Mine was for my first impala ram, spent a long time on my belly in rocky thorny terrain crawling through 61 different kinds of animal dung, ended up in a shallow depression (not my state of mind) cheek-to-cheek with my PH, holding my rifle at the ready for years, waiting for the ewes to bug out so I could take out their sugar daddy. The shot was very anti-climatic, heart shot @ 150 yds. and didn't run 10 ft. I figured after all that he would run 3 miles with very little blood, but I got lucky...

What was your most difficult, rewarding and/or hardest stalk?

My next best one didn't end in a kill, but I'll save that for another day...

To me the hardest hunting is for a large bull elephant, you walk umpteen billion bloody miles in awsome heat, wade rivers filled with God knows what, sweat pours off your body like Vic falls, you eat biltong or Dri Vores, and you may very well fall asleep on the track under a Baobab that night, and care less what eats you, in fact it would be a blessing if something did eat you, but hell your going to freeze to death anyway before daylight...and all this time you know that your going to have to walk back out of this stuff!! and that may be the worst part, would I do it again?? you damn betcha I would, a hundred more times.

A mountain zebra hunt. We really had no conception of what we were letting ourselves in for. We knew that mountain zebras weren't creatures of grasslands as are Burchell's, but the mountains where went should have been home to bighorn sheep, not horses with funny paint jobs.

For the first time, we actually used the capabilities of a Land Cruiser. On all previous trips, the only four-wheeling that we did was for the few short meters necessary to cross a sandy wash that was in wetter times a river. Our start began when we pulled into the small yard of a renovated steel shipping crate that formed the house of the neighboring ranch owner. From him we got the latest reports on road conditions and the loan of one of his workers who had grown up on both ranches. Leighton would serve as our walking map.

At Leighton's cinder block house, he handed up his bedroll, a small sack of mealie meal, and his small three-legged iron pot, then he climbed aboard the vehicle. With fluent Afrikaans and hand signals, he directed us toward some hills about 10 miles off. Whenever the twin rocky ruts offered a choice, he directed Anneli, our guide and driver, onto the proper turn.

Anneli and Claud, our assistant guide, had brought along four jerry cans for water, and earlier we'd stopped at a water tank and filled them with green, scummy water that we'd had to chase the cows out of. Neither of them seemed to have a good understanding of just how dangerous waterborne diseases could be, and Wini and I had been a bit uneasy with the cavalier response to our insistence that the water be boiled before we drank it. We'd mentioned the poor quality of the water to the ranch owner who'd "lent" us Leighton, and Leighton guided us on a slight detour on our way to the mountains so that we could empty the jerry cans, rinse them well, and refill them with fresh, clean water. I still had intentions of drinking most of my liquids after they'd been boiled, but now I wasn't going to go thirsty if all I had was water straight out of the jerry can.

Rising out of the Namibian plains as they did with no foothills or other indications of scale, the mountains got taller, steeper, and rockier as we got nearer. Finally, we turned in the front hubs and began our ascent of a rock track. Whenever the track really got narrow, which meant that Wini or I could look straight down and not see the edge of the track, Claud would get out and assist Anneli in the precise wheel placement necessary to keep the Toyota going. Wini and I would get out and supervise. After several hours of low speed, low gear driving, we pulled out onto a ridge and Anneli shut down the engine. I think we were all relieved to get to camp with no major mishaps.

Camp was a pair of cots set away from the vehicle for Wini and I, and a fire pit for cooking. Leighton, Claud, and Anneli would roll their sleeping bags out on a soft sandy spot. There was a lone tree on the ridge, and we set the black plastic jerry cans in its shade. There wasn't enough shade to keep the water in the cans from getting hot enough to scald us, but it was the one place where we wouldn't have any trouble finding the cans when we wanted them. We made a short but productive stroll around the area and collected a pile of firewood, and camp was complete.

Wini and I uncased our rifles and we all went for an orientation stroll. Just over the edge of the ridge we were on, we could see down into the steep canyon. It looked like no zebra country that I'd ever heard of. I'd certainly seen a lot of country that was similar to this, but none of that was home to zebras. The steep terraces and cliffs would have been just the thing for the Anasazi, and the only thing I could bring myself to expect to see was mountain sheep.

The terrain was broken enough that we couldn't see much that was directly below us, but we had no problems scanning the far side with our binoculars. "Claud," I asked, "over where the tan and brown stone meet, is that a klipspringer?"

"With the heat waves, I can't be sure," he answered, "but I think so." Leighton had lost interest in the cross-canyon view. He was more interested in the faint tracks in the dust on our side. He spoke in a flurry of Afrikaans and Claud translated. "He says that most of the track here is old, but there have been a few zebra here recently."

Wini had taken a nice Burchell's zebra on a previous hunt in Zimbabwe. Burchell's zebra are the commonly seen zebra in the parks and on most hunts. The size of a small horse, the Burchell's will weigh around 750 pounds on the hoof. Their dark gray to black stripes meet under their belly, and there's usually some lighter gray "shadow stripes" in between their main stripes. The mountain zebra isn't rare, but its habitat is far more restricted, and Wini wanted one.

