ZIMBABWE: Hunting Elephant Near Hwange With Mbalabala Safaris

[Medicine]

Contest has been won. Thank you all for your answers.

 

[Medicine]

Early the next morning we ride the boundary and almost to the end we see them – not buffalo tracks, but impala. Lots of them and they are caught and they know it. The group, 10 plus, at our 2:00 position, makes for the border where they know safety awaits; however, this is not Lin’s first time at the rodeo and he guns the cruiser. The first one crosses. She’s still a ways ahead but we are flying. And so are they. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. The next half dozen cross right in front of us. Zoom. Zoom. Two more, but like a cutting horse, Lin has turned the remaining three – two ewes and a ram – a nice ram, too, and he’s beautiful. Ishmael piles from the cruiser before it’s stopped, Kulu has me available and the entire transmission and load is so fluid that had you rapidly opened and closed your eyelids, it would have escaped you.

Ishmael throws me across the hood and automatically finds the ram in the scope. And, for exactly the third time in my existence, I become human; however, this time there is no alcohol in me. The blood is no longer neat - it has been cut by the sweet waters of the Zambezi and it is spellbinding, enthralling, entrancing, mesmeric. The ram is 50 yards out, quartering to the right, nervous, with the ewes in front of him. Ishmael is holding me where the bear claw will exit just in front of his offside shoulder and he is dialed in - holy shit he’s dialed in – zero breathing – it is as though I am held by a vice and the ewes disappear. They are still very much there in their physical form but not to Ishmael and Lin watches and waits. And waits. And Ishmael watches too – watches as the ram, all 22 3/8 inches of him disappears, forever, into the grass and into the beautiful Zimbabwe sunrise and when Ishmael comes to, he finally sees the ewes diagonally cutting the prairie heading to the spot where the elephant fell.

 

[Medicine]

Poll: What happened to the ram?
A) He walked off into the grass toward the sunrise
B) He dropped straight into the grass and rode a sunbeam to heaven

 

[ActionBob]

Poll: What happened to the ram?
A) He walked off into the grass toward the sunrise
B) He dropped straight into the grass and rode a sunbeam to heaven

B

 

[Edster]

I’ll go for B

 

[kudukid]

Medicine I am a bit slow on the uptake because the internet speed is a bit slow in the land from down under and it has all those oceans to travel across. I would have answered to your first quiz, option K, none of the above. I believe you are a leader of a secret government “wet team” sent in to make people literally disappear. One of those types that even The President doesn’t know exists!
I believe you acknowledged you had a winner just to throw us off the scent.
It might cost a bit more in postage but you need to send that prize to Australia. No need to address it- it will find me.
As to your second quiz, unless you are the ultimate judge of an impala ram on the run that knew it’s horn length within 1/8 th of an inch - you must have measured it after you sucked the life out of it with a surgically placed bear claw.

 

[jasyblood]

I’ll take B as well.

 

[Medicine]

As to your second quiz, unless you are the ultimate judge of an impala ram on the run that knew it’s horn length within 1/8th of an inch - you must have measured it after you sucked the life out of it with a surgically placed bear claw.

I will relay your sentiments to Ishmael. I will work on my writing also as I intended to portray an animal that was still before vanishment. You may have; however, nailed the significance of the measurement. Hopefully Ishmael's character will start to make more sense with the upcoming posts. Thank you all for your answers. Please keep them coming.

 

[Royal27]

What a great story!

The best reports are not the ones about how many animals were killed, but rather about the experiences amd emotions that lead us to that. This is one of those.

 

[Medicine]

Ishmael hands me unloaded to Kulu and climbs in the cruiser smiling.

“Did your safety mess you up?”

“Yeah, damn three position,” Ishmael lies.

They drive to the end of the boundary and turn around. On the way back, not far from the dam, another impala. It’s another ram, alone, and he is huge, standing in the middle of the road with long, high horns from which a baby ape could swing and he is Mr. Rowland Ward. Much larger than the earlier one – half a foot larger – and he has two choices and he chooses correctly, I suppose. Hell, at this point, I’m not sure that it would have made a difference but he enters the bush off the starboard bow.

