LION BLIND

Quite a few years ago on the Luangwa river we were baiting for lion. It had been about 10 days and, not even a hit on any of our baits. Things were getting a little stressed as I had taken all the minor game and we were just waiting on the lion. One bait was 3 hours away and of course when we got a hit it was on that bait but we were all happy about having a lion feeding. We refreshed the bait and built a machan about 70 yards away from the bait.

Come evening we all climbed into the machan Arthur the PH, Sadie, our friend Cindy and myself. The lion came but it was just too dark to shoot. We spent that night in the machan listening to the lion feed and the hyenas carry on. The next day we were in the in the machan late afternoon hoping for the lion to return a little earlier. As the shadows started to lengthen we heard the lion coming grumbling the whole way. He walked underneath the tree the machan was in but from my little porthole in the machan I couldn't see him. The lion moved out to the right and laid down. By this time everybody was getting really excited as Arthur, Sadie and Cindy can plainly see the lion but I couldn't. I was set up so I could see the bait clearly but not too far to the right. Arthur was telling me "The lion has come. He is right there." I can't see any lion! Arthur was getting quite frustrated and Sadie is telling me "Just look. he's right there." I couldn't see anything. Arthur was getting red in the face but finally the light bulb went off and he said "look to the right." I changed position slightly and there he was plain as day.

After a few minutes the lion got up, went to the bait and he ended up as a rug on my wall. We still laugh about me being lion blind.

Mark

It was time to fly into our hunting camp in the Chete. We left early in the morning from Kwe Kwe. The pilot was actually a farmer and both he and his wife were pilots. He thought that it was the best way to get around Zimbabwe.

He told us that he made sure that the plane was serviced in South Africa .. and if something was to go wrong in flight - he could land us safely.

Mighty comforting. Mighty comforting.

Eventually he found the landing strip at the hunting camp and brought her down. He then loaded up with folks for the flight out of there.

There was a doctor from Detroit who had wounded a buffalo the evening before and asked us if we could track it down and finish it for him.

After he and his wife and their guide and the outfitter's wife got on board - the damn plane started sounding like it was going to stall.

It would rev and then sputter and made sounds that you never want to hear in your departing airplane.

Aiee! I promised myself that I would never again set foot on that plane.

We then drove over to the camp and were told that they had just killed two elephant poachers and wounded a third (leaking oil and running for his life, was how they put it). The dead guys were in a boat that they pointed out to us and was on its way to Binga.

The local ranger was a young man who liked to walk around bare footed. I asked the dude what they did for excitement around there?

He just looked at me.

A few years ago hunting in Zimbabwe with Brent Hein my wife, Pam and I were sitting in the back of the Land Cruiser and the trackers were standing behind us.

We were heading back to camp and Pam as always saw a Impala standing by a small tree. As usual Pam was pointing excitedly saying there is an Impala. I remained silent and Pam was "punching" and asking if I had seen the Impala. I just kept looking forward and I said "No it's a tree". Pam then turned around and asked the tracker, Friday and said "Friday, "you saw it and it was an Impala" Friday replied "Madam, if boss says it's a tree, it's a tree.

Early morning went to a leopard blind.

Just before sunup, the leopard arrived, and I shot him.

There was a lot of leaves under the tree, so we cleared some, and buried the leopard.

We took some blood, and put some on the ground on the edge of the cliff where the tree was, and a few drops further on on leaves.

Our trackers arrived, and Alan informed them we have a wounded leopard, and they should follow it.

It was so funny watching each one trying to go so slow that the other passes him.

After a bit, and the blood was lost, we decided to go back under the tree.

One of the trackers stepped on the buried leopard, and slipped.

They saw it, and all was laughter, and relief!

I took my wife to the BVC for her first trip to Africa. Before we left, I told her that she could not go running nor could she go off on any walks by herself. She wanted to know why? Lions was the short answer.