The mountain zebra, in addition to being found in different habitat, looks a bit different from the Burchell's. It is smaller, going around 600 pounds on the hoof, and the stripes don't meet under the belly. Too, the mountain zebra doesn't have shadow stripes of the Burchell's.

We didn't see any definitive sign of zebras, so we moved on. The mountain vegetation had one thing in common with that of the lowlands where we'd been hunting earlier -- most of it had thorns. The good thing was that the thorn bushes were rarely more than knee-high, but they were plentiful wherever a slight depression had allowed windblown soil to accumulate.

We kept off the crest of the ridge as we moved so that we wouldn't skyline ourselves, and we stopped regularly to use our binoculars and examine every new draw that we came across. We didn't see any zebras, and only spotted a few klipspringers -- all female. Leighton wasn't finding much track or other zebra spoor either. It wasn't looking like we had arrived at the ideal game spot, but we certainly couldn't complain about camp.


African hunting camps, especially the tented ones, tend to be luxurious. Contrary to expectations, luxury gets old. Our camp had no frills, not even a tent. We could see the buildup of purplish clouds in the evening, but we were assured that we had absolutely nothing to worry about from rain. We collected extra firewood on our return to camp, and it wasn't rain I was thinking of. The clouds looked like thunderheads to me, and being near the only tree on a high ridge in a thunderstorm didn't strike me as being conducive to enjoying the rest of the hunt.

The clouds shortened the normally brief equatorial dusk, but we had our fire going before things went from dim to black. The stars above use remained out and the thunderheads gradually drifted away.

At supper, Claud explained that Leighton was sure there was water down in the sandy washes below our ridge. "The sand grouse we flush fly downhill," Claud said, "instead of back up to that far ridge where the stock tank was." Wherever there was water, there, too, would be the zebra. If the coulees below us were totally dry, there'd be fewer sand grouse and they'd flush away from the canyon. Unlike gemsbok or other truly desert-adapted animals, zebra need to drink every day or two, and the mountain zebra is no different from his plains cousin in this matter.

I wasn't certain whether they fully believed that there were zebra in the area or whether they wanted us to believe that there were zebra in the area. It didn't really matter. We were there to hunt, we were in mountain zebra habitat, and both Wini and I were more than ready to hike. We tossed a few final scraps of acacia onto the coals of the cooking fire. They flared up and lighted the way for Wini and me to find our cots out on the ridge. The stirring of the others over by the fire died away as they spread their sleeping bags and got settled. Wini and I mumbled a bit about how much we were enjoying this piece of the trip and ad almost completely drifted off to sleep when I heard it. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"What's funny?" Wini asked.

"Didn't you hear it?" I asked.

"Hear what?"

"Listen," I said. After a short wait, the sound came again.

"What's that?" Wini asked.

"Our assurance that there's something out there. Hyena. He's hunting something more than lizards." The whoop and howl of hyenas was, according to the classical hunting literature, a regular sound of the African night for the old-time hunters. After decades of poisoning, trapping, den-gassing, and other methods of animal control, not to mention the loss of the vast game herds that sustained them, hyenas aren't common and it easy to go through a month's hunt without hearing one.


We were finished with breakfast and had cleaned up the dishes by the time the sun was fully up. Wini had two 750 milliliter water bottles on her small pack, Leighton and I each had a one-liter bottle in ours. Anneli and Claud had a 3 liter bladder each in their backpacks, and there were no spares. Communications between us in Alaska and the guide in Namibia hadn't been as clear as they should have been, and we hadn't understood either that we'd need a lot of canteens or that we were expected to bring them with us. The night's low temperature was only about 65 degrees, the day was heating rapidly, and we hadn't started hunting yet. And, we weren't packing a lunch.

"Claud," I asked, "are we set up for a full day's hunt?" He replied that we were only going to be hunting for half the day. We'd go down into the canyon near Wini's and my cots and walk along the sand-covered riverbed that circled around the toe of the ridge and be back at camp for a late lunch. If and when we saw a mountain zebra on the slopes above us, we'd do a stalk up the rocky slopes. This was certainly different from the mountain sheep and goat hunting I'd done before. There, the idea had been to get above the animals and when I selected one for actively hunting, I'd hunt down to it.

We could feel the temperature rise as we descended into the canyon. Not only was it getting later in the day, so the temperature was rising, but also we were losing elevation, so it was warmer. Any relief we'd had from the breeze was lost after we'd gotten halfway down the slope and the sun reflecting off the rocky slopes and outcrops soon had us sucking hard on our water bottles. The walking was made difficult by the thorns and steep, unstable footing as much as by the heat.

We followed game trails on the way down, and like game trails on any continent, they just seemed to appear from nowhere, provide good footing for a hundred yards or so, then disappeared. We stopped at every new vista and scanned for zebra. Leighton hadn't spotted much zebra spoor on the trail and we didn't see any zebra along the hillside as we descended. Walking was easier after we reached the sandy riverbed, and it was more encouraging. Tracks and horse-apples were scattered on the sand. We were free of the thorns, but each step in the soft sand was accompanied by a backward slide, and the sun reflecting off the pale sand pushed the heat up another notch. Leighton pointed too a trail that led off to the side as we began following a turn in the riverbed.

