About ilarivers

BOOK REVIEW
AFRICAN MEDIUM GAME CARTRIDGES

By Pierre Van Der Walt

A number of years ago, the late Dr Don Heath who was research and development manager for Norma Ammunition in Sweden invited Pierre Van Der Walt and I to visit their plant in the charming little town of Amotfors; Pierre wrote up the story for MAN Magnum, and I for African Hunter. It was the first time I had the pleasure of meeting Pierre, and his company added a lot to the experience: firstly his vast knowledge on all things firearms-related, his appreciation for history and quality craftsmanship, and especially his keen sense of humour.

A couple of years after that, I was privileged to write a review of Pierre’s classic tome, African Dangerous Game Cartridges, which has become the definitive bottom line in modern African ballistics. And about a year ago, Pierre let it be known that the follow-up volume, African Medium Game Cartridges, was in its final stages. Needless to say, I have been looking forward to getting my hands on a copy ever since.

Apart from the vast wealth of knowledge that both books contain, they are conspicuous by their high-quality format and hundreds of colour photographs. Certainly anyone who keeps a library of Africana with hunting and firearms titles will be looking for that information in a well-presented, easy to read and lasting format – such as will appreciate in value over time – and Pierre’s books do not disappoint.

African Medium Game Cartridges is the second in a planned series of four titles, which will span the subject from big bore to small bore, and it is also the first comprehensive reference book on Africa’s medium calibres ever attempted.

This book, like its predecessor, is not limited to a basic overview of cartridges. Pierre starts out with subjects such as application ranges, bolt action lengths, bullet, cartridge, and propellant classification, correct nomenclature, optimum impact velocity bands, velocity to charge ratio, and many more topics that we all need to learn more about. He covers characteristics of expanding bullets and terminal ballistics, and explores terminal performance, from Taylor’s Knock-Out Theory to controversial ideas like hydrostatic shock and the energy dump theory. Pierre’s extensive knowledge is such that we have a definitive “mythbusters” exploration of what is and isn’t.

Want to know about secondary projectile explosion effects, Ackley’s Bridging Theory, Kvale’s Bullet Hesitation Theory, Steiger’s Propellant Abuse Theory, and many other ballistic phenomena? Read chapter five.

The book then examines, in depth, 39 cartridges that have been used on Africa’s medium game species: from the 6.8 Remington Special Purpose Cartridge to the 7.65 x 53 Argentine Mauser. Each calibre is meticulously studied from a number of complimentary angles: the history that led to its inception, the unique characteristics that make it noteworthy, ballistics tables, reloading tables, advice on handloading the calibre, and application bands for the different bullets available. To cement its place as the reference book on these calibres, Pierre’s reloading data encompasses African, American, Australian, and European propellants.

Interspersed throughout are a plethora of load data summary tables for the different cartridges, cartridge diagrams, and 380 full colour images.

African Medium Game Cartridges is 478 pages of history, data, and and experience from the man who gave us the .458 African, and to whom even the cognoscenti turn for information and advice about African firearms and ballistics. The glossy presentation, hard cover format, and crystal clear illustrations make it as much a coffee table book as a reference manual, and
It is a must-have for any real library on Africana, firearms, ballistics, or hunting.

African Medium Game Cartridges is available for US$75.00 plus shipping from Pathfinder Book Publishers, info@pathfinder-publications.com, or visit the website www.pathfinder-publications.com.

CHIEF “CHANGA-CHANGA”, KING OF THE SENGA
I J Larivers

Arguably much less well-known – in some circles – than James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, John Harrison Clark, King of the Senga, was nonetheless a force to be reckoned with in southern Zambia at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Clark was born in Port Elizabeth round about the year 1860, into a working class family. Growing up in the Cape Colony, he soon mastered the arts of marksmanship, horsemanship and bushcraft, and served for a time during the 1880s in the Cape Mounted Rifles. He was tall and physically imposing – well-suited to life in the bush.

But he wasn’t, perhaps, as well-suited to military discipline, and wanderlust soon took hold. It is not known exactly why he left the Cape in 1887. It may have been that he was simply in search of adventure, in a day when fences were closing in, and many of the great adventures were already the stuff of legend. Or perhaps he had to move on. One frequently-told story is that he was forced to flee the colony as an outlaw after having accidentally killed a man. Who knows? It was the time of legends, and he was the sort of character that would come to attract a mystique surrounding him. Whatever the reason, his wanderings took him to Portugese Mozambique, and he followed the Zambezi River upstream to the abandoned village of Feira, where the Luangwa joins the Zambezi. Now called Luangwa, and known to Livingstone, Feira had been founded by Portugese missionaries as probably the first European settlement in what is now Zambia, sometime around 1820. By1887, when Clark arrived, it was a ghost town. Deserted after a native uprising decades before, it had never been re-occupied. Its emptiness apparently suited Clark, and he took up residence, flying the British Merchant Navy’s red ensign above his boma.

Even as the Nineteenth Century was drawing to a close, the slave trade was still flourishing in Central Africa. Gangs of Arabs, Portuguese and half-castes preyed upon the people of the Baila and Batonga tribes. One of Clark’s first endeavours was to create and train a small “army” of sorts, comprised of the local Senga villagers. Shortly after, he assumed the mantle of chief – again it is not clear exactly how. One legend is that he arrived on the day the previous chief died. Another story is that he won his office by conquest, which is probably much nearer the mark. It is today generally assumed that he either defeated the reigning chief in battle, or that he liberated by force a Baila village where Portugese slavers were looking for wares. And so, “Chief Changa-Changa” came to be.

As he was the only one thereabouts with his own army, Clark levied and collected “taxes” in the form of cattle and other livestock from the African villagers and sold “trading licenses” to foreign merchants, reaping ivory, gold and other trade goods in payment. In the case of ivory hunters, his “export tax” was half of their bounty. Because he also defended the local villagers and colonial traders from slavers and marauders, he was able to get away with what would be today termed a protection racket, crowning himself King of the Senga into the bargain.

Oddly, this didn’t go down all that well with the Portugese authorities across the river in Zumbo. The path of least resistance was for everyone to get along, which they did for the most part, but on one occasion Clark invaded the Portuguese outpost, pulled down their flag and replaced it with the Union Jack, and then repaired across the river back to Feira, presumably to gloat. His point made, he made no attempt to prevent the Portugese officials from returning. Again, according to legend, he was once arrested by the Portugese, but had to be set free because the native troops refused to guard him, holding him in some awe. A little audacity goes a long way, and it seems that most folks were in awe of him at that time.

A king needs a queen, and Clark in due course married the daughter of the Chikunda chief Mpuka – though after the manner of the times, contemporary accounts have it that she was but one of many.
In 1895 the King of the Senga established a proprietary court to the north, building a new village in the fertile Luano Valley where the Lunsemfwa and Lukasashi rivers converge, and constructing a stone fort; he christened the new capitol Algoa, which was the Portugese name for his native Port Elizabeth.

As the old century drew to a close, Portugese influence in the region was waning, and Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company moved into the lands north of the Transvaal. The BSA Company had consolidated its hold over what they were beginning to call Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – and Barotseland by 1894, and with Rhodes’ dream of a Cape to Cairo railway in mind, BSA Company explorers such as the legendary Frederick Russell Burnham looked to the lands north of the Zambezi and began to negotiate concessions with the more powerful local chiefs.

Major A G Deare set out from Fort Salisbury, how Harare, in 1896 on one such foray. His primary task was to meet with Chief Mpezeni of the Ngoni tribe, who co-existed to the east of Clark’s fiefdom. Hearing of Deare’s column’s engagement with Mpezeni, Clark sent a letter, signed “Changa-Changa, Chief of the Mashukulumbwe”, requesting a like meeting with the Major. In what in those days would have been much less of a coincidence than now, Major Deare – who had heard of the white king – discovered from his real name appended to the missive, that Clark was an old acquaintance of his from the Cape Colony, even having lived in the same town as he. History does not record whether the major accepted the invitation.

But the writing was on the wall. Out with the old and in with the new. Clark had already acquired mining rights from two neighbouring potentates, and he used these to try and negotiate with the BSA Company’s administrator at Fort Salisbury, Earl Grey, so as to fall under the company’s protection. He pointed out the rich mineral deposits to be had. Chief Changa-Changa had good relations with the local tribes, and while the BSA Company had sent Lt Col Robert Warton north to represent its interests, Clark pointed out that, through him, Mashukulumbwe and Mpezeni would peacefully toe the company line. Clark still had his private army, which he claimed numbered between three and seven thousand. You don’t get a tea named after you for nothing, though, and Earl Grey’s response to Clark’s overtures was circumspect, bordering on arrogant.

Meanwhile, Clark continued quietly acquiring mineral concessions from chiefs Chetentaunga, Luvimbe, Sinkermeronga and Mubruma over the ensuing couple of years.

Clark also pointed out that he had negotiated labour agreements with the chiefs in the region, and contract labourers could be had for six-month contracts from among the neighbouring chiefdoms’ populations. He negotiated a monthly wage of ten shillings per man with the workers themselves, along with rations and accommodation, and proposed to Earl Grey that he could supply Salisbury and Bulawayo with all the manpower it might need, year-round if necessary, at £1 a head.

But John Clark’s relations with the natives weren’t as good as he liked to portray. He was known for a roving eye for the local womenfolk, which didn’t go down too well with the local menfolk, and in April of 1899, the BSA Company received a formal complaint from Chief Chintanda. Clark’s womanising was probably the real basis for discontent, but the chief also said that Clark had been representing himself as a BSA Company official and had been collecting taxes and levies, and negotiating concessions, under that auspices. How true that was is open to speculation, but it was certainly the type of story that Chintanda believed the BSA Company hierarchy would respond to. (Statements taken from other chiefs, such as Chief Mbruma also mentioned Clark styling himself a BSA Company agent, but made no mention of his sexual peccadillos. Many of Clark’s interactions with the local villagers are a matter of record, but it is hard to establish what he actually did tell them in order to get the concessions.)

And respond the Company did, though probably less out of altruism and sympathy for Chief Chintanda’s grievances than concern that Clark was a threat to their empire-building in the region. Trouble was, Chief Changa-Changa’s domain was legally outside the BSA Company’s mandate. Company administrators were cautioned by their own attorneys that Rhodesian courts had no jurisdiction across the Zambezi at that time, and even after a formal application was made to no less a personage than The Right Honourable The Viscount Alfred Milner, Governor of the Cape Colony and High Commissioner for Southern Africa by Arthur Lawley, the BSA Company administrator in Matabeleland, that didn’t change. Lord Milner affirmed that he could not authorise legal or punitive action against John Clark by the BSA Company until such time as they held legal sway over the areas in question.

But Cape Town was a long way away, and the BSA Company was slowly but inexorably moving north. The Company’s own representatives were negotiating with the local rulers, and by 1900 the BSA Company had established a permanent presence to the northwest of Algoa, and had moved into Feira itself by 1902. This meant that Mashukulumbwe was now formally under Company control. How much legal weight Clark’s prior claims and concessions carried was a matter of conjecture. Though he tried to sell them to the Company, officially they would not entertain him, taking the stand that they were neither legal nor binding. It was now no longer about control of the region; Clark wisely wanted out.

The BSA Company, however did offer a buy-out in the form of compensation. Col Norman Earl-Spurr, who knew Clark in the 1920s maintained that the king was given farms as compensation, and this is backed up by William Brelsford, noted author of The Tribes of Zambia, as well as an informative piece in the Northern Rhodesia Journal entitled “Harrison Clark: King of Northern Rhodesia”. A M Bentley, offers a slightly different take, that Clark was offered land grants and mining concessions. Whatever the deal, Clark wisely accepted.
Hanging up his crown, Clark turned to farming. He had some success because he thought outside the box and tried crops that had not yet been grown in the region, such as cotton and rubber. Heavy rains destroyed an entire cotton crop one year, and sensing he was too old to deal with the vagaries of nature he repaired to Broken Hill, where he lived out the remainder of his life. His last formal employment was as personnel manager for a local mine, to which he was well-suited because of his good relations with the African population. Still affectionately known as Changa-Changa, he was active in community affairs, became a partner in Northern Rhodesia’s first commercial brewery and owned a Ford Model T – one of the first in the town.

