Old Ways Die Hard

Almost twins

Since 2004 I had the privilege and pleasure to work with a great engineer and greater human being, that I have the honor to call a friend, Tom Riley. Probably his major fault is that while living in Michigan he supports “The Ohio State University” football team.

Over the course of the “Orion Program” (named by me after the mythical hunter) Tom and I traveled extensively to China and especially Brazil. As I have family in Brazil I would travel on Fridays to be able to visit them on some weekends, and for many times Tom joined me.

We survived together the rigors of my sister’s children’s birthday party, enjoyed some good conversation over long hours driving, some moderate amount of libations (just “two fingers” measured in a rather lose way), shared great meals, and had a good time generally.

But two occasions stand apart. We went to a barbeque (or grill) at my sister-in-law Angela and her husband Mauro and something that I had never paid attention to, was suddenly clear to everyone in the party. Tom and my brother-in-law Dito (short for Benedito) look almost like twins.

You can notice the less than generous hair, grey mustache and glasses. I let you figure out who is who.

The other event happened when I took Tom to visit the farm where I grew up, Fazenda Taboa, about 25 kilometers from Orlândia.

Tom served in Vietnam about the same time that I was born (or a bit before that), and he is one of those persons that can talk about that time with a unique perspective and even some humor.

Apparently his main problem with the US Army was that when he landed in Vietnam he was not issued a personal weapon, as he was considered to be “support troop”. No long after that he had to scavenge a rifle and dug himself a foxhole to defend his base when it was attacked by either the Vietcong (or the NVA, I am not sure).

Tom told me that his position was about to be overrun when an army truck backed up to it, the tailgate dropped and a “Meat Chopper” opened fire. The “Meat Chopper” consists of four fifty-caliber Browning M2 machine guns mounted in an anti-aircraft support, but widely used as an antipersonnel weapon.

Tom tells that he was deaf for a couple weeks, but was terribly happy to be in that condition and alive.

To make a long story short, I decided that Tom should have the opportunity to shoot a couple white winged pigeons, one of my all time favorite game bird. I got my old 12 gauge CBC trap gun, a handful of shells and we started to wander around the house looking for the pigeons.

When Tom held that shotgun he changed. He held it at port all the time, started looking around very carefully, kept himself to the very center of the pathway, and walked very carefully, like stepping on eggs.

That situation surprised me a bit and I started joking with him, and then Tom told that this was the first time he held a firearm since he came back from Vietnam. Almost forty years late he was looking for potential ambush, booby traps or land mines.

Suddenly a pigeon flew from one of the very large mango trees and came straight towards us (a very uncommon thing for a weary pigeon to do). Tom shouldered the shotgun, aimed at the bird and fired. The small problem is that rather than hit the pigeon, he hit the high voltage electric wires overhead, and we had a brief, but unique, pyrotechnical show, almost like a miniature white phosphorus grenade.

Tom was fast enough to point out that his intention was to scare the hell out of the attacking pigeon so he could tell all his companions how dangerous and well armed we were, and therefore avoid any big engagement.

There is no doubt that old ways die hard.

I hope that Tom has enjoyed our relationship as much as I did. I know that he holds a grudge against me for introducing him to Brazilian pizza (at BRAZ, in Campinas) and creating a lower appreciation for the US variety. But, how could I tell he would enjoy it so much?

Capybara

Photo by Eloir Mário Marcelino

The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is the largest rodent in the world, and when I started hunting “big game” as a child and teenager in northern São Paulo state, the “Alta Mogiana” region of Brazil in the late 1970’s and 1980’s it was pretty much the only such wild animal that we had around.

My father would hunt capybaras with hounds that we called “Americanos”, since they basically are American Foxhounds. The way to hunt capybaras with hounds is to let the dogs loose in a swamp, the typical habitat for the capybaras. When pursued the capybaras natural instinct is to go for water, so we would “block” the local small river or stream with a net, which we would make with a length of chain-link fence, in order to make them surface.

A couple hunters would work the dogs while one or more shooter or blocker would stay at the net in order to shoot the capybara when it surfaced. Generally they would hit the net hard before they would surface or try to swim against the current. This would be a very trilling moment, and at one occasion a friend that my dad had invited hunting ejected all the shells from his rifle without firing a single shot, due to his level of excitement.

My dad at a time had a very large cannel. The master dog was a female named Canoa. Other names that I remember are Corumbá, Botafogo, Rosana and Sargento, the later a yellow dog, clearly not a foxhound. But by the early 1980’s a hepatitis epidemic killed most of the dogs, and eventually my father stopped hunting.

Around this same time I started hunting with some of the farmer employees, in a very different manner. We would either build an elevated shooting platform or look for a suitable tree at a proper place in the swamp, and then we would use calls to attract the capybaras. It looks almost like deer hunting, except we hunted at night and had to use flashlights to help us see what we were shooting at.

The call was made out of a flattened and then bent bottle cap, with a small role made on the top part. The bending and tuning of the call or “pio” is more of an art (almost lost I would say) than science.

The only guns that we had at the farm were shotguns. We had two 28 gauge side-by-side, a Rossi with exposed hammers (that was “my” gun), and a nice hammerless Beretta that was never used in the harsh swamp environment. Later on my dad bought two 12 gauges trap guns, and we started loading the shells with IDEAL slugs.

