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#1 ·
Where Are You Terry Roach ?



Those who spend their time, money, sweat, and sometimes blood, learn things which others don’t. It was only a small incident that took place near Lake Manyara in northern Tanzania. It has stayed with me .......

The first tracks spotted by Abraham are of a lion. We take a slight detour from looking for buffalo and go lion looking. We track the lone lion for a few miles and find an old male with little mane and in not too good condition lying up in a clump of trees. He didn't have many good days left. Terry crouched comfortably as the lion watched us, interlopers only sixty or so yards from his recently claimed kingdom. "If we were allowed I'd put him out of his misery" Terry said in a whisper, "He's going to be pulled down by hyenas or starve when the game migrates. I've seen him before, two years ago he had his own pride, must have had bad luck with a younger male and gotten kicked out. He's on his own now; old lions don't last long on their own."
We back away from the acacia and thorn tree oasis and leave the old boy in peace, I hope that he dies quickly and on his feet. I feel no pity for him; every king will someday die, but to be a king, if only for a single day, is, as Ruark said, something of value.
We do not strike any buffalo track in the morning, Overlunch, eaten from the tailgate of the Land Cruiser, we discuss a change in tactics. Terry suggests that we move to the Lake Manyara area and look for herds from the top of Mount Manyara; we will check the Kongoni and Wildebeest on the way. We could detour to take a look at the hippo pool, one of several where hundreds of river horses cavorted, careened and mated. Hippo mating is something I thought would be, shall we say, educational to see for myself, but first; buffalo.
Mount Manyara looms over the lake of the same name, I do not know it's altitude but it is enough. It took two hours on a rutted, stone covered road which snaked up the side of the mountain to rise above the lake mist. The unbelievable panorama, which included the shimmering lake reaching to the horizon, was ever changing, beautiful. From several of the switchbacks Kilimanjaro could be seen in the distance.
Ur creeping ever upward was interupred by a small herd of elephant crossing the road. That these huge animals could negotiate the mountain seemed impossible. Even the totos didn't have a problem keeping their footing where I would have had difficulty staying erect. As we resumed our climb baboons chased the Land Cruiser. Terry, laughing, slowed down to allow them to get closer, then sped up to make them run harder, he played this game until I shouted for him to step on it. We had what appeared to me to be a big toothsome baboon almost in our laps. Everyone but yours truly was laughing; I was preparing to repel boarders.
At a point about three quarters of the way up Manyara we pulled to a stop. The Toyota rested on a ledge which seemed much too small and ran perilously close to the sheer cliffs that dropped off to our left.
Our trackers, in the inimitable African habit I could not emulate, sat on their haunches and shielded their eyes from the now potent sun as they scanned the seemingly endless horizon below us. Terry and I looked more closely with our binoculars while the sun baked our arms and the backs of our necks.
Abraham, casually hunkered down on the edge of the escarpment, snapped his fingers once and pointed out over the almost endless plains below. Trying to match the path that his black finger so casually pointed to, I swung my binoculars down and to my left. Suddenly they were there. What had been only black dots became a large herd of Cape buffalo browsing along the top of one of the foothills.
There were several small groups, perhaps a hundred buffalo in the herd. Patiently Terry explained that this was bad news; there would be little chance of finding an exceptional buff in this group. He did think that we just might want to take a look.
I was jumping out of my skin, a bass drum was beating somewhere in my brain, blood was pouring through my veins and arteries as it never had before! You could bet your house, the kids, and your great aunt’s annuity that we were **** well going to take a look. I was not about to pass on my very first chance to get close to a Cape buffalo. I was ready to go right now, come on guys let's get moving before they wander too far. Let's get the show on the road, let’s see some hustle now, let's make tracks. Let's get to those **** buffalo!
Of course I didn't say all of these things, I treid to fake nonchalance, and failed. I just turned bright red, almost exploded out of my skin, and stammered for about thirty seconds. Terry laughed and said, " We'll just go up the mountain and have a beer and let them slow down a bit. Even if we started now we couldn't catch them, we’ll wait for them to take their afternoon nap under those trees over there, Then we can go take a closer look."
The entrance to the hotel on top of Manyara is an enormous open veranda, the bar sits to one side of the large room, the tables look out on the lake and plains far below.
From where we sat we could watch pink clouds below us moving rapidly across Lake Manyara. The clouds were made up of thousands of flamingos which seemed to take flight at the slightest provocation. Much closer, in fact too close for my comfort, were dozens of baboons. As we watched them, no more than a few feet from where we rested our arms on the low wall, three of them chased one another through the lobby. If you think that I am being a sissy take a close look at the teeth of a baboon sometime. Baboon give up little or nothing to leopard in the dentition department
I readily admit that I was torn between sitting comfortably and listening to Terry tell me more about Africa and his years as a Selous Scout and professional hunter or getting down the mountain to the Cape buffalo. Terry recognized the symptoms of a first time safari hunter and suggested that we take a leisurely look at the Wildebeest herd before we took a run at the buffalo. I magnanimously, and quickly, over-paid the bar tab and we headed back to the Toyota.