Every night when returning to camp, we would turn on a spot light just to see what we could see. It was fascinating. We saw all sorts of things. Lions, leopard, African wild cats, civets, genets, etc.

One night while returning, we spotted two young male lions 50 or so yards off the road to the right. We stopped to take a look. After a couple of minutes, the truck was started to continue our drive to the camp. After driving about 2 feet, the PH realized we had a flat. Great.

I get my rifle and a light out. The trackers get down to start work on the tire. My wife, brave woman that she is, gets out of the truck.

She notices I am shining the light to the left while the lions are on the right. She points this out. My response? " I know." Not satisfied with my answer, she wants to know why. My response was " to make sure the rest of he pride was not trying to slip up on us." At this point, she decided it was great idea to get back into the truck... Quickly I might add!

One of our friends liked to stay at camp, and go for long walks on the tracks.

One day when we asked him how far did he go, he said “not very far today! I saw the tracks of a very big lion”

We asked him how big, and he made a sign that showed something much larger than a lion.

We asked him to take us to where he saw it!

Turned out he saw the tracks of a black rhino!

And that scared the daughter out of him!

Hunting buffalo in the Selous with the late, great, Wayne Clarke, we were driving across a sandy river when Wayne spotted a young bull ele on the far bank about 100m away. He immediately turned the truck and drove to the bull and stopped a few yards away to take photos. The elephant was demonstrating and putting on quite a show until the trackers on the back remonstrated with Wayne on the reasonable grounds that is was OK for us in the front but that trunk was waving uncomfortably close to their heads. Wayne started the truck but it had sunk to the axles in the soft sand. Fortunately the bull stayed on top of the bank while we hopped out on the far side and pushed the truck 300yards to harder sand.
Wayne was greatest fun to hunt with, and a very fine PH but he was bold and very sadly he didn't grow old.

My first leopard. Sitting in the morning before daylight. He showed up with his lady friend. They bred under the bait tree before it was light enough to shoot. Another male started sawing across the valley and the male walked away from his lady, to the left of the bait tree and sat down like a dog looking away from me, toward where the sawing was coming from.

It was light enough by now, but there was a small bush in the way. Finally, he decided for another triste before breakfast and started back to his girlfriend, walking from my left to my right. I shot. He ran straight on into the most thick palm thicket you could imagine, but then doubled back running to my left and died in some tall grass to the left of the bait tree. Guess he remembered he left his girlfriend and doubled back and then was basically dead on his feet.

Following a leopard into that palm thicket would have a real problem. No way to be quiet and you couldn't see past your gun barrel. But while the leopard left a nice blood trail into that thicket, he reversed and ran out of it.

We heard the car start up at the shot and start coming on, and hatched a little plan. When the car arrived with the chief tracker and the government game scout, we showed them where the cat got hit and where he headed.

My Swahili is rudimentary, but the tracker definitely invoked Allah's help. While the tracker was sorting it out, the PH started explaining what happened to the game scout and ended up leading him right to the grass where the leopard was lying dead. The PH gave him a shove in the back propelling him right across the leopard.

Was very funny for everyone but the game scout.
Fortunately he had a good sense of humor and the trackers were very relieved they didn't need to go into that palm thicket after a wounded leopard.

Might’ve been our first safari in the Selous with the Pasanisis, or might’ve been the second. It was early, in any case.

We are in the private terminal, reserved for charters. Waiting around for our plane and pilot.

Out we are led to a huge airplane. A Swiss plane. A Pilatus. Big as a whale. Probably seated about twenty.

We were the only passengers.

A distinguished Frenchman, with grey at his temples, and military eyes, met us at the ramp. We introduced ourselves.

I asked him if he had been doing this long.

He replied, “Yes. I believe I am the oldest thing on this airplane. And that is the way you want it.”

Since that day, I have always asked every charter pilot if he was older than the airplane he was flying.

We had a new camp manager.

