The Perfect Hunt

 “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Sylas and his parents (my daughter and her husband) got to “The (Soon To Be) World Famous Meirelles Deer Camp” Thanksgiving night after I had shot my buck. On Black  Friday morning the ladies went to town while the gentlemen had more pressing priorities, specially sighting in or getting used to rifles, in Sylas case a brand new Ruger American chambered in 350 Legend.

For some reason Sylas was very afraid of the potential recoil from his new rifle and it was a battle, involving tears and whining and other unpleasantries, to have him shoot the very mildly recoiling gun a couple times in order to get ready for the afternoon hunt.

Food and time riding my ATV erased any bad feelings from the morning target shooting session and by 3:30 PM we were leaving the more than comfortable club house with a lot of hunter-orange to provide both legal compliance and an extra measure of safety, even if we were hunting private property from an enclosed elevated blind.

Either by design or accident there is a concealed parking spot just yards from the blind and transporting the gear upstairs was no chore at all. Once we were properly and comfortably installed I loaded Sylas’s rifle and placed it securely against a corner and got my most indispensable piece of gear: a pair of binoculars. I will not even touch my rifle before I have identified a potential target through binoculars and assure that a shot would be safe.

But I digress, this story is about Sylas. No more than a handful of minutes after we arrived, a pair of very young deer, probably buck fawns came out from the wood line just west of us and started browsing the late fall vegetation and Sylas asked if he could shoot one of them. My answer was that he could shoot either of them, but should he? They were very young and small deer that would result in very little, but delicious, venison. Was one of those young deer the trophy he was looking for? Besides, while some people use artificial decoys to attract deer, we could just wait and let those fawns be our live decoys. Their presence would provide confidence for other animals that could potentially come into the clearing.

Nothing reinforces a lesson as well as real life practice. I had barely ended my lecture when I saw a brown shape moving rapidly inside the wood line about a hundred yards away. I told Sylas to pay attention as an animal much larger than the ones in front of us was just inside the woods, although I couldn’t tell wether it was a buck or a doe.

Things started to pick up pace as a buck emerged from the woods and slowly walked straight to the blind! I passed the binoculars to Sylas so he could evaluate the buck and the inevitable question came: “Can I shoot him?”

“Of course you can, but he is a bit far away and facing us. Why don’t you wait a little for him to get closer and turn broadside.” 

From that point on it was like if the buck was being remotely controlled. At 54 yards the buck stopped and turned left, showing his right side to us. At this point I handled Sylas his rifle and he rested it on the window rail. The Leupold VX-R was already turned on and the little red dot provided an accurate reference for the young hunter. “Fufu I can’t take the shot. There is brush in front of the deer and at Hunter Safety they said that it is not safe to shoot an animal behind vegetation.”

I asked him to wait until the buck took a step forward and to make sure to aim at a spot directly up from the front leg and about the middle of the shoulder. Again, like by remote control the buck took that important step forward.

After the shot rang and the buck bolted towards the woods Sylas was positive. “I know I hit! The tail went down and he crunched downwards. Only deer that are hit react like that.” Not a bad observation for a ten year old boy.

During the next several minutes we put away our gear, I took off my bibs and heavier coat and got ready for the tracking job. After making sure that the rifle was ready but safe we climbed down and walked towards the spot the buck stood when shot and put nose to the grind stone looking for that magical first drop of blood eventually spotted by the young hunter himself.

Before moving forward we talked about how, if we lost the trail, coming back to first blood was important and that he should mark it, which he did using his red ear muffs. We slowly charged ahead, found more blood and came to inevitable split of the trail. Did the buck kept going west or turned southwards? We discussed the possibilities and found that ferns on the south side looked disturbed like by a running animal.

At this point I told Sylas that we would maybe look for another yard or two and get back to the blind so we wouldn’t risking jumping the wounded buck. It is always safer to let the animal lay down and get weaker than keeping the adrenaline up and trying to escape. But the lesson was almost pointless; as I raised my eyes, fifteen or twenty yards ahead of us was a very dead nine-pointer buck.