I like to say that the only bad story is the one that’s never told. John Harrison Clark apparently did put pen to paper and drafted an autobiography, which would have been a compelling insight into his life and times, had it not perished in the fire which burned his house to the ground – and which he always maintained had been the work of the BSA Company because of their fears about what the eventual book might contain. William Brelsford held Clark in high regard, and that says a lot. When he died from heart disease on 9 December 1927, aged probably 67, he was a well-loved and much-respected member of his community.
“Changa-Changa” lives on in the local vernacular today, roughly translating as “boss”.

PHOTOS:
1  John Harrison Clark at Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia.
2  Chief Changa-Changa’s British Merchant Navy red ensign which flew over his house at Feira, now Luangwa.

2 Clark at Mkushi

4  Lord Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner for Southern Africa.
5  Earl Grey, the Administrator of the British South Africa Company in Clark’s time.
6-8 The Zambezi River at Kanyemba, across from Fiera, now Luangwa.
9  A map showing the confluence of the Luangwa and Zambezi Rivers, Chief Changa-Changa’s domain.

THE OMAY
I J Larivers

(This article was originally published in African Hunter magazine.)

Lake Kariba was low, very low, as Chris Moore and I crossed from Kariba town to the mouth of the Ume River at the other end of the Eastern Basin. Probably as low as I have ever seen it, very reminiscent of the drought years of the early ‘90s.

The boat journey is probably the best way to get to Ume Camp. Many years ago I had driven in, taking the road from Magunje on the way to Kariba, and at other times through Gokwe, but once well-maintained roads are in pretty poor condition now. When the rains come, they get worse.

The hunting operation in the 2.2 million acre Omay Safari Area is run by African Conservancies, which are affiliated to Carbon Green, a company that generates carbon credits with environmentally-friendly development initiatives for the local rural district council. That’s one of the things that makes Omay special: African Conservancies and Carbon Green enjoy an outstanding level of cooperation with local villagers. This is necessary in today’s Africa; it follows on from the ‘if it pays it stays’ concept used by the hunting fraternity. The reality is that unless the rural African communities are on-sides any programs or developments have a very poor chance of success. Omay combines a carbon credits approach to local development synergised by sport hunting, and the local people see the tangible benefits delivered to their doors. Literally.

We had an early night, and the next morning we were up at 05.00 to go and deal with a problem animal control hippo that had already claimed one human life. Chris had been away, and the local district council game scouts had attempted to shoot it, but with inadequate weaponry and skills. Chris has a beautiful old bolt-action in .450 Watts, and while ammo may not be readily available in Zimbabwe, either.458 Lott or fire-formed .375 H&H in the 500gr/2,200fps range are just the thing for dangerous game on PAC operations.

In a wide lagoon running behind the Bumi Hills hotel, it didn’t take long to identify the offending hippopotamus. There were few enough of them to carefully glass each one and the one in shallow water, unable to lift its head properly was The One. In the end, as the animal was no longer coming on shore to go on the offensive as it had been wont to do, Chris opted to go with a handful of locals in a rickety old boat that was (maybe) one step up from a canoe.

In typical African village style, everyone wanted to go along, but the helpers were eventually reduced to four. Chris dispatched the hippo quickly and got a length of rope around one leg as the wind was getting up and the lagoon turning rough. On shore, attempts to drag the carcass out with a rope attached to the vehicle were futile – always bring a good rope! No matter. In no time a small horde of Tonga villagers were waist-deep in the water, laboriously rolling the animal ashore. A couple of big crocs that were very much in evidence earlier were all but forgotten in the presence of this largesse.

The hide panels and the head were recovered, and the meat was divided up among everyone in the tiny fishing village. There was the expected pre-feeding frenzy and we had to wait until almost dark so Chris could ensure that everyone got a share of the spoils. PAC animals provide a welcome source of fresh meat for the locals, and having an operation like African Conservancies on the ground year-round also gives the locals some peace of mind when a dangerous game animal does go rogue.

I’d already had a couple of excellent meals at Ume Camp – the cook swears he can’t cook, but he’s not telling the truth – but only got to have a look around the next morning. The camp is built overlooking a stretch of the upper Ume River, a portion of which had cut through its banks the previous rainy season and left a flood plain behind. This was great for bushbuck, waterbuck, impala and kudu, but it did pose a problem for elephants that can get bogged down and perish if they’re not extricated in time. Chris recounted a number of incidents of this from the previous rainy season, and described the various methods they used to free the great beasts – if they found them in time. Evil sport hunters saving trapped and injured animals. The kind of thing the mainstream media shies away from like the plague but nonetheless is a frequent reality.

The chalets are very comfortable thatched A-frames, all en-suite with electricity supplied by generators as and when required. Sadly, there is Wifi available, but no place is perfect. Hot water comes from the old ‘Rhodesian boilers’, and the pub located below the spacious dining area boasts a magnificent view of the flood plain below and a small pool and fire pit – what more could you ask for?
The key species which attract hunting clients are buffalo, lion and leopard.

The north and the south of the Omay have now been consolidated into one area, and the infrastructure of camps, roads, etc., is being constantly upgraded. Male and tuskless elephant, hippopotamus, crocodile and sable are also on the main hunting menu, augmented by quotas for male eland, kudu, reedbuck, impala, grysbok, klipspringer, duiker, bushbuck, zebra, jackal, honey badger, hyaena, civet, genet, porcupine, baboon and monkey.

Chris has done what a lot of other concession managers should have been doing for a long time and systematically reduced quotas of the core species and closed certain areas to hunting – especially along the boundary with Matusadona National Park – with the result that there has been a noticeable increase in numbers and trophy quality in a very short time. Big herds of buffalo are now coming into the concession, not being harassed by arbitrary gunfire, and not going back. This is the whole idea and 2017 should be a very good year in the Omay.

Probably one of the more glaring examples of a hunted-out area that I can call to mind is Chirisa – I remember it from the bush war days and so I know firsthand what it could be, if only quotas were cut back and certain areas given a breather for awhile. I can remember having to stop while a hundred roan crossed the road in front of me. While some of the operators have cried foul over Chris’s closures and restrictions, in the end it can only benefit them and their clients.

We talked about developing bird shooting as an extra that might appeal to some clients, fishing – there are excellent tiger on the Ume – and perhaps even the possibility of offering clients the option of being housed on a houseboat instead of in camp if they so desired.

Omay has long had a reputation as a rugged area; if you get your trophy in Omay, you have worked hard for it, and Chris’s management style has made for both better quality trophies and more affordable safaris.

Where you have wildlife you have a poaching problem. Like most places, it is twofold in the Omay: commercial bushmeat, and ivory poaching. Chris has put together a sixteen-man anti-poaching unit, which he has vigorously trained. Their arrest record to date is more impressive than that of most conservancies; he runs a large network of confidential informants, and has taken other, innovative, steps that are best not publicised for fear of compromise of operations. Snaring in most areas has been contained, and elephant poaching reduced to a shadow of its former self. This all costs a lot of money, and benefits and protects all species, not just huntable species. Currently it is being funded by Carbon Green, and by sport hunting.

The Omay is one of Africa’s true gems. Rugged terrain and almost indescribable beauty. It’s still a work in progress, as any hunting destination always is, but it has the potential to provide the hunt of a lifetime.

THE ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE, FORGOTTEN STORY OF MARTIN AND OSA HJOHNSON
I J Larivers

(This article was originally published in African Hunter magazine)

Unique to the 21st century, with the phenomenon of social media, is that a person can acquire an army of “followers” pretty much without having done much of anything at all. I’m not putting this down, because it usually harms no one and broadens everyone’s horizons. But it’s really not all that hard to get a thousand “likes” on Facebook for a half-decent album of photos from an African safari. Perhaps it’s time to reflect on those who have gone before. Back to the day when a flight to Africa took four days, including overnight stops, on a Short Solent flying boat – if it got there at all.

Most of us are familiar with the account of Ernest Hemingway’s near miraculous survival after two successive plane crashes in Africa in 1954. We know the story of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1909-1910 safari to East Africa, outfitted by the Smithsonian Institution. Who hasn’t heard of Amelia Earhart? No doubt these folks were at the forefront of adventure in the last century. But one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many adventurers from that era most of us have never heard of, or perhaps have forgotten.

Shortly after I came to Africa, I was reading a copy of Geographical magazine – the monthly magazine of the Royal Geographical Society – and I was intrigued by an article about the exploits of a fellow I’d never heard of by the name of Richard Halliburton. He was from a solid, upper middle class American family, and graduated, of course, from Princeton. He then should have embarked on some professional career or other, but had developed an addiction for travel. He was also a better than passable writer, and able to hold his own on a lecture tour – the forerunner of Facebook. Thus, he was able to capture the public imagination without the Internet, and effectively make a career out of travelling. He paid a toll of 36 cents to swim the length of the Panama Canal, hob-nobbed with the White Rajah of Sarawak, and chilled with the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. He published The Royal Road to Romance (1925), The Glorious Adventure (1927), New Worlds to Conquer (1929), and The Flying Carpet (1932). All very much Indiana-Jones-in-a-suit-and-two-tone-loafers stuff, but Halliburton became legend when he embarked in a Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, from Hong Kong to San Francisco for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. “Southerly gale. Heavy Rain Squalls. High sea. Barometer 29.46. True course 100. Speed 5.5 knots. Position 1200 GCT 31.10 north 155.00 east. All well. When closer may we avail ourselves of your direction finder. Regards Welch.” was the last that was ever heard from the Sea Dragon or Richard Halliburton.

Very few people are probably aware that Trader Horn was real, too, but he was. His real name was Alfred Aloysius Smith, and he was an ivory trader with Hatton & Cookson’s in what is now Gabon in the latter 19th century – and if you like this sort of thing, Tramp Royal, a study of his life by Tim Couzens is well worth seeking out. It is a reminder that there have undoubtedly been so many great adventures, the stories of which have never been told and now never will be. That frustrates me.

Just the other day, I became aware for the first time of the existence of Osa and Martin Johnson. Fair enough, neither was still surviving on the auspicious day of my birth, but free from the e-burdens of today’s technology, I grew up reading books – and books about Hemingway and Roosevelt and Halliburton and the Johnsons were the kind of books I read. Martin and Osa Johnson had a lot in common with Richard Halliburton. They were professional travellers who were able to capture the public’s imagination with their exploits and thereby earn a good living from their films and books, like Martin’s Over African Jungles.

Kansas is almost synonymous with heartland in America, and both the Johnsons hailed from there; Martin grew up between Lincoln and Independence, and Osa Leighty was born and raised in Chanute, the town which is today the home of the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum. This museum is primarily why the Johnsons’ memory and achievements live on.

The museum, which started out simply as the Safari Museum, was founded in 1961 with a core collection of the Johnsons’ books, photographs, films, and other related family memorabilia, with the intention of not only telling their story of adventure but also encouraging further research into the fields of wildlife and ethnology in Africa and the South Pacific. To any who think the technological terrors of the 21st century might have eclipsed the accomplishments of the Johnsons, the museum is very much alive and well; in 1998 it was named one of the “top ten historic sites for Valentine’s Day by the History Channel Traveler website, and in 2001 The Pitch, a weekly newspaper out of Kansas City, named Chanute and the museum as “Best Romantic Day Trip.”

Martin Johnson’s first recorded taste for adventure was when he signed on as a crewman and cook for Jack London’s voyage across the Pacific in the Snark. That one I did know about, for I had read that book: In typical Jack London style, he acquired the skills of sailing before the mast and celestial navigation during the course of his voyage across the South Pacific in a 45-foot ketch he had built and named after Lewis Carroll’s famous poem; he passed these along to his readers in The Cruise of the Snark.

