Here is an essay by Gene Hill about one of his trips to Africa. It is light reading and very good. Enjoy

Giving and Taking

By Gene Hill

A few years ago I was in Africa. Only a year ago, but it seems far more distant than time. I find writing about it strangely remote and unreal. How does one describe the way the lion tells you he is in charge of the night how much you believe him? Nor can I properly express the combination of beauty and dignity, and the elusive shyness, of the great antelopes like the kudu and the sable, or put real meaning into the dark sullen tonnage of the Cape Buffalo.

The good writing about Africa, by Isak Kinesen, Hemingway, Ruark, and a few others, deals in the main with how the continent affects and changes the thinking of those who spend much time there. But their good words are like pebbles thrown in a pond __ you see a little rippling on the surface, hear a splash, and then everything is just the way it was before. The country closes behind you as the writers take you through it. The animals move back a little, the baboons and birds resume their barking and singing. You are, in very short order, made to fell insignificant. As much as I’ve enjoyed sitting, as it were, at their campfires, looking over their shoulders at the stalk and the kill, it is not remotely like being there.

I could tell you, in detail, about stumbling into a lioness and her three cubs, and how frightening it was in an absolute way. But then, fright is not a strong emotion, secondhand. I could tell you about being chased by half a dozen elephants or almost walking into a hippo in the dark, but in print it’s just another brush with a big animal. And if you wander around Africa, these things are bound to happen anyway. If you drive a car long enough, you are going to have a blowout or a skid or an accident. Who is going to know what you felt? Who cares about your life the way you do?

Enough of that. Let’s hunt for a day I remember very well.

I have never felt quite so good after a week of walking all day, with the very comforting weight of my .375 riding on my shoulder. Back at the tent camp, I’d sit in front of the fire, have a little warm whisky, some good talk, a streak or two from the animal I shot yesterday or today, and then go to bed early to read for a little while. In the dark I’d listen to Africa, falling asleep with the soft voices of the camp help somehow cushioning the heavy bellows of the short-tempered hippos and the egotistical threats of a nearby lion.

In the morning its cold and you stand around the fire waiting for breakfast and the first light to extinguish the last of the stars. You check the rifles being put into the hunting car and go over your cartridge belts one more time. I slip four big 270-grain Noslers in one pocket of my shorts and full clip for the 7mm Magnum in the other. Four more 300-grain solids for the .375 go in a shirt pocket, just in case. My old theory is, “if you don’t have it in your hand or pocket, it might as well not exist.†The professional checks the car one more time—extra gas, lunch boxes, water jug, spare tires, ropes. One rifle is tied with rubber straps in the outside rack; the other one rides up front in my hands, three cartridges in the magazine and the bolt closed on an empty chamber. The ones in the rack are loaded the same way.

In the headlights as we leave the camp are the usual assortment of birds enjoying the warmth of the sand tracks, and now and then a rabbit or an elephant shrew. My binoculars are in a clip on the dash and I clean the dust off the glass and slip the strap over my neck. As we drive along the hunter and I play the old game. He says, “See that roan?†And I say, “Not more than 20 inches, maybe 21.†That’s a tie. We both saw it at the same time. You lose when you have to say “where?†I usually lose. He knows where to look, but I’m learning.

Today we’re looking for sable antelope. And I’m thinking about yesterday when we must have seen thirty sable bulls and I turned them all down. Three days in a row before that, we hadn’t seen one sable. But now we think we know where to start. It’s an hour’s drive past zebras, wildebeests, two giraffes, a family of warthogs, reedbucks, hartebeests, and one hear of at least eighteen elephants standing almost invisible at the gray edge of a stand of forest. The trackers, riding in the open back of the hunting car, are constantly tapping on the roof to make sure we see what they see. If we don’t we stop and ask “where?†Sometimes they do not understand why we pass by an animal we were looking for a few days ago. They stop us now to point out a good kudu bull that neither the hunter nor I could see. I fool with the glasses for a full two minutes before I make out the ivory tips of horns, but the body of the animal is invisible. I already have my kudu and I hope this one isn’t bigger because that’s happened to me several times already. The hunter says, “He’ll be a good 50 inches by next year if the poachers don’t get him.†By now the kudu has moved a step or two and I can see the white chevrons on his face. “Save him for me,†I say. “Tell him not to go away until I get back.â€

