Hunters three: Sport and adventure in South Africa

by Thomas Wallace Knox

After a moment of thought—and it was only a moment—I adopted the tactics of the crab, and moved backward. I did not turn around, as I wanted to keep my face in the direction of his snakeship, who seemed to be asleep and sunning himself. I backed away three or four yards and then made a detour around my unpleasant neighbor, sufficiently far away from him not to disturb his slumbers.

I was afraid of coming on more snakes, but luckily that was the only one I encountered. He was what is known as a mamba, and is found in various parts of South Africa. The one I saw was a small one; we killed a snake of this kind one day under our wagon, and when he was stretched out on the grass he measured about eleven feet in length. Mambas of ten or twelve feet are by no means uncommon. Their bite is poisonous; dogs bitten by them die within an hour or two, and the same is the case with small animals. Human beings live longer, but the bite of one of these serpents is almost sure to be fatal. Some of the native tribes have a superstitious reverence for them, and do not kill them; but the majority of Africans generally try to despatch them if they can.

The herd of koodoos gradually fed around in my direction, so that they were between me and the sentinel. I wanted to bag him, but of course their position rendered it impossible. I had had my eye on him for some time, and when the rest of them got around toward where I was I thought of the Irishman who gave as his excuse for not firing at a flock of ducks, "Whenever I get a bead on one, another swims right in between him and me!"

I singled out the best buck of the herd and stalked up to within forty yards of him. Then, when he presented a good broadside, I let him have it, and brought him to the ground. He was up almost in an instant, and so was I; and I gave him another shot, which again floored him, this time for good. I ran forward and plunged my hunting-knife into his throat to make sure that he did not escape me. Of course the others were off like the wind, but I paid no attention to them; my thirst for glory was satisfied for that day.

The men had been watching me from the tree where I left my horse. The report of the gun, the smoke, and my handkerchief, which I waved in the air, brought them, and with them my horse Brickdust, which was led along at a slow trot by the Kafir who had charge of him. I mounted and rode to camp, while the Kafirs attended to skinning the koodoo and bringing in the meat.

Harry and Jack had not reached camp when I got there, and they did not return until nearly sunset. They had good luck in their chase of the elands, Harry shooting one and Jack bringing down two. Harry's was the largest of the three, and consequently he claimed that the honors were about even. They had a lively chase after them, and by the time they got through their horses were pretty well used up.

"In two or three places," said Harry, "we came near breaking our necks in pitfalls that the Kafirs had made for game; and in one instance if it had not been for the intelligence of my horse I should have gone headlong into a hole about eight feet deep. The horse saw the hole before I did, and swerved quickly to one side; if we had gone full speed into that pitfall I am afraid it would have been all over with both horse and rider."

These native pitfalls are oftentimes a great nuisance and also a great danger to the hunter. The natives dig them in localities where the animals are apt to run, and consequently they are right in the way which a hunter takes when he is pursuing a herd. Sometimes the pitfalls are open, and strung along in connection with one another for a considerable distance. The natives surround a herd on three sides and then drive it in the direction of the traps. If an animal tumbles in he cannot get out, and is easily speared or otherwise slaughtered by his captors.

One day, while I was stalking a herd of gemsbok, I walked plump into a pitfall that was seven feet deep. The hole had been covered over with bushes, grass, and a sprinkling of earth, so that it looked for all the world like the ground in its immediate vicinity. I was sneaking along, bent nearly to the ground, with my eye on the game ahead of me, when suddenly I felt the earth give way, and it seemed as though I was dropping half-way to the other side of the world. I fetched up at the bottom all in a heap and half stunned. When I gathered myself up and rubbed my eyes I found that my gun was lying on the bottom of the pit with the muzzle directly toward me and both locks at full cock!

My hair had been standing on end when I brought myself up to a sitting posture; when I saw my gun and its position every individual hair on my head was frozen stiff!