One Heck Of A Ride

127 Fabled Land Of The Maasai and long, light-colored hair on his throat and lower neck. His horns measured 50 7/8 inches from tip to tip, easily making him an SCI gold medal trophy, Acouple of hours and five miles later, we were able to get much closer to the fringe-eared oryx I eventually killed after passing up several small groups of these antelope. As with the wildebeest, this bull was feeding alone. As I prepared to shoot from an anthill 200 yards off, I remember thinking he looked from a distance exactly like the gemsbok I’d taken in South Africa. I collected my second animal of the day with no fanfare. One shot and he went down kicking. My first impression had been correct. The most visible difference between this East African oryx and the gemsbok of southern Africa were the long hairs on the tips of his ears and the fact that his coat was closer to a fawn color than a predominately gray gemsbok. His straight and heavy horns had thick bases and were 29 3/8 inches long, which ranked him as an SCI silver medal trophy. I now had taken five of the eight animals I wanted from this safari. Instead of returning to camp, Charlie prepared our lunch in the field with bread, cold meats, condiments, and “biscuits” (cookies) from his chop box plus a couple of cold Tusker beers from his ice chest. With two good trophies in the truck, we napped under an acacia tree before delivering A welcome break for lunch in the shade of a suitable tree. the wildebeest and oryx to the skinning shed. The roads we hunted from were rough and dusty, and the days were hot and long, but I was enjoying the adventure of my lifetime. I spent two more days hunting out of the Mto wa Mbu camp in northern Maasailand, mostly for an East African eland. Along the way, I shot a silver medal East African impala with 26 1/8-inch horns, a gold medal southern Grant gazelle with 27 3/8-inch horns, and a beautiful zebra without the brownish “shadow stripes” the zebras I’d shot in southern Africa all had. As for the eland, I left that camp with a great respect for its wariness. I had taken record-class Cape and Livingstone eland in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and a great Lord Derby eland bull in Cameroon, but the East African variety in Mto wa Mbu successfully eluded me. It wasn’t because we hadn’t hunted hard enough. Charlie and I, and his trackers, followed a superb bull’s tracks for more than seven miles across a hot and dusty plain but could never catch up with him. Over lunch in the shade of a huge tree, Charlie said it was a shame that I’d booked my hunt for late August. “It’s winter in July, and it’s a much better time to hunt,” he said. “The rains have ended then, and it’s not as hot and dusty. The plains also have many thousands of animals in the winter.” On to Ngorongoro and Kigosi We spent my last morning at Mto wa Mbu searching for a big eland bull without seeing one before returning to camp for an early lunch. I settled my bill with Intercon and tipped the camp’s fourteen staff members and the government’s game scout who had accompanied us every day we went out. I found it interesting when Charlie told me that two Maasai youths (“morani”) in our crew were leaving the camp soon after us to undergo “eunoto,” a traditional ritual to celebrate their