He was asked to put a leopard bait and set up a blind close to a water hole.

He did a grand job.

He found the right tree, put the bait on.

He set the blind on an elephant path.

The path goes down a cliff to a water hole.

We arrived in the evening before dawn, and were happily waiting for the leopard to appear.

Suddenly, we could hear elephants down at the water hole no more than a 100 yards from us.

The elephants must have come from the other side, and most likely will start walking our way once they have had their drink!

We decided to leave the blind, and walk back to the truck.

No point of being used as soccer balls by elephants, conveniently placed right on their path

My buddy found a fresh leopard track. He drew a circle around the spoor in the dust and hared it back to camp. He came back with some guys to show them what he had found.

They took one quick look and muttered a single word,
'Firestone'.

We spent a few days without shooting any buffalo.

The boys in butchery start4d asking for buffalo.

One morning we shot 4.

Put one in the truck, and drove to camp.

As we drove in, we hit the horn and the trackers started shouting BUFFALO!

The butchery staff were putting on their overalls as they were running to meet us at the butchery.

The trackers started shouting TWO BUFFALO!

The butchery staff were very happy, non believing and laughing.

The trackers shouted THREE BUFFALO.

Now no one believes them.

As we got to the butchery, the trackers, shouted FOUR BUFFALO!

More disbelief!

The guys were working almost to midnight!

The next morning the trackers were telling them, “don’t make fun of us any more!”

Last Safari of the year. Chartering out.

Of course, the staff tried to put everything they could on the plane. There were no scales. The pilot rejected some of the heavier items.

Runway was slightly down hill over a gorge. The pilot waited until the takeoff run to say he hoped he had enough runway. He was obviously just messing with me. I represented aircraft manufacturers for years and have flown on a lot of small aircraft. Only lingering doubt was I had no idea how much weight was on this plane because we had no way to weigh it. But, I reminded myself of the old saying that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.

Mine had a bit of gray hair, so I figured we were fine, and we were.

We just took off Dar in our charter plane to camp.

Half an hour into the flight, the pilot announced he has to turn back, because his GPS stopped working.

I asked him if all he needs is the location of the air strip, and he said yes.

I said, carry on, I have my GPS with that location on it.

He laughed.

I got my Garmin eTrex, found the air strip, and gave the GPS to the pilot.

I have pictures somewhere with him holding the GPS by the dashboard, and laughing.

We went on and landed with no problems.

The pilot had to spend the night in our camp, as it was too late to fly back to Dar.

We were driving on a dirt road in Botswana one morning some 3 years ago.. This was the hot season, December, and snakes were plentyful.. I was in the passenger seat beside the driver in the Cruiser and a tracker and a non hunting south african were sitting up on the safari rig. The tracker yelled stop and pointed out a large black mamba coiling up on a tree by the road. The SA guy wanted to snap some pics with his cell phone..

The thing was that a big branch streched over the road and directly over the car...and the snake proceeded out the branch..

The SA guy says "please get ze car going.." Could not keep myself "but you wanted some pics" Next he screams "GET ZE FUCKING CAR GOING..! "

Returning to camp in the dark in northern Cameroon we met a pride of lions with cubs. Stopped to take photos. I looked behind the truck and a lioness was coming very determinedly with eyes fixed on the trackers behind us. I said to Patrick Dahlan, my PH, "This one is really coming!" and stuffed a round up the spout. Patrick said "Don't shoot her I could loose my license" and he started hammering on the roof of the cab and yelling at the driver to "Allez! Allez". Unfortunately the driver was very deaf and he was OK anyway, safe in the cab with the windows wound up tight.
By the time he got going the cat was a few feet from the back and the others were joining in. The trackers sat behind us seemed a bit upset.
She chased us a little way and turned back.
Now that lions are unexportable and no longer have any trophy value that pride will all have gone bye-byes by now. The vultures were already gone there due to poisoned cattle carcases.