London, his wife Charmain and a small crew put out from San Francisco and sailed across to Hawaii and thence to the Marquesas, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, Samoa, and the Solomons before ending their voyage in Sydney, Australia. London’s engaging first-person accounts, like so much of the Johnsons’ later works, gave the public their first introduction to these exotic locales.

At the conclusion of the two-year excursion, Martin Johnson put together a travelling roadshow to highlight his photographs and souvenirs from the voyage; it was while visiting Chanute that me met Osa Leighty.

Osa was only sixteen at the time, ten years younger than Martin, and in the beginning she found his tales of far-off adventure and photos of cannibals somewhat disquieting. It would be an understatement to say Osa’s father was not enthralled with the young adventurer, or the relationship that quickly developed between the two; after a three week courtship they were married in May of 1910.

Their first major adventure together was in 1917, when they embarked on a nine-month voyage through the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands. While visiting a tribe known as the Big Nambas – which really identifies the language spoken by a group of people still living in modern day Malekula, Vanuatu – they were held captive by the chief and only allowed to continue on their way after the intercession of a British gunboat facilitated their escape. There were decided advantages to travelling the world in the days of colonialism! The following year, their film footage was used to create the feature film, Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas.

After they had returned home from one of their epic expeditions, the Johnsons would edit their footage and embark on lecture tours describing their adventures and showing their unique films. Although the facets of South Seas life and African wildlife which they could capture on film were limited by the technology of the day, and neither Martin nor Osa had any formal training as naturalists, their footage was extremely valuable because they went out of their way to avoid material that was staged and a lot of what they were able to film was cutting edge stuff because it had never been seen or captured on camera before.

In 1919, Martin and Osa returned to Malekula – but this time with an armed escort – and again collected film footage and artifacts from the Big Nambas. As it turned out, Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas had come to even that remote corner of the earth, and said cannibals were suitably placated by their new movie star status and this time around, they were eminently accommodating. The Johnsons finished filming their trip in 1920, visiting British North Borneo, and sailing up the east coast of Africa. Two films followed in rapid succession – Jungle Adventures in 1921, and Headhunters of the South Seas the following year.

While the titles conjured visions of adventure on the high seas and perhaps a large dose of melodrama, for many Americans this was their first exposure to these far-off lands and no one can argue that they were the fore-runners of today’s Discovery and National Geographic channels. It was perhaps inevitable that after their voyage up the east coast of Africa the Johnsons would turn their focus to the Dark Continent.

In 1923, they released the feature film, Trailing Wild African Animals, which was the result of a 1921-1922 expedition, and they embarked on an epic journey from 1924 to 1927 during which they got a wealth of material from a remote area in northern Kenya close by Mt Marsabit. Returning to the United States with a trove of film footage, they brought out Martin’s Safari and Simba: King of the Beasts in 1928. Thirteen years later, in 1941, film and experiences from that expedition was used to make Four Years in Paradise – Paradise being their name for the small lake they had camped beside.

Although at first she had been a bemused and somewhat hesitant adventuress, Osa Johnson quickly developed a flair for her newfound career, taking charge of the logistics and staff on Johnson expeditions, and helping out – very capably – behind the camera. In camp, she procured the supplies, planned the meals, and was no mean hand with a rod and a gun, thus ensuring that there were always fresh provisions. Although it would be extremely un-PC today, once when a rhinoceros charged Martin, Osa lifted her rifle and dropped the enraged beast in its tracks; as a result, Martin was able to capture all the action on film.

During the years 1927 and 1928, Martin and Osa Johnson made their third African safari, this time along the Nile in the company of George Eastman, best known as one half of the Eastman Kodak company. When it came out in 1930, Across the World with Mr and Mrs Johnson was one of the first ever talking picture documentaries, with Martin Johnson supplying the narrative.

In 1978, Colonel John Blashford-Snell and HRH Prince Charles launched Operation Drake – sort of an Outward Bound concept on board tall ships circumnavigating the globe, with the goal being to use adventure, exploration and community service to develop self-confidence and leadership traits in young adventurers. Operation Drake was followed in 1984 by Operation Raleigh, and it was so outstandingly successful that it morphed into Raleigh International in 1992. Today it is recognised as the world’s most ambitious sustainable development charity, working in remote areas to assist locals in managing their natural resources. But Martin and Osa Johnson had the idea back in 1928.

That was the year they selected three Eagle Scouts to accompany them on safari in East Africa. From a promotional standpoint it was pure genius – national competition and all to select the lucky winners – but it was also good, solid leadership training for the youngsters. The trio co-authored Three Boy Scouts in Africa (1928), and Robert Douglas went on to pursue a successful career as an attorney, David Martin became an executive in the Boy Scout movement, and Douglas Oliver ended his career as an emeritus professor of anthropology at Harvard University. The opportunities for adventure they had with the Johnsons couldn’t have hurt.

Thirty years ago I went to see an okapi in the Ituri forest in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Truth be told, at that time I was really following the battle honours of Col “Mad Mike” Hoare’s 5 Commando, but who wouldn’t take a detour to see an okapi, with a few Mbuti pygmies thrown in for good measure? I spent several days at the station at Epulu and spent time with both. In much the same way that the Nile today must be much the same as when Sir Samuel Baker saw it, I don’t think things had changed much since the Johnsons had filmed in the Congo half a century before. The Johnsons brought out Congorilla in 1932 – the first wildlife “talkie” whose sound track had actually been recorded in Africa. (For trivia buffs, Trader Horn, which was released the year before was the first non- documentary film ever shot on location in Africa, so this was all pretty innovative stuff.) The film even spawned a dance
– the Congorilla Foxtrot – which was resurrected at least once by the Cairo Club Orchestra in Melborne, Australia!

The Safari Museum isn’t the only thing in Chanute to bear the Johnsons’ name – so, too, does the Chanute Martin Johnson Airport. Five years after Lindbergh flew the Atlantic in the Spirit of St Louis and five years before Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific, Martin and Osa Johnson learned to fly – at that airport. Once they were licensed, they bought a couple of Sikorsky amphibians, an S-39 they named Spirit of Africa, and an S-38, Osa’s Ark. Coincidentally, the same year the Johnsons got their pilots’ licenses, Richard Halliburton’s bestseller, The Flying Carpet, which was the story of his circumnavigation of the globe in an open-cockpit Stearman 3C-B, hit the shelves.

Martin and Osa’s fifth African expedition was airborne. From 1933 to 1934, they flew the length of the Dark Continent; their aerial film footage, including the first filmed over-flys of Mt Kilmanjaro and Mt Kenya, was both groundbreaking and outstanding. Never again will anyone, anywhere in Africa, see, let alone film, the vast herds of elephants and other game they saw below them. Baboona was not only the inevitable feature film that was born of this expedition, but on 3 January 1935, it became the first ever in-flight move, being shown on an Eastern Airlines commercial flight.

The Johnsons’ last expedition was again to their old stomping grounds, British North Borneo, where they filmed Borneo between 1935 and 1936.

Western Air Express Flight 7 was a twin-engine Boeing 247D operating as a domestic scheduled passenger flight from Salt Lake City, Utah to Burbank, California on 12 January 1937. In severely limited visibility resulting from heavy rain and fog, the Boeing had wandered off course on its approach into the Union Air Terminal at Burbank. When the captain, William Lewis, suddenly saw high ground ahead, he cut power to reduce the force of the impact and “pancaked” into the hillside. It crashed shortly after 11.00 near Newhall, California. There were three crew members and ten passengers aboard. Martin Johnson died from injuries received in the crash and Osa was seriously injured.

Clark H Getts had been the agent managing the Johnsons’ lecture tours, and took over Osa’s financial affairs following the crash; by August, he had become the new man in her life. It was Getts who got Osa signed on as a consultant for the Darryl F Zanuck film, Stanley and Livingstone. Getts artfully sculpted Osa into a more glamorous figure, who was even voted one of the best-dressed women in America.

Osa was very capable at a good many things, but she did hire a ghost writer, Winifred Dunn, to help her pen her autobiography, I Married Adventure, which went on the shelves in May of 1940. It was the year’s best-selling non-fiction book. The film version, by the same name, premiered in August. (Osa had also drafted another manuscript about their Borneo trips, which was published posthumously as Last Adventure in 1966, with the aid of Pascal Imperato.)

Osa Johnson and Clark Getts married secretly in April of 1940, and followed that up with a public wedding in February of the next year. Osa had had a problem with alcohol  following Martin’s death – and while Getts was busy keeping the wheels of the Johnson machine turning with re-worked footage and some new material, Osa started drinking again. Getts had her put into a psychiatric hospital in 1944, and a divorce in 1949 followed a bitter legal battle. Kelly Enright, in Osa and Martin: For the Love of Adventure, does a good job of quantifying what Osa was going through. Despite her disastrous relationships following Martin’s death, she was not some depressed alcoholic, but she had lost the man who had shared and shaped her life since the age of sixteen, and in many ways, it was a loss she would never be able to come to terms with. It is perhaps telling that one of the legal provisions of the divorce was that she was able to resume the name Johnson.

By 1951, Osa was not in good health; reminiscent of Clark Getts, who knew a good thing when he saw one, Osa’s lawyer John Crane moved in with her, but the end was near. On 7 January, 1953, plagued by coronary artery disease and financial difficulties, Osa suffered a fatal heart attack, aged 58. She had been planning a return to Africa.

The Johnsons were a high profile, very public couple, with a carefully-crafted image, but like all of us, they were also people with their own personal lives apart from that. Professor Pascal Imperato and his wife took the time to delve into who Martin and Osa Johnson really were. As he says in his insightful biography, the definitive story of their lives. They Married Adventure: the Wandering Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson, “What emerged were two people quite different in many ways from the public images they had created for themselves. We were not disappointed by what we found because even in their private lives, Martin and Osa had the power to inspire”.

Today, the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum is administered by a twelve-member volunteer Board of Trustees, and is affiliated to two sister museums, the Musée de Manega, which is located in Burkina Faso, and the Sabah Museum in Malaysia, and it stands as a rare window into a world a lot of folks like me wish we could still step into.

Not forgotten into the 21st century, in April of 2001 Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge opened and featured an exhibit of Johnson photos and Osa’s book. American Eagle Outfitters used the Johnsons as the icons for its 28 franchised Martin + Osa clothing stores and accompanying Martin + Osa line of primarily denim classic and contemporary clothing. Sadly, the venture failed in 2010, but judging by the number of folks looking online, it’s not forgotten. The Johnsons’ photos continue to appear in the backgrounds of modern movies, like 2004’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Night at the Museum from 2006.

Martin Johnson was once quoted as saying, “If ever a man needed a partner in his chosen profession, it has been I. And if ever a wife were a partner to a man, it is Osa Johnson”. The Johnsons shared twenty seven action-packed years together, and left behind a legacy that was unique and iconic of an era that is no more and will never be again. Their story is a glimpse into beginnings – basically the wildlife documentary as we know it – and endings – when the world was whole and there was so much left to see and discover. It is fitting that this story and these two rare individuals not be forgotten.

THE GUNS OF MARTIN AND OSA JOHNSON
During their four years by “Lake Paradise” in northern Kenya on the Ethiopian border, the Johnsons possessed quite an arsenal.
By way of heavy dangerous game rifles, they had three .470 NE doubles by Thomas Bland & Sons of London, a .505 Rigby bolt action rifle and two Jeffery .404 Mauser actions. As was done back in the day, when you were on prolonged safari, you ensured against breakages and malfunctions with numbers.

They also carried a Thomas Bland .275 with a Mannlicher action, and three .405 Winchester lever actions. The .405WCF remains to this day the most powerful rimmed cartridge designed for the lever guns, and was a personal favourite of Theodore Roosevelt on safari in Africa. And lastly, a Winchester Model 1895 in .32.