“Shit,” Lin says, “Had he gone left we could have shot him.”

Mr. Big Shot, only 15 yards away and on our wrong side of the road, stops, turns broadside and with his eyes, gives us a full confession to the burglary and there is nothing we can do because the statute of limitations is only three years. And today is three years and one day. But, my God, what a beautiful animal he was.

We cross the dam, park the cruiser and double back to the blind. This time Ishmael takes no chances and immediately reclines the camping chair in an attempt to beat Lin to the punch. It works, and in exactly one hour after what was probably the most wonderful sleep of his life, Lin taps him on the shoulder. He is groggy - like really groggy - but Lin tells him that a 54” kudu is about to water. Sure enough, he appears with a younger bull attempting to drink in front of the camera Lin hung yesterday. They are skittish and before they even press their lips to the pool they are off. Lin is all business.

“This window, get ready, in those trees. You see them? The one on the right- No, the one on the left”

And Ishmael sees him. And he has me on him. And he thinks, “I bet [the lady] sure would like a kudu.”

And just like that, as quickly as they appeared, they are gone – the young one to one place and the older to another. Ishmael puts me down. He is smiling and enjoying himself and I can tell that the blind has connected him with his childhood - the first part, before the second part was tainted by the offer.

“Let’s go fishing,” he tells Lin and they pack and leave the photo camp for good heading for the blood thirsty vundu of the Zambezi.

 

[CAustin]

Frontal brain shot on an Elephant bull

• AfricaHunting.com
• Jul 12, 2021
• 2

Caliber .416 Remington Magnum with 400 grain Woodleigh Hydro solid.

Great shot sir!

 

[Medicine]

Riding back to camp, drinking beer, Ishmael has feelings he hasn’t felt in decades – feelings he never thought he’d have again and he knows exactly when it changed. It was just after his 15th birthday and he was walking to the gym from the football practice field. He had a nine point on his wall and a dozen kills, give or take, behind him. And a man in a green 4-runner waiting for him in the parking lot.

“You’re Ishmael?”

“Yes sir”

“Ishmael, I’m Dan Spaulding, Anne’s dad – she’s told me about you. Says you like to hunt”

“Yes sir”

“Sam at the sporting goods store also said I needed to talk with you”

“Yes sir”

“Ishmael, my father and brother and I have recently taken over the cotton farming rights on the Weller and Tims properties. We’ve planted, but the deer are really wearing us out. The plants don’t stand a chance. They are mowing them down. The state biologist came down and took a look for us and not 15 yards from one of our fields he found a dying deer. It was starving to death. Still alive but had ants eating its eyeballs. He gave us 100 tags but my brother and I, after first trying to run them off with 6 and 8 shot, filled them in three nights and when we called the biologist and told him he agreed to give us unlimited. Now my brother and I both have full time jobs, young families, and were hoping you could help us out”

“What do you mean?”

“We were hoping you would shoot the deer. We stand to lose a lot of money if the cotton doesn’t make and the deer, you ought to see them, when Mr. Weller had his Lion’s Club drive, out of dozens killed, the largest was an 8 point that only weighed 80 pounds”

“You want me to come help you shoot deer?”

“Yes, I’ve killed enough in my lifetime and I really don’t enjoy doing it. I was hoping I could take you with me and show you the place and show you how we do it. Now, Ishmael, it’s not hunting and the law states we have to leave the deer lying. We can’t even give the meat to the jail or donate it to churches”

“What about the antlers?”

“You can’t move them either. Everything has to stay in the field”

“When were you wanting to go?”

“I could take you tonight. You can shoot my gun. And it’s totally legal. I’ve already checked - you can shoot under my license”

“Where do you want me to meet you? And what time? But I’d like to bring my gun if OK”

“That’s fine. Let’s say 8:00 at the river bridge. How many boxes of shells do you have?”

