africa's professional journal for serious hunters since 1994
The Lion is Death (Part I)
By I J Larivers
So, you’ve seen Ghost in the Darkness - one hundred and thirty souls spirited away by man-eating lions during the construction of the railway between Mombassa and Nairobi through Tsavo at the end of the 19th century - and you can hardly believe it could be a true story? Ha! Those kitties were amateurs - let’s turn back the pages of history and look at some of the real man-eaters along the Great North Road.
African Folklore, Myths and Legends
Enlarged and Expanded 1949
By Owen Connor
While we were engaged with the depredations of hyenas around the camp, my trap gun being to no avail, a suggestion was made by ‘Tuli’ Rudolph. His idea was to place a chunk of meat in a five gallon paraffin tin. Cuts made from corner to corner across the top would trap the tin on the animal’s head. Most fuels were carried in these tins, and came in a wooden crate, which carried two tins. In the old days very functional desks and tables were made from these crates for camping, there were no plastic buckets then.
Petros, one of the guides, had taken us out several times and he did not approve of our hyena experiment. However, the trap was set with the paraffin tin, and the hyena duly trapped. The hyena then commenced running around camp and then into the settlement with everyone belting him with branches and rhino shamboks (whip) which was great fun! Finally the tin came off and we all went to bed.
The next evening we were informed that Petros was ill, and required some “muti” (medicine). On going to his hut he came out without a shirt on and had many strokes across his back, and accused us of having given him a hiding! We administered some salve and went back to the fireside to contemplate this turn of events. Jim the camp cook, said Petros was lying. He said the District Commissioner had administered the strokes, as Petros had taken us out of the hunting area. However, Sinoia, our tracker, had a different view. He said Petros was a witch and transformed himself into a hyena during every full moon and it was he we had all beaten the previous night!
There is an underling truth in this story.
Before Kariba dam was built, there used to be semi-permanent settlements along the Zambezi all the way from Chirundu to Nyamumba. The river would flood its banks annually. During the winter months, once the river had receded, the natives lived along its banks growing maize and millet on the nutrient enriched flood plain.
However, during the wet season (summer), the natives moved inland. One of these areas was near the ‘centre’ road which crossed the Taswe river near the old “B” camp. Here they had permanent huts. In good seasons ground water was available throughout the year, drawn from the dry Taswe river bed, which even today is nothing more than a sandy stormwater drain. In time of drought though, the young girls collected water from the Zambezi, 20 kilometres away, carrying the water in calabashes and clay pots balanced on their heads.
On their return from one of these water collecting trips, the young girls were alarmed to find the village in chaos. On entering Mbuya’s hut (grandmother), they were met by a hyena with a string of beads around its legs (married women wear these beads as a token of their union). One of the village elders told them that Mbuya had been eaten by “Gumba Chuma” and that Mbuya had now taken the form of a hyena, and must be sanctified and worshipped as he was now the spirit of Mbuya.
I was told that under no circumstances was I to shoot a hyena as this would be considered killing a human and bring forth very bad luck!
A Depiction of a Hyena personified by Heater Bruton
A common computer game exemplifies the undergod as simply a man with the ability to turn hyena...
Even the Chupacabra is based on a half-human half-beast theory, filling the darkness by night and human by day which is the explanation given by the superstitious for not being able to find the beast.
A Depiction of a Hyena personified by Heater Bruton
Following a number of kills which fit the Tsavo pattern pretty closely, and began to materially affect the construction of the road and the bridge, three hunters who were contracted to provide game meat were now tasked with the destruction of the lions. By the end of May, the score stood at Hunters 5: Lions 1, and of the two remaining hunters one was dying of septicaemia after having been badly mauled and the other was succumbing to the terminal stages of malaria.
There was a Seventh Day Adventist mission 40 miles away at Rukomechi. Two of the five former missionaries in this place that God had quite probably forgotten, lay buried there; the current missionary was a Dr Fraser, who had somehow survived for fifteen years. He had a formidable reputation as a lion hunter, for his flock were among the most primitive tribes in central Africa, the Batonga. They were staunchly animist in their spiritual beliefs and paramount among the things that went bump in the night under the command of the Zambezi river god Nyaminyami - who would rear his unquestionably ugly head decades later to attempt to thwart the construction of the Kariba dam - were the mudzimu - the demon man-eating lions. Dr Fraser’s approach for demonstrating the superiority of his God was the administration of lead injections to solve such lions’ mineral deficiency problems. The good doctor had developed an innovative and slightly insane approach to the efficient despatch of problem lions. He would wait out at night with his back to a large baobab tree, and simulate the cries of a wounded native. He could use no light, so it was imperative in the dark to lure the king of beasts to within about ten yards, where his .450 Farquharson single shot (yes, you read that correctly) rifle could do its work. There was no room for error, but there was occasionally room for more than one lion, so the missionary indeed also demonstrated the concept of divine protection. Should the critter in question be other than a lion - say a hyena - Fraser would slowly stand up and give it a good whack over the head with the Farquharson. Modern PH’s for some reason have strayed away from these methods.
One very large black-maned lion and a smaller one with a bad leg were the culprits in all of the documented attacks, with some other lions sometimes joining in from time to time.