The ride down Mount Manyara was even slower than the long climb to the top. Looking out on the sheer drop to our right I was not about to suggest that a little more speed was the order of the day. As we crept along at 7 Km per hour I looked out over the lake and the valley below. The number of birds and animals visible at any given moment is impossible to even estimate.
The buffalo, having retired to the shade provided by the acacia trees, wait-a-bit thorn and conbretum which grew in profusion, could not be seen. The wildebeest herd however seemed to be virtually infinite. There were wildebeest stretched across the length and breadth of the savanna which surrounded Lake Manyara. Everywhere I looked through my compact binoculars there were those strangely shaped horns pointing at the sky. The recently born calves were having a frolic, kicking up their heels and running around their mothers in circles. They seemed to never tire of playing, jumping and butting their patient mothers bellies for liquid sustenance.
As we approached the foothills we came across a small group of workers on their way up the mountain. They carried their bedrolls, picks, shovels and other tools, and what appeared to be very large knives. Terry slid to a stop and greeted them with the traditional African hello: Jambo. From there I was lost, I spoke a little KiSwahili, they didn't. Both Terry and Abraham stepped down onto the road and immediately sat down on their haunches. This is a traditional way to relax, and obviously quite comfortable if you happen to be African born and raised or to have been in Africa long enough to stretch the appropriate muscles, tendons and ligaments in your legs, while you are talking. The palaver lasted a full half hour, my only contribution was to provide cigarettes and to catch a word here and there that I could understand. There was much pointing and gesturing.
When Terry, Abraham and I returned to the Toyota, Terry filled me in on the conversation. " I wanted to talk to those fellows about the buffalo and leopard. They are a traveling band of tinkers. They will do just about anything that you need to have done in the way of fixing things up and repairs. The old one, the one that didn't talk too much, is an aircraft mechanic, but there isn't much work for him now that the Israeli's have left. No one is flying light aircraft around here much anymore so he repairs cars and lorries and just about anything else mechanical and broken. The hotel should get him to take a whack at the coolers, could have used more ice in our drinks. Only proper way to drink whiskey, with ice.
They are all married and have at least two wives, when we shoot more meat than we can use at camp I stop by their villages and drop off three or four hundred pounds of meat with their families, keeps up good relations. In return they keep their eyes open for good animals and let me know of any poaching that might be going on.
Poachers will be the death of Africa. The old girl can't survive much longer with the bloody poachers taking game with pits and snares and poisoned spears and arrows. Feeding your people is one thing but these poachers kill an entire bloody rhino for the horn, they machine gun elephant for the tusks, they kill wildebeest wholesale to sell the meat in Arusha. When they wound an animal they just forget about it and go on with their killing. It's hunters like us, or the poor natives, that get killed by a buff that has been shot in the guts with a bloody three-o-eight two or three times. Poor thing is just laying up slowly dying and here we come along and he's mad, rightly so, he takes us on and we end up in a grave or worse, not the rotten poachers."
The worst are the bloody **** snare traps that they use. Pieces of wire hung on a tree with a noose on the end. The poor animal runs along and gets caught and usually gets cut around the throat but most of them don't die right away. Most of them just get caught and stand there. They eat everything within reach and sooner or later, if the lions, leopards, hyenas, jackals or wild dogs don't tear them apart alive, they weaken from thirst and fall. Then they die of hanging. I've found quite a few that were no good to anyone, even the vultures don't find them if they are in the deep bush. They are just there, alone when they die in agony.
The rope snares that they use to catch them by the legs aren't any better. They make a piece of rope about three meters long out of grasses and tie them around a short length of log that they bury in the dirt. The noose is buried in a small hole and when an animal steps into the hole the noose tightens around the hoof. The poor animal is then at the mercy of the lions and other predator; they don't have a chance to run before they are torn apart. If they want to get to water they have to drag the **** log half the way across bloody Africa. The **** poachers just don't understand they’re killing their own bloody country. “
Terry was quite clear about his feelings about "modern" Africa, Africa was better off as it was, not as it was becoming. Had he the choice to make Africa would remain the land of mystery and sudden death, a place where a man can find his soul in a sunset as red and warm as blood.
As we reach the savannah there is herd upon herd of wildebeest spread as far as we can see. Dust from the terns-of-thousands of hooves billows across the flatlands. The wildebeest graze, run, walk, prance and bounce across every square inch of dusty soil. I couldn't believe that these herds could survive on the scrub grass which slowly passed beneath the tires of the Toyota. It seemed to me that there was barely enough grass and other forage here to support a small herd of goats. I asked Terry why the wildebeest didn't simply move closer to the bush where the grasses grew in what seemed to be endless profusion.
" Lion. The wildebeest know that the grass is better over there closer to the bush but they also know that there are lion over there. Out here they get a better view, it's bloody difficult for the lion to get close before they are seen and the wildebeest like it that way, as would you if you were on the lion's menu. We'll take a jaunt past the bush after we look over the herd, it is shocking how many lion can hide in even bush as thin as that stuff over there."