Also recorded is an American Springfield, also in “Mauser” action which they list as being a .303. I thought that this must be a typographical error, because of the manufacturer and the calibre, and in one very good photo Osa is shown with what looks very much like a Springfield sporter, possibly made by Griffin & Howe because of the side-mounted scope, so I’m going to say the Springfield would have been a .30-06.

They took along a Winchester repeating 12-gauge, a 12-gauge Parker double barreled shotgun, and two 20-gauge Ithacas, one sawn off.

Handguns were a pair of Colt revolvers – one a .38 and the other a .45. There is also a glamour shot of Osa with a Mauser Type A in 9.3x62mm; the Johnsons were known to pack in crates of ammunition, as was the norm back then, but a 9.3×62 would make a lot of sense in Africa where calibres like .30-06 weren’t as common. The one example that has seen the light of day and can be directly linked with Osa is an Oberndorf sporter, serial number 105930. It’s consecutive serial-numbered companion is known to have been sold through the firm of Charles A Heyer & Co of Nairobi, and as both rifles are identical down to the rubber buttplate fitted for a lady, one can surmise that both rifles were at one time owned by Osa.

These sporters are known as among the finest of the Mausers.

The Hearing Imperative
I J Larivers

(Originally published in African Hunter magazine)

When I first started shooting, most of the club’s committee consisted of the ‘old guard’- folks who’d been on the range or around firearms a lot for most of their lives, throughout the Rhodesian bush war and events like the first Practical Pistol World Championship in 1977. It wasn’t long before I got involved with the club’s reloading teams. It could be quite comical on a Wednesday evening with the old-timers bellowing at each other to discuss the merits of different bullet types and powder charges, for a good many of them had spent most of their shooting lives without using hearing protection.

The greats of yesteryear, like Elmer Keith and Bill Jordan, didn’t hear too well either as the years wore on. In their halcyon days, hearing protection just wasn’t seen as necessary and that ringing in your ears after a day on the range was just part and parcel of shooting. I grew up like that too, but fortunately didn’t do a lot of shooting until the use of hearing protection had become the new normal.

I do have tinnitus – that annoying background ringing in the ears – today, but it’s a result of two large doses of quinine after contracting a particularly bad strain of malaria on the Zambezi River. What shooters didn’t realise back in the day, was that there is a condition called Noise Induced Hearing Loss. It is a medical condition, wherein the cumulative effects of repeated exposure to loud noises causes degradation of one’s hearing.

There are times when it’s not practical to wear ear defenders: a military scenario and hunting are examples. When I was in tsetse control during the last days of the war, I always kept a pair of spent 9mm cases on the light switches of my Series III Land Rover for the purpose – and of course I never used them, except maybe if we did some impromptu shooting practice on the old airfield that doubled as our range.

I have done a lot of shooting over the past forty years as far afield as the United States, Namibia, South Africa, Ecuador, Australia and Bali, and in this day and age, I have not come across a range where both eye and ear protection are not mandatory. In the major international disciplines such as the International Practical Shooting Confederation, these safeguards are a condition of match entry. Even air gun shooters wear ear defenders – not because of the deafening report of a .177 Hammerli, but to minimise distractions from background noise.

As the former editor of a hunting magazine, I will come under fire from my readers for letting through photos of people supposedly shooting without eye and ear protection, or having a family pet on the range during what appears to be live fire. The good reason for this is that any time the human ear is exposed to sounds in excess of 85 decibels there is the risk of damage to the sensory receptor cells in the ears called auditory hair cells. Experts will tell you that even a single exposure to such a loud noise can result in temporary damage to these cells.

A decibel equates to ten Bels – named in honour of Alexander Graham Bell and originally used to quantify telephonic power in the early 20th century.

Hair cells are sensitive to vibrations in the air – sounds – which they then biochemically convert into impulses along the auditory nerve which the brain translates into perceived sounds. The result of damaging them with unduly loud noises is sensorineural hearing loss, and what this means is a diminished hearing sensitivity. You can still detect volume, just not the subtler nuances between sounds. Human hair cells are not capable of reproduction, and therefore the damage to hearing will, over time, become permanent. Millions of people around the world have developed high frequency hearing loss as a result of unprotected exposure to loud noises, and the shooting fraternity is particularly at risk. In addition to the pure volume in decibels of a sound stimulus like a gunshot, its frequency and duration are also causative factors in damage to your hearing, hence the use of hearing protection in the construction industry.

Noise Induced Hearing Loss may go almost unnoticed, but as time goes by, once sharp and clear sounds become indistinct and muffled. People with the condition begin to have difficulty distinguishing similar words from one another and perceiving common sounds like ‘v’ and ‘s’ – particularly in environments where there is a lot of background noise.

Sound is caused by vibrations travelling through the air, and as such is moderated by physical barriers and distance. The closer you are to the source of the sound, the louder and more distinct it will be, and this applies to the muzzle of a firearm as well. When a topographical obstruction like a wind current or a physical barrier interferes with a soundwave, it causes what is called an acoustic shadow. In the case of a shooter, the head creates a partial acoustic shadow, so the effect of a gunshot and any resultant hearing impairment is not necessarily the same for both ears. The report, in the case of a right-handed shooter will be greater – by about 3dB – in the left ear and vice versa.

If a noise needs to be 85dB to potentially damage one’s hearing, how significant can 3dB be? Very. To understand the decibel scale, remember it is logarithmic. Increments are non-linear; logarithmic scales are used to measure wide ranges of values such as light intensity and loudness of sound. While ten decibels is ten times greater than the faintest sound the ear can perceive, twenty decibels is one hundred times greater. To put this into perspective, a 3dB increase means the intensity is doubled.

As a general guide, if you’re sitting in a quiet room, you’re probably being exposed to around 40dB. If your alarm clock goes off, that goes to around 80dB. Go outside to mow the lawn, or use other machinery and you’re going to be in the 90-110dB range.

‘Firearms’ are collectively rated on most charts as giving off around 140dB, but not all firearms are created equal, and higher velocity cartridges and shorter barrels are going to be louder. An MOA single shot .358 Winchester I occasionally shoot at long range silhouettes has a 360° muzzle brake – and that can add in excess of 10dB to the report.

It’s easy to see how long-term exposure to gunfire can irreparably damage a person’s hearing. Indoor ranges and covered ranges will often prohibit the use of magnum loads to reduce ambient sound, especially as someone standing alongside a shooter is exposed to even greater noise.

As with most things, prevention is far better than cure, especially when there is no cure. And because Noise Induced Hearing Loss is cumulative, even though some permanent damage may have been done from the beginning, it is never too late to start using hearing protection.

Hearing protection is basically divided into two categories: passive and active. Passive would consist of earplugs or hearing protectors. I know a lot of shooters who insist on wearing both types concurrently.

Ear defenders range in price from dollars to hundreds of dollars, and it’s probably not worth skimping too much in this regard. The effectiveness of different types and brands is determined by something called a Noise Reduction Rating. This is a unit of measurement used in the United States that compares the effectiveness of various forms of hearing protection.

The higher the NRR number, the more effective the device presumably is. Again, the NRR reverts to a bit of a generalisation because sounds are comprised of varying frequencies, and earplugs and defenders do not temper different frequencies to the same degree. The formula used to determine the actual effectiveness of a form of hearing protection is to take the NRR value, subtract seven and divide by two. Therefore, if you are using a set of disposable earplugs with an NRR of 29 (29 – 7 = 22 / 2 = 11), and you are using a lawnmower producing 90dB, you are not being exposed to 61dB, but rather 79dB (90 – 11 = 79).

By the same token, if you are using those plugs together with a set of ear defenders which are NRR rated at 27, you do not add the two values together, but rather add a decibel value of five to the highest number, e.g. that combination would afford 34 dB of protection (29 + 5), and the exposure from the lawn mower would be down to 56dB.

You will also occasionally see reference to SNR values. This refers to the Single Number Rating, which is an insulation value, in decibels, which is averaged over relevant frequencies. If, for example, a product has an SNR value of 35dB, it will absorb 100dB, reducing it to 65dB. For years, I used Deben’s passive Slimline ear defenders. They are a good quality product at an affordable price, and their noise reduction rating is 24. The quality is important, because the efficacy of hearing protectors depends largely on the fit. They must fit properly and seal tightly around the ear, or the Noise Reduction Rating is almost meaningless.

One day, a newer member of my shooting club, who is in the business of supplying medical equipment, convinced Paul and me and a few other folks to order a set of 3M Peltor Tactical Sport Hearing Protectors. The price was way above what I normally paid for a set of passive defenders, but at the very least I would have a state-of- the-art set of passive defenders if I didn’t like them! 3M is a quality brand, and Paul is very happy with his. They are even used as passive protectors, even though they are NRR rated at ‘only’ 20. I like the way mine amplify ambient sounds, and as they cut out at 85dB, they fit the bill nicely. There are many applications for a good set of hearing protectors that will also allow you to hear normal background sounds and conversations and be aware of what is happening around you, while at the same time filtering out harmful noises.

Modern active electronic ear defenders are the solution to this problem. The shooting fraternity is pretty much divided down the middle as to whether they are a good thing or an abomination. I personally like the idea of active noise reduction, because I can clearly hear the range officer’s commands. Zimbabwe’s top Practical Pistol shooter, Paul Friendship, on the other hand, feels that the background noise is too distracting when he’s on the line – we both have the same hearing protectors, but I use batteries!
How do they work?

Active ear defenders incorporate a battery-powered amplifier that works with microphones in each ear muff and normal background sounds are picked up, amplified, and fed through miniature speakers on each side. Better models have volume controls, and any loud, harmful noises – in the 80-90dB range – are filtered out by an electronic circuit, which cuts off the speaker in the headset. Across the board, varying active sound suppressors come in the 15-30dB NRR range, and, apart from the amplification of normal background noises, they are no better or worse than passive hearing protectors. And no, I don’t care if they’re MP3-compatible.

It really comes down to the individual shooter’s choice as to what type of hearing protection to use. The least expensive are earplugs, and the best types like the Silencio Red-E-Fit offer NRR ratings of up to 32. The price tag goes way up if you order ones custom-fitted to your ears – or active ones, which are available – but they do afford the best seal. Many shooting ranges, including mine, have inexpensive throw-away earplugs for sale to casual day members, and you can buy ones like Silencio’s silicone Economy Earplug, which are re-useable. The only complaint that many shooters have is that earplugs can be uncomfortable, and may be dislodged with strenuous activity.

In the cheaper types, the ear cushion is foam-filled, and this is replaced by liquid silicone in the better models. If you wear ear protection and eye protection, your shooting glasses, for example, may interfere with the fit around the ear and the liquid silicone is much more adaptive and ensures a better seal.

Active, electronic ear defenders seem to be all the vogue now. If all else fails, they are no worse than passive hearing protectors, though they are much more expensive… and remember… batteries are the curse of technology! But, all things considered, they may be the last pair I ever buy, and I am happy with them.

In summary, all types of ear defenders have their place. I always throw a couple of pairs of disposable 3M foam plugs into my range bag, because someone on the range is always going to forget hearing protection; at the price, there will always be one or two pairs in my car, too. My old Deben passive hearing protectors also live in the car, along with an older pair of shooting glasses – for I can be forgetful, too. The simple fact is, there is no alternative to sensible hearing protection.

CHRISTMAS WITH CHEWORE
I J Larivers

There’s always a grain of truth in superstitions. For instance, if you see a chameleon walking across your path, that’s OK, but if it’s walking down the path, toward or away from you, it is a harbinger of disaster. So says Ndebele legend. If you think about it chameleons are weighted far more on the prey side than the predator side, and despite their artistry of camouflage, that only works if they’ve got some obliging background in front of which to do their stuff. So, they’d best make haste from point A to point B. Because you are not likely to see a chameleon walking down the path. If you do, and you actually register it, you’ll probably bewondering enough about it that you’ll step on the puff adder around the corner. See? Chameleons walking down the path are bad luck.

This and other legends I learned over Christmas of 1994, whilst spending a relaxing ten days at Tashinga National Parks rest camp on the shores of Lake Kariba with a colleague.