Claud translated Leighton's rapid Afrikaans, "That trail will certainly lead to a small pool, but the zebra won't be there now. This is the time that the zebra are out on the slopes and feeding." Then Claud outlined his hunting plan. "We should hunt on around the corner, then up and back to camp. This evening we can come back down around here."

Wini asked, "Where is the waterhole Leighton talked about?"


Claud conversed with Leighton in rapid-fire Afrikaans that sounded like Arabic to me, then replied, "He doesn't know. It could be close or it could be several kilometers away. He just knows by the bird life and by the spoor that there must be water down here somewhere." Claud paused, then continued, Trying to find the water wouldn't do us any good. I think maybe if we hunt around here in the evening, we might find some zebra passing by."

We paused in the spotty shade thrown by a small acacia tree and Claud siphoned some of the water from his backpack into my empty water bottle. Leighton and I shared its contents, then Claud refilled the bottle. We moved into an area of small canyons that branched from each other. Each hillside led to yet another higher hillside that, after innumerable linkages, eventually mounted to the main ridge where we were camped. When Claud gestured to one particular side canyon that we were to ascend, I pointed off tot he side and asked, "Isn't camp in that direction?"

"Yah, I think. We can go up here, then turn toward camp," Claud replied as he started off.
Wini looked at me and I shrugged. I had only the most general sense of where things were; in detail, I was lost. I motioned Wini to follow Claud. She was the one who had taken a Burchell's zebra on another hunt, and was the one who wanted to add to her zebra collection on this hunt. I was just along for the experience.

Claud and Leighton led the way up the hillside with Wini close behind them. I followed after a gap of about 30 yards, and Anneli was immediately behind me. Claud had just reached the crest of the first canyon's ridge when he crouched down. Leighton helped Wini climb to Claud's side, then came down the hill to the large rock where Anneli and I had stopped. The sun was shining almost straight down, so there wasn't much shade where the three of us were crouched beside a rock. Wini and Claud scuttled tot he left, paused, then scuttled back to the right along the ridgeline. They moved forward out of sight, and Anneli spoke to Leighton in Afrikaans, then to me in English. "There a few zebra up there, over on the next hillside."

I moved up the hill to where Wini had left her small pack and picked it up. The ridgeline wasn=t far above me, so I started to move up, pausing with every step to look and make sure I wasn't going to spook the zebra. I hadn't yet reached the crest when there was single shot from the other side of the ridge. I waited a moment while Leighton and Anneli joined me, then we moved on to the ridgeline.

Claud was rapidly disappearing along a ridge that branched a bit lower and to the left of where I was. Wini was nowhere in sight. I moved to the right, then downhill to where Leighton was pointing. A narrow game trail ran down the gully bottom, then turned to the left. When I made it to the turn in the gully, Wini was just ahead of me.

She was struggling up the hillside and her shirt showed that she'd been on the losing end of an argument with a thorn bush. "What's up with Claud taking off?" I asked.

"I don't know. I got a good shot and the zebra fell along way down the canyon. Claud took off and I got caught in a thorn bush and couldn't keep up. I think he want that way," Wini said and pointed.

"Yeah, I saw him racing along this hillside. What does he expect to do if the zebra isn't dead? He hasn't got a gun. Is he going to wring its neck?" I had still not seen a live mountain zebra. We were joined by Anneli and Leighton just as we moved around the hillside far enough to see the zebra.

Claud was crouched next to the zebra and we could see quite clearly that it wasn't alive. The zebra was sprawled on a small ledge that was probably part of a game trail, and Claud was kneeling between the zebra and a rock shelf. Dismissing thoughts of what Claud might now look like if the zebra had still been able to kick, I listened to Wini as we scrambled closer.

"I'm surprised she isn't broken open like a dropped watermelon." Wini pointed far up the ridge and said, "The zebra was standing up there, near the top. Claud said she was a big mare, and here stripe pattern was wonderful. I was able to use a rock for a rest for my .270, so I got a steady shot. Instead of bolting down the trail or doing any of the things that I expected, she just stiffened and fell forward. She bounced all the way down until she was out of our sight." By this time we'd reached the zebra and were able to examine her. There was a little blood smeared around her muzzle, but there were no major scrapes and cuts. Her trophy value had survived the fall. It took considerable effort by all five of us, but we got her rolled over and in position for the necessary photographs.

After the photography was finished, we once again put our shoulders and backs into it and rolled the zebra over for the start of skinning. Before Claud and Leighton got started on the skinning job, we took a short break to eat the snack bars we'd brought. The sun had moved well past vertical and there was still a lot of work to do. Our 'late lunch' was rapidly receding. I handed Wini her pack with her water bottles, and we all shared the remainder of our water. I hoped we weren't too far from camp.

There was no relief from the sun for any of us as Claud and Leighton skinned the zebra. After they freed a portion of the hide, we'd all join in lifting and shifting her so that they could continue the job. When Claud finally made his last cut, there was still plenty more to do. Claud set the hide aside and assisted Leighton in cutting up the zebra carcass.