My worst was an Asian hunt.

Each evening, in spike camps on the sides of mountains at 14,000 feet, as we crouched around our tents, anxiously watching the grey and blackening skies, we were offered our supper.

Our guide, who spoke no English, and our "interpreter" - who spoke barely enough - would offer us two choices.

"Mr. Mike," our interpreter would inquire, in a sweet, but as we later learned, to our utter sickness, pneumonia laden voice, "Would you like some feesh, or cow meat?"

Our interpreter had a name beginning with an "N" and extending toward its ending several syllables later with an "i" or maybe a "y".

We called him Andy.

The fish he offered looked like cat vomit, and the "beef" was unspeakably grey and slimy.

These feasts of needed protein came out of rusty cans labeled in Russian and no doubt lined in lead.

We would always demur, and opt instead for Ramen noodles, spiced with red pepper, which we would supplement with our stash of Power Bars.

My wife and I thanked God each night for our Hilleberg tent and the warmth of our bodies close to each other through the subzero temperatures.

One afternoon, after returning to camp, having spent hours in the mountains after sheep and ibex, we found our guide's tent entirely missing, while our Hilleberg remained securely fastened to Mother Earth.

Our guide finally found his little pop-up tent where it had been blown several football fields away, brought it back, and tied it down as best he could.

There was an awful blizzard that night. Our tents were buried in snow.

The next morning, as we were digging out and pitching camp to head back to base, our guide began to "help" us.

He was rough-handling the tent poles and on the verge of wrecking the very fabric of our tent.

I told Andy to tell him, "If he breaks our fucking tent, I will break his fucking head!"

Andy did not need to translate. Apparently, some English words are so universally well known, no translation is necessary.

Nine hours later, with no words between us, we made it back to base camp, a humble, but wood-heated, abode, located at 10,000 feet of elevation above sea level.

The hunt was a total failure on any objective terms. I took no sheep or ibex, and missed the only shot I took on a marginal ibex. I was shooting almost vertically, at a couple of hundred yards, and missed cleanly over his back.

Still, the Tien Shan mountains are burned to this day in my mind as one of God's most beautiful and terrifying places on planet Earth.

We left soon afterwards, and coughed our lungs out all the bloody way home, suffering from some version of Asian bronchial pneumonia, caught no doubt from Andy. And for three days after we had arrived home, we continued to suffer, while gobbling down Zithromax every day, until the illness passed.

All said and done, we are both glad we did this hunt, but we are both fairly certain we will never do it again!

Mike,

I hate cold so would never even conceive of that hunt.

Took my wife to Masailand in July. Promised she'd see no snakes because it was too cold. But, we climbed a kopie to glass, and sure enough, I stepped right over a python. At least nothing dangerous. It was dehydrated and malnourished. The PH caught it and took back to camp. After some force-feeding and watering it was released where there was better prey.

We had hyenas in our camp non stop in the evenings.

They were so brazen they actually stole our BBQ stick which was a few yards from us eating.

We found it by the drag marks about half a k next morning.

Walking back to my tent, I used to se one lurking on the foot path.

They take a look at me, and take off.

One evening, there was standing there.

I shown the lights on it, and it turned towards me.

I stopped, we were 10 yards apart.

She started walking towards me.

I said "Oye! Don't come any closer you nitwit!"

She stopped, turned around and took off!

quote:

I told Andy to tell him, "If he breaks our fucking tent, I will break his fucking head!"

Andy did not need to translate. Apparently, some English words are so universally well known, no translation is necessary.

Yes, you are absolutely right! I have had the same experience!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
We had hyenas in our camp non stop in the evenings.

They were so brazen they actually stole our BBQ stick which was a few yards from us eating.

We found it by the drag marks about half a k next morning.

Walking back to my tent, I used to se one lurking on the foot path.

They take a look at me, and take off.

One evening, there was standing there.

