In times of stress their movements are virtually nothing but blurs, a very unnerving fact at a time when you yourself are probably scared witless. I beckoned to the remaining grounded tracker to go with me out into that black, high grass where all those lions were loitering. Since the sun was already down, they ran as fast as they could toward the sound and actually caught up with a big lion within shooting distance. There have been literally hundreds of man-eaters reported in the area since 1900 and, as the case of Peter Hankin so horribly demonstrates, there is still not much of a shortage.One pride, for example, the Ubena man-eaters, had been in operation for a full ten years before George Rushby, a game officer of Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and one of the greatest man-eating lion hunters of all time, began to put the screws on them in their thirty by fifty mile range in 1942. Under Darwin City Council Bylaws Regulation 103, it is an offence to camp or sleep in public places . Death in the Long Grass: A Big Game Hunter's Adventures in the African Bush PDF EBOOK DOWNLOAD Description Peter Hathaway Capstick's 'Death in the Long Grass' continues to be one of the true classics of written hunting tales. Publication date 1989 Topics Big game hunting -- Africa, Big game hunting, Africa Publisher New York : St. Martin's Press Collection inlibrary; printdisabled; internetarchivebooks Digitizing sponsor Kahle/Austin Foundation Contributor Internet Archive It was still breathing. I marked aspot on the trail that would allow me to go over the edge out of her reach. With humor, grace, and supreme tension, Capstick takes the reader . I had refilled the magazine but was afraid to shoot since I did not know where the other lion was and dared not risk a zero-range charge while working the bolt. . We got within what seemed like inches of that lion, when he let out a fine roar, almost as if he didn't like us there. He must have already cleared it through my company or he wouldn't have known I was free. Suppose you might spare a day or so to pop over there and sort him out? My only complaint is that it's not 4 times longer. A book I have read and re-read, Capstick being a master story-teller whether recounting personal incidents, or simply relaying some of the tales that abound of hunting dangerous game in Central Africa. At five yards she gathers her hind legs beneath her flattened, lean body, the hind claws gripping the earth for purchase. In East Africa there are several cases recorded of a lion eating his victim within the sight of paralyzed onlookers.I still get the old flutter-guts when I recall the night in Ngamiland, Botswana, in 1970 when I was sharing a tent with Daryll Dandridge, a fellow professional hunter at the time with Ker, Downey, and Selby Safaris, Ltd. Our campwas pitched hard on the edges of the Okavango Swamp, and, the night being warm, we had not zipped the ends of the tent closed. Catch-22, Afro style. But he did not see the paw stroke that tore through the skin of his forehead and grated on his skull bone. Behind its bleached cloth and netting walls, a slender white man sleeps fitfully, tossing in the humid spring silence as greasy sweat darkens the sheets of his camp bed. We drifted slowly through the bush listening for the crunch ofbone or a low growl as the lion fed in the leafy stillness. Leopards, on the other hand, almost never make a sound when charging. Reprinted by permission. Two months after the attack his head was still swollen twice the normal size, and he continued to suffer from dizziness and ringing in the ears. First among them is his inclination to charge from close quarters where only a brain or spine shot will anchor him. People were climbing on top of trucks, scaling trees and shouting in terror. I am, however, a believer in the sooner-or-later theory, sort of an offshoot of Murphy's Law, which, paraphrased, states that if you stick your neck out with the stuff that bites back enough times, you're going to get it sooner or later. I have never seen his like since.I am indebted to John W. Cox, my good friend and a noted sportsman, once the owner of such larger-than-a-breadbox items as Yankee Stadium, for permission to print an account of his adventures one dark night in the 1950s in Chad. Without releasing his grip, the lion tugged, gently pulling the body from between the hut and the sleepers a few inches away. As the thousand grains of lead tore through the roof (happily without setting fire to it withmuzzle blast), there was a tremendous roar that blended with the twin crash of the shots. For amoment she hesitates, but her ancestral fear of the smell is washed over by the desperation of her hunger. He wasn't certain what had awakened him but realized that he could hear the breathing of a heavy animal just through the grass of the walls. Somehow he tugged it free, the sudden release making him fall backward. All indications are that the end is far from near.One of the most consistant danger points of this area is the Luangwa Valley of Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia), a northern tributary