The meat of a Burchell's zebra is black, and the fat is a sickly yellow. Few whites like it, and even rural black Africans aren't overly fond of it. Most Burchell's zebra meat is made into biltong for consumption during the summer when little hunting takes place. Mountain zebra meat is completely different. It is a bright red meat, visually impossible to distinguish from antelope meat and is so good that it is part of fancy restaurant fare in Windhoek and Johannesburg. The meat was why Leighton had agreed to partake of the hard work of hunting -- the reward of some 400 pounds of meat was worth it. Claud made the final cut that freed one hindquarter and Leighton shifted it to a rock where it would stay clean. We all grabbed the now slippery carcass and shifted it to allow Leighton to get to the other hindquarter and, in the process, some of the innards leaked out of a mis-cut that Leighton had made. Claude reached in and pulled out a second zebra.

It was a fully formed, completely haired, male foal that was so perfectly formed that it could only have been days from birth. Wini and I skinned it while Claude and Leighton continued to dismember the mother. The skin of the unborn foal was so thin that it was more like skinning a rabbit than skinning a zebra. Before Leighton, Wini, and I had completely finished our bloody chores, Claude had packed the adult zebra's hide on his pack.

"We," including Anneli by a casual wave of his hand, "will meet you down there where this side canyon meets the main river channel."

"Isn't camp up that way?" I asked and pointed up toward where the zebra had been shot.

"Yes, but this will be an easier walk," Claud answered. He turned, and he and Anneli made their way down the draw and out of sight.

"I hope they know what they're doing," Wini said. "You haven't picked up much Afrikaans, have you?" I shook my head as she continued, "Leighton is our only guide and he doesn't speak any English at all. I don't like this." I couldn't help but agree with Wini as I lifted a hindquarter to Leighton's shoulder. I draped the small foal's skin over my shoulders and we followed him in the direction that Claude and Anneli had gone. When we reached the confluence of the side canyon with the main riverbed, neither Claude nor Anneli were there.

Leighton wasn't moving fast, but he was moving steady, and he didn't slacken as he turned and continued in what would be the downstream direction in the wet season. Wini and I followed. There was a leafy acacia tree a few hundred yards further along, and Leighton slipped his burden to a clean rock, then sat in the shade. He wiped his forehead and smiled. The universal language told us that yes, he was hot and sweaty, but he was happy to have plenty of meat. After resting a short while, he rose and moved over to his hindquarter and tried to swing it to his shoulder. He failed. I moved forward and grabbed the 70 pound load and lifted it so that Leighton could move underneath it. As he moved off, Wini handed me my zebra stole and we followed.


I could only hope that Leighton knew where he was going, because we didn't find Claud or Anneli waiting for us. I had a difficult time understanding how Leighton could continue to reshoulder his load after each break. Certainly he was much more acclimated to the heat than we were, but Wini and I were certainly starting to drag by the time Leighton started looking for a cache. From a combination of German, English, and pantomime, along with a couple of Afrikaans words thrown in, we thought Leighton was saying that camp was somewhere uphill from us. Our loads were much lighter than Leighton's, but when Leighton cached his hindquarter, he was moving as if he were fresh. On the other hand, though, Wini and I had no such second wind.

Wini was feeling nauseous, so I helped her get as comfortable as she could in the scanty shade cast by a thorn bush that was taller than most. I looked closely at Wini and started to get worried. She never seems to sweat heavily, but now she wasn't sweating at all. After getting her settled, I watched Leighton disappear from view over the skyline of the ridge 300 yards or so above us.

The shadows were starting to creep down the other side of the canyon as the afternoon moved on toward evening. I moved into position next to where Wini was stretched out with her bandana over her eyes. As I sat down, my shirt scraped roughly against my armpit. I realized that sometime in the last half-hour, I'd quit sweating, too. "Think you might be up to climbing the hill here?" I asked Wini, pointing in the direction Leighton had gone.

"This is bad," Wini answered. "Claud and Anneli took off and surely they didn't mean that they'd meet use 'just there' when 'just there' is so far from where we were. So they left us with a guide that couldn't speak English, and now he's gone. Do you have any idea where camp is?" she asked. I told her that my best guess was that camp was probably only a couple of miles away, up the ridge somewhere. "You don't know for sure, either. Maybe you should just leave me here and try and make it to camp. If you can find camp, maybe you can send help," she said. "I'm not up to wandering around for I-don't-know-how-many-miles trying to find camp." Wini said.

"That's a non-starter," I answered.

"Well, what else can we do?" she asked. Her tone had lost its peevishness. She was having to roll her tongue around in her mouth before talking, and she realized from the long pauses before I spoke that the same was true for me.

"Simple," I responded. "We go on as far as we can go, then we stop. We go in the best guess we've got for the direction of camp. When we stop, we try and do it where we're most likely to be found."


