Send Him

My hunt begins in Zimbabwe

“When I’m not hunting, I’m thinking about hunting. It’s on my mind because it’s in my blood.” Jim Shockey

I grew up around big game hunters. My father, my uncles, and my grandfather all went out in pursuit of big game. I spent my childhood looking at new and exotic taxidermy continually being added to family members’ homes — a red stag from New Zealand, a polar bear from the high Arctic, a cougar from British Columbia. Not a year would go by without someone taking an exotic trip in search of the next adventure. Even though I was young, I would still wonder when the day would finally come when I too would join them on the hunt.

It was April of 2004 when the day finally came. After traveling and hunting all around North America for over two decades, my grandfather finally decided to make his first trip to Africa. He had already made his name in North America hunting dangerous game, including bears, wolves, and cougar. Now he had his eye on the Big Five (Elephant, Lion, Cape Buffalo, Leopard, and Rhino). For those of you who have done your fair share of hunting in the Americas, understand that Africa is a totally different beast. Aside from the obvious increase in cost, you are looking at a number of other issues. The logistical nightmare of getting firearms and ammo overseas is a journey unto itself. The greatest change of all is in the nature of the dangers. With dangerous game both big and small around every corner, civil unrest, and the elements, Africa is no joke.

Be sure to have a well-respected and seasoned guide, and do your research before making a trip to the Dark Continent. The best place to start is with the organization SCI (Safari Club International). They are the most respected hunting organization in the world. I recommend attending their yearly convention, which is held in either Las Vegas or Reno. There, you can find any outfitter, for any species, in any location on Earth. Your typical African safari will last anywhere from two to four weeks, depending on what you are hunting. A general rule of thumb is to spend one week on each of the Big Five species. Most safaris will have you taking down “plains game” (a catch-all term that typically refers to any species that is not a member of the Big Five), and then the final cap will be your trophy Big Five species. Be prepared to spend at least 4–5 days travelling back and forth from your country of origin and spending anywhere between 20,000 and 200,000 [U.S.] dollars, depending on what you are hunting. Weapons and ammo will be provided at a cost if you don’t bring your own. Most plains game species will cost less than 1,000 dollars a head, but all of the Big Five species will cost well over 10,000 dollars. Typically, your pricing will be:

1. Cape Buffalo: 8,000-20,000 dollars

2. Leopard: 8,000-20,000 dollars

3. Lion: 25,000-50,000 dollars

4. Elephant: 30,000-80,000 dollars

5. Rhino: 50,000-350,000 dollars

This Zimbabwe hunt was abnormal in that it was only 10 days long and only had Big Five animals on the docket. This is not something I recommend, nor is it the norm. Cape buffalo and leopard were our targets. I was just a boy at the time, not even 10 years old, and I joined my grandfather (Frog) and my father (Fox). Thank God my dad was smart enough to know that I wasn’t learning shit in school anyway, and he let me take off for two weeks. When my mother asked my teacher whether it would be wise for me to miss so much school, my teacher simply said, “Send him.” It took us 20 hours of flying to reach Johannesburg. In the years immediately following 9/11, flying was an even bigger pain in the ass than it is now.

Johannesburg was an interesting enough city. I was too young at the time to care or understand the local politics. I was more captivated by the different people, the architecture, and — most of all — the odd layout of the vehicles. Driver’s seat on the right side is still strange to me. We spent a day sightseeing in the city. We stopped by a crocodile farm and leather tannery, where thousands of crocodiles kept in concrete pits waited to be fashioned into belts and boots one day. We spent time in the market district as well. Bartering and haggling was an interesting thing for me to witness. Fox purchased some fine wood carvings, which he still has to this day.

The following day, we hopped on a short flight via bush-plane to Victoria Falls, one of the world’s largest waterfalls. For context, Victoria Falls is over twice the size of Niagara Falls. I would absolutely recommend seeing it if you have the means. You will be in awe of the majesty of the natural world.

The final leg of our journey took place the next day, where once again we jumped on a bush plane and flew southeast to the Matetsi Safari region.

African safaris operate similarly to those in the United States, in that there are private game reserves, national parks, and communal land. Much of African land these days is in the first two categories. Over the last fifty years, the “tragedy of the commons” issue has become too great to bear for African wildlife. Poaching was too difficult to manage throughout most of Africa. Demand for animal parts has only increased, and the lack of funds and manpower has driven many species to the brink of extinction. Tragically, some have been wiped out altogether. Nowadays, most of African land is either privately owned by game reserve organizations or directly managed by local governments. The solution in saving Africa’s wildlife was to lease the rights to hunt animals and to relocate them into these reserves and national parks. The animals are then managed, and healthy populations maintained, under the carful watch of hunters and government organizations. The result has been an amazing success story. In African counties where hunting is allowed, there are more species in greater numbers than there in those countries which ban hunting. Most of these reserves and national parks stretch for hundreds of miles, much larger than the home ranges of most African species. In other words, in the fenced reserves (even though they are marked by man-made boundaries), most animals in their lifetimes will never walk from one end of the reserve to the other. These reserves are carefully monitored for poachers. Furthermore, the populations of animals are well maintained so that the habitats remain intact and the animals don’t overpopulate such that they spill over into human settlements. For this hunt, we were hunting on a free-range game reserve, no fences.

