A seventy-five pounder passed, a ninety chased
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
A fresh old-bull track at six in the morning. Thirty minutes of circling for a stable wind. A perfect pair of tusks in the seventy-two to seventy-five pound class. I pass him. Two hours later Felix is on the roof calling me up urgently — a bull in the open who looks, from a long way off, like a ninety-pounder.
Fifteen degrees at first light. Dark clouds everywhere. At six we found a fresh old-bull spoor. Felix and the trackers read it for a couple of minutes and then we parked and the chase was on. Three hundred meters in, the dung was still warm. The sleeping spots from the night. Under four hundred meters from the road — thick — we caught him.
Big-bodied. Both tusks, from a distance, looked impressive. Half an hour of circling to settle the wind. When we had him, he was a very old bull. A perfect matched pair in the seventy-two to seventy-five pound class. Nerve short and small. I looked at him a long time. Then I passed him.
South then east to the fence. A quarter past ten, Xhau spotted a bull in the open a hundred and fifty meters off. Felix climbed on the cruiser roof to glass:
Stan, come up here and take a look. Stan, hurry up. Come up here. Stan, you must come see this. Stan, come up here now.
I was busy watering the plants and replied: I’m busy. Are you looking at my ninety-pounder?
On the roof, Felix pointed. The bull was walking broadside, right side to us, toward a thicket. I have shot an eighty-one pounder before, and a ninety-two. This bull looked like a ninety to me from the cruiser roof. Four-foot right tusk, thick. Left side hidden. Another road kill, I thought, getting down and gearing up.
A kilometer and a half to the first thicket. He had already walked in and out of it. Cat-walk through the second; he was in the third already. Then a fourth. On the fifth thicket we gave up the stalk and trotted — 3.6 kilometers total — to cut him off. We closed to fifty meters as he walked into a mud pan and lay down, then stood at our noise.
He was a young bull. Medium body. Long tusks. The open, treeless country and the distance had fooled us. Felix admitted it: nothing to measure him against — no tree, no other elephant. A big young bull looks like an old ninety in open ground.
After lunch we tried the southwest again. Still flooded. Still soft. A kilometer of reverse out of a bog before we could turn around. Four o’clock: fresh broken leaves, a fresh big bull track. Fifty meters in, hot dung. We trotted — twilight was coming. Lost him at four-thirty. The trackers recovered him. Two hundred meters more, hotter dung, far between the clumps: he was walking fast, he knew. By five-fifteen we hit his running tracks. Too late. Mark the spot.
On the way back, Felix and Xhau walked the road unarmed to fetch the cruiser and met an elephant bull at fifty meters. They went quietly into the bush on the left. Nothing happened. These things happen.