A Bloodcurdling Tale of African Big Game Hunting
Big Game Hunting, Rhinocerus
From the London Spectator:
Hannes became a professional hunter because, as he says in his fine book Strange Tales from the African Bush, he missed “the smell of cordite… the clatter of the helicopters and the memory of the blood brotherhood that few, other than soldiers under fire, are lucky enough to know.” He’s a fourteenth generation white African and a veteran of the famous Rhodesian Light Infantry that fought valiantly in that country’s civil war. He still loves Africa and lives in the Western Cape. When he visited our beach house on the Kenya coast, I managed to persuade him to tell me a few stories, fueled with bottles of Tusker — a much-loved local lager which is named after the elephant that killed the original brewer.
After the civil war, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, Hannes tried being a barrister. He tired of life in a courtroom and it wasn’t for him, so he picked up his rifle and headed off back into the bush where he’d grown up and seen so much action. For the next twenty years he hunted across Africa, guiding rich tycoons tracking trophies, but he met his nemesis in the flat dry scrub of northern Tanzania, deep in the heart of buffalo country. Here they came upon a 2,000lb bull at 150 yards. His American client fired his .375 rifle prematurely, as the creature faced him head on, wounding but not killing it. The injured beast took off into a ravine thick with wait-a-bit thorn and combretum scrub.