To Hunt a Lesser Kudu – Follow a Poacher! By Geoff Wainwright

To Hunt a LESSER KUDU

– Follow a Poacher!

Real Africa starts north of the Zambezi where game ranches are in limited numbers, unlike in South Africa where wildlife is protected behind fences by private owners. In the vast open areas of Zambia and Tanzania game roams free and is poached by poverty-cursed villagers. The game departments are poorly financed and understaffed, and anti-poaching plays an essential role in trophy hunting and conservation. I had joined the ranks of the Honorary Wildlife rangers in Zambia as a professional hunter and worked in the Kafue and Luangwa areas. There was rampant poaching there and we arrested the suspects. However, while on our annual biltong hunts in the GMAs (game management areas) we were prohibited from hunting without police trained in wildlife management.

Then, because of corruption in the game department, I crossed the border, continued to hunt clients, and put my anti-poaching skills into practice in Tanzania. While in Masailand I was guiding a German named Thomas Straff, and one night after a day’s hunt for lesser kudu we were relaxing at the campfire. My waiters were about to give Thomas a jar of honey for his wife in Germany when their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the distant thud of a fired muzzleloader. They looked at us and simultaneously cursed – Majanjile! –Poachers! …

We were in dry semi-desert country with thorn thickets that in places arched overhead. We were hunting for a recordbook lesser kudu. Our hunting block was declared out of bounds to villagers by the game department because of the poaching, and the scouts were given an incentive: for each poacher arrested and successfully prosecuted, the scouts were paid a handsome bonus. Yet each day in the early morning, my tracker on the back of my vehicle would point to fresh bicycle tracks made during the night on what we loosely called the main road.

This particular day, my game guard Oboto and the crew jumped down to read the signs. Our suspect had carried a heavy load on his bicycle carrier. He had turned off the main track and carried on riding between thickets. We followed his bicycle track at a snail’s pace, drove over low bushes, and squeezed through and around haystack-high thorny scrub while still on the lookout for a kudu, occasionally seeing fresh kudu tracks and droppings.

Suddenly, at two hundred meters we stopped as a group of kudu began to cross over an open space. Thomas rested his rifle rested on the shooting sticks. We waited as the females showed, followed by the some young males. We passed on them, and pressed on, never deviating from the cyclist’s tracks, often spotting dik-diks scurrying out of sight. Thorn thickets scratched up against the Land Cruiser's sides with a screeching sound.

Suddenly Oboto's head appeared at my window, and he told me to stop. He asked for my binoculars and climbed onto the roof. For a few tense moments nobody spoke. My glasses were shared between my crew. Then the silence was broken by their excited repeated whispering of “Indio!” (Yes! Yes! in Swahili.)

I got out of the cab, joined the men and focused my binoculars. Three hundred meters away was an ancient baobab, and high up in the fork between the bulbous branches a man in a cloud of smoke was busy raiding a beehive. We left the truck, our rifles slung over our backs, and quietly stalked and got to within a hundred meters of the tree. Aware there could be other men, we checked the surrounds - nothing. His bicycle was leaning against the tree trunk, a plastic container strapped on the carrier. The man remained oblivious to our presence, but angry bees buzzing around our heads decided us to back away and took cover behind some high bushes.

We watched, as with a rope he lowered

a basket of honeycomb to the ground. Hand over foot, he used hard wooden pegs knocked into the soft bark, and clambered down, his arms flailing about swatting stinging bees. We sneaked up behind him, and Oboto shouted and pointed his .458. The frightened poacher staggered backwards and fell on his back.

He was in his sixties, dressed in tattered overalls, an African axe hooked over one shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot. We kept our distance as Oboto started to question him and pointed to his bicycle. Fearfully the poacher admitted his container was filled with water. We took him into custody and put his honey, bicycle and container on board my vehicle. We left the baobab and reached our camp at twilight. Our captive, fit for his age, jumped down, his face swollen from the bee stings, eyes just slits. He greeted my amused staff with a smile and offered them some honey. In the truck’s headlights Oboto broke a comb into pieces, and flicked off any bees still stunned by the poacher’s smoke.

Thomas and I showered away the day’s dust and fatigue, leaving the camp staff to suck the liquid gold and chew and spit out the wax. And it was there by the fire, the honey jar next to Thomas’s beer, when we heard muzzleloader shot. Within minutes Oboto hurried out of the dark into our firelight, holding his .458 Bruno, and spoke urgently in Swahili. I apologized to Thomas, and we left him in the care of my waiters.