About a mile from where we’d seen the sable bulls, we stop the car. I put a shell in the chamber of the 7mm, slide the glasses inside my shirt, and start to walk. We leave one tracker with the truck. The tracker with us carries my .375 and the hunter carries his own .458. All we need is a sable and all we see is an empty meadow. Disappointment is part of hunting, and the sudden vacancy is almost unreal. I still carry in my mind the picture of this field studded with the graceful black-pelted animals with their arching horns. I can so clearly see them clustered; it is almost like awakening from a dream not to find them there.

We turn and start the walk back to the car, the tracker in front and the hunter and me following behind, making plans about what to do next. The tracker stops with a low whistle and points toward the woods across from the clearing we just left. About half a mile away are some sables about to come into the meadow. Through the binoculars we can count eighteen, all cows. The hunter says there must be a bull somewhere. I tell him that I don’t have anything better to do this afternoon and why don’t we just walk over and take a closer look. Without too much optimism we start the stalk. With such a number of cows, it is sure, absolutely sure, that one of them will see us before we get much closer. We crouch and freeze, run a step or two, and freeze. There is only one small stand of trees between us and the herd, and that still leaves about 200 yards of nothing but grass and thirty-six eyes. We drop behind a slating tree and use the glasses. The hunter sees him first; standing in grass almost high enough to cover his back; all that is really visible is an arc of horn. But it seems high enough and far back enough. I rest the rifle on the tree, put the crosshairs under the front end of the horns, and wait. The cows are getting spookier and milling around as if waiting to be told what to do. The bull moves a step forward and I can see most of his front shoulder through the grass. The hunter nods at me. At the shot nothing much happens. The cows are milling a bit faster and the bull just stands there. I shoot again and the bull and the cows walk back into the woods and vanish.

The bull is no more than 100 yards into the trees. We stop and I shoot one more time—the “insurance policyâ€.

We get back to camp a little after dark and leave the sable in the capable hands of the skinners.

“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it?†the hunter said as we stood around the fire. “hunting has a way of adding something to you and at the same time subtracting something as well.â€

I said that I’d taken a lot of animals before and hoped to get several more, but that it never got any easier.

“Would you throw him back?†the hunter asked.
“No,†I answered. “We know there are twenty other bulls or more for his harem. I need him at home to watch over me, to remind me of some things I don’t ever want to forget. Of Africa.â€
“Why wouldn’t a picture do as well?†the hunter asked, and then answered his own question. “It doesn’t, does it?â€

He held up his hand and I could see the scars that a leopard had put there.
“You should have asked the leopard to take your picture,†I said.
“No,†he said, “it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. There wouldn’t be anything to this hunting business if you always won.â€

That night the lions somehow sounded closer than ever as I slept. The next morning I found out they had come into the skinners’ tent and taken away my sable.

Africa giveth, and Africa taketh away.

One of my favorite all time writers, now deceased. His writings were superb.

Exceptional writing.

As one who loves language, I really admire these nice turns of phrase:

" . . . the dark sullen tonnage of the Cape Buffalo."

" . . . fright is not a strong emotion, secondhand."

" . . . the egotistical threats of a nearby lion."

"Hunting has a way of adding something to you and at the same time subtracting something as well."

"There wouldn't be anything to this hunting business if you always won."

Truly evocative.

Thanks for posting this dogcat.

I was with Gene on that hunt. Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, June 1982.
I dont know about the roan-I dont remember any in the area.This was the first safari for both of us. An excellent writer and a great guy around the campfire......RIP

Edwin Obrecht

He can certaintly turn a phrase. Brings back memories and kindles the desire to return certainly.