Fraser, no doubt in the market for a bit of excitement got stuck in at once. By day a devoted missionary and by night the scourge of the rogue lions - sort of a Dr Syn of Rukomechi Marsh if you will - he rode his motorbike to the camp and positioned himself as per usual to await events. During the first three nights, Fraser shot three lions - all curious and desirous of a human take-away, but none the principal antagonists. If you think that tending sick patients all day and hunting villainous lions all night might get a little tiring after three days, you would be right. On the fourth night, Fraser slept soundly - except that his back was to the baobab tree not on his mattress at the mission! A lion, not conversant with human anatomy, had mistaken Fraser’s feet for his head and was dragging him into the bush. Fraser brought his .450 to bear and missed, but the lion departed for healthier climes. The good doctor then took a couple of days off.
But even with Fraser in situ, lions had been eating labourers. When the bridge engineer was gobbled up by the black-maned lion, the Batonga saw it as the spirits’ revenge for the missionary’s kills. Such was their fear that it soon became infectious among even the more sophisticated black labourers. Native bomas were ringed with thorn walls, fires were kept burning all night, and every available tree was occupied by workers trying to sleep in safety, but still the lions came. Sleeping trenches were dug, roofed with steel bridge girders and a steel chain lattice-work. Police guards were posted on all the trenches, and while one lion was indeed shot a number of labourers were wounded by the ricochets.
Enter a nomadic Scot known only as “Jock”, an itinerant prospector/tracker/hunter with a .44-40 Colt Lightning rifle. Engaged to hunt for the pot, he was offered not insignificant bounties for lions. The ballistics of Jock’s .44-40 were akin to a light load in any of today’s .41 or .44 magnum handguns - a 200gr lead cast bullet at just over 1,000 feet per second. Not exactly an A Lion Load.
The only images of the real Tsavo lions.
Harry Wolhuter was one of the first game rangers in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, and in 1903 he stepped into the pages of history. He was attacked by two lions just after nightfall as he rode along the park’s Lindana Road on horseback. Wolhuter, seized by the right shoulder, was dragged sixty yards into the bush before he was able to surreptitiously draw his sheath knife with his left hand and stab the lion twice, after first having made his best educated guess as to where the beast’s heart was. A third strike severed the lion’s jugular vein. Mortally wounded, the big cat died not far from a tree that Wolhuter had somehow managed to climb, while his dog kept the other lion distracted. Harry Wolhuter was rescued by his native assistants, and began the long road to recovery. A modern day visitor to the Kruger National Park can see Wolhuter’s knife and the skin of the lion he killed on display in the Stevenson-Hamilton library at Skukuza. Major H C Stigand can perhaps be credited with going one better than Wolhuter at Simba station along the Mombassa-Nairobi railway line when he was badly mauled by a wounded lioness that he had tracked into dense cover. With no other alternative, he summoned what remaining strength he had and strangled the lioness. Another technique not favoured by today’s hunters. Wimps!
In 1920, close to the mission station of the White Fathers at Kapatu, a lone man-eating lion appeared. During a two-year rampage it was said to have killed eighty men - possibly the precursor was when one of the White Fathers wounded it and was unsuccessful in following up the blood spoor. It was easily identified by its tracks and was somewhat lame, probably from the bullet. It was finally shot in broad daylight in 1922.
George “Yank” Allen was a relocated Texan, a prospector and hunter who traversed vast areas of central and southern Africa in the early years of the 20th century. He came from an era when it was possible to earn a living from killing rogue lions, and was arguably the last of the professional lion hunters. In between jobs, he had a penchant for strong drink, and had lived a life a scriptwriter could only dream of. For those with the time to listen, he was a wealth of stories. He had been a cowboy in Texas and had come to Africa via the cattle ranches of the Argentinian pampas. It was a given he was a crack shot. He trekked from Cape Town to the Congo at the end of the Boer War, and shot his first man-eating lion in Northern Rhodesia. Ivory was where the money was in those days, so he focussed on elephant, but by 1912 he was working for Liebig’s cattle operation just north of the Limpopo as a professional lion hunter at ten pounds sterling a pelt. He was a solo hunter who said of the locals: “Cowards. They tremble all over at the sight of a lion, and when they see a live one they’re up the nearest tree” - hardly complimentary, but no one can question his success as a lone operator. While marginal by today’s standards, Yank’s rifle of choice was a .303: “Stand your ground, keep your thumb on the bolt so that you know the gun will go off, keep your finger on the trigger and watch carefully.” Somehow, it worked. Along with countless crocodiles he shot for the British South Africa Company he was credited with over three hundred lions before he finally made his ultimate safari in Rhodesia in 1924.
Mishoro Monty was a rogue lion that killed over a hundred men in Zambia’s Kasama district between 1926 and 1929. He was eventually poisoned. Kasama was also home to Namweliyu, the appropriately-named “cunning one” who stalked the area in 1943, killing forty three locals. He had a peculiar habit of never returning to a kill, so he was very difficult to lay a trap for. One fateful day, though, he broke his rule and returned to a partially-eaten African - whereupon he fell to the rifle of the district officer James Lemon. But for sheer number of victims and complexity of circumstances, nothing can beat the rogue lions of Tanganyika’s Njombe district.