We got into the truck, with the honey collector between my skinner and tracker holding on in the back. I smiled inwardly - my staff had named him Puffy because of his swollen face. Our headlights switched off, we made good speed over the white ribbons of tyre ruts as Puffy, a Masai by tribe, gave directions to Oboto. He said to turn off our main track into unfamiliar territory. We slowed to a snail’s pace and wound our way through stands of scratchy thorn trees, and on high ground I cut the motor.

Puffy pointed to an orange glow in a dark sea of endless thicket. Oboto questioned him, and he admitted that the water on his bicycle was for the indicated group of poachers. Their camp was on the bank of a dry riverbed and their underground water supply had finally dried up. Puffy agreed to guide us to their whereabouts in daylight.

On our return to camp we flushed a pennant-winged nightjar. With its two wing feathers much longer than its dark body, it fluttered daintily against the grey night sky, only to land again. Thomas welcomed us back at camp, and after a pleasant evening together we retired for the night.

With the rays of early morning sunlight on the horizon we left camp, Puffy crammed in the cab between Thomas and me. An hour later we drove down a steep bank onto the riverbed littered with elephant dung. Twice we passed easy-toshoot non-trophy kudu bulls. Our route upstream was blocked by flood debris, so

we cleared a way through and continued. By mid-morning ribs of rock were scraping the chassis of the Land Cruiser.

Then a spiral of smoke above a bend in the track indicated the poachers’ camp a short distance away. We came to stop. Puffy whispered to Oboto, using hand movements to illustrate which path to take. I quietly I drove up onto the bank and hid the truck in riverside foliage, and with leafy branches we swept away the truck’s tracks. We left Puffy handcuffed to the bull-bars and threatened him shoot him if he betrayed our presence to his accomplices.

Oboto took the lead, and Thomas’s back-up rifle .30- 06 was proudly carried by our tracker, the shooting sticks by the skinner. We soon found the poachers’ worn footpath used to transport bush meat on bicycles to distant markets. Careful not to leave our boot tracks, we kept it in sight and followed its twists and turns, every so often stopping to glass ahead. The poachers were already hunting in the vicinity as we heard the distant dull thuds of their muzzleloaders.

Mindful of Puffy's advice to be cautious, we walked round a tight thicket corner and suddenly ahead of us was exposed to the silent poacher’s camp.

There were thatched cone-shaped huts covered in dried branches and the smell of smoked meat on the drying racks. Next to four bicycles on the ground were fireblackened hearth stones. Thomas pointed out lesser kudu horns wedged in a fork of a tree. Like thieves we sneaked from hut to hut, peering through the low doorways. In the dim light were four mattresses made from grass, the soiled blankets strewn about, smelling of sweaty bodies. A dog suddenly started to bark in the distance, the barking growing louder by the minute.

We made a snap decision to leave. Oboto snatched up a wildebeest tail and swept away our tracks. Our party hurried out of camp to the closest thicket, and on hands and knees we burrowed inside to hide. We had a view over the camp, and to our back was the dry riverbed. The dog suddenly appeared between the huts and vanished from sight. We heard the sound of voices, and two men out of the expected four came into view pushing a bicycle, a kudu draped over the carrier. At the sight of the impressive horns that would be left to rot with the others, Thomas muttered in German to himself, and shook his head dolefully. He then turned his attention to the river and tapped me on the shoulder. I raised my glasses in the direction he was looking to see a kudu bull standing in the shade of the river bank, its head crowned with exceptional horns. Thomas and I sneaked away from our crew and followed the river bank. It was an easy shot from the shooting sticks to the opposite side, a soft point .375 heart shot. The kudu collapsed onto the sand.

Oboto cursed us, imagining his bonus money gone as he thought the two poachers in the camp would have bolted at the shot. However, they must have assumed it came from one of their accomplices, because they took no notice and remained in their camp.

We sneaked back and waited for the other henchmen to return. When they arrived they just left their muzzleloaders leaning up against a tree out of their reach. The element of surprise was in our favour, and we arrested them at gunpoint. We had to release Puffy on the grounds of no evidence - my sweet-toothed staff had eaten all the honey.

Thomas’s kudu hunt was finally over, and my hunter and I left Masailand to hunt a sitatunga.

But I sometimes wonder if Oboto ever got paid his bonus for arresting the poachers.

Geoff was born in Que Que (now Kwe Kwe) in 1945, and educated in Kitwe and Mufulira in what was Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, and he worked in school holidays in his father’s gun shop. His father gave him a BSA 7x50.7 and at age 25 he joined Zambia Safaris and graduated to a .375 H&H. He became an Honorary Wild Life Ranger and moved to Tanzania and joined Wengert Windrose Safaris. He has worked for numerous outfits and hunted in South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Congo. Geoff still does the occasional hunt and is author of a book “Hunting for Trouble".