To make ourselves useful we offered to bring up a Unimog truck for the station, and a cattle crush which had been modified to incorporate a scale for use with Chewore, the baby rhinoceros.

Although Tashinga was one of National Parks’ Intensive Protection Zones for rhinos, the local villagers surrounding the National Park are not adverse to setting as many snares as they can steal the wire to make for bushmeat more than anything else. Little Chewore’s mother was caught in one such deathtrap, and although after her discovery and capture she survived, for a long period she was unable to produce milk for her offspring. Thus it came to be that the little brute was incarcerated in a large pen on station where she quickly made friends with, and provided hours of enjoyment for, anyone who overcame the myriad obstacles of getting to Tashinga to see her. This was a perfect opportunity for the station ecologist, Paul Wood, to accumulate a lot of raw data on a healthy growing baby rhinoceros.

Having arranged for the ‘Mog and the cattle crush to be relayed across the lake by ferry, we made our own way over in a 17-foot powerboat, and were met by the Senior Ranger, Gary Douglas. We settled into a couple of days of lying in what little sun there was, catching more than our fair share of fish, getting in a little pistol practice on the station firing range, and feeding and playing with Chewore.

Chewore’s pen was made of sturdy mopane logs, and was more than large enough to accommodate her antics. She loved being scratched behind the ears, and reciprocated with the high-pitched whistling squeaks that baby rhinos are famous for. She consumed gallons and gallons of formula throughout the day from whoever wanted to feed her, and there was a long queue for that job. She had been given a couple of old car tyres as toys – pet shops don’t usually stock stuff for baby rhinoceroses – and she would spend what little time she wasn’t eating sleeping or squeaking, chasing them around her enclosure to the delight of anyone who cared to go in and roll them for her. Just as well, too, for a baby rhinoceros is a stocky, sturdy, powerful scale model of an adult rhinoceros. Chewore loved to play, but the problem arose when you wanted to leave. She still wanted to play. She weighed more than I did, and the only way of getting out of her pen was to send a tyre off in any direction that would allow you to slip out the gate.

Gary had friends out for Christmas, and my colleague Paul Oleszczuk did impala fillets to an old Polish recipe. That Christmas was made up of many things: good company, the African bush, and Chewore.

Then came the buffalo.

Gary had received reports of a wounded buffalo along the foreshore to the west of the camp. Wounded buffalo make ordinary buffalo look like stuffed cuddly toys. Night was fast falling, and one of nature’s imposing sound and light displays that had been in the background all day was looking to erupt into the mother of all thunderstorms.

After some years of drought, the lake foreshore was void of anything that might credibly be called vegetation, and didn’t look too inviting just then if you happened to be the height of a person – which we coincidentally were – and the tallest thing for several hundred metres around. I was carrying my FN-FAL rifle seemingly just for the sake of conductivity.

But go out in search of the beast we did. Gary had a short wheelbase pre-production Land Rover, and, as we drove onto the foreshore I saw one of the most impressive lightning displays I have ever seen in my life – partly as it was all around us in an arc of 360o. The thunder was still a muffled rumbling ominous growl in the distance.

We drove a kilometre or so east of the camp, in which direction we knew the buffalo herd to have gone. The lions would be following the herd, and any wounded animal would soon be dealt with naturally. No buff, wounded or otherwise, anywhere to be seen. We were questioning the veracity of the report, but decided to take a quick look to the west – the animal would have to be seriously incapacitated to be this far behind the herd.

Sure enough, just as we were having thoughts of home and warm, dry, beds, two eyes shone in the beam of the spotlight maybe fifty metres away. It was a large cow, and her left front leg was hanging from the limb by a thin strand of skin – she had clearly been attacked by a crocodile whilst wading in shallow water. She couldn’t move fast, but surprisingly she could move, and didn’t regard us at all like long-lost relatives. Gary had the heavy rifle, a .458 Winchester, and climbed from the Land Rover and put in a good heart and lung shot into the buffalo’s left side. She went down in a couple of minutes. That was about the time the heavens opened, and, soaked to the skin, we got back after midnight, with fresh buffalo liver for the next morning’s breakfast. The rangers recovered the remainder of the carcass the next morning.

Chewore of course had been unaware of any of this, and was sitting out the deluge in a sheltered section of her boma.

She had been rescued from a place known as Tunsa Springs in the Chewore area of the lower Zambezi in the mid 1990s after her mother had been snared. Chewore had been CASEVAC’d out by helicopter, and Mom followed in a truck. Tashinga would offer them both the protection they needed to survive. Eventually, one of the guests at former National Parks warden Steve Edwards’s Musango Safari Camp fell so much under the baby rhino’s spell that she gave up her day job in Switzerland to take care of Chewore full time.
By definition, habituated animals have lost their fear of man. This can be a problem with something as big as a rhinoceros, and it is even more of a concern when the animal is rare, endangered, and targeted by poaching gangs. As expected Chewore became a regular fixture at Maronga tented camp, which offered her a degree of protection, and she would often sleep in the kitchen tent and socialize with guests.

When she had grown to near adulthood, it was thought best to relocate Chewore to Hwange National Park, and she was duly sent to Sinamatella. As her contact with humans had always been in a positive light, she was oblivious to the dangers of being a rhinoceros in Africa, and by way of exploring her new surroundings crossed the border into Botswana. Fortunately the poaching problem at the time was less acute there, and she again had the good fortune to find herself in the company of guides and rangers who looked after her and even exploited her habit of wanting to find out what was in the cooler boxes at sundowner time! And they say rhinoceroses don’t have a sense of humour.

So far, though Chewore is probably only somewhere around middle aged, the story has had a happy ending. She is now one of a handful of black rhinos who live at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary.

Located some 25 kilometres northwest of Serowe in Botswana, the Khama Rhino Sanctuary is a community-based wildlife project which was established in 1992 to reclaim a tract of wild bush, and involve the local communities in conservation – especially of the endangered rhinoceros. Incorporating almost 8,600 hectares of Kalahari sandveld, the sanctuary is home to both black and white rhino, some thrity other species of wildlife and 230 species of birds. The prime focus of the Khama Rhino Sanctuary is the rhinoceros breeding programme, and so far Chewore has done her part by giving birth to two calves. To date, sixteen rhinos from Khama have been relocated to other protected areas, and the sanctuary itself is heavily protected by not only its own corps of rangers but also soldiers from the Botswana Defence Force.
By all accounts, Chewore is now far less inclined to approach humans, and seems to have found her true niche in nature at last.

She was the first rhinoceros to be hand-reared by National Parks at Tashinga, and being a pioneer of sorts there were a number of lessons to be learned about the re-integration of habituated rhinos back into the wild from her example.

According to current conventional wisdom, the release process should be gradual, and into a location far enough away from where the calf was raised that it will not try and return to be with humans. One of the things that seemed to attract Chewore after she was released was all the people-food goodies that she had been given as she was growing up and which she knew would be forthcoming from the ubiquitous cooler boxes around camp. While it is tempting to give baby animals treats, this is very rarely doing them and favours.

With it looking like much of the rhino’s hope for future survival is going to revolve around captive breeding, little Chewore was a pathfinder in many ways.

PHOTOS:

1. The author with Chewore.
2. Transporting the modified cattle crush.
3. Chewore’s mother recovering from her injuries.
4. National Parks Warden Paul Oleszczuk putting in some range time.
5. Chewore making sure the table settings were correct.
6. In later years – photo Barry and Lynda Revell.

The Tragic – and Needless – Deaths of Claudio and Max Chiarelli:
Conspiracy Theories and Lessons Learned
I J Larivers

(This article was originally published in issue 107 of African Hunter magazine, 2016)

At around 15.30 hours on Sunday, 13 March, the well-known and well-respected professional hunter Claudio Chiarelli, holder of Zimbabwe professional hunter’s licence number 58 (1989) and his son Max died tragically – and needlessly – in a hail of gunfire in the Mana Pools National Park. Initial reports blamed poachers, but in fact it was blue-on-blue: euphemistically-named “friendly fire”.

Claudio and Max had been performing voluntary support duties for National Parks in the area, in concert with the Zambezi Society. On that fateful afternoon, they had gone out to collect a National Parks ranger patrol that had been following poachers’ spoor, and to deploy a further two three-man patrols; six rangers were travelling with them, as was Francesco Marconati, who operated Vine Lodge in the park. This would feed a lot of grist into the omnipresent rumour mills, in and out of Zimbabwe, because
of the “Chinese connection” to Vine Lodge.

Claudio and Max’s vehicle was parked on the side of the road in the middle section of the park; unwittingly, they had stopped a mere fifteen metres from the spot where the
poachers’ spoor had crossed the road. The National Parks APU had been on spoor since around 09.00 that morning, and as they closed with the road, suddenly they heard the sound of voices.

Claudio and Max had opened the bonnet of their Land Cruiser and were standing in front of the truck; Francesco and the other rangers had deployed farther back around the Cruiser. At this time of the year, the end of the rainy season, the bush can be unbelievably thick and visibility almost at a minimum. As the rangers slowly advanced, one of them caught sight of a flash of blue, Claudio’s shirt, and assuming it to be a poacher, they opened fire. Tragically, Claudio and Max died instantly.

The rumours began flying thick and fast, and it was only
after Richard Maasdorp and Gary Layard of the Zambezi Society had visited the park and spoken with those involved that the actual facts emerged.

There were some sketchy accounts of what had happened in the media, but it was in forums and social media that a lot of the information, and some conjecture and misinformation, was distributed.

Reports that Claudio and Max had been killed by poachers were soon laid to rest. They were not involved in anti-poaching patrols, except as part of the support infrastructure that National Parks itself so desperately lacked then. But some of the posts are worth mentioning:

“That does not sound like an accident to me. What patrol will simply open fire on an unidentified vehicle and its
occupants? That even defies any shoot on sight order as that too requires the target to be identified as a poacher”,
wrote one contributor. Probably from a climate-controlled office half a world away.

The realities in Zimbabwe are very different. The thickness of the bush played an obvious role in target acquisition, but so, too, did the life-and-death stakes that poachers and rangers play for daily, and which are almost incomprehensible to someone living a cloistered first-world existence.

Poachers and traffickers of endangered species face minimum mandatory nine-year prison sentences in Zimbabwe. This means they will think absolutely nothing of ambushing and murdering park rangers. Since 2013, over a thousand game rangers have been killed while protecting protected wildlife in Africa. So yes, in many African countries there are shoot-on-sight (and please spare me the misleading and emotive “shoot-to-kill” so beloved of the tabloid hacks – there is no such thing) standard operating procedures. They have to give the anti-poaching units a fighting chance.

More enlightened – from the standpoint of legislation – countries like Zimbabwe also have laws like the Protection of Wildlife (Indemnity) Act, which indemnifies law enforcement from prosecution from such acts.

Academicians can and will carry on debating the eeew- ickiness of the so-called “coercive conservation practices” until the end of time, safe and comfortable in their first-world offices. The realities are much different.

“How can you possibly make that ‘mistake’? No poachers ever are caught standing by a white safari rigged Land Cruiser. In a lot of cases, volunteers help by deploying and picking up patrols or wherever else they can. If they are getting in the way of corrupt poaching syndicates, what better way to smoke a group of these volunteers to make them quit and get out the way?” wrote someone else.

The trouble here is that the rainy season in the Zambezi Valley is not hunting season, and even if the commentator had actually been to Africa, very few overseas hunters have seen the bush at its densest state with almost zero visibility.“

I am not buying any of it” was one succinct comment, followed by “Nor am I. I have been in contact with some friends in Zim. They all think this was a set-up.” Ah yes, the ubiquitous and adumbral “friends”. They’re everywhere.

I was starting to feel annoyed, because the Zimbabwe rumour mill was worse. “This was a hit…pure and simple” being one example, and if this sort of thing was getting onto the Internet, watch out. I felt that all these cloak-and-dagger stories were actually demeaning to Claudio and Max. It was almost as though what happened was being used for a perverse kind of entertainment.

