One Heck Of A Ride

128 Fabled Land Of The Maasai rite of passage into manhood. Their heads would be shaved, and they would spend a day and a night dancing, jumping, chanting and drinking ox blood. They then would endure tattooing, ear- piercing and circumcision before going off to live alone for a while. After the ritual, they would be allowed to drink alcohol, choose wives, and marry, Charlie said. Charlie and I spent an hour measuring my trophies and filling out record book entry forms before driving on to the Ngorongoro-Lush Game Reserve, where I spent the next two days with a guide named Khalid Talib, viewing with awe what has to be the world’s greatest gathering of wildlife. It’s been said that more than two million animals inhabit the 110-square-mile crater left behind by an extinct volcano, and I do not doubt it. We saw incredible numbers of wildebeests, zebras and various types of antelopes, as well as lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants, buffaloes, wild dogs, and cheetahs in those two days. In the middle of its plains is the Oldupai Gorge, “the Seat of Humanity,” where Mary and Louis Leakey found the remains of the earliest forms of humans in the 1950s. The crater also is home to many unique indigenous plants and trees, including a wild sisal said to have medicinal value in addition to its use for ropes, twine and carpets. It is no wonder that it is a World Heritage Site. My Quest Ends In Kigosi From Ngorongoro, Khalid drove me back to the airport in Arusha, where Charlie and I caught a commercial flight south to Dar es Salaam, where we changed planes and flew northwest to Mwanza International Airport near the shores of Lake Victoria. From there, a ninety-minute charter flight took us southwest to Malagarasi Safaris’ camp on the western edge of the Kigosi Game Reserve, a 3,200-square-mile floodplain with literally millions of migratory cranes, storks, and other birds. Fed by four rivers, the reserve had grassy swamps and woodlands supporting large numbers of plains and dangerous game animals. This camp was comfortable and impressive, with tents and semi-permanent structures that were thatched on their walls and roofs. My first day of hunting on the reserve began the morning of 30 August when I passed up several small but mature East African defassa waterbucks before coming upon three different herds of Cape buffalo (I counted 115 animals in one of those herds). Charlie and I tried to stalk a big bull buffalo with deep, sweeping curls and thick bosses that was with a herd of sixty, but a decent shot never presented itself and the herd ran off without my firing a shot. After returning to our vehicle, we soon found a waterbuck with horns so impressive that Charlie didn’t have to say I should shoot it. A short stalk brought us to within 300 yards, and I settled my .375 into the sticks one of the trackers had set up for me. I fired when the crosshairs were on a foreleg and about a third of the way up its body -- and missed! I quickly bolted another round into the rifle’s chamber and fired, and missed again! The waterbuck apparently didn’t know that it was a target, and it continued to stare at us while I handed the .375 to Charlie and grabbed my .30- .378 from the tracker who was carrying it. I was One of the traditional tent camps that were author’s homes-away-from-home during his Tanzanian safari