I looked to where he was pointing and as sure as God made little green apples there were two lionesses hiding in grass that could not have been much more than a foot and a half high. I made a mental note to never think that I was safe simply because the grass was short. If lions were green, I thought to myself, they could disappear in the middle of a pool table.
We were about one quarter of the way out onto the savannah before Terry spoke again: "I'm going to drive between these two herds for a bit. We'll stop out toward the middle and look them over with the binoculars, if you like we can take a little walk. We can see how close we can stalk up to a really good bull before he spooks off.”
Although the herds were not more than 100 yards away on both sides of the Cruiser we used our binoculars to look over the largest sets of horns that we came across. Judging a very good trophy and telling him apart from a very, very good trophy in the middle of an ever moving, ever changing mass of thousands upon thousands of animals is much more difficult than I had imagined.
I spotted what I thought was a particularly good trophy and pointed it out to Terry, he just shook his head and pointed to another wildebeest. I couldn't see any difference, if anything mine looked bigger. I told Terry so.
"Yours looks bigger because his body is smaller, look at the ears, if the horns stretch out far past the ears it's a good chance that he's a mature bull; might even be a book animal."
As we slowly inched along, the Cruiser on autopilot. Terry and I stretched our necks out of the windows looking for the big bulls that simply must have been there. It seemed to me an impossible task, I just couldn't look at any one animal long enough to tell how good a trophy he might have been. Quite suddenly the Cruiser lurched to a stop and Terry started swearing. My head bounced off the half open window, smacked into the sheet metal and I almost fell out of my seat. Terry punched the dashboard hard.
"See there", Terry said pointing. "Just as I was telling you, another bloody snare has caught that small female by the hind leg."
I tried to focus my binoculars but my eyes had teared up from the bashing my head had taken. As the pain dissipated I found the female that Terry had pointed out. She was a pitiful sight.
It was obvious from the deep rut that she had been trying to drag the thick log attached to the snare across the plain to reach water. She was thin, covered with dust, her ribs easily counted through her thick hide. I didn't think it possible for her to have avoided lion, hyena, or wild dogs long enough to be as dehydrated and malnourished as she was. Her eyes were covered with biting flies, her muzzle and nose were cracked from the sun and her attempts to free herself from the snare. Terry put the Cruiser back into gear and pulled closer. We stopped about twenty yards from the poor animal.
"What do we do?", I asked, "Put her down to end her misery?"
"That's what the poachers would like", Terry said. "The bloody bastards are probably watching us right now, if they aren't watching they will hear the shot and come to investigate. If we shoot her they’ll wait until we are gone then they’ll come out of the bush and butcher her. Not bloody likely if I have any say in it. Have you got a knife?"
I was certain that Terry wasn't going to go out there with a knife in his hand to end her misery, after all this animal weighed over 500 pounds and she did have those long, sharp horns. Even on wildebeest, horns are for more than decorative purposes. Perhaps, I thought to myself, he is going to perform ching chee so that the camp staff can have meat for dinner tonight. If she had been captured by the front leg he might stand a good chance. With her front hooves free and having even limited use of her horns I didn't think that this was such a good idea. I didn't want Terry stuck on the horns of a wildebeest that was out of her head with thirst and hunger and probably ready to kill anything that came close.
There was something in Terry's voice that told me to keep my mouth shut and let the professional do what he knew he was going to do, come **** or high water. I handed him my Swiss Army knife and started to get out of the Cruiser. I was planning on covering Terry with my rifle. Just in case.
"You can stay in the Cruiser, I'm just going to go out and cut her free",
With Abraham at his back he did just that; I took the photographs to prove it. He walked over to her slowly, talking quietly. She stood stock still. As Terry approached she started shaking, quivering while he reached out and took the rope with his left hand. It seemed to me that their eyes were locked, Terry never flinched as she pranced, trying to pull away from him. He quickly sliced through the thick rope with the razor sharp blade and slowly retreated backwards to the Toyota. The wildebeest walked a few steps, shook her head from side to side, took a few more steps, then she was gone, racing across the plain to join the herd.
"Bloody stupid animals, she didn't even know that she was free for a minute there. I didn't know what she was going to do after I cut the rope, good that she ran the other way. Could have been dicey, close as I was. They’re so bloody stupid it wasn't much of a risk." Terry's shirt was soaked through down the chest and back, dark circles of sweat had formed under his arms. I never believed his nonchalance, Terry wasn't the type that sweats easily.
I remained silent for a minute or two but couldn't help myself; I had to ask: "If they’re so stupid, and there are so many of them why did you risk getting gored to go out and set her free. You shoot them for camp meat don't you?"
Terry slowly turned his head and looked at me. "Here's your knife, good one", he said, "Why did I stick out my bloody neck to set her free. . .? Because that is the way it’s done, isn't it?
It was only a small incident that took place near Lake Manyara in Northern Tanzania. It has stayed with me.......