Finally, our plane touched down on a small airfield in the middle of the reserve. Lush green forests and tall grass were all around us. The first wild animal we saw was a lone male waterbuck, similar to the one pictured above. He was grazing along the tree line and took off for cover when our guides rolled up in the Jeep to meet us. Our guide was legendary PH (professional hunter) Gavin Rorke (who, to my knowledge, is still running safaris in Zimbabwe). He was a giant of a man, were my first thoughts... White, over six feet tall and 200 pounds, with full mustache and the classic African safari clothes that one would picture Teddy Roosevelt wearing. He introduced himself in his South African accent. He had with him three black native trackers who did not speak English. One other white man, Kevin, was with him, who was also South African. He was a tall man with short hair, in his late twenties or early thirties, and he wore a long green hunting shirt and khaki pants. Kevin was training under Gavin to become a professional hunter in his own right. With introductions out of the way, we unloaded our gear from the plane and watched it take off.

So there we were, in the middle of the bush, away from all civilization. I remember thinking how quiet it was — you could hear the waves of grass rustle and wind roll over the land. No car horns or screams of people or rustling of the city. It felt peaceful, as though I belonged there. We packed up our green Jeep (similar to the one pictured above) and began the one-hour drive to our basecamp. The land very quickly changed from greenery to a true African scrub land. Tall brown grass, thick bushes, and scattered acacia trees (pictured below). Africa only has two seasons, dry and wet, and most hunting occurs during the dry season because game is easier to find — find the water, you have found the game. As such, we didn’t see much game on our hourlong drive to basecamp. Basecamp was on top of a cliffside, no more than a hundred feet high, overlooking the scrub valley to the east down below. Camp was no more than a dozen huts in a circle around the largest hut in the center. The center was a dining hall with a firepit (similar to that pictured below). Most of the huts were on the opposite side away from the cliff. There was one hut for each of the PHs, some for the native trackers, one skinner-and-tannery hut, a hut for camp food and refrigeration, and huts for cooks and laundry workers. There were huts along the cliff edge for clients to sleep in. Fox and myself took one, and Frog took another. Our two huts were maybe fifty yards apart. Ours was on the northeast corner, Frog’s on the southeast side.

Our hut contained two beds that each had a mosquito net hanging from the ceiling. We had a single bathroom with running water and a small balcony overlooking the valley below. After we had dropped off our bags and gotten settled in, we walked over to Frog’s hut. It was getting late at this point, but we still had some down time until dinner. The hunt would start tomorrow. Frog was unpacking his clothes and setting them out for tomorrow. While he and Fox were talking, I walked out onto deck to check out his view. And there, on the deck, I experienced my first brush with death in Africa, and it wouldn’t be my last.

Curled up in the corner of the deck was an adult eastern green mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Green mambas are highly venomous, and their neurotoxic venom can kill within hours after you’ve been bitten. Their venom attacks your nervous system and kills you by shutting down the neurons that signal to your brain that you need to breathe. Your lungs stop working, and you die. Thankfully, I had walked to the left onto the deck and not to the right; otherwise, I would have stepped on it. As the mamba sat motionless, I was captivated by its amazing green color and its black eyes. I screamed ‘SNAKE!’ at the top of my lungs, and everyone rushed out onto the deck. The arrogance of youth and my religious watching of The Crocodile Hunter had made me want to get closer and try to pick it up. I knew what it was — I’ve had a love of snakes from a young age and still keep a boa constrictor as a pet to this day —, but somehow, I thought that I was invincible. But this was no garter snake from back home, and quickly I was pulled back and pushed into the hut. Gavin had heard the yelling, and he rushed over. Fox suggested that I run back to our hut to grab my camera to get a picture of it, an easy trick to pull on a boy to get me out of danger. So of course I ran as fast as I could back to our hut. I grabbed my small camera from my bag and rushed back. When I returned, the snake was gone. It had been pushed off the ledge by Gavin's snake stick, but they all told me that it had simply run away. Crisis averted. We joined Kevin and the head cook Rosie, a middle-aged white woman working for Gavin, for dinner. We stayed up late, trading stories back and forth around the campfire and watching the sun set. I tell you, there are very few things in life that are better than hunters telling stories around the campfire under the stars, with Orion looking down on us. Tomorrow, the hunt would begin.