I called Trevor who was hunting in the cornfield across the road to help load the buck on the ATV and before taking any pictures made sure that Sylas placed the letzebissen (last bite) in the bucks mouth. This European tradition places a sprig of vegetation, as both a symbol of respect and gratitude, in the animal’s mouth. Immediately afterwards I removed my hat and shaking his hand said “Weidmanssheil” and explained to him that the proper answer is “Weidmannsdank.” 

While hunting is very different than killing, the finality of the kill is what makes hunting real. Taking a life is a very serious action, and in my view the animal should be commemorated with more formality and respect than a high-five. In our rather convoluted times a bit of tradition and propriety goes a long away to make an hour spent in the woods between grandson and grandfather an even more unforgettable experience.

"The Heart Of The Hunter"

A book truly from the heart!

Last week Thursday I had a meeting in Kalamazoo, MI, and arriving too early I decided to go hunting...for hunting books, in used book stores, which is one of my favorite forms of prospecting for potentially forgotten gems.

At Bicentennial Bookshop Inc. (820 S. Westnedge Avenue, Kalamazoo, MI) I spent a good hour spot and stalking their overflowing shelves, and finally decided on taking three new specimens home and at least one (for I have not yet read the other two) proved to be a great trophy!

I had never heard of Edison Tesla Marshall (1894-1967) before, but after researching a bit I found him to be a prolific writer sold his first story to Argosy magazine while a freshman in college, giving him confidence to pursue writing as a career, and later in life "he traveled around the world and earned a reputation as a big game hunter and adventurer in search of story material." It looks to me that Mr. Marshall worked very hard to create and sell fantasy stories to others so he could live a full life as if in a fantasy story!

There is no bravado in "The Heart of the Hunter," but an honest discussion of the anguishes and contradictions of the chase, the pursuit of big and many times dangerous game, the excitement and fear, but never cowardice. Mr. Marshall takes us from his native Indiana where he first started hunting small game with a .22 rifle he received as a birthday gift in the first decade of the XX century, and moving to Oregon, to where his family relocated in 1907, and where he fell in love with ducks, which he hunted with an old Winchester hammer pump gun, the same gun with which he accidentally shot himself losing his left hand thumb and a piece of his left ear. According to him "Ducks are the big game of small game."

He started his big game adventures in the Yukon and Alaska, where in three different trips he hunted caribou, moose and grizzly and brown bear in ever more desolated and wild places. For all his hunts in the Northern Wilds Marshall used a Springfield 30-06, which he called .30 U.S.

After that he traveled to then British East Africa on safari with the famous expatriated American white hunter Bwana Cottar with whom he hunted "plains game," rhino, buffalo, leopard and lion, but not elephant as he considered the fifty pound extra license fee as so high. To The Whispering Veld he took the Springfield and a 9,5x57mm Mannlicher-Schönauer that he had won on a bet. He clearly did not like the later rifle due to his fierce recoil, and eventually used Cottar's Winchester 1895 in .405 for much of the dangerous game hunting. During his African safari Marshall starts to question his quest for big game trophies and his passion for conservation, leading to discussions and potentially disagreements with Bwana Cottar.

A couple years after Africa Marshall travelled virtually halfway around the world to the Big Jungles of French Indochina to where he took a Mauser .404 Jeffery, "shooting sixty grains of cordite and a four-hundred-grain bullet - much more powerful than Cottar's lever-action .405, well-balanced, stoutly fashioned, and one of the most positive if not foolproof arms I had ever put to my shoulder." In the luxuriant jungles of Indochina Marshall hunted for saladang, water buffalo, sambar deer, wild boar - as big, if not bigger, than the ones that destroyed the fields of France - leopard and his special kind of Golden Fleece, the tiger! "Without tigers it could not fill the bill. Tigers were the incarnation, the titulary goldhead, of the jungle." Besides the .404 Mauser, he also took a Remington .35 pump-action rifle, Model 14, as requested by "an American manufacturer."