The first time that I went hunting with a gun was at “ the island”, a place upriver were we had built an elevated stand some days before. I took the Rossi 28 and Mr. Candinho, a long time farm employee and the same gentleman that lost a part of a finger to a dead alligator and shot a 21-foot anaconda out of my father’s arm (but those are other stories), took one of the 12 gauge guns.

We climbed the stand overlooking the “Córrego do Rosário” at dusk and waited for nightfall. The first animal to come by was an opossum or something similar. Later on two alligators swam the river. Finally after what felt like an eternity a capybara herd started to approach, taking their time to graze on the swamp vegetation.

As the herd was in front of us I had one of the most severe attacks of what I later came to know as buck fever and just shot my gun on the general direction of the herd. Immediately all capybaras dived in the river and disappeared.

Eventually I was successful on my chase for the big tasty rodent, but first adventures have a special place in our hearts.

By the way, today, June 10^th, my father would turn sixty-seven if he was still with us.

My New Book

This week my new book “Caçadas: Estórias e Outras Mentiras” (Hunt: Stories and Other Lies) was releases for sale in Brazil.

“Caçadas: Estórias e Outras Mentiras” brings a collection of short stories, tales and articles that spam almost four decades, from my childhood grounds in the northern part of São Paulo state in Brazil, to Africa and the Unites States, and the central theme is hunting and firearms. Besides my own pictures, the book also brings original illustrations from German artist Ralf Birch and cover created by the designer Simonni Breviglieri.

“Caçadas: Estórias e Outras Mentiras” is being sold by my friend Eloir Mário Marcelino at Recargamatic (recargamatic@recargamatic.com.br, phone + 55 15 3282 1666 or +55 15 3282 1584).

Poachers

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of a poacher (noun) is 1: One that trespasses or steals; 2: One who kills or take wild animals (as game or fish) illegally. They also say that the term was first used in 1614, and that would be aligned with the social changes in Europe and the private ownership or exclusive use of wild game by certain strata of society (more often that not, the king and “his friends”) and the taking of those same animals by the underprivileged class or classes.

Since I understand that there are certain persons or populations, commonly known as subsistence hunters, that do take game not always legally for their own survival even in this “modern” times, personally I would complement the definition of a poacher as “one who kills or take wild animals (as game or fish) illegally and for a profit.”

One of my first personal experiences with poachers or poaching was during my 2005 safari in South Africa. If I remember correctly during my first day out, my professional hunter Frans Bussiahn spotted a single drop of blood as we walked a trail to spot for kudu, and his alarm bells went immediately on.

He started to carefully scrutinize the area for any tracks, spoor or more blood, but we could not find any other traces. As we continued on our track to an advantage point to glass for kudu Frans mentioned that “poachers are the lowest form of life form on earth, even lower than child molesters.”

That is a very strong statement, but when you consider that poaching was responsible for the slaughter of uncountable elephant herds during the 1970’s bush wars in Southern Africa, wiped out wild game in most of Kenya, and currently is driving the African rhinoceros into virtual extinction, I am not sure that I would disagree to Frans.

The next time was in North Dakota in 2009 while on a pheasant hunt. Before meeting in New England, ND, my friends Bob and Rick had been grouse hunting in Montana, and both of them came across the skulls (with attached antlers) of winter killed deer, and not knowing better they collected them as souvenirs.

Then one afternoon Bob and I were hunting a fantastic piece of non-posted private property (which is legal to hunt in North Dakota) when the local game warden came by. Bob already had his limit and was at the truck and I was about a half mile away. While I walked back I saw that Bob was getting something from the truck.

I generally hunt upland birds with a side-by-side shotgun, so when I arrived the warden said that he did not have to my gun for the maximum legal three shells capacity and politely asked me for my license.

At this time I noticed that Bob was worried and that “his” deer skull was at the warden’s truck, and that Bob was not looking very happy.

The warden then explained that in most Western states it is illegal to pick-up, or in many cases even touch, any skull of a dead animal with antlers or horns attached to it, while it is completely alright to collect shed antlers.

The reason is that many poachers will shoot a trophy animal out of season when they are most vulnerable, and abandon the animal to rot in the woods, returning several months later to “find” a trophy rack that can be sold for a large sum of money.

In order to complicate matters, the fact that that particular skull had been picked-up in Montana, and we were now in North Dakota could be qualified as a federal offense.

I am proud to be a hunter, and unhappily I experienced more than once the heart breaking pain of losing a wounded animal, after a long and unsuccessful search for it, and I have trouble of thinking of a more disgusting act than abandoning an animal on purpose, wounded or dead, and then attempt to profit from this act.

While in most of South Africa game is private property and the game ranching is way of the land, under the United States conservation model, wild animals are the property of the people, and only become yours or mine property once properly tagged. Thus, while in my first exposure to poaching in Africa Frans was being robbed, any poacher acting in the US is actually stealing from you and me.

Our incident in North Dakota end well enough. The warden was extremely polite and reasonable, and said that if it was OK with us he would just apprehend the skull and not pursue any further action.

We got some education on a rather ugly side of the great outdoors, and that made me think that perhaps Frans was right after all.