AHC#8 Curs | african-hunter

Trophy Dogs

By Steve Edwards

Anchor 8

Bayaka orchestra

A Bayaka family.

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Whether or not James Brander Dunbar kept the head of everything he ever shot apart from birds is impossible to tell, but his somewhat bizarre collection ranged from the rhinoceros head over the main staircase to the skull of a German soldier (unmounted) in his study.

- John Mowbraye (editor): Baxter’s Game Book (1973).

Hunting domestic dogs. Now that’s one to send bunny huggers into a slavering, slobbering fit, followed hopefully by rigor mortis. Needing shillings for whisky (since at present I’m living in absolute penury and can’t afford more than two cases a week) I set about considering contrivances for its acquisition. I decided to detail the gunning down of dogs. I was contentedly aware that Ant Williams dare not reject the article, lest he be exposed as a fraud and false prophet of Nimrod. I had him by the credentials. All I had to do was yank.

That’s why you’re reading this article.

Placing a shoulder mount of a snarling fox terrier above the mantelpiece is not in favour with the decadent, fat-gutted, fanatical captains of the animal rights movement. Weirdly, most hunters feel the same way, whereas one would expect the intelligentsia to spurn the bourgeois agents of moral imperialism and realize that except where the law makes unreasonable intervention objects of the chase and the collection of trophies are of limitless scope. As Ernest Hemingway declared: “I would shoot my own mother if she went in coveys and had a good strong flight.”

An American associate of mine, a member of the extreme right came to Africa to shoot people. He served peanuts in a human skull and was irked when the police confiscated his trophy. In his History of Brazil (1810) Robert Southey tells how a tribe of cannibals turned human leg and arm bones into musical instruments, used the craniums as drinking cups and wore the teeth as necklaces. It was, and perhaps still is, a custom of the bloodthirsty Danakil people of Ethiopia to slaughter strangers.

My old man sitting on the right taught me to shoot dogs.

How are we fellows to keep warm? Africanis pups, Magondi Tribal Trust Land, Zimbabwe, winter of 1977.

Victims were castrated and their testicles strung on string and kept as trophies. In some Danakil groups a man could not marry unless he had murdered someone and had the necessary trophy. According to L.M. Nesbitt (Desert and Forest, 1934) “Whenever the valiant husband acquires new merit by committing further murders, new testimonials of the same gruesome nature will be added to the string.” And, of course, serial killers tend to collect trophies. Jeffery Dahmer, for instance, kept the genitals of some of his male victims in formaldehyde.

Perhaps this is going too far; certainly, it has given trophy collecting a bad name.

(I am still debating the merits and demerits. I could be very happy in a pub decorated with the genitalia of politicians.) But why is nearly everyone averse to a trophy dog? The collection of such has simply never come into vogue, as Randolph Churchill discovered to his chagrin after he accidentally shot a sausage dog belonging to one of his relatives. In his book Men, Women and Things (1937) the Duke of Portland says of the incident: “Of course the fair owner was very much distressed at the sad end of her pet; and Randolph, by way of appropriate consolation, had his poor little victim stuffed and put into a glass case, which he sent to his relative as a Christmas present. I am afraid the result was not very successful, for when the lady saw it, she burst into a flood of tears.”

Dogs are creatures to which we have given human faces, so a hunter’s sentiments about them tend to differ from his feelings about the wild animals he hunts. For example, in his book Fourteen Years in the African Bush (1998), Anthony Marsh says: "The kind of unsavoury job that a game warden occasionally has to do was wished upon me... the district officer asked me to shoot all the diseased dogs in Mariakani market. It was a request to which I did not take very kindly, as I am a dog lover and I didn’t think such a task should fall to me. If a hunter flinches from this article in despair or disgust, he should more easily understand the motives of those opposed to hunting."

In the Rhodesian bush war I was sent to the south- western lowveld to shoot feral dogs. At first I was sickened by the task, but after being outsmarted by foxy canines I became pissed off and pursued pooches with a vengeance. It may have had something to do with my bloodline. When I was four or five years old my father, a man of ferocious temper, was woken from his afternoon sleep by the incessant barking of our dogs. I watched as, with murder in his bright blue eyes, he emerged from the back door with a rifle and shot the dogs, three or four of them. I remember bawling with woe and following the gardener as he went round the yard with a wheelbarrow, loading up dead dogs. Well, my father has had lots of time to catch up on lost sleep. The old bastard died in 1968 and is buried in Kariba Gorge. It seems the years he spent in the Save Valley in the late 1930s, then in the Long Range Desert Group in World War II, and finally on the Zambezi river where, in 1949, he built a camp just below Kariba Gorge, were the days he was most at peace from the demons that drove him. My old man took me to the Zambezi for the first time in 1954. I was five years old. Sometimes, he would arrive at Hartley Junior School, where I was a boarder, and say: “We’re going to the Zambezi.” When the headmaster protested my father said: “Whose son is he?” He was an awkward customer.

