Warthogs and Rhinos

What I love about Africa is it is unpredictable, wild and beautiful.  One of the last wild places in the world where terrible beasts roam that can stomp you into mush or rip the flesh right from your bones.  Every bush seems to have thorns to tear your clothes, the fish have teeth and the rivers are treacherous as they are the territory of the hippo and croc, of which both have nasty temperaments and the ability to inflict great harm on the careless.  There is a raw primeval beauty in the bush, the sunsets are blood red as well as at dusk, and into the night the chorus of birds, lions, hippos, hyenas, baboons and the leopard can be heard within a few yards of where your tent may be pitched.  In the evenings as the temperature drops and you sit around a fragrant fire of burning mopane in safari chairs made of wood and canvas, smoking a nice cigar and sipping bourbon or scotch, listening to the roar of lions just outside of camp the feeling is unparalleled.   I don’t know exactly how to explain the feeling, it is a vigorous feeling where all the senses are alive and stimulated.  As you look up into the Southern Hemisphere at the Southern Cross and gaze upon millions of stars with no city lights polluting the sky, it is an awesome and overwhelming feeling.  It is as if the vulnerability of sleeping out in the wild areas where the beasts roam, subject to the elements and the unpredictability of everything the continent has to offer heightens the awareness of your morality and allows you to relish all the life you can get out of the moment. 

We were sitting in a makeshift blind by a water hole.  Water holes in Africa are interesting places to sit for a while.  I prefer getting out on foot and stalking, as I like an active hunt, especially being from the Southeast where I get my fill of sitting in stands hunting white tail deer.  The water hole experience in Africa is quite different though.  You can usually be sure to see all kinds of different things going on around a waterhole and you need to be prepared for the unexpected because anything can happen.  The blind we were in was merely a bundle of sticks and brush woven in between three trees about 20 yards for the waters edge.  This made a convenient screen to allow us to watch the goings on around the water hole without being detected.  Once we had the blind built and settled in the usual progression of critters started.  First, all kinds of colorful birds start darting back and forth taking drinks from the water.  Then the monkeys show up.  The monkeys provide a lot of entertainment and make the sit in confined area much more pleasant than the entertainment provided by squirrels scampering around in the deer woods at home.  The monkeys are constantly chasing each other, fighting, making all kinds of chatter and noises, running up trees etc.  You can keep well entertained for hours just watching them.  After the birds and the monkeys are comfortable and scurrying back and forth, usually that is when some of the antelopes start showing up.  You will see a couple of Impala or maybe a waterbuck or Gemsbok walk cautiously in, taking small steps towards the water, stopping every couple of steps and looking around, sniffing the wind and looking ready to spring into a leap at any moment.  This afternoon was a typical afternoon on an African waterhole and we were a few hours in our wait for the warthogs to show up and were in the phase of the sit where all was calm, birds darting around, impala drinking on the edge and moneys going about their playful antics.   As I was being lulled into a melancholy kind of mood and feeling quite relaxed, all of a sudden something changed.  The birds took off in flight, the monkeys went scurrying off in all directions and the antelope leaped in the air and were gone.  Something was going on, I was not sure what yet, however soon I was to find out.  Out of nowhere three big rhinos came in at a trot erupting from the bush.  These beasts just came barging in, not cautiously and delicately like the impala.  They stopped within twenty yards of my blind in-between me and the waterhole.  Now I mentioned that feeling of vulnerability in bush in Africa.  When you are within twenty yards of three two ton plus animals with armor plating and prominent horns on their heads and all that is between you and them is a pile of sticks you feel vulnerable and alive.  I do not think there is any way for me to describe the feeling accurately, you need to go give it a try yourself, but trust me, it is an elevated awareness of your mortality you will not soon forget.  This experience most definitely beats the monotony of sitting in a deer stand in the Southeastern United States.  There was no way I was going to dose off now.  Fortunately, these beasts were not aware of my presence, or if they were, they did not pay me any attention.  They spent some time sparring with each other and pushing each other around at the water hole edge before settling down for a drink.  Eventually they ambled off and disappeared into the bush. 

After the rhinos had moved on, things started back to normal with the birds coming in and the monkeys scurrying around; then a warthog sow with several young piglets came in at a trot all in single file and piled up at the water’s edge to take a drink.  I was waiting for a boar with large tusks to show up as that was my target species on this afternoon hunt.  Eventually my quarry showed up.  A big boar with nice long curved tusks came trotting up to the watering hole with his tail straight up in the air.  He ran up and down the edge a few times and settled in for a drink.  I took out my glasses and evaluated the quality of the ivory he was carrying and decided this was a worthy trophy.  I put my Winchester Model 70 chambered in .375 H&H mag to my shoulder and found him in the crosshairs of my Kahles 1 X 4 scope, steadied my rifle on a branch of the tree and squeezed off the trigger.  At the impact he jumped a couple feet into the air and hit the ground running past the far side of the waterhole.  I rechambered a round and walked down to the edge to pick up the blood trial.  The trail was obvious and prominent.  I had made a good shot; the distance was no more than thirty yards.  We walked up on the pig about 80 yards from where the shot was made.  It was a lethal heart shot and he was stone dead when we came up to him.  It is amazing how tough these animals are on this continent, for him to take such a hit from a 300-grain bullet to the heart and still manage to run eighty yards.  As all of my hunts in Africa, it is one that I will never forget and every time I look at that warthog skull prominently displayed under the glass coffee table in my trophy room, I remember this hunt fondly.