I just rediscovered Gene Hill. I remembered him from years ago and just started reading him again. I like his style and his thinking...

quote:

Originally posted by Bwana1:
I was with Gene on that hunt. Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, June 1982.
I dont know about the roan-I dont remember any in the area.This was the first safari for both of us. An excellent writer and a great guy around the campfire......RIP

Edwin Obrecht

Can you tell us more about Gene and your interactions with him on that hunt?

A great outdoor writer. I remember anxiously awaiting each new book.

quote:

Originally posted by mrlexma:
Exceptional writing.

As one who loves language, I really admire these nice turns of phrase:

" . . . the dark sullen tonnage of the Cape Buffalo."

" . . . fright is not a strong emotion, secondhand."

" . . . the egotistical threats of a nearby lion."

"Hunting has a way of adding something to you and at the same time subtracting something as well."

"There wouldn't be anything to this hunting business if you always won."

Truly evocative.

Thanks for posting this dogcat.

One of my favorites.....truely a gifted writer.

Touched many, delivered a good/positive message, and told a wonderful story. God Bless and God Rest.

The reason I’m an African nut is because of Gene Hill. I grew up in Pennington, NJ where he lived. I was friends with his oldest daughter and hunted and fished on their property and hung out at their house all the time. I cut Gene’s grass while he was on the safari he’s writing about in the passage above and I was there when the trophies, including the sable, when they were delivered for the taxidermist and helped him hang them in his study.

Gene was rather quiet and shy but usually managed to let lose quite a few witting comments, mostly at my expense, whenever I was at his house. He also every now and then breakout an unlabeled bottle of scotch he’d have just brought back from a shooting trip to Scotland. It was always really good stuff, not worthy of a punk 18 year old like me at the time. I also got to meet some pretty cool guys like Ed Zern and Richard Wolters, the dog trainer. Gene was alright.

To get back to how he got me so hooked on Africa, one weekend a year or two after he went on safari he handed me a book and said I should read it. It was Peter Matthiessen’s “The Tree where Man Was Bornâ€. Well, you don’t ignore a book recommendation by Gene Hill so instead of studying differential equations back at college like I should have, I read the book. It’s not about hunting, it’s about the people and geography of East Africa. As Gene says, it’s hard to describe in writing what Africa it like, but “The Tree where Man Was Born†does a hell of a job. Like every budding hunter, while growing up I dreamed of hunting in Africa, well this book changed my attitude from wanting to hunt in Africa, to “I’m going!†Two years later I landed in Botswana as a Peace Corps volunteer who secretly was trying to figure out how to get the .375 I’d just bought shipped to me without Peace Corps knowing. That was the start of a long love affair. God, I love Africa.

Peter Durkin
African Excursions

Gene Hill was the only writer guaranteed to make me cry every time I read him! The guy knew the heart of the sportsman better than anyone who every applied ink to paper.

Even though I know of only three articles he wrote on Africa -- the one above, "Unpacking Some Memories of Africa," and "The Elephant Hunt" -- his descriptions of the place make the rambling, egotisical mess Hemingway wrote when he penned "The Green Hills of Africa" look like the work of a third-rate hack.

I've always contended that Gene Hill was a head-and-shoulders better writer than old Earnest when it came to non-fiction, outdoors subjects.

The first couple of paragraphs sum up reading about Africa once you've been there... so few can do it justice. Gene Hill could.

As I wrote before, I was with Gene on that Zim hunt in 1982. The next year several hunters on that trip including Gene and myself went to Zambia. Over the years I was able to hunt/ fish with Gene in several places- Scotland,Fl. Keys,and several other spots.He was always a pleasure to be with.
Over the years we lost contact. I know he finally divorced his alcholic wife, moved to Arizona and died there of throat cancer. I do not know if he remarried. Great guy

I always liked "Hill Country". At the risk of sounding like a woosie, He wrote one on old dogs that can make tears come to my eyes. I wish I'd have met him or at least written to him to tell him of how much I enjoyed his words!