Third World racing car at the kraal where I photographed the pups.

Cooling off on a hot day, a good specimen of Africanis lies in the stomach contents of a crop-raiding elephant.

To the old man I owe my highly anti-social nature and my passion for the bush.

He also taught me solitude does not simply mean being in the bush. It means being in the bush on your jack jones. Alone. This is practical when canoeing or backpacking, but often not when hunting. In that case, the best companions are a few black guys who know the bush and do not want to yip-yap.

But, returning to the hunting of dogs: Why was I shooting them? Because they had been abandoned by tribespeople who were moved into protected villages. Now the dogs were running wild and producing totally wild offspring. The main concern was unvaccinated dogs might cause a major rabies outbreak. I shot 95 dogs in the south-western lowveld and it wasn’t exactly easy. Everybody - army, police, Internal Affairs had been shooting at them, but this haphazard extermination campaign was not a success. Many dogs were shot, but the survivors were so clever they were no longer targets for potshots. They now had to be hunted. I was also told to shoot feral pigs. Later, in the south-eastern lowveld (mixed in with hunting elephant, buffalo and hippo), I shot and poisoned numerous dogs, pigs and domestic cats.

Poison would also have speeded up the process in the south-western lowveld, but many cattle and donkeys had been shot and at one stage scores of rotting carcasses were to be seen, even on the main road near Beitbridge. The ‘Welcome To Rhodesia’ sign at the border should have added: Hold your breath for the next 30 kilometres. Cattle were shot to deprive infiltrators of food; donkeys died to prevent their use to transport weapons of war; and both were also shot to keep them off the main road, where they obstructed the convoys that had been introduced. With so much meat available, numerous marabou storks, vultures and other raptors were present, which precluded the use of poison.

I could have used coyote-getters, which fire a sodium cyanide cartridge from a .38 spl. case. The coyote-getter (designed in the USA and first used in South Africa in 1961) is discharged when an animal pulls on a bait (treated with a malodorous scent) that is tied to the top of the device. A cyanide capsule is shot into the animal’s throat and death occurs in 60 seconds or less. Jackal usually die within 50 metres of the coyote-getter. But I had too few coyote-getters; rain rendered the baits useless; and setting and checking coyote-getters was a bloody nuisance.

On arriving in the area where I had to kill dogs, I spent several days familiarizing myself with the terrain and the distribution of dogs. At first I hunted with my FN 7.62mm and a .22 with a scope. I soon realized stalk-and-shoot hunting would be tediously slow with such alert animals.

In the course of my early hunts I noticed dogs often lay up near the fresher livestock carcasses. The abundance of meat was a boon to the dogs but also earned some of them a bullet because I took to sneaking up on suitable carcasses. As the method was often unproductive, I improved it. Since the general slaughter of livestock except donkeys had almost ceased, I began shooting donkeys for bait. This was distasteful, as I like donkeys and although their vocal cords wear hobnailed boots, I find their agonized, asthmatic bray extremely entertaining. All the pigs I shot were also used for bait. Unfortunately, the abundance of vultures and marabou storks meant baits were usually eaten within three days or less.

Twice, my baits caused the death of marabou storks. One unwisely settled on a flimsy acacia bush and was trapped by the thorns. Another, swooping down to the scene of death, collided with a fence. In a macabre sort of way I found these deaths amusing, putting me in mind of a ghoulish undertaker getting killed on his way to a funeral. Marabous, like vultures and hyenas, are apt accoutrements to death. Largely a scavenger, the marabou is no peacock or bird of paradise. It is drab, ugly and, indeed, degenerate in appearance.

Bigger than all storks except the saddle-billed, its head and neck are naked and of a pink or reddish colour. The bill is formidable and from the marabou’s neck hangs a huge, unfeathered, reddish air sac, a hideous appendage which looks like an ogre’s scrotum. Fortunately, it is visible only when inflated. Marabous can be seen in the veld or at the water’s edge, plodding along with a somewhat stooping gait, their heads often bowed in necrophiliac musing.

Having baits enabled me to select killing grounds. Because of the intense heat ideal sites offered shade and water near the bait (so the dogs would remain in the vicinity) and some cover for my approach. Water, unfortunately, was scarce. As for shade, sites with one patch were better than those with several shady spots. I wanted the dogs to lie down at a specific place. When possible, my choice of site was open ground with a solitary baobab. The bait was placed so at a certain time of day deep shade would lure dogs to the side of the tree opposite to my approach. At that latitude south, the shadow cast by a tree at 9am would lie on the west side of the tree. By noon the shadow would be on the south side and by 3pm on the east side. The shadow was at its shortest between 11am and 1pm. From as far off as possible I’d check the bait with binoculars and if no dogs were visible I’d assume they were resting in the shade. Walking barefoot and carrying a 12 gauge semi-automatic I’d sneak up, accompanied by a tracker with my FN 7.62mm. I’d open up with the shotgun and change to the FN when necessary. Those dogs had some lively times before death got a grip upon them. The ones that survived a few of these assaults became neurotically suspicious and hard as hell to kill. And if you think a greyhound is swift forget it.