After the shade the opposite ridge cast by blocking the setting sun had extended to where Wini lay, I managed to get her moving again. Wini didn't have the energy to go up the ridge where Leighton had gone. Instead, we continued on down the canyon until we found a way up that wasn't so steep. We didn't talk about how thirsty we were. Mostly we didn't talk at all because it used up too much of the tiny bit of moisture we had left. When we turned from the riverbed and faced the slope, I made sure that both our rifles were empty. We were both cramping up from dehydration and having to use the stocks as canes. We ascended the slope at the painful rate of one step at a time with long pauses in between while we regained our balance to make the next one. Wini's vision was no longer very clear, so I led the way. I forced us to ascend at least 30 paces up before allowing us to sit for a rest. I used the setting sun as our pace maker. Whenever we reached the edge of the upward creeping shade, I allowed us a rest that lasted only as long as I kept the still-rising shade in sight, and then I got us up and moving. I did not want us to have to spend the night on such a steep slope.

We were beginning to lose the race with the sun. We had reached the upper third of the slope where the angle slackened a bit and we were beginning to reach the rounded area that could either be considered the very lowest edge of the ridge or the high end of the slope, and it was obvious that Wini wasn't going to be able to get up before the shade reached the flats that were somewhere above us, and I wasn't too sure of my own ability to control my severely cramping legs. The breeze was still coming uphill in the daytime pattern. It hadn't yet turned in the nighttime pattern and begun to flow downhill. I thought I heard something that didn't quite belong, but I couldn't tell what it was. Using my rifle as a cane, I was able to stand so that I could see above the rocks and low brush. I looked downhill. I saw nothing, so I looked to the right and to the left. I still saw nothing, so I used my binoculars, but that didn't reveal anything. I have been afflicted by severe, even disabling dehydration before, so I knew that I couldn't completely trust my senses, but I didn't think I was that far gone, yet. "Do you hear anything?" I asked Wini.

"No." Her answer was dull. "Will we make the night?" she asked.

I knew what she was asking, and I could answer honestly. "Yes. We'll make the night, but much past mid-day tomorrow isn't something I can bet on. Whether we'll be able to walk at all by morning is a different question." I paused, trying to evaluate how hard I could push us, and for how long. "There," I said. "Did you hear that?"

Wini answered that she didn't hear anything, but I used my rifle to pull myself up and turned slowly to face uphill. I could see nothing, but through my binoculars, I could see Anneli waving at us. I turned and sat again, "Anneli is just uphill from us by a couple of hundred yards. She ought to be down here with water in just a few minutes." Wini smiled but said nothing.

After a few minutes, I got upright again and turned to face uphill. I still couldn't see Anneli with my naked eyes. When I looked through my binoculars, Anneli waved. I looked closer and she was waving us to walk uphill! "I cannot believe this shit," I said. At Wini's questioning look, I worked my tongue around and told her, "She's not coming down to us. We've got to go up to her. Think of the drink when we get to her."

I nearly fell as I helped Wini to her feet and heard her groan as I took the first step away from her. I was too cramped to stand straight so it was easy to turn and see Wini struggle with her first step. The few hundred yards took a long time with a standing rest stop between every couple of steps. The temperature was dropping rapidly with our slight gain in elevation and the lack of direct sun. It was dim by the time we collapsed where Anneli sat. I couldn't trust my temper, so I made sure to sit with Wini between Anneli and me.

"I'm afraid of heights," Anneli said.

"Pass the water," I said.

I was stunned at her answer. "I don't have any." Wini's exhausted face turned to me. Anneli continued, "we were going to go to camp, then come back and meet you with water, but when we got this far, I just couldn't go any farther. Camp is farther than we thought. Claud left me here to meet you while he goes back and gets water."

"Did you see Leighton go by?" I asked. When she said no, I knew that it was only serendipity that had allowed us to meet. I looked around at the rapidly increasing dusk and knew that I was the one who was going to have to decide and to act. "The chances of Claud or anyone finding us on this hill are slim. We have to go up to the top."

Wini was silent as I stood, but Anneli was babbling apologies. "That's all done, now. Forget it. We have to do things right because we aren't going to get a second chance." I helped Wini to her feet, Anneli took the tiny zebra skin, and we faced uphill.

Our ascent started out as painfully slow as it had been for Wini and me for the last hour and more. Gradually we moved up to where the slope was no longer so steep and we were able to take a full half-dozen steps between rest stops. Just when the dimness had me wondering if we had better stop for the night, I found a small game trail. The lighter tan of the dirt in the trail stood out against the darker surrounding soil allowed us to keep on. The continuing drop in temperature and shallow gradient helped us almost as much as a drink of water might have done and we were able to keep going. The trail faded and disappeared just as we reached the ridge top.

"Anneli, which way is camp from here?" I asked.

"I think that way," she said and pointed. She was pointing well to the left of the direction that I thought we needed to go.

A darker hump against the night's darkness told me that there was a low rise not far in front of us. "Let's go up this little rise," I said. "Both Leighton and Claud should be at camp and they might have a light going so that we can get a bearing."

I rediscovered the real obstacle to traveling in the dark when we got thoroughly snared in some thorn bush that I couldn't quite see in the dark. The short walk through the thorns took us as long as it had to get to the ridge top from where we'd linked up with Anneli. I led us over to an acacia that I could see outlined against the stars and called a halt. "We're going to have to stop here. We're too likely to trip over a rock or get ourselves pocked in the eyes with thorns if we don't." I turned to Anneli and said, "You think camp is over there," and I pointed in the direction she'd indicated earlier.


