Day One - Tanzania

  Good Morning Shooters! Welcome back...it was impossible to make any contact in the bush...and there was little time for writing.

After arriving in Tanzania some 22 hrs later, we needed a further flight out to our first camp...ahhh, but it was worth it! The transition from a modern, progressive city like Houston, Texas, to a location where the water is warmed over an open wood fire, in 55 gallon barrels, for your first shower is....well, it's priceless!

Most days began around 4am. But I did keep a small note book which I used. It was here I stored a few of the special memories....and I will share them with you now and over the course of the next few weeks....but the National Sporting Clays Championship is right around the corner!

I can take you from the good ol' USA, to the great Continent of Africa. I can give you a step by step, almost hour by hour report on preparations for a Safari, directly to the final touchdown on a grass strip near your camp...ask me, and I will. I have spoken to many of you and many have had this experience. So I will "cut to the chase"...did I say that? Yep....it was a chase, a stalk and a hell of a walk! At the end of the 28 day safari, I would be stronger and smarter, but sorry to leave. There are bonds made with men of other cultures, other languages and beliefs that are hard to turn your back on...

This third world country can grip one tighter and dig deeper than the world we are from...friendships born of fire and ice. Long days in the sun, bumping along dirt trails. Stalks up hills, over rocky terrain and through water. It's a long drive home at night and that same chilly darkness, awaits you again at 4am. So parting was difficult for me....a long hand shake, that contact one makes with his eyes with men who have walked your walk...that pause, as hands meet to squeeze the last few seconds out of a friendship. That sudden recall of shared near death encounters, the reality that these men and these forces may never come together again, is the stuff legends are made of. I would leave Tanzania....but a part of me will never leave Tanzania. I have come back here time and time again and never found leaving to be easy.

Day One: 3:40 am..or so..who's watching?

It is times such as these my best words are only second best. The light of day had just touched the horizon. I lay awake anxious to hear the first sounds of a new morning. These sounds would be so far from my normal daily life that I had already begun regretting not packing my recording equipment. I lay in the dark of the tent straining my ears, waiting. On past safaris, it has always been a bird somewhere far away...then another, until a full chorus of exotic sounds fill the air. It is the first thing I look forward to when I arrive in the bush and the last sound I carry back with me on the plane.

But the first sound was soft, a light step, far away in the dirt. Barely a sound at all..more like a movement. The sound increases as it comes closer. But I still cannot identify it. Then I remember Derek Hurt telling me, as I walked back to the tent after dinner, that a "female leopard" has been seen who calls in the early hours of dawn, drawn in by the smell of the skinners' work. I waited, but did not hear another sound for several minutes. I knew one of the cooks' helpers would be bringing Kahawa about this time, and I also knew from past experience hunting with Robin Hurt Safaris, that there is always a camp guard on duty, at night.-----> Why is it our eyes dart around as though out of control when we are in the dark... when it's our ears we are straining? Hummm...

But anyway, I laid there confidently waiting. I would surely be able to identify the sound in the next few seconds....and that next sound was exhilarating. Every nerve ending in my body became alert...the panting sound of a Leopard walking nearby is a sound you will never forget. I had opened the nylon mesh window above my head to the night breeze before falling asleep. As much as I wanted to stretch above my pillow and steal a peek, I knew a single sound or move from me inside the tent would be detected by one of the most elusive cats in Africa and...WHOOSH... she would vanish into the darkness. I instead elected to lay quietly and absorb her every sound, deep into my memory bank. As I lay there, I savored each advancing step she made...I visualized the imprint of her paw into the soft dirt as she came down the path towards the tent....I saw her eyes darting left and right scanning her surroundings...the white of her teeth and the pink of her mouth...suddenly I could hear her breath deflect as it passed over the saliva in the back of her throat. I could almost smell her stale breath as she passed under the canvas windscreen, inches from my bed.

There is a tingle that rushes from the top of my head to my toes whenever I have come this close to danger. I have felt it before...when I faced an angry Elephant in the bush...when I stared into the eyes of an advancing Buffalo and when I watched a lion----> watching me, as I watched him...those are the moments in life that brighten and highlight the fiber of your very existence and leave a memory so vivid that you can recall that tingle years later....for me, it's why I come back. Those golden moments that words never seem to describe with accuracy and the people listening just shake their heads, roll their eyes and smile coolly as they quietly question your sanity. If you haven't been...no one can explain it...well, maybe Wilbur Smith.

But just as suddenly it was all interrupted by another sound..." Habari Ashiburi, Bwana...kahawa..." But hey the day had to start somehow. The smell of hot coffee and warm milk...well it's a pretty good, second, to Leopard breath! lol..lol..

As the day defeats the night, Rose Marie, Derek and I sat silently in a blind 10 miles or so from the main camp. A quarter section of rotting "Kongoni" hangs from a limb approximately 35 yards in front of us. It had been fed upon by a large male Leopard before we flew into this camp. He had left clear deep prints in the dirt and left defining scars on the trunk of the tree as he made his way to the high limb out of reach of any Lions.  Our Masai trackers had built a blind out of tree branches and tall grass. We peered carefully out of several openings in the thick grass, hoping that last nights' unsuccessful hunt, would bring back the same Leopard to the old, smelly carcass. Our three Masai, Abedi, Lekinda, Mboy stood guard near the rear of the open sided blind. They didn't need light or binoculars to sense the presence of another animal. Three of the most notorious poachers in Tanzania, they had come to work for Derek and would be our trackers for this Safari. I was reminded daily of how little I could see or hear, as I followed their hand signals through the miambo forest and open savanna of East Africa. But I was learning....and on two hunts soon to come, they would thank ME and say "...macho masuri !", "good eyes".

6:45...or so..

After sitting deadly silent, waiting for the sun to uncover our Leopard feeding on the old Heartebeast hindquarter, we concluded the big male we were hoping for, had been lucky that night and did not seek the putrid, old meat he had left behind...to rot and fall out of the tree for the hyenas to finish off. Derek signaled with some disappointment that the wait was over and reached for the radio to call the Land Cruiser. As we waited, I surveyed the blind with a chuckle... we had one 7mm, my 375 U.M., and Derek had brought his trusty 416 double. We were well prepared for whatever might come....but it would not be today.

 

   

Comments

[Nobody]

Just wanted to say hello

[Shox NZ]

Paying attention to your astounding post, I locate it is of the extraordinary experience and appropriate suggestions.Trust I will receive what exactly I wish from your current feelings.Good Luck!