A kraal dog really knows how to move.

My best shot was at a small dog running flat out. I missed the first shot, adjusted aim according to the dust from the bullet strike, and bowled the dog over at 262 paces. Okay. Maybe it was a fluke. The shot was witnessed by a large group of district assistants who pulled up in a truck and watched what I was doing. They clapped, cheered, yelled and brandished their rifles. I felt like a rock star. Anyway, you may talk of your exploits with big game, but how many domestic cats, pigs, donkeys and dogs have you downed?

Kraal dogs are usually regarded with disdain by whites. One of my old man’s less immoderate descriptions was: "Those things are as useless as tits on a bulldozer." I disagree. In remote tribal areas I have seen some fine specimens, not only among the mixed-grill types, but among the genuine Africanis, which is a recognized breed.

Two handsome hounds came down to the Runde river and cooled off, while their owner helped skin a hippo.

Shumba sometimes used my plant press as a bed.

The history of Africanis was given by John Gallant in Farmer’s Weekly in 2002. Evidence reveals nomadic herders from the Near East arrived with dogs in the Nile Valley 7000 years ago. About 1000 years ago dogs had been spread through Africa by waves of Bantu migrants who gradually pushed south. Gallant said: “In subequatorial Africa, their ancient gene pool was left untouched by exotic influences until European settlers brought strange dogs … today, true Africanis dogs can still be found in tribal areas. They are one of the rare, ancient canine gene pools left in the world.” Being shaped by the African environment the Africanis acquired a tolerance against external and internal parasites and resistance against common illnesses. Physically, they have a highly variable coat colour and the ears may turn over or remain upright. The legs are strong, straight and sinewy, the feet have tough pads, and the body is lean that formed for speed and endurance.

When mistreated and starved, so the pelvic girdle seems set to erupt from the skin and the ribs look like lean soldiers on parade, kraal dogs become thievish, cowardly curs, untrustworthy and vile to the eye. But if taken as pups (from physically sturdy parents) and properly cared for and trained, they are excellent bush dogs. Those from tsetse-fly areas survive where pedigree hounds would very soon be dead from trypanosomiasis, unless dosed with Samorin, a prophylactic effective for up to four months, or treated with Berenil which, apparently, damages the liver.

In 1993 a PH was mauled by a wounded leopard in a concession bordering the south-western part of Lake Cahora Bassa in Mozambique. Wounded the previous day, the leopard exacted revenge when client and PH returned to the site the next day. On their return to camp, we organized an aircraft to take the PH to Zimbabwe to be treated for leakage of tomato sauce. I then sent a boat to an island where I knew there were some dogs. The owner arrived with two, a male and a female, strong and spunky animals. Now it was time to look for the leopard. With me was Zimbabwean PH Kevin Du Boil, a man I liked because he was a good hunter, would never run away, and he could drink a big bottle of booze five times faster than I could. Arriving in the area of the attack, we let the dogs off the Cruiser. Kevin and I were carrying 12 gauges. I have never believed in back-up, except from tried and tested men. I’ve always felt a tracker, game scout, client or anyone else with little or no experience of handling firearms in dodgy situations, is potentially very dangerous. That belief, and my aversion to socializing, make me avoid PH work whenever possible. It pays less, but I much prefer anti-poaching operations, problem animal control, putting in roads, collecting data and so on.

Kevin and I set off into bush that alternated between woodland and thicket.

When the dogs got the leopard’s scent they went rigid and bristled, then slowly went forward. It became obvious they were struggling to hold the trail because the sun had burnt off most of the scent. Too much time had elapsed between the mauling and the follow-up. Nonetheless, we cast about, knowing if the leopard was in the area we would get a reaction from it, or the dogs. Satisfied we would generally be out of shotgun range of each other, Kevin and I split up so we could each cover a section of a large pan. Well, we never did find the leopard, so I assume it was not badly wounded and had moved away.

While we were looking, I noted the dogs were well-trained and keen and I was sure their owner used them very successfully on poaching forays. Later - for two bars of soap - I got a pup from that tribesman. Sarcastically, I named the pup Shumba (lion) and, sadly, I lost him when he was about 18 months old. I was out running in the Doma area in Zimbabwe one evening (there was a moon to see by) when I heard a vehicle behind me. Shumba was the same colour as the road and a farmer accidentally ran over him.

"Lionel claims to be the only white hunter living in Surbiton." - Punch 1978