J. Terry Riebling
 
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#2 ·
Fantastic story. You are quite the writer... with a great experience. I loved it and would be interested in reading how the rest of your safari turned out.

Hate to ask stupid questions, but would love to see some of the pictures you took if you would like to post them. When did the safari take place?
 
#3 ·
alyeska338 said:
Fantastic story. You are quite the writer... with a great experience. I loved it and would be interested in reading how the rest of your safari turned out.

Hate to ask stupid questions, but would love to see some of the pictures you took if you would like to post them. When did the safari take place?
Dear Alyeska338 -

Thank you for your kind words. I have been blessed with 9 African hunts. The incident in the story took place in 1986. I was fortunate in the extreme to meet Terry Roach and learn from him some of the most valuable lessons I have learned in this life.

If I can ever figure out how to get photographs scanned, on a disk and then into this electronic, glorified typewriter I will post them.

If you like books about spies, guns, adventure, sexy ladies, bio-terrorism and the like I will give you a heads-up when my novel is off the press.

So far the reviews are much better than I deserve. Thom Mount, the Executive Producer of "Bull Durham" and "Stone Cold Killers," among others said that it was "enthralling" - high praise from Hollywood.

The publisher, Accurate Press, says that it will printed and available for the Christmas season - I hope he's right.


Thanks again for your kind words.


Bluesman
 
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