Two years after his return from IndoChina, he traveled overland from the Gulf of Tonkin all the way down to Bangkok, and two years after that he arrived at the Jungle of Mowgli, where he hunted the Duars of Bhutan specially for tiger, sitting for countless hours over malodorous baits, and not shooting from the back of trained elephants while local villagers drove fields and forests., but also for water buffalo and other smaller antlered game.

Twenty two months afterwards he returned in the Pursuit of the Giants, hunting not the younger jungle tigers, but older and bigger tigers that grew to heavy to hunt wild game and now feasted on domestic livestock and eventually on their herdsmen in the fallow fields around villages. In pursuing this most dangerous game he again brought the .404 Mauser, but also another rifle. "This was no less than the double-barreled .470, made by the great George Gibbs of Bristol, and the grandest piece of ironmongery I had ever seen. Its long cartridge contained a five-hundred-grain bullet propelled ninety grains of cordite."

During this shikari Mr. Marshall first shot a smaller jungle tigress, and then a gigantic Grandfather of Tigers that measured a full ten feet in between pegs, as large as the famous Bachelor of Powalgarh, hunted by the dean of all tiger hunters, Jim Corbett. He shot another male tiger almost as large, and then during a drive for deer and boar a tiger - Kala Bagh, the black tiger, so called because of his black soul for he always killed the herdsmen prior to killing the cattle - appeared from nowhere and mauled one of the beaters, that probably had his life saved by Marshall due to the first aid provided and him taking to a hospital for treatment.

Marshall then had to travel to Burma where he was unable to collect much material for his book, but where he hunted a gigantic rogue elephant that was fully ten feet tall and had twenty inches tracks. Its broken tusks were eighteen inches in circumference and weighed just short of sixty pounds apiece.

He then returned to India, to find that during the previous five weeks Kala Bagh had set a blood record, killing six cattle, one buffalo, one pony, and oddly enough, three goats in the same night, and probably in the same minute. "And the great tigers of the grasslands had been piling up that kind of slaughter for years." Eventually both hunters met in a fierce battle.

Edison Marshall in Indochina with a "small" tiger (1931)

I am not sure if Mr. Marshall ever met Robert Ruark (1915-1965), both being accomplished writers as well as hunters, but both had enough sense to use enough gun. By the end of "The Heart of the Hunter" Edison Marshall writes the following: "I had hunted enough big game that when I told of it, or wrote of it, I would receive a respectful hearing. Never again would I remain silent when hunters urged the adequacy of light rifles against heavy game. These made for straighter shooting at long ranges. But let the hunter take more time and care in the stalk; and then hit as hard as he can, for surely noble quarry deserves a quick dispatch. This is the least we can give."

I had great pleasure reading "The Heart of the Hunter," even if I know that am unable to write nearly as well as Edison Marshall did and I am certain that in our rather stupid times I will never hunt the beautiful and elusive tiger, but I can at least try to live as full a life, turning my dreams and fantasies into reality.

A Real Rage

The recovered Rage...

I guess it is true that we learn something new every day. I bought a TenPoint Titan Xtreme crossbow a couple years ago, but as luck had it I did not have the opportunity to fire it at anything but targets until Monday this week.

Although I am a bit of a traditionalist, at Neverland the expected ranges from our tree stands are a bit longer than I am comfortable to shot with my compound bow, so the investment on the crossbow. Also, it is always nice to play with a new or different toy.

The other "innovation" that I accepted along the crossbow was the use of mechanical broadheads, in my particular case Rage's X Blade 125 grains. As my compound bow is set to 56 pounds draw weight I felt that fixed-blade broadheads would guarantee me better penetration, but the crossbow has power to spare.

