In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country

by John T. McCutcheon

The Tree Method

The tree method is comparatively simple. You build a platform in a tree and place a bait near it. Then you wait through the long, silent watches of the night for Felis Leo to appear. The method has few dangers. The chief one lies in falling asleep and tumbling out of the tree, but this is easily obviated by making the platform large enough for two or three men, two of whom may stretch out and sleep while the other one remains awake and keeps guard.

When I went to Africa I resolved never to climb a tree. Later I resolved to try the tree method in order to get experience in a form of lion hunting that has many advocates among the valiant hunters who want lion skins at no expense to their own.

Of course, there are some perils connected with this method of lion slaying. Mosquitoes may bite you, causing a dreadful fever that may later result in death in some lingering and costly form. Also the biting ants may pursue you up to your aery perch and take small but effective bites in many itchable but unscratchable points. These elements of danger are about the only ones encountered in the tree method of lion hunting, but then who could expect to kill lions without some degree of personal discomfort?

My one and only tree experience was not particularly eventful. A large and commodious platform was built in the forks of a great tree in a district where the questing grunt of lions could be heard each night. The platform was comfortable; it only needed hot and cold running water to be a delightful place to spend a tropic night.

I shot a hartebeest and had it dragged beneath the tree. Then my two native gunbearers and I made a satisfactory ascent to the platform. We had a thermos bottle filled with hot tea, and some odds and ends in the way of solid refreshments. We then stretched out in positions that commanded a view of the hartebeest and waited patiently for an obliging lion to come and be shot.

Night came on and soon the landscape became shadowy and indistinct. Trees and bushes fused into vague black masses and the carcass of the bait could be located only because it seemed a shade more opaque than the opaque gloom around it. The more you looked at it the more elusive and shifting it seemed. The sights of the rifle were invisible, and the only way one could find the sight was by aiming at a star and then carefully lowering the direction of the weapon until it approximately pointed at the carcass.

Of course, we were very still; even the stars were not more silent than we. And little by little the noises of an African night were heard, growing in volume until from all sides came the cries of night birds and the songs of insects and tree-toads. It was the apotheosis of loneliness. And thus we sat, with eyes straining to pierce the gloom that hedged us in. We could see no sign of life, yet all about us in those dark shadows there were thousands of creatures moving about on their nightly hunt.

Suddenly there came the soft crescendo of a hyena's howl some place off in the night. It was answered by another, miles away; then another, far off in a still different direction. The scent of the bait was spreading to the far horizon and the keen-scented carrion-eaters had caught it and were hurrying to the feast.

Then, after moments of waiting, the howls came from so near that they startled us. There seemed to be dozens of hyenas—a regular class reunion of them—yet not one could be seen in the "murky gloom." And then, a moment later, we heard the crunching of teeth and the slither of rending flesh, and we knew that a supper party of hyenas was gathered about the festal board below us. I was afraid that they would eat up the carcass and thus keep away the lions, so I fired a shot to scare them away. There was a quick rush of feet—then that dense, expectant silence once more. Soon some little jackals came and were shooed away. Then more hyenas came, were given their congé, and hurried off to the tall grass. And yet no lion. It was quite disappointing.