The Zambezi Valley looking towards Zambia, even today it is inhospitable country. The Chirundu road can be seen between the trees.
The Lion - "A mane the Colour of Africa"
The King.
The Zambezi Valley looking towards Zambia, even today it is inhospitable country. The Chirundu road can be seen between the trees.
Not overly fond of baiting his traps with himself, he would follow up the spoor after a nocturnal attack and shoot the resting lion by day. Within two weeks he had shot nine lion - but as many men had also been taken. The black-maned mudzimu struck again and Jock tracked it over twenty miles the following day, coming across the remains of an old Batonga woman who had provided it with a mid-day snack. He pursued it again the following day as its trail turned menacingly back towards Chrundu - but unaware that his doom was at hand, the old lion sedately killed and ate two Batonga tribesmen only a few miles from the camp at Chirundu. While taking a nap after lunch, the black-maned lion also took a round from Jock’s .44-40 which ended his marauding days. With his reward in hand, exunt Jock.
But God, in the form of Dr Fraser, had a score to settle with Nyaminyami. The missionary returned to Chirundu the day before Jock dealt with Ol’ Black Mane. Following a fruitless night at his boabab, Fraser was returning to his mission when he spied a lion and lioness stalking one of the white labourers who had taken refuge in a tree after Fraser shouted a warning. Fraser dropped the lioness with a clean shot from his .450 but the lion charged. Less than ten feet from the missionary, he collapsed to the ground, weighed down by an extra 480 grains of lead. The missionary’s reload had been quick and the lion’s charge had been less than it should have - because of his limp. The two main actors had now left the stage. Permanently.
Were they mudzimu after all? With only a few exceptions - though there were still many lion about - the reign of terror ended with the demise of the lame cat. Before the road was completed, another seventeen workers would be eaten and another eleven lion shot, but this was mainly due to the laxity that swept over the camp after the two main players were dispatched that week in 1938 - the labourers eschewed their security precautions. That these numbers could be taken as almost “normal” gives a good indication of the scope of the lion problem in general. God 1: Nyaminyami 0.
In 1960, following the completion of the Kariba dam all of the Batonga were relocated out of the Zambezi valley below the gorge into the Urungwe and Chewore safari areas and the Mana Pools National Park. I have in my youth hitch-hiked from Harare to Lusaka more than once along that road and walked across that bridge.
There was a solitary male lion in what is now northern Zambia named Chiengi Chali early in the last century, and on his own he accounted for at least ninety Africans in 1909 (the Tsavo lions claimed one hundred and thirty victims, you say?). Chiengi Chali’s reign of terror had commenced after the death of an old chief who had prophesied that he would return as a lion and deal with his enemies. The district officer’s boma at Chiengi was fortified, fires were lit, the whole nine yards...but still the lion came, saw and conquered. A large lion with a conspicuously pale coat, he came through roofs and broke down doors - and when a trap gun finally ended his spree he was found to be a young, healthy male. So much for the man-eaters-are-old-and-infirm school of thought.
Another variant on the mudzimu theme is that man-eating lions are reincarnations of powerful chiefs or witchdoctors. The legendary East African game warden Bill Harvey’s story of the commanding chief and wizard - or mchawi - Lijonjo has been recounted elsewhere in the African Hunter. One of his nephews, Makochera, had taken half his tribe north out of Mozambique to greener pastures in Tanganyika. After visiting them on occasion, Lijonjo had become convinced that the grass was indeed greener in the north, and proposed to move the whole tribe to Tanganyika. The catch was, Makochera insisted on becoming the paramount ruler. Negotiations broke down, and Lijonjo called upon the spirit of his father to enter the body of a lion and deal with Makochera and his family. The first two victims were taken by a lion barely a week later. Harvey took up the hunt, and on his first foray out, Makochera’s nephew Rajab who was accompanying him was eaten during a night march. The follow up the next day was unsuccessful, and the day after Harvey had left a man was killed at the door of Makochera’s hut. The tribal elders, meanwhile - who had never been amenable to Harvey’s intervention - decided to capture Lijonjo and compel him by force to lift the curse, which the old scoundrel eventually did - and literally the next day the lion all but allowed himself to be shot by Harvey’s game scouts and the rampage was ended.
Paramount among the things that go bump in the night under the command of the baleful Zambezi river god "Nyaminyami" are the mudzimu - the demon man-eating lions. Even now, the locals often ask Parks to deal with a mudzimu lion or two stalking people...
A .450 Farquharson in hand, ready for the shot.