Retired CID Detective Superintendent Charlie Haley, formerly officer commanding, forensic ballistics for the
police and respected throughout southern Africa as one of the most knowledgeable ballisticians on the continent, was also asked to inspect the bodies. Charlie’s verdict, when I asked him, was a single sentence: “I examined the bodies and all I saw tied in with the official report.” In his 22 years in the police, he has seen just about every conceivable type of shooting. He also mentioned that all of the rounds that hit the bodies appeared to have been tumbling, which to me is indicative of bullets that have been deflected by something like dense bush. It is not indicative of calculated and controlled fire.

Fortunately, saner voices were also heard. “Rather than spawning conspiracy theories this is an opportunity (albeit a very, very unfortunate circumstance) to press for more funding, training, management and everything else associated with the goal that these two men gave their lives for. Let’s hope their lives were not [lost] in vain.” And herein lies a lot of truth.

National Parks is broke. Yes, they are in a position to earn a large amount of revenue, but it’s a bit misleading, flim-flam, even, calling them a parastatal, because they are wholly owned by government. So there are often “better” uses found for the earnings they generate. The Director- General also doesn’t need his fleet of fancy SUVs, so some of their money could probably be better spent, too. But that is what it is, and Zimbabweans, having always valued their natural history heritage, have made a plan. A lot of the anti-poaching efforts these days have been, of necessity, privatised. I can’t express how much I admire this initiative. It is outstanding, and has undoubtedly saved much of the country’s wildlife. It is not uncommon for me to be asked from a number of different quarters, just who a potential donor should support. I invariably advise folks to look local first.

Bubye Valley Conservancy is one of the pioneers for the use of tracker dogs against wildlife crime in Zimbabwe, and that costs money. So does the large, well-trained anti-poaching unit they have created to protect the world’s third-largest Black Rhino population. Much of the money for that comes from sport hunting, but now that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has caved in to the Cecil-lovers’ “lion lives matter” campaign (don’t rhino lives matter, too?), much of that revenue has fallen away.


Around Kariba there are the Matusadona Anti- Poaching Project, the Bumi Hills Anti-Poaching Unit, the Tashinga Initiative and The Gache Gache Anti-Poaching unit. Elsewhere, there are the Dande Anti-Poaching Unit, Flying for Wildlife, Lower Zambezi Volunteers Group, Lower Zambezi Valley Wildlife Support Group and many, many more.

I also have a great deal of personal admiration for the work done by the late Rory Young (murdered by insurgents in Burkina Faso) and Chengeta Wildlife. So yeah, there are a lot of very deserving causes out there who are all doing magnificent work. But do you see a problem? I do. It is something that they are all working to overcome: the issue of coordination. The “standard” in the phrase “standard operating procedures” is the operative word. And this is directly relevant to the tragedy that befell Claudio and Max Chiarelli.

At the beginning of February, many of these stakeholders had an inaugural meeting in Harare to discuss how to best coordinate their efforts. The initial mailing list had over 60 names on it. (What jumped out at me, as an aside, was the fact that National Parks Intelligence and Security Section and police CID Minerals and Border Control from Harare were not included and I believe it was a huge mistake to not involve them. I’m going to say it was just an oversight.)

From such meetings and cooperation will come standard operating procedures. And a way forward. On the day Claudio and Max Chiarelli died, there were no effective radio communications. GPS devices were not in use by the patrols. There was no central command post at the park headquarters that knew, from a system of reporting lines, where everyone was. National Parks has to rely on folks like Claudio and Max and Francesco to supply a lot of its infrastructure, but more attention needs to be given to the basics: the tools they have to use. The infrastructure and the equipment. Which is where donors are needed. Perhaps the various private conservation entities will wind up working off of a repeater-based universal radio net, or maybe they will have their own structure but be able to contact other elements when necessary. I don’t know, and it really doesn’t make a lot of difference. The operators on the ground need standardised training, standardised maps, standardised radio procedures, &c.

Some stakeholders expressed the fear that because of this incident, National Parks would move to curtail the involvement of the private sector in the fight against poaching. I don’t believe they can, because they lack the resources to carry on without civilian input. And, it would be a very silly move from a PR standpoint, because they would only be fueling the rumours that the crime syndicates behind the poaching are trying to muscle out independent anti-poaching initiatives.

There is no point in vilifying an over-worked, under- paid Parks ranger for what I sincerely believe was an honest mistake made in a high-stress situation, but there is a point in learning from that, going forward, and honouring Claudio and Max by doing everything possible to get the job they were so passionate about done without something like that happening again. It can be done.

Of all the folks who have asked from time to time about who to support with donations, there has not been one Cecil-loving keyboard warrior? Two Facebook sites, Justice for Cecil and Cecil the Lion Community, have over 50 000 followers. If each were to realise that his or her opinion would carry a lot more credibility if they coughed up just $1, how much could be accomplished? Not to piddle it up against a wall by building a bronze statue of Cecil at the entrance to Hwange for $30 000 as one group has suggested, but by buying radios, GPSs and investing in specialised training and paying for productive informants.

Zimbabwe professional hunter, Hannes Wessels, summed up the backdrop to that fateful day in Mana when he wrote, “Like many local safari hunters marginalised by the collapse of commercial hunting triggered in large part by the international outrage following the ‘Cecil the Lion’ debacle, Claudio was trying to help stem the ongoing slaughter in the Zambezi Valley which is motivated by the demand for meat and ivory. Claudio and Max, for no personal reward whatsoever, were doing what they could to help. It cost them their lives. Where now is the loud-mouthed anti-hunting brigade? Will the media so much as take note of the fact that these two men died trying to save animals that are under siege in a non-hunting area. For them there was never any question of personal gain; they did it because they, like most true hunters, love the animals they occasionally pursue and kill.”

Claudio and Max Chiarelli were laid to rest outside Harare on Friday 18 March at a memorial service that drew
over 600 friends and colleagues. Rest in peace.

Photos

1. Max and Claudio Chiarelli
2. The spot, along the main road into Mana Pools National Park, where the contact occurred.
3. Claudio Chiarelli
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Claudio Chiarelli was born in Libya in 1950, an Italian colony at the time. He spent his early childhood in Tripoli with his brother, Enrico, his mother and his father. When the Gaddafi regime came to power and the independence revolution erupted, the family was forced to leave the country.

They returned to Italy, but not before Claudio had acquired vast hunting skills at a young age when he triumphantly bagged many pigeons and pesky neighbourhood cats around Tripoli.

After a stint back in Italy, the adventuring spirit overtook Claudio, and he departed for Angola to hunt elephants. True to his colourful character, he endeared himself to the local community with his generosity and sense of humour. He was thwarted once again by civil war, and on his return trip to Italy, he met his beautiful young bride-to-be in Asiago. Guilianna and Claudio fell madly in love and travelled to Kenya to start a deep-sea fishing safari business in the face of the hunting ban in Kenya. They were married in the local registry in Nairobi and entered the world of fishing and luxury lodges on the coast.

Their sense of adventure led them to Zimbabwe in 1982 when Claudio established his big game hunting business in the Charisa Safari area. It was as successful a hunting business as Zimbabwe has ever seen.

Claudio was known for his love of life, his gracious and respectful relationship with his staff and his unsurpassed conservation and hunting ethics. The couple’s greatest achievement, by far, has been their two beautiful children, Virginia and Max.

Above all, his fierce devotion to his family and his profession, combined with the positive influence he has had over the years through his willingness to teach young people the ways of the African bush, will have a profound and resounding effect on all those who knew him for a long, long time.

K9s IN THE FIGHT AGAINST POACHING
I J Larivers

(This article was originally published in South Africa’s MAN Magnum magazine in February of 2017)

Very often, especially on social media, there is a call for “new measures” to combat one or other poaching atrocity that has just occurred.

The problem with CITES and other policy-makers is that poaching and trafficking are already illegal so passing more laws or revising policies on paper won’t really do anything. The key to most successful operations is intelligence, and that costs money. Money to pay confidential informants, so that local villagers will realise that there is money to be made – safely – from selling out their friends and neighbours the poachers and the traffickers. Funding is what will make a difference, especially buying information and paying for a working informer network. Trouble is, the majority of the Cecil-lovers out there are nought but keyboard warriors. The 21st century breed of “conservationist” whose conscience is assuaged and who can feel really great about themselves simply by hitting a “like” button from half a world away, no muss, no fuss. What is the strength of their convictions, in dollars and cents? This is the reservoir that needs to be tapped in order to make a difference.

In southern Africa, there are real conservationists, who don’t mind getting their hands dirty and their boots on the ground, and they are behind places like the Save Valley and Bubye Valley conservancies, and the myriad private-sector anti-poaching initiatives which are currently helping to stem the poaching and illegal trafficking tides. These folks need financing to do a job they care about and that the government no longer either has the resources – or perhaps the inclination – to tackle. They no doubt wondered about a world gone mad when the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force in 2015 attempted to solicit $30,000 in donor funds for a bronze statue of Cecil the Lion to be erected at the entrance to Hwange National Park. Mercifully the statue was put on hold when the funding wasn’t forthcoming, but at a time when Matusadona Anti-Poaching Project was announcing a reward of $400 – what they could afford – for information, think what the collective community of anti-poaching initiatives could have actually accomplished with $30,000.

In my book, good intelligence is first and foremost. Then you need meaningful penalties and sentencing and aggressive law enforcement. Those who cry “we need to do something more” are partly correct, but in most cases the laws are there, they just have to be vigorously applied. Most parks and conservancies have beefed up their boots-on-the-ground manpower thanks to private sector funding, but one avenue of action that is just currently taking off in Africa is the use of K9s. It is expensive to acquire and train dogs – and their handlers – to an appropriate standard, but the benefits can be enormous.

Ruger is a young Labrador retriever-German shepherd cross who has been making headlines in Zambia sniffing out ivory, firearms and ammunition. He was scouted and trained by Megan Parker, the director of research for Working Dogs for Conservation in Montana in the United States. She is a properly qualified conservation biologist – which most animal rights activists are not – and is very experienced at training detection dogs. Ruger is Zambia’s first anti-poaching K9, and is stationed adjacent to South Luangwa National Park where poaching is a serious threat to wildlife; it is his mandate to detect elephant ivory, rhino horns, bush-meat and arms and ammunition.

Megan Parker calls Ruger a “bad dog” but is quick to point out that bad dogs are the best for this type of work. He was very difficult to work with at first, but not giving up, Parker eventually teamed him with game scouts assigned to Delta Team, an anti-poaching unit funded by Zambia’s Wildlife Authority and the South Luangwa Conservation Society. For Ruger and for the scouts, it was a case of learning new tricks.

Dogs, of course, have much more finely-attuned senses than we do, and Ruger can conduct a vehicle search in minutes. (To put this in a perspective of sorts, a dog can detect a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a million gallons of water.) Having done more than my share of anti-poaching roadblocks in the past I can confirm that it could take me an hour or more to do the job properly. Ruger proved himself on the job when he singled out a particular vehicle. Initially no contraband was found, but in the end searchers uncovered a matchbox wrapped in plastic, which contained a single percussion cap used to set off the powder charge in a muzzle-loading musket. Good dog.

This sort of success among rural Africans is akin to witchcraft, which is still today a very real part of their lives. In one public demonstration held for government officials at a Zambian courthouse, a game scout carefully concealed a small piece of ivory – which it took Ruger under three minutes to uncover.

One of the things that makes K9 anti-poaching units costly is the fact that – like all special forces – the selection process is all-important. And Parker, and Pete Coppolillo the executive director at Working Dogs for Conservation, do not hold African village strains in high esteem; commercial kennels in Africa are more attuned to turning out security, not detection, dogs. Just about everyone in Africa today who is working with anti-poaching K9s is sourcing them from overseas. As for Ruger’s “bad dog” status, the 150 poachers and traffickers he has put behind bars to date will no doubt concur.