of the Zambezi and one of the better hunting grounds of Africa. I did not make that walk ever again without a rifle.Another night in Sidamo Province, just across the Ethiopian border from the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, I was camped with the late, great Christian Pollet, a famous professional hunter from the Congo. And, remember, those are just the ones we know of.The scores of other man-eaters in central and south-east Africa, such as the Mpika lions, the Revugwi man-eaters,the Chabunkwa lion that I killed, and literally dozens of others, less famous because of remoteness, have killed without question many tens of thousands of people in this century alone. I could see the tightness of his knuckles on the knobby, thornwood shaft of the spear. Seeing and hearing nothing, he called Harvey's name softly. ""As I could see lions within what looked like biting distance, I started blasting away with the .308. Few men can say they have known Africa as Peter Hathaway Capstick has known it -- leading safaris through lion country; tracking man-eating leopards along tangled jungle paths; running for cover as fear-maddened elephants stampede in all directions. I lit a cigarette from the flat thirty-pack of Matinees. while her husband sat nearby chanting, playing a small drum. By visual count we had eleven lions wandering around the trucks and tents at once, possibly a couple more in the murk we could not see. beer. Inside the travel-dented locker lie three flat five-packs of Kynoch 300-grain soft-point cartridges for the battered, silver-worn, old rifle, a Cogswell and Harrison, .375 Holland and Holland Magnum in caliber. In this case the price of the binge wasn't a headache, but death.The headman pointed to the north when I asked him in Fanagalo where the lion had carried his kill. Over. "Right, Cyril," I answered. A low, incredibly sinister rumble welled up through the dark, and the hut shook under a heavy shock. A pulsing fountain burst from the wound in a tall throbbing geyser as I thrust it back again, working it with all the strength of my arms. We'll never know, but the odds surely tilt in that direction. Impasse. Forty yards away, collapsed in a heap of tan putty, lay the dead lion. His wit, metaphors, descriptions all resonate--British. I went back and once more put the gunbearer across my shoulders and headed for the village.Silent's injuries far from dampened the celebration of the Sengas, a party of whom went back to collect our shirts and inspect the lion. In a blink it was gone into the high grass, but not before I was able to stick a .375 into it with undetermined effect. You may blow a hole in his heart big enough to accommodate a navel orange, but in his condition of hyperadrenia, there will still be enough oxygen in his brain to carry his charge for a surprising distance and enough moxie left over to turn you into something that would give a hyena the dry heaves. There is no form of lion hunting that is not exciting, but this is one of the methods most likely to continue fluttering your stomach twenty years after you first tried it. Peter Hathaway Capstick's 'Death in the Long Grass' continues to be one of the true classics of written hunting tales. As thrilling as any novel, as taut and exciting as any adventure story, Peter Hathaway Capsticks. St. Martin's Press, 1978-01-15. I didn't, of course. When I dropped him off at his village, near my safari camp, his fat, young wives seemed to concur as they bore him off to his hut with much giggling.The Sengas retrieved the body of the lion's last victim, which was about half-eaten. They are also, I can promise you, the most consistently nasty. To treat your dead grass, run a lawn tiller over the grass and water it every day for a week to help it . The singlemindedness of a man-eater was amply demonstrated by C. A. W. Guggisberg in his definitive work on lions, . Interesting choice. There was no way I could possibly make it the seventy-five yards back to the rifle. Willy De Beer was not most men. Horn of the Hunter: The Story of an African Safari. , a wraparound loincloth. We left them behind with the water bag after I removed the cartridges from mine. One pussycat that wasn't going far. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price. ""Where were my guns? It is chancy hunting, since the lion is on the move at this time of day, and, in thick bush, you are unlikely to see him until he is quite close.Another extremely interesting form of lion hunting is practiced mostly in arid countries such as the. He shrugged with typical African fatalism. De Beer, completely blind and helpless, could only scream as the lioness ate him alive.Ten feet away, petrified with terror, Colin Matthews stood watching the cat ravage his father-in-law. It is normal between a hunter and his gunbearer/tracker that the first spoors while the other covers the possibility of an ambush charge. The Man-eaters of Tsavo treated the project as one extended buffet table, their accomplishment having been to have eaten more imported Indian coolies than it took to film. 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