Here, too, original images of the Njombe lions
The Chirundu Bridge joining Zimbabwe and Zambia
The British South Africa Company built a boma at Mporokoso, also in what is today Zambia in 1898. W R Johnstone, a company official in the closing years of the 19th century became the first white victim of the man-eaters there, when he was knocked from a tree and mauled. Though not carried away and eaten, those were the days before antibiotics and Johnstone died a lingering a painful death from septicaemia. E W Vellacott followed Johnstone to the grave in similar circumstances in 1918. One of the few survivors of the Mporokoso lions was the noted Rhodesian poet Cullen Gouldsbury, who was less severely mauled. These man-eaters accounted for about ten Africans a year, but the African philosophy is very fatalistic about encounters with lions and crocodiles and the locals rarely took the precautions they should have.
africa's professional journal for serious hunters since 1994
Hunter's Gallery
 Lion by Randy CadwalladerRandy Cadwallader with a beautiful lion taken with PH Peter Fick. |  Buffalo by Dave CreamerDave Creamer and a nice old buffalo taken with Grant Taylor & Mashambanzou Safaris Mozambique. |
|---|---|
 Nyala by Rob WalshRob Walsh with a beautiful nyala taken with Cheetah Safaris. |  Impala by Alex NemeklaAlex Nemekla and a nice impala shot a 80 metres with a .308 and Africa Hunting Safaris, Inc. |
 Warthog by Ralph von BargenRalph von Bargen with a nice warthog shot in Chirundu with PH Jannie Meyer. |
Hunters' Resource
africa's professional journal for serious hunters since 1994
The Classic .375 H&H
The .375 H&H is an out-growth of the intense rivalry between European and British gun makers to develop new standard cartridges in the early 1900s. The military cartridges had been standardised around the world by 1893 (except in the USA) but in the sporting field there was considerable jockeying for position. The 9.5mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer, started the race for a large medium bore, suitable for general African and Asian hunting. The Mannlicher rifles are delightful little carbines and the calibre quickly took off. The British gun trade adopted the 9.5 M-S as the .375 Rimless NE (2 ¼), but Messrs Holland & Holland introduced their own round, the .400/375 Belted NE to compete. This cartridge was unique in that it was the first to use a belt for head-spacing rather than a rim or the shoulder. Ballistics for the .400/375 were identical to the 9.5. viz a 270 grain bullet at 2150fps. The belted design certainly eased manufacturing procedure since it was nearly as easy to produce the correct headspace with a belt as with a rim, and yet didn’t give the feeding trouble or require the complicated magazine design of a rimmed case. Ease of head-spacing is overlooked today, but in the early 1900s precision machining had to be done by hand, and chamber reamers were soft and wore out quickly. Rimmed or belted cases were much simpler. In addition the chamber of a rimmed or belted case could be made oversize, which was a considerable aid to extraction from a hot or dirty rifle. Reloading was not in vogue in the British world and reliability of function was the key, even above accuracy.
At the same time as Holland & Holland were introducing their .400/375 (1905), Mr Bock of Berlin was introducing his incomparable 9.3. Adopted by Mauser in the same year, it soon eclipsed the 9.5 and became Africa’s standard large medium bore. The .400/375 almost died at birth. It offered nothing over the 9.5, except that the rifles were considerably more reliable (the early Mannlichers were quite temperamental), but cost several times as much. The 9.3 clearly outclassed both. It launched a bullet of better sectional density (.305 vs .274), some one hundred feet per second faster (in pre-1918 loadings, after which the ballistics of the 9.3 were further upgraded in European loadings). These minor improvements in sectional density and velocity made all the difference. Neither the 9.5 M-S nor the .400/375 had sufficient penetration for frontal brain shots on elephant, and were decidedly marginal on shoulder shots on rhino or buffalo. The 9.3 possessed more than adequate penetration on all three species, and was the first cartridge that could be considered an all-rounder.
In 1906 though, the first cartridge of the new ‘high velocity’ craze hit the market. The .280 Ross was adopted by the Canadian Army, and even with the limited powders then available, launched a 140 grain bullet at 2900+fps. This represented the sort of quantum leap in velocity that the early smokeless loads had over black powder. High velocity ‘magnum’ cartridges and loadings became the rage, with non-magnum cartridges being rather passé. A cartridge had to deliver over 2500fps to be classified as a ‘magnum’ (although manufacturers were rather loose with the term), and all the major English gun makers brought out at least one ‘magnum’ cartridge. Even the British Army adopted one of the new 7mm Magnum cartridges for its new P13 service rifle, the 276 Enfield, but the First World War put paid to that.
Meanwhile, the design team at Holland & Holland were listening and learning. A velocity of at least 2150fps and a sectional density of at least .300 was required for satisfactory penetration on large game. High velocity was a distinct bonus in ensuring hits at unknown range, and that impact velocities of over 2250fps produced explosive wounds, and often lightning quick kills. Reducing bullet weight, and therefore sectional density, to allow an increase in velocity did not, however, produce the desired effect. Sectional density had to be maintained above .300 in order to achieve acceptable performance on big game, irrespective of velocity. The replacement for the .400/375 had to be a true magnum - delivering all available bullet weights at over 2500fps - for marketing purposes. It had to be safe against the largest game, and yet also usable for long range shooting on medium sized game in the mountains of India and Nepal. As the rifle was intended to be suitable for dangerous game, reliability of feed and extraction was of paramount importance, and this dictated a very tapered case with a shallow neck angle. The only way to easily achieve accurate head-spacing with such a cartridge was to retain the .400/375’s belt - the one feature of that already-obsolete cartridge that worked! Finally, it had to be able to work through a standard length Mauser action, since Rigby held the monopoly on magnum Mauser actions.
