By Dieter Noli

It is a grand thing to be a hunter in Africa. You go out there and become part of nature. The trappings of civilisation are left behind. Whatever role you may have played under ceilings, surrounded by walls and interacting with people, is now irrelevant. Suddenly you are a predator, walking shoulder to shoulder with lions, leopards and cheetahs, a force to be reckoned with, on par with elephants, rhinos and hippos … You are an African hunter, a gentleman and a sportsman, taking part in one of the most red-blooded activities ever devised, which is hunting on foot in Africa. Or perhaps you are not. It all rather depends on what exactly your idea of African hunting is.

If you are on a game farm that is stocked with nothing but antelope, you may be hunting in Africa, but you will not be a true African hunter, especially if you are sitting in a hide that is located above a salt lick or next to a water hole. Walking-and-stalking may make things slightly more difficult, but it is still canned hunting, no matter how large the can is. While such an approach to shooting game may be perfectly acceptable in Europe or America, it is most certainly not what African hunting was originally all about.

African hunting was traditionally accepted as carrying an element of risk. And it was precisely this glorious element of risk that formed the main attraction for the sportsmen who descended on Africa in droves during the latter years of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. They had had their fill of European-style game harvesting, so they came to Africa for the danger, more often than not in the form of the Big Five – elephant, rhino, buffalo, leopard and lion.

In many areas dense bush and stock-killing tsetse, combined with the absence of both road and rail, meant that the African hunt originally had to be conducted on foot, with porters carrying the equipment. The hunter was literally on his own two feet. And for two reasons he was also on the menu. Firstly, the animals he was hunting could turn on him when wounded. Secondly, there was also the very real chance of his bumping into something that he was not hunting, but which just happened to be very hungry or in a bad mood. The entire hunt was, after all, walking-and-stalking. Role reversals with unfortunate and often lethal consequences for the hunter could not be ruled out. The African hunt was defined by the unparalleled danger it entailed.

Ah, you point out, but what about India? Elephants and buffaloes, I say! And man-eating tigers, what? Yes, indeed, never mind the fact that the elephants and buffaloes were pint-sized and tame compared with the African ones. The tigers, which are basically striped lions with no mane, were generally hunted from the relative safety of platforms in trees called “machans”, or from elephant-mounted boxes called “howdahs”. That may have been interesting, but by African standards it was not exactly dangerous.

With the notable exception of Colonel Corbett, who developed the elimination of man-eating tigers into an art form, walking-and-stalking tigers was simply not indulged in, old chap. It tended to shorten things, you know … like your arms, legs and life. It follows that, while it was indeed possible to hunt tigers in a dangerous manner, the fact that this was not generally done greatly reduced the social value of a tiger trophy. What, after all, is the point of having a supposedly dangerous animal hanging out of your wall or spread-eagled in front of the fireplace if “everybody knows” that it was probably taken in perfect safety?

And what of America’s bears, mountain lions and buffaloes? Well, let’s see. The buffaloes were shot down in droves like cattle. Bears eat berries. And as for mountain lions … well, I don’t exactly recall any reports of a group of large felines having held up the building of a railway line in America for several weeks by eating a substantial portion of the construction team. That kind of thing only happened in Africa, before Lt. Colonel Patterson dealt with the lions known as the “Man-eaters of Tsavo”. And anyway, if America was absolutely crawling with dangerous game, why did its ultimate he-man president, Teddy Roosevelt, refuse a second term in favour of a two-year safari in Africa?

Even more telling as to the substantial nature of African game is the fact that Roosevelt, in spite of being armed with the most powerful American rifles of his time, found himself seriously under-gunned until he resorted to using a British weapon. Clearly, whatever rifles the Americans had developed to eliminate all opposition from man or beast in the New World, just did not cut the mustard in Africa. And when they finally developed a big game cartridge “of their own” after WWII, all they did was to replicate the ballistics of Britain’s .450 Nitro Express of 1898, calling it the .458 Winchester Magnum. They even used a bullet of exactly the same calibre, being .458 of an inch.

