lions on my back

 
A gentle tap on the land cruiser roof brings us to a quick stop ‘Nyati!” whispers our tracker Freddy through the window.
 
It is our third hunting trip in as many years to the Sapi Safari area of the magnificent Zambezi valley. We had purchased our 14 day hunt on the auction held annually in Harare and had managed to get our favourite “G camp” at the end of August 1996. This suited us as our wives enjoyed tiger fishing and birding, which is excellent at that time of the year, and a “happy” wife means a “happy” camp.
 
We had two buffalo on licence and I had drawn the short straw from my friend and hunting partner Tony Green and was going to take the first buffalo. Stu Hulley - Miller an ex parks ranger with heaps of experience and personal friend was going to back me up.
 
The sun was an orange ball through the haze on the horizon as we quickly got ourselves ready to go. Within a few minutes Freddy was leading us of on the spoor of a large herd of buff. After a few minutes we could hear them moving through the thick bush and decided to move around and ahead of them. As it was early there was still no wind so everything was in our favour. We moved in a wide semicircle ahead of the herd and then started to work back towards them finding them grazing in a large opening.
While moving towards them we had heard a lion “humphing” in the distance and Stu whispered that we should be on the look out as lion may be in the area. The sight of 150 buffalo grazing in open grassland in front of me took any lion thoughts out of my mind as we planned our approach.
As I started leopard crawling towards an old tree that had been pushed over by an elephant, which was directly between the oncoming grazing herd and me, I again heard the lion in the distance. Stu hung back giving me chance to get to the log, which was about 15 meters away.  
Halfway to the fallen tree I suddenly felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I slowly looked around and not 30 paces away behind and to my left was a large male lion. His one front paw in the air as he paused with an almost guilty look on his face of being caught in the act of stalking me!
“Stu there’s a lion,” I whispered as he couldn’t see it around the bush as the lion was almost parallel with him.” “ Where?” whispered Stu back? “ Right f…. g here” was my hoarse whisper.  Stu quickly crawled forward to a get a better view of our “shumba” who was standing there looking at us. “ You watch the buff and I will keep an eye on the lion” said Stu. My answer was unprintable but I nevertheless decided to carry on to the fallen tree. The buff were now milling about with our commotion and the other lion that was still “humphing” upwind letting them know that he was on the other side of the herd from us.
“Watch out “ whispered Stu as the lion started to show an interest in me crawling towards the tree. I rolled over and pointed my rifle at him and he suddenly turned and backed off 70 paces where he was joined by 2 lionesses! The buff was now really trapped and had closed ranks in a long line and kept on walking towards us with their noses in the air. Every now and then one or two of them would mock charge the lions that would lazily get up and trot away only to come back and flop down once the buff had turned back to the herd. Luckily they did not try that with us! In the mean time I was having a hard time trying to pick out a suitable animal to take. Stu had his hands full keeping an eye on the lions, which still hadn’t lost interest in us.
 
This whole event lasted for about half an hour with the buff milling, closing ranks and then trying to chase the lions off which were still showing an interest in us but obviously knew what the business end of a 450 double meant.
After all the confusion I eventually singled out an old buffalo cow who was looking straight at me and let her have it in the middle of her chest with a 480 grain solid at 40 paces. With the shot the buffalo immediately closed ranks and started walking towards me! I stood up and in a flash was back next to Stu who had been stuck watching the lions halfway to the tree. For a few tense moments there was a stand off and then as one they turned and thundered off into the thick Jesse bush on the edge of the clearing. In these few seconds, which felt, like time had stood still we had forgotten about the lions, which had also now disappeared with the shot.
We waited for Tony and Mathew, Stu’s son who has since become a big 5 rated ph hunting in Mozambique, and the trackers to catch up with us before going to look for my buffalo, which had disappeared with the herd.
Freddy and the national park scout “Steven” were soon on the blood trail. We could see from the frothy pink blood that the animal had been well shot and we would catch up with it shortly. Walking three abreast we cautiously rounded a patch of bush at the end of the clearing to be met by the growling of two very upset male lions attached to my now very dead buffalo. The lionesses had obviously taken off with the initial shots and the two males had stayed behind.
One of the lions immediately came at us. We had no time to strategize and Stu shouted at us to keep walking and make a lot of noise. He came growling straight at us with his head held up stopping a few meters in front of us kicking up dust as he stopped and turned back to his mate. He came half-heartedly a second time before realising that we weren’t going to give up. They both decided discretion was the better part of valour and ran roaring and growling off into the thick Jesse.
Walking up to the buff we found it covered in bite marks and lion saliva where they had obviously pulled it to the ground trying to claim it as theirs.
The adrenalin set in with everyone talking at once as we relived the experience .The buffalo was soon loaded and we headed back to the majestic Zambezi for a bite to eat and some afternoon tiger fishing.
 
On leaving our camp we met the next group coming in and told them of our experience. Needless to say the next hunter took after his buff with only himself and the parks scout as back up. The same thing happened to them but this time the lions won the day taking his buffalo! Parks did however give him another buffalo to hunt for which I am sure he had ample back up! This pride had become opportunistic and was obviously tagging onto hunters and without having to do too much other than frightening the s..t out of them for a free meal!
 
Written by Kim Robertson
Magnum Magazine, April 2007