"No. Maybe over there," she said and pointed off to the right, more in line with my earlier guess.

"With light, we might get ourselves straightened out. Now it's time to just set and conserve our energy and moisture." Anneli hung the foal's hide on the acacia and sat down. I took Wini's rifle from her and leaned it against the tree as Wini sat, too. "Cover your ears," I said and stepped a couple of paces toward where I thought camp was, then worked the bolt on my rifle and fed a round into the chamber. The shot that I fired as a signal round flared bright orange and it took a couple of minutes for my night vision to return. I went back to where the ladies were sitting and joined them. I fished around in my waist pack and found what I knew was in there; two pieces of hard candy. I handed Anneli and Wini each a piece of candy and considered building a fire. Although our cramps had diminished, the energy we'd expend and the moisture we'd lose with the effort of finding enough wood wasn't worth the small solace the flames would give, and I figured that if I couldn't see the light of a pressure lamp at camp from where we were, then they wouldn't be able to see the light of a fire, so I settled back on the gravelly ground.

After a half-hour or so of intermittent conversation, I suggested to Wini that she fire off her.270 as a signal round. She stood slowly and stepped away from Anneli and me, then loaded the chamber and fired. Anneli and I uncovered our ears and listened closely for the honking of the Land Cruiser's horn, but heard nothing. Wini and I had the only rifles in the area, so I knew that if Claud or Leighton heard a shot, they'd know it was us. The only other possible source of a shot would be a nocturnal poacher, and Claud would be equally as likely to investigate that. Between us, Wini and I had expended as much rifle ammunition in signaling as we had expected to use up in two week's worth of hunting. It was getting late enough that I was ready to cease signaling and see if we could find a way to get marginally comfortable for the rest of the night when I saw a light flicker briefly, then disappear.

"Did either of you see that?" I asked. Neither had, so I directed their attention to somewhere slightly west of the sliver of moon. "Keep your eyes peeled, AI said, "and plug your ears." I moved off to the east a few paces so that the orange pillar of my .375 wouldn't affect their vision and fired a shot.

It was several minutes later when Anneli called, "There!" Pointing off to the east, she said, "I saw a light there." About the same time as she spoke, a small white light made a few circles, then changed to a glow as the bearer used it to light his path. "Claud's coming," Anneli said.


"I sure hope he's bringing water with him," I said after a pause to build enough moisture in my mouth to be able to speak. It seemed to take all night, but it probably wasn't much more than an hour before we linked up. Whenever the light would disappear from sight for too long, we'd fire a signal shot. Sometimes it would reappear immediately, other times it took several minutes. Whenever the light reappeared immediately, it meant that Claud was saving his batteries and walking in the light afforded by the quarter moon. When it took longer to reappear, it meant that he'd been wandering through the thornbush in a low area. Eventually he wandered up the slight incline to us, then turned and shined his light on the ground where he'd walked up. Out of the night, Leighton walked up, stooped under the weight of the pack on his back.

"Three liters for each of you," Claud said as he pulled plastic bottles out of Leighton's pack. I helped Wini untwist the cap on her bottle, then turned to mine. That the water might still have a few contaminants was far from my mind as the first swallows slid down my throat. I deliberately drank slower than I wanted to, and cautioned Wini, "Take a few swallows, then come up for air. If you drink too fast at first, it'll cramp your gut."

Claud sat on the ground next to Anneli, and she spoke rapidly to him in Afrikaans without bothering to translate. Claud was silent and pulled a sleeping bag from his pack. I took another swig of water and said, �I think we�ll be able to go on back to camp tonight, Claud, now that we�ve got some water. Besides, I think we�ll need more. This sure helps, but it isn�t going to go very far.� From pervious bouts with severe dehydration, I knew that the three liters each of us had was only a beginning to what we=d need to fully recover.

�I�m staying here,� Claud said. �I�m going to go get the zebra hide at first light.� I made sure that he realized that I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. He�d already taken the hide to camp, hadn�t he? �Today things got a little mixed and I maybe didn�t make the correct choices. I left the mountain zebra hide in a thorn tree along the riverbed so that I could help Anneli climb this mountain. She was too tired and needed water to go any more, so I left her and went to camp to get water. At camp, Leighton came and said that you were at the bottom of the canyon and needed water, too.�

The language barrier had prevented me from talking with Leighton, but he�d obviously recognized that Wini and I were not in good shape when he left us. He�d stashed his zebra hindquarter and gone straight to camp, and Claud had gotten there not long before him. There, the two of them had filled empty plastic juice containers with water and started back to find Anneli where Claud had left her on the hillside. Enroute to where they thought she was, they�d heard our signal shots. The direction they needed to go had been a bit puzzling because of echoes, but they could guide on the first shot close enough to know that they needed to change their route.

By the time Claud had explained his version of events, Anneli, Wini, and I had finished the water that Claud and Leighton had brought. In the half-moon=s light I looked at the untouched water bottle that Claud had brought for his overnight stay. "How far is it back to camp?" I asked.