“Maybe 1 ½ to 2 boxes if I count the loose ones”

“Bring them all and I’ll buy you two boxes tomorrow. Now, Ishmael, I can’t pay you but I will supply your shells and help you with a little gas money every now and then and if the crop makes we may be able to split the profits with you”

“Yes sir, that’s fine but I’m only 15. I’ll have to get my dad to bring me”

“If he drops you off then I’ll bring you home”

“Yes sir, I’ll be there”

At 8:00 he was there and at 8:30 the barrel of his BAR was so hot that you couldn’t touch it and three hours later, when the killing spree finally stopped, he was no longer at one dozen, but four dozen.

 

[1dirthawker]

Castle Lights. Right on cue, Lin asks does he want one and he drinks three.

hmmm, ishmael and i must be related!

 

[1dirthawker]

“Lin”

“Yeah”

“I know you’re a businessman. Why don’t you get caught up on some emails? I know you have a business to run, potential clients who are awaiting responses. Do what you need to do. I’m totally fine here”

“You sure?”

“Yes”

“OK, I guess I’ll go hang a lion bait. I’ve got a client who really wants one”

“Perfect”


Medicine,

i'm liking ishmael better and better!

 

[PARA45]

The deer killing sounds like it happened in GA. Please keep it coming.

 

[Medicine]

Ten more trips Mr. Dan was able to make with him that year and with a conservative estimate of 30 each trip I suppose you are starting to get the point. I will not detail the exploits because the antihunters do not need anymore ammunition for even in today’s shortage, they continue to have plenty. Even the hunters - you sportsmen - would be enflamed because it wasn’t hunting – it was killing – and when I tell you that it was quindecinnial, I suppose your mind should be blown. Quindecinnial – that’s 15 years – long after he had donned the suit and the tie and only after the lady had become pregnant with his first child did he quit, cold turkey, in the middle of the night with a 154 grain spire point to the neck of a chocolate-antlered seven point.

Now, I know you are a numbers guy and I’ll go ahead and get it out of the way. “What is his total you ask?” Well, you’ve already got the dozen he brought to the table and his first year’s total that he easily doubled the next year as he had his driver’s license and was no longer at the mercy of Mr. Dan. Year three was a repeat of year two, as were years four and five so you take those numbers and add them, but because you are thinking, like Wilt Chamberlin’s and Ric Flair’s numbers, these are about to be inflated, I encourage you to employ the formula your wife did when you first asked her how many men, before you, she had been with and, if you weren’t sleeping through basic mathematics, I suppose you’ve come up with 1491 specimens. Through the first five years. And there were ten more.

Equipment changed and techniques changed because the deer stopped squatting in the cotton. He’d sit by moonlight where he ruined his eyes reading his college textbooks under the light of nothing but the full moon and whatever he shot would wind up being like a box of the seven point’s antlers.

And when Mr. Dan tired of buying his expensive Weatherby ammunition, as he’d long since traded the BAR for a magnum, he purchased a set of dies in .243 and 7mm and forced Ishmael to swap over where, with blood money, he bought the Steyr and Swarovski – all $2300 worth - and developed his hatred for the three position safety. Now, I do not profess to know how many deer you’ve seen in your lifetime, but I suppose it would be fairly safe to bet you a trophy elephant hunt in newly opened Botswana that for Ishmael’s last eight years with the Steyr, that its safety cost him about that many. After six years with the Weatherby where admittedly the bulk of the deer were killed, he just couldn’t get used to it. “Why didn’t he trade it?” you ask. Because it would shoot the eye out of a cattle egret, in a tree, 200 yards across a slough in front of two witnesses I suspect he’d say.

