In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country

by John T. McCutcheon

The Policemen of the Plains

The kongoni is the policeman of the plains. He is the self-appointed guardian of all the other animals, and for some strange, unselfish reason, he always does sentinel duty for the others. His eyes are so keen that he sees your hat when you appear over the horizon two miles away, and from that moment he never loses sight of you. If you approach too near he whistles shrilly, and every other animal within several hundred yards is on the alert and apprehensive. The kongoni often risks his own life to warn other herds of animals of the approach of danger, and if I were going to write an animal story I'd use the kongoni as my hero. The hunters hate him for the trouble he gives them, but a fair-minded man can not help but recognize the heroic, self-sacrificing qualities of the big, awkward, vigilant antelope. Why these two sentinels had not seen us is still and always will be a mystery, but it is certain that they had not.

At the same time we knew that any attempt to approach nearer would alarm them and they in turn would sound the shrill tocsin of warning to the unsuspecting elephant herd, in which event we might have to track the elephants for miles until they settled down again. So we cautiously climbed down, retreated below the edge of the hill, and worked our way up in the lee of the group farthest to our left in the expectation of finding the three bulls. From tree to tree, and in the protection of large ant-hills, we moved forward until we were less than fifty yards from the elephants. Then we studied them again, but could not locate the bulls.

Probably at this time something may have occurred to make the elephants nervous. Perhaps the warning cry of a bird or the suspicious rustling of our footsteps in the tall grass, but at any rate the herd began to move slowly away. Two of the larger groups marched solemnly down the slope away from us and the other disappeared among the low scrub trees to our right. We followed the two larger groups and soon were again within a few yards of them. An ant-hill four or five feet high gave us some protection, and over the top of this we watched the enormous animals as they stood under the trees ahead of us. While watching these two large groups we forgot about the one that had disappeared to the right.

Suddenly one of the gunbearers whispered a warning and we turned to see this group only a few yards from us and bearing directly down toward the ant-hill where we crouched in the grass. They had not yet seen us, but it seemed a miracle that they did not. If one of us had moved in the slightest degree they would have charged into us with irresistible force. We held our guns and our breath while these big animals, by a most fortunate chance, passed by us to the windward of the ant-hill, not more than thirty feet away. If they had passed to the leeward side they would have got our wind and trouble would have been unavoidable. I took a surreptitious snap-shot of them after they had passed by, and for the first time in some minutes took a long breath.

Then we circled the herd again and came up to them. They were now thoroughly uneasy. They knew that some invisible hostile influence was abroad in the land, but they could not locate in which direction it lay. We saw the sensitive trunks feeling for the scent and saw the big ears moving uneasily back and forth. One large cow with a broken tusk was facing us, vaguely conscious that danger lay in that direction. And then, by some code of signals known only to the elephant world, the greater number of elephants moved off down the slope and up the opposite slope. Only the big, aggressive cow and four or five smaller animals remained behind as a rear-guard. She stood as she had stood for some moments, gazing directly at us and nervously waving her ears and trunk.

The Rear-guard

Akeley climbed to the top of an ant-hill and made some photographs showing the big cow and her companions in the foreground, while off on the neighboring hillside three distinct groups of elephants were in view. The latter were thoroughly alarmed and moved away very swiftly for some distance and then came to a pause. The big cow and her attendants then moved off, feeling that the retreat had been successfully effected. Once more we followed them and came up to them, and then once more we were flanked by a number of elephants that had previously disappeared over the hill. They had swung around and were returning directly toward where we stood, unsuspecting.

We barely had time to fall back to some small bushes, where we waited while the flanking party approached. They came almost toward us, and when only about fifty feet away I ventured a photograph, feeling that, if successful, it would be the closest picture ever made of a herd of wild elephants. I used a Verascope, a small stereoscopic French machine whose "click" is almost noiseless. The elephants advanced and we huddled together with rifles ready in the patch of bushes. It seemed a certainty that they would charge, and that if our bullets could not turn them we would be completely annihilated. But as yet there was no sign that they saw us, or, if they did, they could not distinguish our motionless forms from the foliage of the scrub.