"Two, perhaps three, kilometers," Claud responded, jutting his chin out in the direction from which he and Leighton came. "Leighton has the small torch you gave him as a gift last night and he can guide you back."

"It's an hour's walk, then," I said. "Why don't you just come on back to camp with us?"

"I'm afraid the zebra hide will start to slip if I don't retrieve it as soon as I can so I can get salt on it," Claud said. "If I get going at first light, I think I can get it back to camp before it gets warm tomorrow."

We talked a little longer, but it was clear that we had absorbed about all the benefit from the water that we were going to get, and we needed to get going. Three liters is the majority of a gallon, but it wasn't sloshing in my belly; my body had already absorbed it all. The same was true of Anneli and Wini.

Leighton led off after we gathered up our gear and we walked mostly by the light of the half-moon. Whenever one of us, and it was never Leighton, got well and thoroughly tangled in a thorn tree, we'd use the small flashlight to unhook ourselves, then continued on under natural light. The land was a mixture of grays; the light gray of the open sand or grass was dotted by the darkness of rocks and completely hidden by the fuzzy blackness of thorn bushes. At close range, we could distinguish where the bush's crown was, and where we needed to avoid in order to keep from shedding a few more drops of blood on the thorns, but we were unable to get a sense of how far we had walked. Each low rise was followed by a drop into a depression. At last, we crunched across a long upward slope of fine rock, and at the top we stopped.

I could tell from the weary shuffling noises that the ladies were again beginning to suffer from a lack of water, just as I was. In the cool of the night, we'd been able to walk at a pace adequate for the darkness, but it was clear that if we'd had to wait for sunrise, especially without the water we'd been brought, we wouldn't have gotten far at all.

I looked down into the ravine we were about to enter. "Anneli, tell Leighton that we need to go slow on the way down. We're starting to get tired and this is no time to fall and break a leg." Anneli passed on my words in a rush of Afrikaans and I could see Leighton point while he made his reply.

She replied, "Camp is just there." I long ago learned to be wary of 'just there' as a descriptor of distance. To an African, 'there' can be any distance from snake-strike distance to farther than a single tank of gas will take a bakkie, and I said as much. "No, not far at all," Anneli replied. "Look on that hill," she said and pointed. "The moon is reflecting off the windscreen of the Land Cruiser."


It was, indeed, just there. There was a steep draw that we had to descend and the fuzzy blackness at the bottom told of the thorn thicket we'd have to cross. The attraction of almost unlimited water at camp was more than enough to get us moving again. "Anneli," I asked as we started down the rocky slope, "why didn't Claud leave a lantern on so we could find camp easier?"

"We don't have one," she answered. That seemed to be the story for a lot of things. Although neither Wini nor I minded camping without the amenities, it occasionally seemed that some of the basics were absent, as well.

When we reached the truck, Anneli switched on the headlights. Although the night was far from dark, the added light did a lot to lift our spirits, but the water did more. I filled our empty water bottles and we all settled in to drink our fill.

I thought about mentioning the contrast between having clean water and the mess we'd have had if the jerry cans were still full of the awful, green, polluted mess that Anneli had started with, but decided against it. Anneli clearly had been giving thought to the many bad decisions that had nearly wrecked this hunt. After a few more liters of liquid relief, we all pitched in and proceeded to make a proper night camp. Leighton got the fire going and we were able to turn off the headlights and still see to rustle up some supper.

With the pain of our thirst slaked, our bellies were reminding us that it had been a lot of hours since we'd eaten last. Leighton and I pulled a heavy wire screen over the fire to serve as our stovetop and we grilled some gemsbok steaks while Wini and Anneli fixed the accompaniment. "Spice it up," I said, as we dished things out. "You need to salt everything a lot heavier than you'd normally do." My advice wasn't really needed. Our bodies' need to replace the minerals we'd sweated out during the day made the food seem bland until we'd gotten really friendly with the salt shaker and other spices.

Once we'd eaten, Wini and I were able to appreciate the cooling breeze that played across our feet when we pulled our boots off.

"I think I've finally had enough to drink," Wini said when I took her empty water bottle and refilled it yet again.

"No you haven't," I replied, "and that goes for you, too, Anneli," I said. "Keep on drinking until you've had to visit a bush. Your body will tell you when you've got enough liquid inside of you. If you don't have enough to urinate, that means that the toxins in your body from the day's hardships are still there. If you don't drink enough to piss them out, you aren't going to get over the stress that your body's gone through." I'd put the teapot on and put in about twice the normal number of tea bags that I would for regular tea. I mixed that with some water to make iced tea with no ice. Leighton excepted, we sipped that. Leighton tried it, but decided that he didn't like it, even with sugar.


Iced tea seems to be a North American drink, and more American than Canadian at that. The first time I'd inquired at a restaurant in Windhoek about iced tea, the waitress had no clue about what I was wanting. I ordered a pot of tea with extra tea bags and a pitcher of ice water. She, along with John and Anneli had watched in fascination as I mixed the two together. After watching Wini and I drink some, they tried it and discovered that it wasn't as bad as it sounded.

It was an hour before we were able to start passing out some of the several gallons we'd all poured in. At some point during the night when Wini's and my bladder were synchronized, she asked, "What was that noise I heard just now?"