I shown the lights on it, and it turned towards me.

I stopped, we were 10 yards apart.

She started walking towards me.

I said "Oye! Don't come any closer you nitwit!"

She stopped, turned around and took off!

You make me think about an event in Botswana.

we were in Sankuyu for one of the last elephant hunts before the close. It was a very nice tented camp. My tent was on the far end at least a couple of hundred yards from the fire, dining area, etc.

We had noticed an abundance of DG. Elephants, buff and lion. Enough to get my attention. Given the long, dark walk to my tent, I decided to bring my 416 when walking to and from the tent in the dark.

One night as I am walking back to my tent, I hear something in the bushes. In a split second, I realize it is coming toward me. FAST! I swing the gun & my light toward the oncoming critter. I am thinking lion. I see it but not well. I am sure it isn't a lion, at least not a full grown one.

As it gets closer and in less bush, I can see a rather large hyena heading toward me quickly. The hyena comes with in 10 feet of me. He runs into another tent and proceeded to drink the water out of a toilet. Yes, there was a drought.

I was perilously close to shooting him. Glad I waited.

From start to finish, I recon this incident lasted 5-7 seconds.

I once had a ph tell this story. It's probably made up. He said he took 3 guys on a pg hunt for a bachelor party. Well the groom to be never got out of the cab and made his buddies ride in the back. He also stored his gun in the back. Every day his buddies would give his scope 20 clicks up and to the right. The groom would miss animals daily and request to go back to the range where his buddies would reset the scope's zero and he'd be nuts on. He finally caught on around day 4. I can't remember the rest of the story but he was fuming mad. Hope his buddies were still in the wedding.

A warthog scoots past in front of us. We slam on the brakes and grab the guns. The warthog stops at an ant bear hole and hurriedly backs down. We unshoulder the rifles only to see the warthog come flying out the hole ten times faster than he went in. Right behind him was a hyena who came out, saw us and took off in the other direction.

We had a good laugh. The trackers on the other hand were in hysterics for a couple hours. Later that day, they would retell the story and roll on the ground laughing. About the time you thought it was over they would retell it again, causing themselves to go back into convulsions of laughter. This went on and on.

Some things transcend translation and are completely cultural.

In my youth I was fortunate to cross paths with Hans Bauer. Mzee Bauer was an ivory hunter from the Deutsch Ostafrika days.

Mzee Bauer along with a couple of his men were elephant hunting and came up to a large drying up pan. The elephant grass had been burned off in most places on the pan and only small mud holes remained. As they cleared some of the remaining elephant grass, they came upon a hartebeest drinking in a mud hole.

Needing meat he aimed and fired. After the recoil, he saw feathers flying a little in front of where the hartebeest stood and the wounded hartebeest running off. His men commenced uncontrollable laughter which they couldn't stop. Bauer asked what happened but couldn't get an answer since they were laughing too hard. Laughing, they walked up to a stork with it's head blown apart. Hanging out of the storks mouth was a barbel that also had its head blown apart. Evidently the stork had just caught the fish and raised it's head to swallow as the bullet hit. The wounded hartebeest was followed up and had either died or was dispatched.

The Mzee had taken a bird, fish and animal with one shot. Out of a life in the bush, that was the story that seemed to give him the most enjoyment in telling. He also told it much better than me. Wish you could have heard his version. Prost Mzee.

Great story AW.

There is a phrase for that kind of hunting (which usually also requires fishing): Fins, Fur and Feathers!

I think there should be a special award for nailing all three, while not even fishing, but while only hunting, and with only one shot!

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
Great story AW.

There is a phrase for that kind of hunting (which usually also requires fishing): Fins, Fur and Feathers!

I think there should be a special award for nailing all three, while not even fishing, but while only hunting, and with only one shot!

Very kind of you. The story is the Mzee's. My recitation is a poor facsimile of his version, which could be drawn out longer and was much more entertaining than my synopsis.

