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The Wild Life
Observations and Reflections on Africa's Wildlife
IX -
Lion II
I sat with Jannie and Anri and considered the situation. The Old King wouldn’t be too hard to find,
and my rifle and ammunition, selected for tough, thick-skinned African antelope, were certainly powerful enough to put him
down quickly with a well-placed shot. Should he charge, and I fail to stop him, I would be backed up by Errol and Jannie,
both crack shots, as well as young Steve, a fair shot himself. Should I wound him, and be forced to follow him into the bush,
the cover in that region is not dense as in other parts of Africa, whence a wounded lion might spring at any moment at close
quarters. Professional hunters and trackers are mauled and killed regularly in Africa while following-up game that someone
has wounded with a poor shot, but in this case, the danger would be minimal, if not absent. Though I had never before hunted
dangerous game, I knew I could make the kill.
There were other considerations though. We had come to Africa to
hunt antelope; to have a small adventure in the wilderness, and so that I could show young Steve, as I had shown Dominick
two years earlier, that there was another world - a real world, beyond the artificiality of American pop culture and the urban
lifestyle. It was to be an introduction to a simpler, more natural life; and a rite of passage.
Like all such endeavors,
it was more than I could have hoped for, though far from perfect, and already complete. We had had our adventure; we had taken
our antelope; we had seen life outside the box. We had done what we came for, and lion hunting was not in the plan. I shook
my head. It would not happen. Not this time.
I left it for someone else to shoot that lion - a decision that I
now regret. I told Jannie that the fee was beyond my budget - which it was – though budgets can sometimes be changed.
The fact is … I was not prepared for it. The hunting and killing of wildlife is a very personal thing, sometimes a
profound, even life-altering experience, particularly with the more celebrated species. Not every kill means something, but
many do, and some mean a great deal. In those cases it is a privilege and an honor as well as a challenge.
One
must be ready for it, not only physically and with the proper rifle and cartridges, but mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.
The challenge I could handle; the privilege I had been granted, and the honor was in the offer, which I accepted humbly. Still,
I left the kill for someone else. It simply wasn’t the right time, and I accepted that. There will be other opportunities;
I will go back to Africa.
Many will condemn me for wanting to shoot that lion; more so for regretting that I did
not. Aside from the animal-rightists and vegans, the general public in much of urban America is developing a warped understanding
of our place in the natural world. They have somehow come to believe that the killing of any wild creature is a sin –
and they would make it a crime if they could. Even those that accept that an animal might occasionally have to be shot seem
to believe that it is best if the hunter take no pleasure in the task; that it be done regretfully, even clinically, by an
emotionally detached professional.
The lion becomes a statistic; his killer a simply a technician - an executioner,
and a primal life-experience is lost, reduced to a dirty task. The lifecycles of both man and beast are further sterilized.
A natural tragedy.
The most repeated comment that I hear is that hunting isn’t necessary, that there was
a time when “We had to kill wild animals" . . . "to survive” they stress, “but we don’t
have to do that anymore”.
“It’s not that we had to”, I tell them; “it’s that
we got to”. We got to hunt and later celebrate the hunt. We got to sow and harvest our own crops, season by season growing
closer to the land, the elements and each other. We got to design and build our own homes, and live in the comfort that can
only come from having done that. “It's called life”, I say, “doing those things”. None of them is
necessary to survive anymore, but all of them are necessary to live, and to know what life is.
Even sex is no longer
necessary for the survival of our species, but that doesn’t mean it should be discarded as a relic of the past along
with every other natural life experience, each in turn replaced with new technologies, till there is nothing left for us but
repetitive work and amusements. Without those natural processes which, in fact, make us human, there is nothing to celebrate.
And while it is true that we have been relieved of the toils that once made life so hard; we have in the process become insulated
from the experiences which make life truly rich.
To turn our backs on those experiences is to turn our backs
upon life itself.
And should that happen, all will be lost.
_________________________________________________________________ Go to The Wild Life - Part II All Will Be Lost
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