VICTIMS OF BIG GAME
By CLELAND SCOTT Nairobi
ARGUMENTS about which is the most dangerous big-game animal end as inconclusively as arguments about which is the best car. It is largely a matter of personal opinion—but any species can be the most dangerous animal on earth to you in certain circum- stances. Nearly every mauling has been caused through an error on the part of the hunter. Sometimes you have to break every golden rule, and for years you may do this with impunity, but when things go wrong you cannot dogmatically say that the animal that caught you is the most dangerous of all. As well say you will never enter a lift again because you once had your pocket picked in one.
Lions have probably caused the death of more hunters than any other species, but they are the most hunted by the greatest variety of people, many inexperienced. As far as Africa is concerned the lion seems to hold pride of place as regards being seen, photographed or shot. I was once well and truly mauled by a lion, but the fault was entirely my own, and I was incredibly lucky in suffering no permanent damage. I used old ammunition that I knew frequently misfired ; and I tried a brain shot when a heart one would have been far wiser. It seems that tigers are more efficient. At any rate they more often kill their victims outright, possibly because they use their paws more than lions and they aim for the head. On the other hand it must not be forgotten that when a hunter is mauled his antagonist is invariably a beast previously wounded. Most deaths from lions and leopards are caused by blood-poisoning days after- wards, while those who recover usually have some permanent dis- ability.
The hunter usually causes his own undoing ; he shoots badly, he takes a chance, or he becomes over-confident. Few of last century's hunters lived to a ripe old age, a result again of a variety of factors. Firearms and ammunition were not as good, nor had medicine made such strides, so that many had to hunt when they were not really fit, and some went on too long. A quick reaction in a crisis can make the difference between a bad fright and a premature obituary. On the other hand the game was fat more numerous and less sophisticated, so what was lost on the swings was gained on the roundabouts. One's mental state has more to do with hunting than is generally realised. If a man is particularly cheerful he is unlikely to take undue or unnecessary risks, but he may get himself into trouble through sheer bad luck. For when all is said luck does enter into all hunting. Sometimes you can do no wrong ; sometimes nothing goes right. When you are feeling that life in the main is rather boring, and you do not mind what you tackle, nothing un- pleasant ever seems to happen to you. If you are naturally of an independent spirit it is best to hunt alone, since you can then do just what you like, when you like, and get all the thrills you want, and you are likely to remain all in one piece.
In my own case, in spite of being mauled by a lion, I have far greater respect for elephant ; this may be because I have had so many full-grown lions as pets that I know what great bluffers they are ; yet when they are really roused nothing but a shot in the brain will stop them in time. I have always been firmly convinced that no one has ever been mauled twice by a lion, and no matter what belief you hold, so long as you hold it firmly enough, you will be all right. One hunter I knew was mauled twice by a leopard, and ended by being killed by a rhinoceros; a beast which stands low in the averages for victims. But rhino can be most frightening, because they are such blundereys, and because the hunter is after something else and does not want to fire a shot for fear of disturbing his quarry, nor does he want the rhino to rush about advertising the fact that something unpleasant, from the game's point of view, is around. One rhino scalped a woman in the Kedong Valley, but she recovered.
One " white hunter " has a rather useless arm thanks entirely to the stupidity of some clients he was accompanying who wanted a lion. A drive was in progress, and the hunter was with the beaters. The clients saw a reedbuck pass and fired at it, with the result that the lions turned back and finding the hunter very close to them, reacted quickly as lions 'do. A lioness sprang at him, and though he hit her with a bullet from his .470, and duly killed her, she got him first. Poetic justice is on the whole rare, but in the Serengetti Plains years ago there was a case. A party had wounded a lion, and instead of putting him out of his pain at once proceeded to take photos of what they thought was an anchored beast. They were all so busy looking down viewfinders that they failed to notice that the lion had got going, and it mauled one man, who, in spite of being flown to hospital, died of blood-poisoning. Buffalo have a most unenviable reputation for turning hunter themselves when wounded. If you are in really dense bush and follow a wounded buffalo by yourself you are liable to be hurt, since while your eyes are on the ground looking for specks of blood and tracks, you cannot simultaneously be looking behind every bush. The wounded beast circles and may literally catch you bending.
Unlike lions, elephant generally kill outright. What usually happens is that they seize you with their trunk and break you across their tusks as we snap a match, or else they bang you against some handy tree. Other tricks in their repertoire are to kneel on you or skewer you with their tusks. A great friend of mine had the most astonishing escape. He was knocked flying by the trunk, and was thin enough to lie between those mammoth knees. Then a camera in his breast-pocket caused the tusk to glance off and pin him to the ground by his tunic. He was next picked up and thrown through a bush, after which he exhibited an astonishing piece of presence of mind. The elephant ran round the bush to see how he was getting on, and snuffled him from head to foot with its trunk, while he lay holding his breath. Satisfied it went off. All that was wrong with him was a cracked shoulder-blade, although he was literally black and blue all over. This elephant had charged him unprovoked, but it was subsequently discovered that it had previously been wounded by someone else and was suffering from toothache, in which condition none of us is at his best.
It is extremely rare for any species to charge without reason, among the exceptions being females with young. One man followed a herd of elephant armed with a camera only ; he kept getting too near until a cow lost her temper and finished him. Not only do the dangerous game rarely charge for nothing ; they even exhibit toler- ance when we invade their private domains. Last year in Tanganyika I spent two weeks at the most entertaining waterhole I have ever encountered. Herds of elephant, one of buffalo, two rhino, a leopard, and five lions all drank within a hundred yards of my bed every night ; only the latter ever disturbed me and this I attribute to thwarted desire or curiosity. One elephant spent almost half an hour sixteen yards from my bed. A party of four lions skidded about under forty yards from me, but until the last night but one, apart from odd snorts and cries of surprise and disgust, no one disturbed me seriously.
On the night in question the solitary lion I presume had had a " brush off " from one of the lionesses, and was mooning about disconsolate when he caught sight of my bed. I had reached that waterhole with the aid of only two donkeys, so had travelled light and had not even a mosquito net to give me ghostly-
looking protection. I was woken by a violent blow at the end of my bed and found myself and my bedding-roll pulled a good foot over the end and to one side. There was no disputing the perpetrator of this act, as there were four tears at the end of the roll ; they had missed my feet by a matter of inches. NOt content with having woken me so rudely, that lion and his rival then proceeded to re-awaken me four more times by grunting for the rest of the night. Man-eating lions are very rare in East Africa and should remain so as long as a reasonable stock of game is left for them. Had this been a prospective man-eater his form was bad enough to cause him to die of starvation, for he ran fast enough when I let out a loud yell.
Big-game photography can be extremely thrilling and just as dangerous as shooting, up to a point, because you spend far longer time in considerably closer proximity to your subject. But to get great excitement from this you must hunt your quarry in normal game country, not in one of the National Parks. These latter prove how astonishingly blasé all game become to human beings ; but how- ever lovely and necessary these parks are, the fact that some other car may drive round a corner at any moment spoils them for me. The new big Tsavo Park in Kenya will more than hold its own, but it is still entirely undeveloped and the game by no means spoon- fed at present. A lot of time and money must be spent on it before visitors can get full value.
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