Definitely a one in a million shot. Perhaps once in history and totally by accident.

I posted the following a couple years ago during the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Since it was posted in another forum I will repost here.
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posted 18 July 2019 03:26
With this being the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, some of us will be reliving memories. My memories may be from a slightly different perspective than most who watched the event on TV.


My parents were on holiday with their three youngest kids, me being the oldest. We stopped for the night at a small inn, in Kigali Rwanda. The inn was made up of 5-10 rondavels, one being the office and home of the 80+ year old Belgium lady that owned and ran the inn.

We knew about the goal of landing on the moon, but had no idea time frame, as we were out of radio frequency where we lived and when we read newspapers they were normally a few weeks old.

The next morning I went with my dad to pay and check out. The Belgium lady was very excited and animated. She spoke French and Kinyarwanda. We spoke English and Kiswahili. She knew some German words and my father knew some German from the war. She had the radio on, but we didn't understand what was being said. At first dad was concerned war had broken out. The DRC had serious problems at the time. Katanga and Dag Hamarskjold were still fresh on everyone's minds. Uganda had problems. An assassination attempt was about to take place on Milton Obote, and Idi Amin would over throw him in two years. We were living in Tanzania where a couple coup attempts had taken place since independence. Then of course there had been issues in this part of Africa between the Watusi and the Bahutu for centuries. With relief we finally determined that it wasn't war she was trying to tell us about.

Finally after a few minutes of pointing at the ceiling and doing charades, my father figured out that man had walked on the moon. It would be another year before I would see a recording of the events of July 69, but my memory of the event will always be of this old Belgium lady jumping up and down doing charades and speaking French like an auctioneer.

It would be difficult in words to convey the level of panic a cornered monitor lizard can exhibit. We had come back to camp at midday and went to our chalet. When I opened the door and let Sadie in I heard the most awful thrashing and crashing from the bathroom and out flies quite a large monitor lizard. He saw Sadie in the chalet, me standing in the door and screamed around the bedroom bouncing off of everything and finally escaped through the eves. We laugh and laughed over that one.

Mark

We were in Matetsi, in stone rooms with thatched roofs.

Not on that occasion but on others I have seen snakes walking up in the ceiling.

On this particular time, I just turned the lights off and hit the sack.

I was dozing off when I heard, and felt, something soft land right next to me on the bed.

First thing came to mind was a snake.

I tried moving VERY VERY VERY slowly to get the torch.

I got it, and turnt on.

Looking straight at me was a tiny bush baby!

No more than two inches across, with very big eyes.

I picked him, and took him out to show to the others.

During my hunt in S Africa I took a fairly long but easy shot at a warthog. I failed to see a steel fencepost right in front of the pig, and naturally I drilled the fence post dead center.

After the hunt, They were ribbing me about shooting the post, I asked the PH if I could take it home with me because I wanted to get a shoulder mount made. The PH, without batting an eye, said "Oh- we can do that right here. Take your shirt off".

My 15 year old son and I were on a 15 day leopard hunt in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately the 21 year old PH, while very nice, had not lived long enough to get really good at leopard hunting. An older PH in camp did his best to give him some advice.

There was a famous book, at the time, that was all about leopard hunting and while the author was very well known to the young guy, I doubt that the lad had read the book.

The food on that safari was very memorable, however. Every evening meal came with, hot out of the oven, fresh bread/buns/or some other kind of baked goods.

Damn, but that well dressed chef could cook. We were actually told, that the dude was a witch doctor.

I had heard of such folks and it certainly made an interesting safari even more special.

And then, near the end of the hunt, the witch doctor fellow approached me. He had a head ache and did I have a pain killer to help him out?

You bet. I healed the witch doctor.

We had a game scout that looked like Sammy Davis Junior.

He was very good, and we had a bit of a game going with him.

I am normally the first person at the hunting truck.