Anyhow, I hunted both morning and evening of Michigan's bow season opening day from the tree stand that overlooks the feeder at an overgrown clearing at Neverland, north of the bridge over the Mann Creek and west of the powerline. And apart from a close encounter, almost of the third degree, with a Cooper's Hawk that attempted to land either on my tree or my crossbow, but then decided it was safer to pick the next tree to the left, and watching cotton-tail rabbits, squirrels and blue jays stealing the corn intended only for the precious and scarce whitetails I had only a beautiful and quiet day at the woods.

After that the weather turned sour, overclouded or raining and windy most of the week. Maybe a very northern side effect of hurricane Matthew playing havoc in the more southern latitudes. Last Saturday I spent the morning bird hunting with Del, when we shot a couple limits of woodcock but saw no grouse, and in the afternoon I had a terrible earache that made driving home a terrible chore and would not allow me to hunt.

Sunday after mass I felt good enough to hunt again, and went back to the same tree stand, and had another quiet, pleasant and beautiful evening in the woods, with only the same cotton-tail, squirrels and blue jays entertaining me when I would stop re-reading Jim Fergus "A Hunter's Road". Driving home Sunday night I called my wife that is visiting our daughter and grandson in Houston and she mentioned that there was a weather alert for a potential frost on Monday morning. And that comment energized me, as a cold blast put the deer on the move.

On Monday morning I was comfortably seating at my tree stand a solid hour before first light, and had finally discovered a good way of balancing the crossbow on the rail so I had my hands free, to read, use the rangefinder, text to my wife, or whatever.

With sunup the frost started to appear in the more open areas, and my hopes were renewed. About an hour or so later I noticed a slight movement behind the trees to the left of the feeder and felt the all too common adrenalin rush better known as buckfever.

The grey shadow stood still for several minutes and finally a small doe came from behind the tree and moved behind the feeder. I positioned the crossbow on the rails, turned the green light on the dots and chose the proper dot for a 35 yards shot. When the doe cleared the feeder I pressed the trigger and was brutally surprised.

I heard the arrow hitting the doe almost as I pressed the trigger, and she went down immediately. By the picture below you can see that the spine must have been hit, but nonetheless the effect was nothing but definitive.

I will let Neverland rest before going back for the big buck that haunts my dreams, and that I am sure that I will meet one day.

...and the end game.

Édoaurd Foà

I just finished reading Édouard Foà's AFTER BIG GAME IN CENTRAL AFRICA, which in the unabridged form typical of late XIX and early XX centuries also says: "Records of a sportsman from August 1894 to November 1897, when crossing the Dark Continent from the mouth of the Zambesi to the French Congo."

I bought this book at Powell's Books during a very pleasant trip to Portland, OR, during May 2014, but just recently had the time to work on it. Of Monsieur Foà five books, this is the only one translated into English. But before making comments and considerations on this excellent read, I would like to introduce Monsieur Foà to those that have not met him before!

Édouard Foà was born in Marseille in 1862 and lost his parents as a teenager when he had to leave his studies at the Collège de Bône in Tunis and found a job as interpreter at the local English Consulate while working at the same time at the post office administration. At 18 he volunteered for the French Army, resigning as a Non-Commissioned Officer  at 23 while serving at Dahomey, current day Benin. From 1886 he was engaged in expeditions to explore the west coast of Africa.

In 1891 he was put in charge by the Muséum National d'Historie Naturelle of a mission to explore southern Africa, and during the two year journey he was able to combine the scientific work with his passion of hunting. 

In 1894 he returned to Africa where during the next three years he would cross the continent from the Zambezi to the Congo, a trip that among other works would result (posthumously) in After Big Game In Central Africa.