Craig Spencer, the head warden of South Africa’s Balule Reserve relies heavily on Shaya, also a Belgian malanois, trained as a police dog in Germany and supplied by the Endangered Wildlife Trust and funded in part by by the German NGO Rettet Das Nas (loosely translated as “save the horn”).

In Zimbabwe in 2015, professional hunter – just so we all stay clear on where the lion’s share of the real input comes from – Peter Fick of Pete Fick Safaris made an urgent appeal on behalf of Bubye Valley Conservancy on the Accurate Reloading forums for funding for, among other things, a K9 unit. One of the points Pete made was that properly trained anti-poaching dogs could be used all around the country when not specifically employed in the conservancy. Clearly, there is a clear and present need for this type of “technology”, especially given Bubye Valley’s 2015 loss of three times as many rhino as in the previous year (Bubye Valley is home to a third of the world’s remaining black rhino population).

Black rhinos are a critically endangered species that in most cases cannot be hunted, and there are very limited returns from photographic safaris in most of Zimbabwe. For now, anyway. It follows that the conservation of the rhinoceros comes at a huge cost. As Bubye Valley says:

Ngulube is a Belgian malinois who knows more about what’s going on in his area of the Kruger National Park in South Africa than park staff who have spent decades there – and he “sees” most of it through his nose. On any given day, he may be looking for traces of arms and ammunition – the nitrocellulose of gunpowder and microscopic traces perhaps of gun oil. (I was once singled out by a detection dog at Heathrow on my way to Iraq. I had 20 or so rolls of camera film, which like many explosives is also a form of cellulose and the dog was intrigued, to say the least.) The part of Ngulube’s brain that processes scent is forty times bigger than ours, and foxhounds Chico, Jetta and Kombi, sponsored by Unitrans Volkswagen in South Africa, can smell even better than he can. They can follow a scent trail that is hours old, and for many, many kilometres through the bush. These three are currently being trained to run loose, at a much faster pace than even rangers on horseback could move, directing in helicopter-borne QRFs. Dogs, drones, choppers – it’s all on the table, depending on how big your pocketbook is.

“Since accepting the responsibility for black rhinos, the Bubye Valley Conservancy has had to increase the size of its anti-poaching force by a factor of six! Not only were more personnel required, but they also had to be trained to deal with a whole new level of poacher; not the subsistence level snaring they were used to – but professional killers armed with automatic weapons. More vehicles were required, as was a specialised radio communication system, kit, weapons, and a full-time experienced anti-poaching manager to run and lead the team. This all costs a lot of money – and we are very grateful to organisations such as The Beit Trust and The Lowveld Rhino Trust, as well as many of clients and friends for stepping up and donating much needed equipment and funds. However, the annual running costs of the anti-poaching operation still amount to upwards of US$ 300,000 that the shareholders of the Bubye Valley Conservancy have to somehow find in the ever more difficult business environment that is trophy hunting – and with none of this money being generated by the rhinos themselves.” Notably, there is not a single big-time animal rights “charity” in sight when it comes to this kind of funding.

Bubye Valley’s plan was to initially acquire four Belgian malinois – the same breed the Secret Service uses to guard the White House (and so far, not one malinois has solicited a single Columbian prostitute or  been found drunk on duty or left his collar in a washroom).

Because of the dogs’ acute senses, poaching gangs, who traditionally operate in hours of darkness will be unable to evade pursuit and capture. And being based near Matopos National Park – which has the government’s largest population of rhinos – together with a helicopter they will be available for QRF anywhere in the country.

The K9s will need an all-encompassing backup infrastructure – dedicated kennels and highly-trained handlers. Once this is in place, the dogs can be used for tracking, area searches, and vehicle and luggage searches. This all comes at a huge cost.

US$ 1,500 to set up a trust, so that transparent accounting procedures will be followed. $24,500 estimated for the construction of kennels. $3,000 for training equipment. $3,000 for veterinary supplies. $1,440 per annum per dog for basic life support. $31,200 for specialised trainers’ and handlers’ wages. $14,400 annually for life support for the trainer and handlers. $45,000 for a dedicated deployment vehicle, and $9,600 to run it for a year. An estimated $1,440 per year for office and administration costs. Do the maths and then think back to the “species that cannot generate its own revenue” part above.

In nearby Gonarezhou National Park Invictus K9 has set up their first anti-poaching dog units including two German shepherds Sammy and Roxy. It is certainly one of the new faces of anti-poaching.

I think that the majority of the keyboard warriors spoken of earlier are well-intentioned enough. It’s just a question of harnessing that resource for something other than bronze statues of dead lions. (Or, as the Chinese recently offered, a new vehicle for Zimbabwe’s National Parks investigators – complete with realtime satellite tracking so that someone would know where they were at all times.) 

The K9 initiative is one of the “new measures” that could really make a difference for African anti-poaching operations in the long run – not cheap, but relatively low-tech and sustainable over the long haul.

RANGE TRAINING PISTOL CLASSICS
I J Larivers

(This article was originally published in South Africa’s MAN Magnum magazine in December of 2017.)

I was sitting in the pub after a day’s shooting at my club and a few of us were discussing “the good old days”. Some things from then were better than others, I suppose. Most of us had shot the local Practical Pistol circuit back in the days when holsters were made out of leather and there was only one division. Courses of fire were more, well, practical; today’s element of gamesmanship had not yet taken over the sport. And no, I am not saying that in a condescending way at all. IPSC is the Formula One of sport shooting, and that’s just fine. There is a tremendous amount of fun and camaraderie to be had, and it’s a great ambassador for sport shooting worldwide. It’s just different than it was back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, because it is now just a game. Stage names and stage designs no longer are intended to reflect the real world practical use of firearms or realistic training scenarios.

As the Castle lager – an inspiration for profound philosophical thought – flowed, we hatched a plan to put together a mini-match with some of the Golden Oldies – other than ourselves, that is. More for us, truth be told, than the newer members. The three courses of fire that we decided on were El Presidente, the Mozambique Drill, and Cirillo’s Hostage Shoot. But though these matches are still shot regularly on a lot of ranges, it’s surprising how many folks don’t understand their history and why they remain some of the best training drills out there.

I should mention here that having trained armed security guards and government law enforcement details for many years, I am a big fan of the basics: stance, grip, sight picture and trigger control. Repeated ad nauseam until it became second nature. I look askance at the sport shooter-concept of taking people like that and teaching them to kick doors in, run down passages, &c., on the range. Walk, then run. But the drills I am discussing here are really suitable for anyone, pistol or revolver, and by introducing a spirit of competition and making people shoot against a clock for a score you engender camaraderie and interest.

The El Presidente is considered to be the classic training drill by us walking anachronisms. It is an exercise developed by the late Col Jeff Cooper, who was the innovator of all that passes today for “practical” shooting sports, and indeed the lion’s share of the principles of modern handgunning, including holding the firearm with two hands. He was the founder of Gunsite, aka the American Pistol Institute, which was the first modern private firearms training facility in the US, and the best in the world. He was the guiding light of the 1976 Columbia Conference, at which modern IPSC shooting was born, and he was the first President of IPSC. With comments like “The organisers of the competition (an IPSC world championship match held in South Africa in the early ‘80s) have erred insofar as there is any such thing as a competition holster” he gradually grew more and more estranged from the sport shooting disciplines like IPSC, but for the “old guard” he remains, well, Yoda.

While training close protection details for the president of a Latin American country, Cooper created the El Presidente. It was intended to achieve two things: to train shooters in a wide range of basic skills, but, more importantly, to measure their progress over time.
To set up the classic El Presidente, place three targets in a line downrange, three metres apart. The shooter commences the drill standing ten metres uprange, and facing away from the targets, with hands shoulder-high in the position of surrender. On the audible start signal, the shooter turns toward the targets, draws his firearm (from concealment in the original incarnation) and engages each target with two rounds. The shooter then reloads and re-engages each target with two rounds. This is what is today known as a Virginia Count exercise: timed, but with a stipulated number of rounds – the shooter may only fire 12 rounds.

El Presidente is simple to set up, shoot and range, but it brings into play every skill needed for proficient self-defence – the draw, the reload, movement, and engaging multiple targets. Cooper considered par to be a perfect score in ten seconds, but I have seen it done in half that. The perfect score is important. When the shooter sacrifices accuracy to beat the clock, the drill loses much of its relevance. It’s worth mentioning here that the drill may be done either score divided by time, or within a pre-set par time.
The modern El Presidente commonly has the targets one metre apart, concealment is no longer required, and the shooter must change direction for his second string after the reload, but no one will complete the drill creditably unless their gun-handling skills are good. El Presidente also tests your gun and equipment, and when I said earlier it is also a measure of progress, the whole idea is to get that perfect score down in less and less time as you become more proficient from other drills. If you are doing that your skills are improving. If you practice it every weekend until you are like a machine it is more difficult to use it to gauge overall progress.

In order to become a proficient pistolero, you need to put in constant practice. A lot of the basics can be polished with dry fire exercises and then cemented with live fire on the range. El Presidente was the first modern combat training drill, and it is still very relevant.
The Mozambique Drill is another time-honoured classic. The 1976 Practical Pistol world championships in Austria, though held under the banner of the newly-formed International Practical Shooting Confederation, was shot as a “combat” pistol match. In the days before political correctness was inflicted upon us, and targets resembled humanoid silhouettes rather than pizza boxes, and especially in Africa, the mantra “two to the body and one to the head” was oft heard on the range. This has its origins in a defensive course of fire called the “Mozambique Drill”. Sometimes also known as the “Failure Drill”.

During the Mozambican War of Independence, which lasted just under a decade, from 1964 to 1974 between the soon-to-be former colonial power Portugal and the Mozambique Liberation Front, a mercenary named Mike Rousseau was one of the combatants on the Portugese side. Rousseau was engaged in a firefight at the airport in Lourenco Marques, now Maputo, and at one point, Rousseau’s primary weapon was a Browning 9mm handgun. As he came around the corner of a building he found himself facing an insurgent armed with an AK-47. Rousseau brought up his pistol and fired two rounds, centre of mass, into his opponent’s chest. The FRELIMO soldier not only did not go down, but he did not lose his AK, either. Rousseau had lowered his pistol to the ready position but now decided to fire a third shot to the man’s head. In the heat of combat, his third round hit the insurgent in the throat. Nonetheless, it broke the spinal cord and ended the fight.
Shortly thereafter Rousseau made the acquaintance of Col Cooper. When told of the encounter with the insurgent Cooper realised a great embryonic training drill when he saw one. He named it the Mozambique, and by the late 1970s, it was part of the training regimen at Gunsite.

In 1980 two Los Angeles Police SWAT officers enrolled in a week-long pistol course at Gunsite. They liked the Mozambique Drill, and appreciated its superiority as a fight-stopper. With Cooper’s blessing it became incorporated into the LAPD’s curriculum. In the interests of political correctness, it was re-christened the “Failure Drill”. Even simpler than the El Presidente, it originally consisted of firing two shots at the centre of body mass, lowering the pistol to the ready position and assessing the need for the third shot. Soon the return to the ready position was modified to a straight transition from the centre of mass to the head. Why an experienced combatant like Rousseau had not done this is anyone’s guess. Maybe he had.

In today’s world there are lots of reasons why two shots to the centre of mass won’t necessarily neutralise a target: poor choice of calibre or poorly-performing ammunition, body armour, heavy clothing, or a drug-induced high. It doesn’t really matter why in a gunfight, the critical need is to end the encounter.
Rounds fired centre of mass should end an attack by disrupting blood flow to the brain, or damaging the criminal’s spinal cord; damage to the lungs is secondary, but significant nonetheless. But if they don’t, the aggressor still poses a deadly threat. While the intention should not be to kill, but rather to end the threat, a bullet to the head will probably conclude the fight immediately.

