Chapter Two- Elephants

We drove to the end of the Sengwa Mine road and turned off into the bush, driving past many small settlements and cotton fields, working our way back to the river. On occasion we would stop and Troy would ask the villagers if they had seen elephant recently. One man told us he hadn’t seen elephant recently, but a week earlier a small pride of lions, a male, female and two cubs, had passed through, and killed seven of his calves while they were there. At the next village another man confirmed the lion story, but said it had been about two weeks previously. He also said 4 elephants had been through just the night before, and offered to show us where. We followed the spoor for about 3 kilometers, to a point where the group crossed the river, and in the soft sand were able to judge the tracks. There seemed to be one good sized bull in the group.

   Troy wasn’t moving well, and by the time we got back to the village it had been several hours, and we were pretty thirsty. Troy asked the man for water, and he brought us a white enamel pan containing cloudy, grayish water that didn’t look good to me at all. Troy drank deeply, and after his reassurance that it was OK I had a couple swallows, but I was concerned about what might be floating in there and passed the pan to the game scout we had brought along.

   With no further instructions for the day we headed back to camp to radio our findings to Kirk, who reported they had seen a few bulls but nothing the client was happy with, and they were moving back to Main Camp that night.

   The hunting party arrived in camp around 7, everyone crowded onto the top of Kirk’s Land Cruiser. Supper was ready when they arrived, and we sat down to dinner while the camp boys got the Client settled into his chalet.

   The conversation was relaxed, and after recounting the past two days the talk turned to poaching in the concession, with Kirk saying it was already worse than he had ever seen.. This was his second hunt for the season, the first having been a buffalo hunt that ended just before my arrival. An old client of the company’s had brought his 40 year old son out for a buffalo hunt, but after three days of walking the son had quit, telling Kirk he wasn’t about to walk another step. The son was a chain smoker, and frequently tried to light up in the cab of Kirk’s Toyota. Kirk didn’t suffer fools gladly, and smoking fools even less.

But, there had been numerous signs of poaching in the concession during the three active days of the hunt, and the current hunt was producing more of the same.

   We talked about the scouting at the Gorge, and when he discovered that we hadn’t been armed Dylan became quite agitated, and declared we must always be armed in the bush. Kirk seemed non committal towards the issue, but I took it to be good advice, even on a scouting expedition in populated areas....