullet to take effect and then walked in after him. We saw a lot of fresh lionesses' tracks that indicated there was a pride hanging out on the island. To be on the safe side we decided to fetch the Land Cruiser which was probably the best decision I have ever made in the whole of my hunting career! Then, with Chuck and his friend standing on the back while I drove, we headed back to the island - to get the surprise of our lives.
What a magnificent sight, but we didn't get much time to appreciate it! Three lionesses came bounding in unison over the low scrub in a full charge. I hastily complied with admonishments of BDF on the back to, "Put foot! Put foot!" I swung the Cruiser away from them but, before I had got up to speed, they were right beside us, leaping up at the vehicle while trying to get on and actually biting holes in the bodywork, which was really most exciting. We outpaced them eventually and, after a short wait, we drove back towards the island, anxious to find out what had happened to our lion. The three lionesses were lying together at its edge and, as we approached, they all stood up and aggressively growled a warning to us. Time was moving on, it was getting hot and we really needed to recover Chuck's lion, so I fired a shot into the round in front of the nearest lioness. She immediately sprang onto the strike and started savaging the ground. Things were now getting desperate. We backed off to watch and, not long afterwards, the three lionesses went back onto the island to shortly emerge with the rest of the pride. We were very pleased we had spotted their tracks and had not walked straight in. Twelve big lionesses came strolling out accompanied by about twenty cubs of various ages and sizes and, if the other nine females were as aggressive as the first three, then with only two rifles we would not have stood a chance...
After making sure that all the lionesses had departed, we drove onto the island to recover Chuck's lion, which we found dead. It was one of the biggest that a client of mine has ever taken and Chuck was extremely pleased with his trophy and the whole experience that went with it. As I hunted in that area fairly often over the next two years, I was able to monitor the pride, which never moved too far away from the islands where I first encountered them. I was more than interested to see what happened to the cubs now that the male was no longer with them. It was inevitable that another would take over the pride and common theory has it that the new male would kill all the cubs in a pride immediately to start spreading his own genes around. Two males did join the pride and, two years later, all the twenty-odd cubs were alive and well and growing up sleek and healthy. I can only think that the two new males were no match for the fury of those twelve good mothers. Who was it that said, "In Africa, there is always something new."
Jeff and Jake House with Jake's lion.
I have always mentioned Grace, the client I had who was a true Dianna. Grace was elderly and could only walk about a mile, after which we would either have to fetch the hunting car or assist her back to it but she always insisted on walking that mile after all her trophies. We heard lions roaring from the camp early one morning when we were having breakfast and set off after them in the Land Cruiser. BDF soon found their tracks, which indicated there were three males walking together. This didn't look too promising because big lions nearly always go in pairs. Three together indicated that they were young males and unlikely to be shootable. However, having got this fat and knowing that the trio must be fairly close, we took the spoor to look them over. Well, there's always the exception that proves the rule...
BDF and I set off on foot and left Grace with my driver in the hunting car that was following behind us. We had a fairly long walk through some thick bush and came across the trio lying at the edge of a palm island. I was astonished. They were all monsters with huge manes, one looking as if he'd had a thatching job done on the top of his head. He had the largest mane that I have ever seen. We got Grace out of the cruiser with her Blaser .375 and began our stalk. But the lions had already seen us and, before we got close enough for a shot, the big chap, to my acute disappointment, stood up and started walking straight away from us. The other two, however, slunk down into the grass when we started edging up towards them. The second biggest, which had a good mane edged with black on the outside, suddenly stood up and looked at us when we were close enough for a shot. Grace fired and put him down.
Black-maned lion shot by Steve Chancellor in 2006.