Today’s Mozambique/Failure Drill is done by firing two shots to the centre of mass and one to the head as quickly as possible. This is a range exercise, so the clock will be running, and the distance to the target can be anywhere between five and fifteen metres – or even farther, depending on the shooters’ skill levels. Again, it is Virginia Count, so the stated course of fie must be followed and no more than three rounds may be fired. The two rapid shots to the centre of mass present very little challenge to anyone who is proficient with their firearm, but the trick is then to slow down just that little bit to get a precise head shot.

The late Jim Cirillo was a big advocate of as much rangetime as you could possibly put in, and he was also very favourably disposed to the pistol shooting sports. But why his name might be familiar to many shooters is that he was a blooded veteran of the New York Police Department’s famed Stakeout Squad. He was the author of the book Guns, Bullets and Gunfights, and the book Jim Cirillo’s Tales of the Stakeout Squad was the biography written about him by American author Paul Kirchner. Both are available from Paladin Press. Jim Cirillo was never an armchair anything when it came to firearms. In over 250 stakeouts, he was involved in more than 20 gunfights, and killed at least 11 perpetrators. So a drill based on his experiences carries some credibility.

The Cirillo’s Hostage Shoot replicates an encounter Cirillo had with three armed robbers in a supermarket; as they tried to flee, one only exposed his head briefly, and two were obscured by a cashier. Cirillo fired six rounds from his Smith and Wesson M10 .38 Special revolver in what the re-enactment deemed to be about three seconds, taken from Cirillo’s own estimate. All the robbers were hit, and one died at the scene. We’re probably all familiar with the History Channel video clip of Jerry Miculek engaging three targets with a revolver, El Presidente-style without the turn and firing 12 rounds on target in three seconds including the reload, but none of them were shooting back at him. Cirillo commented afterwards about the three seconds, “I’ve spent so much time on the combat range I ought to know!”

To set up Cirillo’s Hostage Shoot, you arrange two targets – the current International Defensive Pistol Association 18” x 30” silhouette target is probably the best for all these drills – at a ground-level position, and superimpose between them a designated no-shoot target to represent a hostage. Place this target array at 7 metres. Then, at 10 metres and 90o to one side (bearing in mind your range’s safety angles) place another target which either has only the head portion exposed or conversely only head shots will be counted. Again it is a Virginia Count exercise, with a time of three seconds for one scoring hit on each target being the goal, or score divided by time.

The above three stages make for a challenging but not overly-complicated mini-match, or personal training drill. The total round count is 18, and by either setting a more generous par time for the Cirillo’s Hostage shoot or just recording the shooter’s time as it is rather than use a par feature on the timer it can be quick and fun for shooters of all skill levels.

And a good starting point from which to gauge future progress.

AN ELEGANT WEAPON, FOR A MORE CIVILISED AGE
By I J Larivers

I have had a meaningful relationship with the 1911-type .45 ACP for forty years now. It was – almost but not quite – the first centre fire handgun I ever owned, and long before that I remember a regular fixture in my parents’ room at bedtime was my father’s Remington Rand .45 on the nightstand. That was back in the ‘60s, and Col Jeff Cooper was making his mark on the gun world. My Dad’s .45 lived in Condition 1 – cocked and locked. I never asked him about that, because it was just the way it was, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have known Col Cooper from Col Sanders. He’d picked up Condition 1 at some time in the same place he picked up the pistol, which was the US Navy during the Second World War. It would be a decade and a half before I bought my first .45, a Colt Government Model MKIV Series 70. By then my father had passed on, and my friends and I were keen followers of Col Cooper’s doctrine and the emerging sport of practical shooting. Real practical shooting, not the action discipline it has become.

In 1978, just before I emigrated to Rhodesia I met a fellow by the name of Mike Large, who was then living in Nevada. Mike had been in the Rhodesian Army, and later the Prison Service, and was one of the founding fathers of Practical Pistol in Rhodesia. Here was a guy from half a world away, in my home town, who’d actually shot against Jeff Cooper and beaten him. Mike’s forte was the Browning Hi-Power, but we spent a lot of range time breaking in my new .45, and it was Mike who got me out of the “gravel pit” mentality of shooting at tin cans, and into some proper training routines.

It was around about this time that I learned how much consumer tolerance was associated with the 1911. Very few products seem to take so much fiddling with to get just right. I owned two at the time – that old .45 and a Jeep CJ-5. There were no Kimbers or Les Baers or Para Ordnances back then, and folks like Bill Wilson made their living by customising Colt 1911s. Now, myriad manufacturers build their own, “new and improved”, but I’ve always preferred to get a basic Colt, and build it up my way. I once pulled out all the stops in Zimbabwe to get my hands on a stainless steel compact .45 from Schutzen Arms that came ready-fitted with all the bells and whistles. It never did work right, though it wasn’t the manufacturer’s fault because it had left the factory as parts, and they did provide me with excellent backup service trying to get it to work. I tried to shoot the local Practical Pistol circuit with it, but after it fell apart at the national championships one year I bought a first generation Glock. In .45, of course.

Those were the days before IPSC consisted of as many divisions as it does now, and I finally had a high-capacity, major calibre handgun. Say what you will about “Tupperware”, but that Glock .45 and the .40S&W I later replaced it with served me well for many years. They were reliable, and for my money are excellent duty sidearms.

Then, early into the new millennium, 2003-2004, I did some contract work in Iraq. There I was issued with the Beretta M9. Again, I will speak no evil of it, for though I only ever fired it on the range it did all that was expected of it.

But it was while I was in the Sandbox that Obi-Wan Kenobi began speaking to me. Over and over. “An elegant weapon, for a more civilised age”. I instinctively knew he wasn’t talking about either the Glock or the Beretta. One thing every AAFES base exchange in Iraq had was a good supply of gun magazines. When I had some down time I began to fantasize. I was going to build another 1911 .45 when I got back, but this one would have a theme. I would put nothing on it that I couldn’t have put on my original Colt .45 back in the late 1970s. And of course, it would be a Colt. MKIV, S70 if possible.

When I got back to Zimbabwe I bought a Glock .40.

And then came the impetus I needed. 2011. The hundredth anniversary of the adoption of John Moses Browning’s iconic masterpiece by the US government. It was truly a case of natural selection, for by then IPSC’s concept of a Classic division for single-stack pistols was being discussed at an advanced stage, and the other criterion – that I could compete with what I carried – was on the horizon.

Almost as if by providence a Colt MMKIV Series 70 fell into my hands. Literally. “Here, you want this? I’m leaving the country”.

So, I cast my mind back to 1977 and my original Colt. The first thing to do was to make a list of what I really needed on the gun, and another list of what I really wanted. I had to bear in mind what the IPSC rule book would mandate, and to play by the rules I’d set for myself I got some old copies of American Handgunner from back in the day, and completed my lists based on what would have been available to me back then. So, what this is really all about is what I believe I should have on a 1911, and why.

The first thing I did was strip the Colt down to bare bones. My good friend Detective Superintendent Charlie Haley had many years ago given me a jar of Parker Hale’s fine Motty Rifle Paste. Few shooters today have probably ever heard of Motty’s Paste, but it was a form of jeweller’s paste that was made to remove nickel deposits. The container and label alone are worth having. I caked the slide and frame in Motty’s Paste and spent the better part of a day just working the bearing surfaces while watching TV. I then handed the frame over to my gunsmith to put a rounded bevel on the base of the magazine well.

Zimbabwe by then having become something of a pariah nation, I sent my shopping list for bits and pieces across to the ‘States with various professional hunters who were going to the SHOT show and who were able to smuggle back what I wanted. I fell back on my tried and true for most of the stuff, and bought Wilson Combat parts.

Now, for what and why. There are really only two modifications an older Colt really needs – a good set of sights and a decent trigger. Back in the day, the vogue was to mill out the Colt’s slide and fit a Smith && Wesson revolver sight in the rear. Figuring I would develop a load and stick with it, I opted instead for a high profile set of fixed iron sights. Black, no dots or other distractions. I remembered reading decades ago that Chuck Taylor recommended iron sights with about 1/8” visibility on either side, and I selected a set that looked about that to me. They were marketed as “retro” sights, but I suppose that fits. (After the foresight went AWOL one day, I had the slide machined and fitted a dovetailed STI replacement, which worked perfectly with the existing rear sight.) I went with the iconic three-hole Wilson extended aluminium trigger with the set screw to obviate overtravel. Maybe cheating a little on the whole 1970s thing, I got my dream trigger by dropping in a computer-prepped hammer and sear set.

In my personal case two other mods were necessary – an ambidextrous safety as I shoot a handgun as a southpaw, and an extended magazine release for the same reason – I drop my mags with my trigger finger. The safety was a departure from my Wilson Combat theme because Ed Brown’s is pretty much state-of-the-art, and I had the magazine release built up by way of extending it, rather than fit a button with a wider diameter. The idea was to drop the mag when I wanted to.

I then replaced the extractor and all the springs, which I think is a sort of must-do in any gun of unknown history, and even though this particular model hadn’t seemed to deform many cartridge cases on ejection, I had my ‘smith relieve and re-shape the ejection port.

Now, for what I wanted. I much prefer the flat mainspring housing to the arched one, and as I bought a Pachmayr one, I put their fine grips on, too. I have never owned a .45 without Pachmayrs. My gunsmith fitted an extended ejector, which we tuned with a diamond file until it worked flawlessly. That took a couple of hours. Even though I had bevelled the magazine well, ala back in the day, I fitted one of the plastic mag funnels that hooks on the bottom grip screw bushings. I just plain like a Commander-style hammer, and I confess I cheated a little here, too, with a jaunty squared STI hammer. And lastly, a beavertail grip safety. Now, I don’t like most beavertails. But I came across one that was a bit of a conundrum. It was downswept. It gave me a higher grip, and it looked nice. To me, anyway. I have seen them over the years, but I have no clue who makes them. I posted photos on a couple of forums and someone suggested it might have been made by the now-defunct King’s Gun Works.

I now had a beautiful, retro Colt 1911. To be fair, there wasn’t a lot of competition in Zimbabwe in the new IPSC division, but that gun won me the Classic Division national titles in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

When Zimbabwe’s top Practical Pistol shooter, Paul Friendship, moved from Standard Division to Production Division, he gave me an STI full-length recoil spring guide, which is the only other thing I’ve done to the old workhorse. I’m not sure it actually does much, but it certainly doesn’t hurt anything.

I carried a similarly-modified Colt MKIV S70 in Rhodesia, and provided my own .45 Colt Commander as a duty sidearm in Bophuthatswana. I bought an old Colt 1911-AI and built it up in the early ‘90s. I struggled with my vexatious Olympic Arms “Safari Jams”, which was responsible for my buying a Glock, and now, finally, forty years on, I have a Colt 1911 that functions as flawlessly as any STI, Kimber, or Les Baer.

An elegant weapon, for a more civilised age.

THE ZAMBEZI VALLEY’S RIFA EDUCATION CAMP
I J Larivers

There is something very special about the Zambezi Valley, no matter the time of year or the reason for the visit. And one of the most special places in the Lower Zambezi is the Rifa Education Camp.

Rifa as a concept dates from 1982, when the Zimbabwe Hunters’ Association, founded in 1949, built the inaugural education camp at Nymomba, where the mighty Zambezi exits the Kariba Gorge; but the site was not as easily accessible as it should have been to facilitate the likes of school busses and two wheel-drive vehicles. Five years later, in 1987 the present camp was officially opened, with students from Sanyati High School in residence – and for over thirty years, set against a backdrop of acacia trees, wild figs and tamarinds, it has provided a unique wilderness educational experience for youngsters from all over Zimbabwe.

Camp Manager, PH Dave Winhall

In earlier days, before the creation of the Kariba Dam and the subsequent siltation and formation of the wide flood plain below the Kariba Gorge, the Zambezi would have flowed past the present-day site of Rifa; today, the mini-floodplain that separates the camp from the river serves a number of educational purposes, such as housing the camp’s famed “vulture restaurant”. Continue reading …