I used to ask him what animal we would get that day, and he was pretty good at guessing.

Towards the end of the safari, I asked our skinner to come to the truck.

I asked him to play along.

“Good mornings friend. What are shooting today?”

He got into deep thought, and said “I don’t know”

I said “I think we have shot everything “

“Yes” was his answer.

I said “We have not shot a game scout”

“NO”

I turned to the skinner, and asked “How do you mount a game scout?”

The skinner walks around him, and say “This one good for full mount”

Everyone was in stitches of laughter.

On my first Safari in Namibia, I was unloading my kit in the guest chalet at Sebra Hunting Safaris. On the bedroom wall was a beautiful Leopard skin rug. As I dropped my suitcase on the bed beneath the skin, out pops a giant white spider the size of a baseball! I didn’t panic, just left him/her alone and decided to sleep in the other bed not beneath its lair. My PH Jan du Plessis told me it was a Huntsman Spider, completely harmless, in fact it’s helpful because it eats other

Had a couple of hunts in Namibia. Wall spiders are common and harmless. I did step on a scorpion one night. Pack flip flops and put them beside the bed. Learned something.

Had a pet frog in the shower in the Selous. His name was Fred. I nudged Fred out of the way every day so I didn't step on him. He was back on the drain the next day. Had a pet lizard, a rather large one, that lived under the bathtub in Lukwati one year. He didn't get a name.

I get scorpions in my tent every year in the Selous!

Lizards and frogs don’t bother me.

I go bare foot in camp, never had any problems, except a twig or two prick me every now and then.

Nothing serious.

Totally agree, but that scorpion made the entire right side of my foot numb for a couple of days. Cleared up though.

The frog, and to a lesser extent the lizard, and I became friends.

quote:

Originally posted by lavaca:
Totally agree, but that scorpion made the entire right side of my foot numb for a couple of days. Cleared up though.

The frog, and to a lesser extent the lizard, and I became friends.

A little yellowish-green scorpion once fell out of my wife’s boot. It was on a cold, early morning one time, in our camp, in the
the Ehi-Rovipuka conservancy, in northern Namibia.

At my wife’s cry, I and our PH, and all of the camp staff circled around, to see what it was.

The staff then immediately ran from it, like it was poison.

Which it was.

I stomped it into oblivion with the heel of my boot.

Our PH told us that, had it stung my wife, our safari would have been over.

Except for the emergency care and hospitalization part.

Damned things.

I got stung by one of the really nasty ones we have here in the desert.

We were out in the desert with my father and several friends.

We always go barefoot in the desert.

One evening after dinner, I felt like I had stepped on fire.

Starting jumping up and own screaming FIRE FIRE.

Got no sympathy, despite my young age.

The older guys sitting my the fire starting laughing, "hahahaha! Scorpion has got you. Come here"

We fount it and killed it.

They tied my leg below the knee.

I was in pain till lunch time next day!

Sitting on the lavatory before dawn in the Selous I held the thin African toilet paper up to the sky to fold it and see the perforations. One bit I had folded appeared to have a leaf caught in it so I switched on my torch. Crouched between the paper which I was about to apply to my haemorrhoids was a small yellow scorpion with it's tail raised.
My PH remarked that the last client he had who got stung by one of those had to be emergency helicoptered out to hospital. A proper pain in the arse!

Scorpions, like snakes, seem to find me, or vice-versa. In addition to the scorpion that stung me in Namibia, I've been hit by three back here in the States. Two were just me being stupid. Scorpions love rotting wood. Was fixing a corral and got hit on the hand while replacing a rotted sideboard. Should have been wearing gloves, if nothing else for the splinters.

Another was a baby scorpion, tiny really. I was shooting an archery 3D course and a target had blown over. It was summer and I was wearing shorts. Big target, so I rolled it up on my legs to right it. Lots of little baby scorpions under there. They hurt as much as the grownups at first, but it doesn't last as long.