And so, out of these requirements came the greatest medium bore to date. Sticking to the .375 bore size, H&H increased the bullet weight to 300 grains to bring the sectional density to .305, and stretched the case to the maximum that could possibly be accommodated in the Mauser action (a special extra long magazine box had to be used). Velocity was a genuine 2500fps, and was achieved at a pressure of only 47,000 PSI, an important consideration for a cartridge designed for tropical use. In order to fulfil the requirement for an antelope rifle for use on the open plains of East Africa, a 270 grain Spitzer soft point bullet at 2650fps was introduced, whilst for long range shooting in the Himalayas and such places, there was a 235 grain Spitzer bullet at 2800fps. To cater for the hunter who preferred doubles, a flanged version with the same three loadings was made.
The .375 H&H Magnum was an instant success. It was suitable, in reasonably open country, for all African and Asian game. The 270 grain, or 300 grain soft-nosed loads sorted out large soft skinned game like lion, tiger and eland with panache, whilst the 300 grain solids proved perfectly adequate for elephant, buffalo or rhino under all except the most adverse conditions. Only as a long range rifle with the 235 grain load did the .375 H&H show any shortcomings - recoil was simply too stiff for use in a light mountain rifle. Nevertheless, for the one-rifle man, the .375 could certainly do it all from impala to elephant. In a time of constant change and slow, dangerous travel, no man could afford to be without a rifle suitable for dangerous game. Yet the primary quarry would be something for the pot. Few men could carry, let alone afford, a battery of rifles, so the all-round rifle was a very much more eagerly pursued goal than it is today.
Initially the .375 H&H lagged behind its German rival. The 9.3 was available in the superbly built, yet budget priced Mausers, used a cartridge that fitted the standard length magazine box, and utilised a simple and cheap-to-produce cartridge design that kept the cost of ammo down. Holland’s .375 was a proprietary cartridge, with best quality and consequently expensive rifles available only from Messrs Holland & Holland. The belted case design added considerably to the cost of the ammunition. For the discerning sportsman though, or the slightly better off farmer or pioneer, the .375 had a distinct ballistic superiority over its rival, particularly in Kynoch loadings.
The growth of recreational and sport hunting in America though, brought the .375 into the limelight. Men wanted a cartridge that was safe for use on the largest bears, and rich Americans were beginning to follow Teddy Roosevelt on safari to Africa. A suitable dangerous game cartridge was needed. Following the First World War, Holland & Holland had released their .375 to the trade, and several manufacturers were now producing rifles in that calibre. As it was the best of the large medium bores and more than adequate for even the largest bear, it was naturally the one chosen by the American gun trade, and the .375’s ascendancy was assured.
World War II put paid to the budget priced yet high quality rifles from Mauser, FN, Brno, Schultz & Larsen, etc. Reasonable quality working rifles now emanated from Winchester and Remington in the USA. The 9.3 began to fade, and the .375 H&H took off in leaps and bounds. Soon American sportsmen made up the majority of hunters coming to Africa, and the .375 was the most common rifle of choice.
By the early 1950s the British authorities were fed up with sending home the remains of men who had tried to hunt large dangerous game with inadequate rifles. In quick succession all the colonies passed legislation making either the 9.3x62 or the .375 H&H the legal minimum calibre that could be used on thick skinned game. The small bore fans were forced to buy something bigger, and the logical choice was the .375. By the late 1950s, the .375 enjoyed all the advantages of the 9.3 prior to the war. Ammunition was available everywhere, in the most remote trading stations from French Equatorial to Portuguese East Africa. It was the one calibre that a hunter could be reasonably sure of finding a re-supply for, wherever he was.
For the ‘one rifle’ hunter the .375 still makes an awful lot of sense. With a sensible (low powered, long eye relief) scope a .375 rifle is an excellent choice for all the larger plains game, particularly tough animals like giraffe, sable, wildebeest, and eland. It is also a very practical choice for lion and leopard, although for a follow-up, the scope would have to come off. For elephant, buffalo and hippo it’s a great choice (with or without the scope), in reasonably open country. In jesse or other thick bush the .375 is definitely on the light side. In the hands of an expert marksman it’s adequate, and indeed, several famous professional hunters have used the .375 exclusively for their entire hunting careers. For a beginner or an amateur, something heavier is indicated for use in the jesse. Of course, for a visiting sportsman, who is being professionally guided, this doesn’t matter. Accurate, first shot placement with an adequate bullet is what matters. Dealing with malevolent beasties at close quarters is the pro’s job.
The modern trend towards premium bullets had further enhanced the .375’s performance. Some of the old batches of Kynoch ammo were notorious for their thin jackets and fishtailing badly on elephant (although they always seemed to get the job done). The only solids that were certifiably useless were a batch of unusual flat nosed Winchester ammo that arrived in the late ‘70s. The jacket was guaranteed to split open on impact and they mushroomed like a premium soft point: great for buffalo, but a definite no-no on elephant. The current crop of Speer African Grand Slam tungsten cored solids, Woodleigh Solids and the various better monolithics, make the .375 better than it has ever been for elephant, whilst the incredible range of soft points available truly make the .375 suitable for everything from dik-dik to hippo. With modern powders and stronger rifle actions (which allow pressures up to 55,000 PSI), the .375 H&H can be loaded to well above the original specifications if so desired, although what this achieves I’m not actually sure (apart from more recoil).
