When we decided that the dart definitely had not taken, we went back to our vehicle and drove off maybe a quarter of a mile, but kept on watching across the plain to be sure she didn’t go down.  If she did, we’d have to go over to be sure she was all right.  As time went by, we kidded Pe’er about having used water in the syringe.  (The brew is really a hyper-potent morphine.).  We followed the cow as she slowly grazed around.  We watched that beast for about an hour.  Suddenly my wife said, “Look!”  The bull rhino had come from somewhere behind us, and now was walking by within 20 yards!  Everyone was surprised.

 

Pe’er is quickly out of the truck with the dart gun.  The wind is right, the bull can’t smell us and we aren’t making a lot of noise, and he just strolls by.  The wind is screeching, he is facing into it, and he has that poor vision.  I excitedly say.  “Give me the g___d___d gun!”  I creep up on him, get within 50 feet, and shoot him in the rear.

 

We watch him carefully, because there are many little gullies, and we are afraid he could roll into one and suffocate.  He staggers.  Then down he goes in only three or four minutes, but just before he falls, the vet goes up and plops a burlap bag over his eyes.  Then my wife, the guide’s helper and I guide and push this huge bull rhino around until he falls at the right place.  Our guide take some excellent pictures.  My wife’s video camera pictures don’t turn out, though.  She let the battery run dry.  I still remind her of that.

 

The thing that is surprising is how clean the animal is.  The skin is just like a coarse grade of sandpaper, but there isn’t any mud or even a tic on him.  We’d expected a load of ticks.  But there was no mud hole, and had he found one, any mud would have washed off in the rain that lasted all morning.  We had crawled around but fortunately the rain had drained off, though the grass was still wet.

 

When the animal went down, the vet used a portable drill to bore a hole in the base of the rhino’s horn, then ran in the microchip and plugged the hole with epoxy.  An old microchip was found embedded in the bull’s shoulder and the vet used it to take vital signs.  (By the way, being darted before doesn’t make them any more tame.)

 

This male rhino was huge, 8 to 10 feet long.  Close to the animal, I felt respect for it.  They’re beautiful.  And that power.  Its eye was a little piggy eye, and not menacing like some animals’, not rolling around.  Even if I could afford it, I wouldn’t shoot one.  Pe’er gave it a shot of antibiotics and an antidote to the drug, and we scattered quickly back to the truck.

 

We finished the day with “steak on a slate” at the hotel—a thick piece of slate is heated to about 600 degrees, then you choose a steak from a pile and plop it on the slate to cook.  You can feel heat radiating from the slate as you cook your steak the way you like it.  It had been an excellent day, and there were to be 14 days like it, not all of them “catch and release” as this one.

 

What are you waiting for?  A heart attack?

ONE DAY IN AN AFRICAN

SAFARI, or WHAT ARE YOU

WAITING FOR?

Carl (Edit) (told to Randy (Edit))

 

I wanted to go to Africa since I was a kid.  My wife Evelyn knew I wanted to go, and she kept saying.  “You want to go to Africa?  Well, let’s go!”  We had no kids but I just didn’t want to spend the money.  But then three guys I worked with, all younger than I, had heart attacks, and two of them died.  Our secretary picked up the phone, then turned to us in tears and said, “—— left her husband at home in the morning and when she got back he was dead on the floor.”  When I heard that news, I called my wife and said,  “We’re going to Africa!”  That was my first trip some years ago.

 

This trip was in 2000 to South Africa after a “white rhino.”  Not white, but white —South African for wide.  They are huge, perhaps 5000 pounds for a male, half again bigger than a black rhino.  Whytes have a wide, square muzzle like a cow, and a temperament much the same, black rhinos are smaller but very dangerous.  Also, they are unbelievably dense — I mean, they’ll charge a tree.  They’ve been protected since the 70’s.

 

A “PH” - Professional Hunter (aka Outfitter or Guide) — has to carry “life insurance” - but not for you—for the rhino!  If they have to shoot one for some reason, it costs $35,000!!  You shoot one even to save your life, and it costs $35,000.  Confused?  Well, on this day we were not out to shoot a rhino, but to dart one.  An animal is dropped with a dart, and an electronic-tracking microchip is placed into a hole drilled in its horn.  Darts for rhino are propelled by a super .22 with 10 times regular power.

 

In the field, we eventually spotted a family of white rhinos—a bull, cow and calf.  The cow was targeted because she had big horns, better to score  in the record book.  I crawled toward the cow, the vet (Pe’er) and PH following me.  When the vet said, “OK. Shoot ‘er,” I was flat on the ground and had to complain,  “I can’t shoot prone—my neck doesn’t work that way.”  So he said, unsympathetically, “Then shoot sitting!”  I squirmed around and sat up, but still it was a problem shot.  The altitude was taking a toll on me, it was hot but I couldn’t take off my jacket, I couldn’t see well from one eye from that angle due to a cataract, and the wind was whistling.  For all those and other good reasons a shooter might have, when I finally fired, my dart hit the rhino cow on the only point where it couldn’t take — her elbow.  There’s only place in the whole body that the thing won’t take, and that’s where it hit!  So the cow just wandered off, her calf with her.

 

There is a book which I call “The Good Guide’s Guide to Complimentary Comments to Hapless Hunters”.  If you aim at a beast’s shoulder but hit its rump, the guide will still say, “Good shot! Good shot!”  They’ll never say, “Your stink-go back home and practice.”  They’ll never say that.  I suppose he muttered “Good shot.”

 

As the cow continued browsing, unaffected, eventually we stood up.  But now the huge male rhino became curious.  The wind was blowing so he couldn’t get our scent and couldn’t hear us, and these rhinos can’t see worth a darn, but he looked us over and still made two or three short runs at us, about 10 feet each, but then he turned away and wandered off.  Our attention refocused on the cow and calf.

 

Earlier, I had asked the guide, “What if the bull should charge?”  His advice:  “Act like a wart hog.”  I thought, “What the heck does a wart hog have to do with it!”  He added as reassurance that he’d been on 70 of these hunts and never even raised his rifle.

Toys-for-Tots Benefit 900 Aggregate Indoor Pistol Match

 

Saturday, December 6, 2003, Sponsored by the Lincoln Rifle Club

Contact: Ronald (Edit), Match Director,[edit] .  E-mail:  [edit]

Rules: Current NRA Pistol Rules for approved tournaments will govern.

Entry Fee: Of $5.50, plus one new unwrapped toy.  This includes the NRA registration fee and range use fee.

Entry Limit: Entries will be limited to 3 relays of 9 competitors (27 entries).

Firing Starts: 8:00 A.M.  All matches will be squadded.  Tickets issued at paid registration.  NRA classification system will be used.

Firearm and equipment:  Any .22 caliber pistol or revolver as described in the current NRA Pistol Rules 3.4 will apply.