Now I would like to report on the firearms that Monsieur Foà selected for this journey into the unknown:

• 1 Double-barrelled 8-bore rifle
• 2 Express 577-bore rifles
• 1 Express 303-bore rifle (Metford)
• 1 smooth 12-bore Winchester six-shot repeater (I believe it to be a Model 1893)
• 1 smooth 32-bore double barrel fowling-piece (for collection of small birds)

All four rifles were side-plate exposed hammer actions, as at the time Monsieur Foà did not believe that the new hammerless actions (either side-lock or box-lock) were robust or reliable enough to endure such a journey, away from any competent gunsmith. By the photographies in the book, all the rifles appear to be of the robust and proven Jones underlever design.

Being so conservative in his choice of rifles (it is understandable that he did not have a Level 8mm as French law regarded and regards military cartridges as War Material), I was impressed to see his selection for a repeating shotgun, which he always kept handy for self-protection against four or two-legged predators!

As for the ammunition, the details are the following:

• 8-bore: 100 "small" cartridges with round 2 1/2 ounce bullets and 5 drachms of powder, for buffaloes and to dispatch large pachydermata; and 100 "large" cartridges with conical 4 ounce 1 drachm bullets and 8 drachms of powder, for elephants and rhinoceroses;
• Express 577: 1,600 express bullet cartridges (6 drachms of powder), with copper tube, weighing 1 ounce 2 drachms; and 800 cartridges with solid bullets ordinary lead, of 1 ounce 5 drachms;
• Express 303 (Metford): 500 cartridges, with solid bullets of great penetration for defense or shots at head (hippopotami, elephants, rhinoceroses), weighting 7 drachms; and an additional 2,400 cartridges with Jeffery bullets (8 drachms), hollow bullet (7 drachms), soft-nosed solid bullets (7 drachms), and soft-nosed express bullets (7 drachms).

All ammunition was supplied by Eley and Kynoch and packed in soldered zinc boxes, ten cartridges in a box.

Monsieur Foà last expedition took place in a time of great transition in the firearms world, black powder to smokeless (chemical) powders, large bore to small bore, lead bullets to engineered jacket bullets, but at early dawn of the repeating bolt-action rifle. By the end of the book it becomes apparent that the 8-bore became more of a nuisance than necessity, and that when other rifles were not at hand, the little 303 Express killed every animal that it shot at when the bullet was well placed, from lion to rhinoceros to elephant.

Let's remember that Alexander Lake in his book Killers in Africa tells us that he used almost exclusively a 303 Lee-Enfield for his hunting, and that he considered that the 270 Winchester with a 150 grain bullet would be a proper replacement for it. Mr. Lake also had a very low opinion of the heavy express rifles as the brutal recoil disrupted proper bullet placement.

Similarly, in Green Hills of Africa Ernest Hemingway uses almost exclusively a 30-06 Springfield by Griffin & Howe during both his 1933 and 1953/54 safaris, shooting 220 grain solids for buffalo and lion.

Another point that I would like to cover is on Monsieur Foà discussions on the Eatable Quality of Animals and the Hunter's Bill of Fare. After long reflection and a rather long time in the bush, he proposes the following menu for when having distinguished guests at camp:

MENU

SOUP

Consommé of buffalo tail. Eland Soup.

HOUR'S D'OEUVRE

White ants, grasshoppers on the point of laying.

ENTREES

Jugged wild cat, elephant's foot à la poulette, giraffe's tongue with caper sauce.

VEGETABLES

Mushrooms, Bonongwe with eland's marrow, Runi, Mtanga with ground nuts.

ROASTS

Elephant's heat larded with warthog fat, rolled rhinoceros fillet, monkey en papillote, agouti stuffed with tortoise.

SALAD

Matako ia tsano.

DESERTS

Fulas, matondos mtduzi, tchendje, and various others.

WINE AND BEER

Moa or pombe and fresh Chiromo nchena.