Holland’s .375’s versatility and its success on dangerous game makes it the first choice as THE ‘all-round cartridge’, and far and away the most popular choice with visiting sportsmen. ‘Pondoro’ Taylor, back in the 1930s and 40s gave the .375 H&H rave reviews in all his books, and time has served only to make the great ‘all rounder’ even better.
Introduced in 1912 by Messrs Holland & Holland of London, the .375 magnum has become the standard general purpose African cartridge. Adopted by the American gun trade in 1925, and the European manufacturers after the Second World War, the .375 is easily the most commonly available big bore cartridge anywhere in the world. Rifles chambered for it are also offered by more manufacturers than any other big bore cartridge.
By Ganyana
Left – Right: .375 H&H Magnum, .458 Winchester Magnum and .416 Remington Magnum
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africa's professional journal for serious hunters since 1994
The War We Fight as Hunters
The Convoluted Economics of Wildlife
While recently promoting the launch of our new African Hunter cloud magazine, one of the tour operators we contacted overseas had the following to say:
“I feel very strongly that you should not be promoting the hunting of any animals that are threatened with extinction… elephants, lions, leopards, cheetah and to see you glorify the hunting of these is sickening in this world where they are so threatened. Why can’t you promote the protection of these and by photography rather than shooting and killing?
I have lived in Zimbabwe when I was younger but am so desperate at the rate rhino and elephant are being slaughtered all over the world and I know it is the fault of the Chinese and other Asian countries’ desire for the horns - but it seems that left to themselves elephant do manage their populations by breeding less.
What I disagree with is showing photos on websites and magazines with rich Americans glorying in the killing of these – small game, OK but not elephants and lions, as what message is it sending around the world? It is similar to ISIS holding the heads of those poor victims of beheadings and we humans have a duty to protect wildlife, not glory in their deaths.”
This person has genuine concerns for the future of wildlife, and we appreciate folks like this who are prepared to sit down and write to us and engage in dialogue - it gives us a chance to get our side of the story across.
When I see terms like “threatened with extinction” associated with sport hunting it can mean only one thing - that the person’s perceptions are being shaped by animal rights activists. And the activists, of course are activists because that’s what puts food on their tables. And oftentimes a lot more than food. Many are registered charities, and therefore leave a traceable footprint on the web, and can be looked at through organisations like Charity Watch - www.charitywatch.org.
During the whole debate last year over the auction of an old black rhinoceros in Namibia, it just seemed that somewhere, someone’s priorities had become - shall we say - shifted? Firstly, as a biologist, I asked myself what the value of a black rhinoceros was and in what currency. That answer was simple - its value is inestimable in today’s world if it is a viable member of a gene pool, and no amount of geld can be used as a yardstick. But too old to breed? Well, that would come down to the dollars and cents value of the horns and ancillary hunt revenue, including employment and meat for rural Africans often living a subsistence existence. Rhino horn is currently valued at between $65,000 ands $100,000 per kilogram. Maybe a little higher, for the price is driven by international criminal and terror syndicates - because the sale of rhino horn is strictly banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the global treaty that governs trade in plants and animals - but more on that later. Unlike their Asian counterparts, African rhinos have a pair of horns. In the case of the larger and more numerous white rhino, the horns’ average combined weight is usually close to 6kg. The average weight of both horns on the smaller black rhino is about half that - though over ninety percent of the poaching incidents involve white rhinos.
In the case of the Namibian black rhino auction, the controversial decision was good for conservation and good for black rhinos. Over the past twenty years, the Namibian rhino population has been on the increase. Now home to some 1,700 black rhino, Namibia’s management policies have seen the species thrive and poaching all but eliminated. While annual rhino poaching statistics for South Africa can break into four figures, Namibia lost two in 2013. Namibia encourages rural villagers to live side by side with wildlife to manage and profit from it by opening up their conservation lands to wealthy sport hunters and tourists armed instead with cameras. Priority is given to the hunters, simply because the conservancies don’t need to make any investment to attract them. Photographic safari lodges not only leave a larger carbon footprint than hunting infrastructures, but they are also costly to develop and maintain.
The theory behind the idea of the conservancy is that local tolerance for wildlife would increase and poaching would dwindle, because a sense of ownership was engendered in the villagers and poaching would equate to theft from the people. Conservancies now control almost twenty percent of the country, and wildlife populations have increased dramatically. Elephant and lion, two of the more topical species under scrutiny today, are increasing in numbers in Namibia while they are decreasing in countries such as Kenya which eschew sport hunting.
By agreement with CITES, Namibia can sell hunting rights for as many as five black rhino per annum, but more importantly when you look at how hunting revenue is often spent in Africa - the fleet of SUVs at the disposal of the Director-General of Zimbabwe’s National Parks is an example - in Namibia the entire trophy fee goes into a trust fund that supports rhino conservation efforts. It doesn’t get any better than that in Africa. The monies generated pay for anti-poaching operations and various research projects.
