“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
Dawn. The sun rose on the scrublands below. It was quiet. No sounds of the city. No car horns or bustling of people. No alarm clocks or bird songs. My eyes slowly opened as the sun started to shine through the window of our hut. Then it hit me. Today was the day, my first day on the hunt. I had longed for this day as long as I could remember. I quickly got out of bed and felt the cold brush of the morning air. My father was already up and taking a morning shower. I couldn’t wait, I was too excited. I put on my long shirt, long pants, hat, and boots and rushed over to the food hut for breakfast. Frog, Gavin, and Kevin were already sitting down drinking their morning coffee. They were talking about how the day would go. The idea was to drive around in the Jeep looking for signs of Cape buffalo.
The Cape buffalo is the largest bovine species in Africa. Adult males can reach almost 2,000 pounds in weight, stand 5 feet tall, and are 10 feet long. The horns, called a boss, can reach 50 inches from tip to tip, though the world record was 64 inches from tip to tip. Herds vary in size from a dozen to several hundred individuals, and they are often considered one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. We are not talking about a friendly barnyard cow here; Cape buffalo have very short tempers and are extremely aggressive. While lions and humans are the only threat to a fully grown adult, buffalo calves are popular prey animals for all of Africa’s predators. As such, they are always on edge and, unlike other African prey animals like zebra and antelope, buffalo stand and fight. It’s very common for herd members to gore lions that are attacking other members of the herd. More so than any other species, the buffalo wants to fight you; it wants to kill you. According to some reports, they kill several hundred people a year, and there are many records of them chasing hunters up trees, charging vehicles, and, in the worst of cases, trampling and goring hunters to death. Hunters have given this beast the nickname “The Black Death” on account of their dark coats and their surprising speed. All members of the Big Five are dangerous, but in my opinion, the Cape buffalo is the most dangerous big game animal in all of Africa.
We had tens of square miles around camp that we could search. It was late April, and Zimbabwe was moving into the dry season. During this time of year, the herds start to congregate into larger numbers because water is becoming harder to find. In the wet season, older bulls are often off by themselves away from the herds. Our tactic was to drive around the bush, looking for any sign of the herds. The good thing about tracking buffalo is that a large herd of massive animals is easy to follow. So, while it is easier to find and track the buffalo, it makes it far more difficult to hunt them. A large herd brings many issues to the big game hunter. First, it is much harder to find and isolate your trophy from a large herd. Buffalo are especially difficult in this regard because they have very limited sexual dimorphism. Males and females both carry bosses, have very similar coat colors, and are of similar size. Second, it is much harder to hide from fifty pairs of eyes as opposed to five pairs of eyes. While the buffalo are aggressive, they will still choose to run if the option is available. Third, it is difficult to get a clean shot. A central tenet of hunter ethics is a clean kill and a clear backstop, i.e., there is nothing behind your target that your bullet may damage upon exiting the animal. When animals are grouped up in a herd, it is very hard to get a clear backstop. The tactic for this hunt would be to find signs of the herd and track them by Jeep until fresh sign is found. Next, we would track them on foot until we see the herd. Then we would find a position either on a hill or in a grove of trees, to sit and search the herd for a target. We would use binoculars to search for a large bull within the herd, and then we would stalk to a position that we hoped he would walk by.
Fox joined us as we finished our breakfast. We then jumped into the Jeep. We were off. Gavin, Kevin, and Frog sat in the front of the Jeep — there was more than enough room for them to sit comfortably, each with space for a rifle. Fox, myself, and a native tracker sat up top, and another two natives were in the bed of the Jeep. The one next to me spoke broken English. His name was Neva. He was to be my “bodyguard” to watch over me and make sure I didn’t get into trouble. After my incident with the green mamba, they weren’t taking any chances with me. The other two men in the back spoke no English. We drove away from camp and into the bush.
Most people think that Africa is crawling with game around every corner. This is not the case in most places. Nature documentaries will often show you East Africa, where it is all grassland and very little trees. Southern Africa is not like that. The climate is much wetter, resulting in far more trees, forests, and scrublands. It also has many more hills and rocks than the flat grasslands of Kenya and Tanzania. I quickly became discouraged after we drove for two hours, seeing nothing more than birds flying overhead. It seemed as though we were aimlessly wandering in circles, hopelessly lost, searching for a needle in a haystack that was miles wide. Finally, Gavin stopped the Jeep, and we all got out to have lunch. We were on the edge of a scrub forest overlooking a clearing no more than a few hundred yards wide. We pulled chairs out of the back and set them in a circle under an acacia tree. We ate sandwiches and decided to make our way across a river to see whether that would bring us better luck.
