One Heck Of A Ride

114 Chapter 12 Two Memorable Hunts In Cameroon I have a special feeling for Cameroon. It is not because this former French colony is spectacularly scenic (it isn’t) or that my two safaris there offered unusual challenges (they did). It also isn’t because I hunted its rainforest with pygmy trackers and saw chimpanzees and gorillas. It is because, of all the hunting I have done, I rank (in no particular order) my hunts for the Marco Polo argali, the brown and grizzly bears, the Grand Slam of North American sheep, the African Big Five, and the world’s two largest antelopes – the bongo and the giant or Lord Derby eland – at the top of my hunting achievements. These animals represent the epitome of trophy hunting, and I collected the last two in Cameroon. My trip from Lompoc to Los Angeles to Paris and on to Douala in May 2001 was long but uneventful, probably because the booking company, Tommy Morrison’s Sporting International of Channelview, Texas, had arranged for every detail including my airline schedules and hotels for my overnight stays in Paris and Douala. I arrived in Cameroon’s largest city in the late evening and was met by my professional hunter and owner of Ngong Safaris, a personable Dane named Borge Ladefoged. I soon learned he had launched the company only two years earlier and was eager to make certain that my safari went well. Borge walked me through Customs and helped claim my baggage and register my rifle. I was grateful for his help. I spent the night in a modern hotel called Le Meridien Douala before Borge and I and Shawn Merriman (the CEO of an investments company in Aurora, Colorado, who also was hunting with Ngong Safaris) climbed aboard a chartered flight to Borge’s comfortable camp in a lodge near an old sawmill in the Lokoma game management area. Hunting duikers in Liberia had given me a taste of rainforest hunting, but I was unprepared for the variety and abundance of insects in Cameroon. I saw literally thousands of every kind and color of butterfly imaginable. It was an amazing experience. However, even though I sprayed my body and my clothes every morning and evening with repellant, I found living and hunting among its swarms of biting bugs nearly unbearable. I had welts on every exposed portion of skin by the second day. Although Liberia also has chimpanzees and gorillas, we saw none while I was there, but I had been told I should expect to see them in Cameroon. Even so warned, I was surprised when we came upon a troop of chimpanzees that screamed and jumped around in the trees above us. The way they carried on was frightening at first, but I eventually realized they were no threat to us. Seeing my first silverback in the wild was especially memorable. We had walked up on a mother gorilla with two juveniles, and all three ran up a tree and watched us. They seemed as curious of us as we were of them. A few minutes later, a big male with a bright red crest on his head and a large patch of gray hair on his back suddenly appeared on the trail, took a long look at us and turned and walked off on all fours, using his knuckles as if they were feet. It turned and took a long look at us before disappearing into the forest. (I later learned that Villagers the hunting party encountered in the Cameroon rainforest lived simple lives with few modern amenities