But in 2014, Namibia made a crucial error - they conducted one of their rhino auctions in the United States, not in Namibia, and that opened the doors of myriad loony bins. So, I decided to take a closer look at the International Fund for Animal Welfare which was the most vociferous opponent of the rhino auction. At the time, they raised some $25 million dollars each year, of which 62% was allocated to service delivery in the forty some-odd countries in which they operate. But it was the remaining 38% that intrigued me. The only stats I was really interested in were salaries. And while it’s true that some high-profile charities - like Heritage Foundation and the NRA - pay their top people seven figure salaries, some nearing three million dollar mark, they are also higher fliers when it comes to asset generation. The Executive Vice President and CEO of IFAW were listed at just under $300,000. That jumped out at me, because some years ago I did contract work in Iraq, in a war zone, and I was earning about two thirds of that for getting shot at, rocketed and mortared. These folks operate in a cocktail party zone.
OK, they didn’t want this rhino hunted because it was cute when it was a baby or somesuch cocktail party rationale but why deprive the Namibian government of $350,000 that had been earmarked for rhino conservation? If they cared a damn about this rhino - if they cared more about the rhinoceros than the publicity and money generated by the grandstanding - why didn’t they bid for the rhino? Why didn’t they put up the money that they were prepared to cost Namibia’s rhino conservation programme? One can only assume that they had a ‘better’ use for it.
The core problem with animal rights activists - apart from the fact that much of their motivation is making money - is that they are seen by most people, such as the correspondent at the beginning of this rant, as experts. Rarely are they. The international media was willing to believe last year that three hundred elephant had been poisoned in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park because Johnny Rodrigues of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said so. National Parks and other conservationists on the ground put forward a more realistic figure of half that or less. I’m not having a go at Johnny Rodrigues or the ZCTF, for they have done good things, but he is not a trained wildlife biologist, and that is what I would consider an expert. So, the average person will believe what they read in the media and the media will believe, it seems, anyone who issues a press release.
If we want to hear from a real expert, Ron Thomson - former Provincial Warden of Hwange - he tells us what is really wrong with elephant populations in much of Africa:
“In southern Africa, most elephant populations - due to the cessation of culling programs in recent years - have now expanded well beyond the carrying capacities of their habitats. In Botswana, for example - a country that carried considerably less than 10 000 elephants in 1960 - officially recorded 207,000 in 2013. The wildlife habitats in Botswana's protected areas - up to a distance of 25 kilometers from the dry season water supplies - have now been completely destroyed by too many elephants over too many years. And the once-rich soils that carried those habitats have - because they have become progressively more exposed to the erosive forces of sun, wind and rain over the last 50 years - disappeared from the environment. That means there is no chance at all, now, that the former diverse habitats that once carried Botswana's rich wildlife biodiversity, can ever recover.”
To the uninitiated, the thrill of stalking an elephant - with camera or rifle - is the experience of a lifetime. To the activists, that same elephant earns them an annual salary. To Ron, the mismanagement of elephant populations by faux-experts may ultimately sound the death knell for elephants and many other plant and animal species.
Ron continues:
“Most of these game reserves are - at this point in time - carrying more than ten times their habitat's current elephant carry capacities. The overall top canopy tree population in South Africa's Kruger National Park, for example, is now down by more that 95% when compared to 1960. And why was this allowed to happen? Because governments - in Africa and in the First World - have sheepishly succumbed to international (animal rights-inspired) pressure to stop elephant culling. The consequences of this incredibly stupid interference in a vitally important and common sense wildlife management practice, will be the total loss of habitats, followed by the total loss of the essential soils that once supported them! The ultimate tragedy will be the destruction of southern Africa's once immensely rich biological diversity - because the game reserves in all these countries are degenerating rapidly.
And all this is happening because gullible governments - all over the world - are listing to the false propaganda of the animal rights communities in the First World. Intelligent people are being taken in by their rhetoric not realising that, by doing so, they are contributing to the successful operation of the biggest confidence industry the world has ever known. All these NGOs want is money - to keep their organisations running, to indulge in the rich-man's life-style, and to keep the senior executives in fat-cat employment.
In December of 2013, a couple at Incline Village near Lake Tahoe in the US reported a problem bear to Nevada wildlife officials that was later captured and killed as a threat to public safety. The couple’s call to the Nevada Department of Wildlife sparked a campaign by members of the Bear League to "threaten, harass and intimidate" the couple. They were subjected to a series of threatening emails, text messages and Facebook messages, "including death threats." Death threats? See loony bins above. We are often not dealing with sane people here, or ones who have any regard for anyone else’s right to their own opinions.
OK, so much for the beneficial input of legal, transparently regulated sport hunting into species conservation - now let’s take a look at the other economics of wildlife.
One figure that’s making the rounds at the moment is that in Africa, every fifteen minutes an elephant is killed. I don’t challenge this, but what I find disturbing is the number of people who cannot differentiate between hunting and poaching. These elephant are not being hunted, they’re being poached. The legendary US Fish & Wildlife Special Agent Dave Hall once said “Hell, if I gave up hunting I’d probably become one of those antis too, and try and close it all down. But you wouldn’t stop poaching”.