With lunch over, we packed back into the Jeep and drove across the clearing towards the river. As we crossed the clearing, we finally spotted some game when two duikers ran across our path and hurried into the tree line. One of the smallest African antelopes, duikers come in a dozen or so sub species. The largest, the common duiker, reaches no more than two feet tall and fifty pounds. These two were a male and a female, and they quickly bounced across the clearing into the tree line. Their prancing reminded me of the white-tailed deer back home.
As we got closer to the river, we finally started to see more game. A pair of giraffes, a few waterbuck, and some zebra. We finally came to the river. It was no more than 100 feet wide, only a few feet deep, and very slow-flowing. It was a safe place for us to cross. The banks were clear of trees and not very steep. Gavin put the Jeep into gear, and we started to drive across to the other side. It was rocky and bumpy — clearly, the bed was lined with rocks instead of sand. We continued to bounce along until we reached the other side. The Jeep started to move up the embankment, but it suddenly came to a stop. Shift to reverse, nothing. The back left tire was stuck in the mud. Quickly, Gavin directed us to get out of the back of the Jeep in order to shift our weight. We got out of the back and sat on the shoreline. Still, the Jeep would not move. You may think that this sounds absurd, but mind you, there are no bridges out here and no roadside assistance. We were on our own. I would come to learn that this is a common occurrence on African safaris. Be prepared to lose between one and three days of hunting due to weather or just getting stuck like this. What was to be an afternoon of tracking game turned into hours of chopping down trees and making a makeshift bridge for the Jeep to get out of the mud. Of course, I was none too pleased at this and quite bored. The guides and trackers were in the mud for hours, trying to get the Jeep out. And I, a young boy with a short attention span, was not having it. I would pace back and forth along the water’s edge, peak my head over the bank, and look out towards the scrub forests beyond, sometimes tossing rocks into the river, trying desperately to skip them. This section of shoreline seemed safe enough. The water was too shallow for adult crocodiles or hippos, and we were loud enough that we wouldn’t surprise any big game coming down for a drink.
It was actually kind of peaceful, until one of the trackers yelled something in his native tongue and jumped into the back of the Jeep at lightning speed. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to him, and Neva immediately ran over to me and stood in front of me. I peeked my head around, trying to see what the commotion was about. Everyone was moving to the shoreline and pointing at the water. Then I saw it, something swimming in the water. It was a snake of some kind. It was big, maybe six to eight feet long, it was difficult to tell. It was jet-black and moving fast. It had a flat neck. I immediately thought it was a species of cobra. Africa has around thirty species of cobra, all of them deadly. As it got closer, someone tossed a rock at it. It splashed in front of the snake, causing it to change its course to go downriver more before reaching the bank. When it got out of the water and made its way over to the trees, I recognized what it actually was. It was another species of mamba, the black mamba.
The black mamba is regarded as the deadliest snake in all of Africa. It is a massive snake — adults reaching up to 14 feet in length. It is a member of the Elapid family, the same family as cobras, and it has some of the deadliest venom on the planet. A neurotoxin that attacks the nerves that send signals from your lungs to your brain. Within ten minutes of being bitten, you struggle to breathe. The bite is often fatal within a half hour. Without medical treatment, there is a zero percent survival rate. What makes the black mamba far more deadly than any other snake in Africa, including its cousin the green mamba, is that they have a vast range. They are common throughout all of Southern and East Africa. They are also very adaptable. They thrive on the ground, in the trees, on the savannah, in forests, in cities, and near the water. The black mamba is also very aggressive and is one of the rare species of snakes that prefers to bite multiple times. Venom is very taxing on the body to produce. It requires a lot of energy, and snakes actually have the ability to decide whether or not to envenomate. This is called a dry bite, when they don’t want to expend the precious energy. Black mambas, however, almost never deliver dry bites. And finally, the black mamba is one of the fastest snakes on the planet. They can reach speeds of 12 miles per hour — for context, the average human runs at 8 miles per hour. When threatened, the black mamba flattens out its neck, similar to a cobra. It then opens its jet-black mouth and hisses loudly in what’s called “the kiss of death.” Thankfully, this one slithered off into the tress, never to be seen again.
Two days, and two of the deadliest snakes on earth. I was on a roll, I thought, still zero concept of true danger at my age. It took us another hour to get the Jeep out of the mud, but by that time it was approaching sundown, and we still needed to get back to camp. We started to head home and, closer to camp, we found another place to cross the river, this time with no issues. The sun was setting as we pulled into camp and got ready for another evening of dinner and stories around the fire. No buffalo today, but as the hunter always says: “There is always tomorrow.”