It follows that the original African hunt brought with it a thoroughly sportsmanlike threat to life and limb, a threat that could not be replicated in any other part of the world. That is what formed its uniqueness and its value. If European-style game harvesting was “hunting”, then what Africa had to offer was something else. And, as the example of the Indian tiger showed, it was not so much what you hunted, but how it was hunted. In modern parlance, an appropriate expression practically leaps at you: Africa offered extreme hunting.

What about today? Does Africa still present opportunities for extreme hunting? In theory it does, since sufficient funds will, for instance, secure you a Big Five hunting experience in the Limpopo bushveld and Zimbabwe, while buffalo are available for shooting in Tanzania. The problem, of course, is that practically all the hunting opportunities are to be found either in national parks or private game reserves. If these areas receive enough human traffic, the animals inhabiting them will gradually become rather tame, resulting in very easy “kills”. Back home in America, of course, the yawning lion quickly becomes a roaring, charging one. It follows that, while the concept of “fair chase” is all very well, it is also very variable. One man’s “vast wilderness area” is another man’s zoo …

Given enough money, time and effort, however, it should be possible to be able to track down an area in Africa where dangerous game not only abounds, but is also really dangerous. That is the point at which you can start thinking along the lines of extreme hunting.

Please note, however, that you must most certainly not go after large or dangerous game with your bow and arrow. You would, in fact, be extremely ill advised to even think of it. This is simply a matter of stopping and dropping power. Arrows have neither. Dropping power can admittedly be obtained by means of anointing your arrows with a liberal dose of extremely virulent poison. Stopping power … well, since the spinal cord will be hidden behind the head in a charging animal, you will have to change to bodkin points, penetrate the skull and hit the brain, won’t you?

With all due respect, I do not believe that such a feat is possible. When used against a mild steel plate, a chisel-headed, four-sided bodkin point will indeed penetrate. Then, since the head is slightly wider than the shaft, it will “cut free” the shaft, allowing it to follow unhindered in the wake of the point – just as a broadhead will “cut free” the shaft when hitting a thick hide. The hole made in the hide by the broadhead is larger than the shaft, so the shaft has no resistance, resulting in very good penetration into the vitals. Fresh bone, however, is flexible. As a result, it allows the arrowhead to pass, then clamps down like a disc brake onto the shaft, rapidly bringing the arrow to a halt before it has the chance to reach anything vital. The thicker the bone, the bigger this problem. So please, don’t pull the plug on your gene pool by trying for that head shot on the elephant with your bow, will you?

Yes, you may well ask. If you are not supposed to go after the Big Five, how on earth are you going to have an extreme bowhunt? Well, you simply bowhunt small to medium-sized antelope in an area that is extensively frequented by wild (as in not tame) and dangerous game – preferably without the assistance of a rifleman to back you up.

But, even if you do have backup along in the form of a game ranger or a professional hunter armed with a suitable rifle, you will still rather suddenly find a new, infinitely exciting and wonderfully terrifying world opening up in front of you. And there will be so much to learn … new, interesting things which will keep you alive.

In addition to trying to find the animals that you are hunting, you will have to consider those that could conceivably be hunting you. You will also have to bear in mind those that, in spite of not really being interested in eating you, may just be induced to attack you if you should accidentally disturb them. You will furthermore have to take into consideration what experiences the animals in your area may have been subjected to, and how these experiences may have affected their behaviour.

Take the example of elephants. If you are in a region where they have been subjected to the attentions of poachers armed with bows and poisoned arrows, there is a very real risk of them instantly charging the twang of a bowstring, enthusiastically annihilating anything they happen to find. As a result, it would be unwise to use a bow within earshot of an elephant under such conditions.

Welcome to the concept of extreme bowhunting. If you think about it, anything else is not even hunting – it is merely playing with your food.