The illegal wildlife trade is worth an estimated twenty billion dollars a year. Newsworthy of late has been the kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria by the terror organisation Boko Haram. But what about the estimated 23,000 elephant killed for their ivory last year? Poaching is no longer merely a matter of concern for conservationists - it is now a national security issue, and not necessarily for the countries in which the illegal trafficking emanates. Boko Haram - like al-Shabbab, Janjaweed, and al-Qaeda in other parts of Africa - is largely funded by the proceeds from illegal ivory. And then there’s ISIS, the new kid on the block. In order to survive, it has to shove others away from the various troughs - or just plain increase the cash flow.
Impoverished African villagers are most often coerced into pulling the trigger, but international crime syndicates and terrorist groups are the puppet-masters. Squiggly lines on Google Earth maps represent the movement of GPS-collared elephants in many African countries; the animals’ perambulations are too slow to trace in realtime - unless an elephant’s trace suddenly surges forward and then stops dead. Literally dead, for in this case it has most likely been slaughtered by a poaching gang.
Various groups of activists would have us believe that sport hunting of African elephants is unsustainable. Sadly, as in the case of South African National Parks and the Kenya Wildlife Service to name but two of Africa’s more high-profile game departments, the activists have subtly put themselves in charge of policy by taking charge of the real purse strings, which come from donor funding. Sport hunting of elephants is not unsustainable - what is unsustainable is the four elephant per hour in Africa which fall to poachers’ rifles daily. Sport hunting channels much-needed revenue into the conservation coffers of developing countries, and provides an on-the-ground, frontline defence against poaching cartels. But considering poaching’s rapidly-increasing ties to international terrorism, let’s hope that CW sinks in a little faster with Western governments who are themselves more and more prone to fall prey to the anthropomorphic siren song of activists with hidden agendae.
The US Department of the Interior, which includes among its mandates the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act is moving ahead with a ban on the commercial trade in ivory, as “part of an overall effort to combat poaching”. No one is going to argue that elephant and rhinoceros poaching and the subsequent trafficking in ivory and horn aren’t a major threat to the survival of the species concerned and a source of illicit finance for corrupt governments and international terrorist organisations. But a number of questions emerge, including the legitimacy of the United States’ role as the world’s policeman and just how effective such draconian measures will actually be at reducing trafficking in ivory and rhino horn. In other words, what works and what doesn’t?
Richard Epstein, in Defining Ideas, the journal of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, discusses the shortcomings of such a ban and the inevitable attendant intrusion on basic human freedoms in a very well-thought out essay entitled “The Wrong Way to Combat Poaching”, and if you haven’t read it, then go to:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/171651.
By I J Larivers
There was much shock and horror professed by a number of African leaders as a result of last year’s US SEAL Team raids against terrorist bases in Somalia and Libya. OK, we’re a hunting magazine, and not a political commentator, but at the same time we have to acknowledge the connection between African wildlife and the world’s myriad terrorist organisations’ funding. Some are supported by wealthy nations (bad career move, Saddam), but they all need revenue which they cannot acquire legally. Such as blood diamonds.
And now, blood ivory and rhino horn.
On a fairly regional level, Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army and Darfur’s Janjaweed outlaw factions are linked to elephant poaching to garner funding, but when you stop to think that some thirty-odd tonnes of illegal ivory pass through Somalia’s ports each year, that alone adds up to just under ten million dollars in untraceable revenue. Add another three zeros onto that and you are in the ballpark for what the multi-billion dollar illegal ivory and rhino horn trade is worth in a year. And Somalia’s last viable export is the terror group al-Shabaab.
According to Agence France-Presse, some 40% of al-Shabaab’s funding comes from illicit trafficking in wildlife products. Al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda are more or less the same thing, and that’s about as big league as it gets. So how long is it going to be before the world’s free governments take aim at the ivory and rhino horn trade to try and dry up another source of terrorist dollars - if local governments can’t keep a lid on it?
The US State Department’s has offered its first-ever reward for information leading to the dismantling of a transnational criminal organization. According to Secretary of State John Kerry “The involvement of sophisticated transnational criminal organizations in wildlife trafficking perpetuates corruption, threatens the rule of law and border security in fragile regions, and destabilizes communities that depend on wildlife for biodiversity and eco-tourism.” So the Department of State is offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the dismantling of the Xaysavang Network, which operates out of Laos with branches in South Africa, Mozambique, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China - and has as its core business the killing of elephants, rhinos, and other species for products such as ivory.
African governments - especially those without strong sport hunting traditions - have long struggled to control poaching. Perhaps because it’s not really a cultural priority, perhaps because finances are strained, or perhaps because some within the governments are themselves the principal traffickers. But these countries are no longer sleepy backwaters facing just local challenges. There’s this whole global village thing now, and when you start putting coins in al-Shabaab’s begging bowl or ISIS’s, willingly or not, a lot of Big Brothers are going to start paying you the kind of attention that you don’t want.
Perhaps the motivation for the outcry following the recent SEAL team raids is because African governments are starting to wake up to the fact that if they don’t control their poaching problem transparently, or are perhaps themselves involved in the cartels, and money is going to the wrong folks, they may wake up one fine morning only to find that SEAL Team Six has paid them a visit during the night.
africa's professional journal for serious hunters since 1994
And they are achieving that because the unversed public and apparently ignorant government officials are listening to them. Can't intelligent people think for themselves any more?”
Why think when you can simply read the press release or the resultant article?
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