 

[Medicine]

I suppose, being of a sporting heart, you have heard enough of the old days and I will, therefore, spare you the particulars of how the perfect apprentice was found, by chance, when he showed up looking for an adventure with a half case of Busch Light after Ishmael’s first choice punked him out for a movie date that led to nothing more than the credits at the end. Said young man, after a few bumps in the road has landed on the eastern shore where he continues to make a name for himself as the operator of a 4100 Manitowoc, an old school friction rig with a 240 foot boom and 130 foot derrick mast tied to a 370,000 pound counterweight sitting on the ring – a work donkey he calls it – whatever the hell that means.

Before I go any further, because my story is ending and because you are starting to think that my tale is fiction and you have, very shrewdly caught, that I should be unaware of any of Ishmael’s exploits prior to January 2021, I’ll go ahead and mop up these things for you now. My place in the cabinet is two spaces down from the Weatherby, three spaces down from the Steyr and seven spaces down from the 10/22 and although the Weatherby is extremely tight lipped, the others are blabbermouths, in fact, you can’t shut them up – especially the Ruger. All hours of the day and night I hear, “in September the deer are in full velvet and have ticks on their horns” or “when you shoot them in late March, their antlers pop off when they hit the ground” or “you remember the time he shot the five point between his eyes and split his skull like a banana and his 11 inch spread became a 21 inch spread – bahahahaha;” however, I have learned that it is the quiet one of which you should be afraid and when I ask the Weatherby to spill her secrets, thus far, I have only gotten a “fuck you.” But believe you me, if she ever does, therein lies the key to your book and if the man from Ishmael’s senior class will ever show back up to clean us, I will ask her, again, and hopefully she’ll be high enough on the gun oil to break.

The Apache used to say that it is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightening in the hand and she is all lightening and you can tell from just one look at her as all her bluing is gone and her once fancy and shiny stock now looks like it’s been sent through a wood chipper. Please let this be a lesson to you the next time you are in the market for a sporting rifle. Never pass on the most beat-up one on the rack of the sporting goods store for that one is the most accurate as evidenced by its wear as someone loved it and hunted it often but, sadly, was probably the first to go when the hunter entered the happy hunting grounds where the button bucks go 170.

 

[Medicine]

Thank you for your interest so far; Conclusion is forthcoming.

 

[Medicine]

And there you have it, that’s how for a decade and a half, coincidentally the same amount of time I was in the cowboy’s safe, Ishmael shot on an unlimited license, night and day, 365.24 days a year in the two most populous whitetail counties of the most populous whitetail state in the country. And I am pleased to report that at the time of his retiral, the bucks no longer weighed 80 pounds but were pushing 230. Scores also increased from the mid 80’s to the mid 160’s and the cotton, my God, I wish you could have seen it. Chances are that if you wore clothes in between 1994 and 2009, it was made with the cotton Ishmael shot over and, sure enough, true to his word, Mr. Spaulding split the ascending profits with him and, although his education was paid, the blood money was how he financed his dates, his guns, his Irish whiskey, and even his boat.

What I won’t tell you; however, is that that buck above the fireplace at Cracker Barrel, the ones hanging in the local fish camp, the one at your eye doctor’s office or any of the ones ever listed by the taxidermy factory on eBay are his but at some point I can assure you that the Spaulding’s tired of repairing and buying tires and innertubes for their combines and tractors and since Ishmael refused to shoot them in their stomachs with his 10/22, I suppose other arrangements had to be met. I will also not tell you that Ishmael may have picked up the sheds that popped off when the March and April deer were shot or the antlers that were inadvertently shot off. And I won’t tell you that any of the meat may have been donated to the First Assembly of God’s foodbank for distribution to the poor. And I won’t tell you that Ms. Clara Mae Gatson and her 11 children on Wahalak Road always had a Merry Christmas as did everyone in her community. As did the families on MLK, Chapman Circle and the depot but I will tell you that some laws are shameful and the needy should be allowed to eat better than buzzards and coyotes.