Shortly after presenting this sumptuous (but for us rather impractical and probably unachievable) menu, he comments that: "For my part, I can only repeat what I have already said elsewhere: if we made a list of everything used for food in various parts of the world, vegetables apart, we should come to the conclusion that everything living which nature has placed in the earth is eatable, and that people fond of it may be found.Was it not with this object that animals were created, like an interminable bill of fare, from which man is free to choose what pleases him?"

By the end of what would become his last expedition, Monsieur Foà's bag was the following:

• Large animals            488
• Small game                520
• Various                       220
• Grand Total            1,228

Édouard Foà passed away on 29 June 1901 at Villers-sur-mer (Calvados) due tropical diseases contract during his previous journeys into Africa, or maybe due to a hunter's broken heart, for no longer being able to enjoy the bill of fare from Africa's hinterlands.

Idle Observations on "MAN HUNT"

The moment of truth?

This week I watched again, repeatedly as I taped in DVR, the movie 1941 film Man Hunt directed by Fritz Lang and starring Walter Pidgeon as main character Captain Alan Thorndike. The film is based on the 1939 novel Rogue Male by George Household and it is a attempt by fictional British big game hunter to perform a "sporting stalk" on the biggest game and most dangerous of all game at the time: Adolf Hitler.

Rogue Male is said to have influenced David Morrell's first novel, the 1972 First Blood, where John Rambo first came to light, and personally I think that Household may have been influenced by Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game, which is the quintessential man hunt story.

Man Hunt opens with Captain Thorndike stalking the Berghoff and getting ready for a 550 meters (or would that be yards) targeting Adolf Hitler and ends with the same Captain Thorndike being hunted and trapped by Nazi Major Quive-Smith in Dorset.

While the movie is excellent and the story takes place in both Germany and England, the choice of firearms clearly shows that the movie was made in the United States of America and that whoever picked up the guns did not give due consideration to the characters.

The rifle used by Captain Thorndike in the opening scenes just doesn't have the delicate lines, fine engraving and Mauser 98 action that would be expected from a British stalking rifle of the period and which we expected a renowned big game hunter of high birth would use. Although I could not positively identify the rifle it appears to be a Winchester Model 70 including the hooded front sight and a Lyman Model 48 receiver sight, instead of multiple folding leaves express sights or a Rigby style bolt mounted peep sight. The scope is also pure American, a Weaver K2.5 with a detachable slide mount instead of an European design (like a Zeiss) and their highly elaborated mounts.

Shortly after, when Major Quive-Smith and the Doctor go out in their morning hunt expecting to locate Thorndike's body the Doctor is using a side-by-side hammerless shotgun apparently in 12 gauge, where in Bavaria I would expect him to be using a gracious Drilling  with smooth bore barrels chambered in 16 gauge. The biggest disconnect here is Major Quive-Smith using an all too American Savage Model 99 lever action rifle. Neither of the two "Nazi" guns has a scope which we would expect from high class German hunters of the time, and also the social stature, political background and affiliations of Major Quive-Smith would make it unacceptable for him not to use a refined, expensive and exclusive German or Austrian gun.

Later on the film, when Major Quive-Smith traps Captain Thorndike he is using a semi-automatic pistol that I am almost certain to be a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless. Again, an unusual choice for a high ranking Nazi officer. Either a Walther PP or maybe a Sauer 38H. The Mauser HSc would not be in production until the year after when the story takes place.

Finally, on the final scene when Captain Thorndike parachutes in occupied Europe to resume his hunt, no longer a sporting stalk, he has a Winchester semi-automatic carbine, either a Model 1907 or a Model 1910, strapped to his jump suit, with a Scout-like long eye rifle mounted Weaver K2.5 scope. Well, these Winchester carbines are not a long range hunting, stalking or sniper rifle and would have been a somewhat poor choice for the real big game hunter. Also, intermediate or long eye relief scopes were not commonly available until the mid-1960's with the possible exception of German Zf-41, which again was introduced a couple years after the story takes place.

I am not as idle as it may appear, but I just wanted to write about some inconsequential topic today.