I snuggled a bit deeper into my sleeping bag after my chilling exposure to the night air and said, "Hyena. I guess Claud will be alright." Wini heard the chuckle in my voice and responded that she was more concerned about her zebra hide in the valley. I wasn't sure whether she was joking, but I didn=t stay awake wondering about it.

We were a bit lethargic in the morning, but after we'd had several cups of caffeine with some stiff water chasers, we felt fine. Leighton took his hatchet, knife, and several water bottles and headed down into the valley while we started to clean up the dishes and get camp in order. Anneli and Wini had just finished salting down the foal's skin when Claud came in, the mare's hide across his shoulders.

"Did you see Leighton while you were in the valley?" Anneli asked.

"No," Claud answered. "He'll be back when he's finished."

I wasn't feeling up to another hot, dry, hike, but I didn't like the idea of making him carry all the meat up by himself. "If he's not back by noon, I think we should go down and help him," I said.

By lunch time, we had the adult zebra hide salted. The two hides were spread on a plastic tarp and I was worried about the effect of the sun on the hides. I don't know if direct sunshine hurts a drying hide, but I've always read that a salted hide should be kept in the shade until it's dry. The problem was that there was no shade, so I laid some branches on the hides to act as spacers and laid another tarp over them for shade and kept the edges up so that any stray breeze could circulate.

After lunch I was loading up a pack with water bottles when Leighton came in with a zebra haunch over his shoulder. "Anneli, explain to Leighton, please, that after lunch I'll go back with him to help him carry some meat up."

Leighton's response, translated through Anneli, was that there was no need. He'd found a thorn bush and made a biltong-drying rack out of it. It was tall enough to keep hyenas from getting his meat, then he'd cut several more branches from other thorn bushes and woven them into the top to keep vultures off. He'd cut the entire zebra carcass, excepting only the one hindquarter, into strips and hung them on the thorns to dry. He'd return in a week or so with his donkey to collect all the biltong and take it back to his family.

It was getting too late in the day to make the drive out. That road hadn't improved any in the couple of days since we'd driven it, and it wasn't something any of us wanted to try at night. The default activity was for me to make us a few more gallons of non-iced tea. We took plenty of tea with us and hiked short distances to where we could look down into various canyons, coulees, and draws for klipspringers. The light exercise helped us recover from the muscle cramps we'd gotten the previous day, and the lack of klipspringers ensured that we didn't overdo the exercise.

The drive out the next day was made without mishap, although we did have one session of back-and-fill. When we'd come in, gravity had been on our side and we'd made it down and around the corner. The corner was just too narrow and tight for the Land Cruiser to negotiate in a single try on the way up. When we returned Leighton to his farmhouse, all five of his children thought that he certainly had to be the greatest dad there was when he handed down the fresh zebra haunch along with a promise of biltong to come.

Welcome to AR.

You and Wini have been in Alaska "cold soaking" so long that you need to decompress for the desert hunts!

A great story well told, and I think I need a cold drink now.

jim

There was this redhead once....

Mac

That is one of the best stories I have read. Only thing, you wasted it here. That should be relished up a tad and be in a major magazine (I DON'T mean Outdoor Life or Field & Stream) and a few hundred bucks in your pocket. I won't even think to add anything on this thread after that story.

Question: Your PH seemed a bit unprepared and as you stated, made a few wrong decisions. Other than that, were you happy with your hunt with him?

Great story, Rupert. You have indeed touched a tender spot for me when you talk about the outfitter not being prepared and/or making some bad decisions. My experience with Africans has been markedly better than with US outfitters. There are lots of reasons for that, and certainly many US outfitters and guides are very capable. Sadly, too many are not that good and some are downright dangerous.

Anyway, the preparation and capability of the outfitter is one issue your story raises. The other is the hunter's own mental toughness. By being both realistic and determined, sounds like you made your own luck. You're both alive and well today primarily because of your keeping calm when things began to go badly. A lot of folks don't have that attribute - my compliments !!

WOW
That is the best hunting story I've read in a long time. You could give Ruark a run for his money.

Rupert,
Very good indeed! Thanks for sharing this with us - I agree that it is somewhat wasted on us... But perhaps it will be a whole book one day?!

Regards,
Martin

What a trip! What a treat it was to read your story. We hunted mountain zebra at Erongo in Namibia so when your story started I expected to see some similarities. Guess what - NOT!

Thanks for sharing it.

Cindy

Rupert,

That was a unique story, and very well told! You should definitely quit your daytime job to become a full time author.

Congratulations!

Nice hunt! Too bad about the foal, something like that would really ruin my hunt, did it bother your wife?

Rupert



Excellent story.



The importance of carrying enough water in an arid area.

Meant to ask you before--what did you end up doing with the slunk skin? Very special skin, of course. You were lucky to get one. Hell, you were lucky to survive, but as someone else pointed out, you created your own luck. But, the slunk skin?

Absolutley one of the most riveting stories I've read in some time!

I sent two calls to voice mail because I didn't want to stop reading!!!

Thanks for sharing a very well written and enjoyable story!

Cheers,
Canuck