They are almost to the gate and Ishmael is recalling a late evening March 14, 1998, episode where a bachelor group of four bucks entered the cotton together. The rut had long since passed and their necks were no longer swollen and he and his apprentice, Travis Powe, were sitting, turkey hunting style against a massive oak and it hits him – TRAVIS POWE! For the entire week, Lin had been reminding him of someone who he knew but he couldn’t put his finger on it until now. The revelation jolts him, and he is no longer on the edge of the cotton – he is in Africa – and his Travis Powe looking PH has stopped the cruiser for one of the trackers to open the gate.

Over a concrete bridge, around a bend or two and Lin punches the brakes and Ishmael sees him – TATONKA. He is big and black and 40” and left to right and standing in a beautiful place to die at the base of a hill and looking at us like we owe him…... respect. And although the demons of old were singing their siren song for Ishmael to pile from the cruiser, grab me, and break his neck with 400 grains of Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, Ishmael tells Lin, “Let’s go,” and Lin doesn’t argue and go they do.

T. V. Bulpin wrote “The Hunter is Death” and for 15 years, under the laws of syllogism, Ishmael was the hunter. Why Africa, you ask? Chasing the Dragon – that’s what this was about. Certainly, after a hiatus of over a dozen years that the automaticity would be gone and being 25 yards in front of a 13,000 pound elephant whose tusk configuration, according to the natives and Lyell, rendered him very dangerous as he was clearly kept from the females by the superior tuskers and made irascible at times. Did it work? Perhaps not but Rome wasn’t built in a day and, somewhere in all of Zimbabwe, there is a scrum cap buffalo wilder than a feral pig in a peach orchard with a nasty disposition who has dodged natives’ snares, been run by wild dogs, chased by spears and is hopefully carrying a poacher’s ball or two in his hip.

And I am hopeful that the sadness he felt at the death of the elephant, the euphoria of standing in the spray and the internal giggles in the blind followed by the excitement he felt of the possibility of a buffalo actually coming along and him being able to wake Lin’s sleeping ass up teleported him to his youth. To that little boy who was always far too excited to ever hit a deer, or anywhere close to one, whose breathing was always far too heavy and whose heart was always beating far too hard and far too loud – loud enough that oftentimes he could hear it beating through his open mouth – for time after time after time. For three years he hunted hard and at 13 deer he shot before he ever hit his first, a doe, with a Ruger No. 1, sitting beside his daddy in a 4x4 plywood box on borrowed land - nearly half a decade after every other boy in his class had already done so. And he still remembers it, like yesterday, breathing so hard his daddy had to tell him, “Ishmael, calm down; the time to get excited is AFTER you kill the deer.”

And when it finally happened and she dropped, he was so excited he called his grandparents, and all his friends and his parents videotaped him at home with their VHS camcorder with blood on his cheeks and he wanted to sleep outside in the cold December night with her. And for so many years afterward he would have to remind himself of his daddy’s advice everytime he would look through his scope and his crosshairs would be dancing.

Before they fish, Ishmael has business. He heads to his room, grabs his backpack, places it on the bed, and pulls out an envelope with the words “Last Will and Testament” printed across the front. Opening the envelope, he reaches inside and counts to 65 and retraces his steps back to the dining hall. Lin is at the table. Ishmael approaches and hands him the $100 bills and asks, “Is this enough to reserve a buffalo, sable next year in Makuti and get me to the park tomorrow?” Lin fans the cash and says, “I’ll have to see what I have on quota.”

“And a PH who doesn’t sleep in the blind?”

“I’ll see if Tine’s available,” he replies smiling.

They catch a few vundu, feed a crocodile some guts and tour the park the following day and the following day, Lin drops Ishmael off at the airport where he begins the process of mentally preparing himself for the afternoon of the lady’s metamorphosis from baby-wanting to baby-making.

Epilogue​

And you thought Ishmael was going to be rescued by a fish poacher searching for his long-lost son while floating in the Zambezi clutching a pelican case. But we’re still here – me two spaces down from the Weatherby and he dreaming of the buffalo who will cause him to hear his heart pounding through his open mouth.

FINIS
​

Chasing the Dragon by Medicine the Rifle

 

[Riksa]

Thank you for the great story!!