By Nick Muckerman
The safari had been going exceptionally well. Our PH was a stud. The properties we hunted were big, wild, and full of game. I shared the adventure with my dad, and despite telling our PH we were just after a good hunt and some representative animals, we killed several very big male trophies. My dad put down a 17-inch blesbok. I took a bushbuck with slightly longer horns, a freak big enough that the PH made a detour on the way back to camp to stop by a friend’s house to show him.
I was hunting in Africa and loving it.
Only two flaws interrupted our safari.
While hunting behind hounds, I encountered a warthog that the dogs trailed into a hole. The pig busted out of his hiding spot pretty pissed off, leading with a pair of white tusks in front of the craziest eyes I’ve ever seen, causing me to jump out of the way directly into an acacia bush. I got up and shot the bastard when he cleared the hounds, faintly aware of a weird sensation in my hand.
I started pulling thorns out of my body but found a two-inch thorn embedded directly through the knuckle connecting my palm to my thumb with an equal amount of thorn sticking out each side of my hand. It wouldn’t come out the way it went in, nor could we pull it through, and by the time we ran out of ideas, my hand swelled up so big that the only option was a trip to see the town surgeon.
He left me with an iodine stained bandage wrapped on one hand and a bottle of medication in the other. I quickly found the strength of this particular medication sufficient for treating severe pain in full-grown elephants. Halfway back to the hunting area, the mystery pills kicked in and my hand (and the rest of me) felt better than ever. We returned with enough time for the hounds to put a wily caracal up a tree—my most desired quarry of the safari—which I promptly knocked out of said tree with a .22LR through the lungs just before dark.
The second flaw came in the form of a guy we shared camp with when we returned each evening.
He hailed from California and was extremely vocal about holding the prevailing political beliefs associated with his state. I choose to live in a state with billboards instructing Californians to turn around, go home, and stay there, but I kept my mouth shut. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this guy used our nightly dinners to give full recitations of every political belief he held, making things awkward and unenjoyable.
I would be happy if California broke off at its eastern border and sank into the Pacific or even just floated over to North Korea, but I wouldn’t say something like that in a hunting camp with people I don’t know. Just because I generally dislike most people does not mean that I am socially inept.
Each night at dinner, I thought the same thing as I watched him run his mouth while everyone looked down at their plates with unease.
Why won’t this guy just talk about something else?
It isn’t tasteful to talk passionate politics night after night at a shared hunting camp with people you don’t know because many of us go to wild places to escape that madness. As soon as someone with opposing beliefs bites on the bait and responds, it escalates quickly and ruins the evening. PHs and outfitters aren’t going to comment unless it is completely clear everyone in the camp shares the same beliefs, for the sake of peace and for the sake of their tip.
So, I just sat there and watched this moron embarrass himself. The only thing he talked about other than politics was how great of a shot he was. He fancied himself as a modern day Karamojo Bell. Rule number two at hunting camp: if you can’t resist bragging about your shooting, wait until all of your animals are in the salt to do so.
The conversation finally shifted to the safari the Californian completed the prior year with this outfit, one he shared with his friend named Kevin and the same PH assigned to him this safari.
Yay! A subject better than politics.
First, he talked about his magnificent shooting on that previous trip.
The great Annie Oakley, at it again.
Then it shifted to a trophy his buddy took. Apparently, Kevin killed a monster of a blesbok the prior year. His PH, whom I liked and seemed to be very good at his job, said, “It was the biggest of my career and the biggest blesbok ever shot on Dave’s property. Pushing 18 inches. Just a beautiful animal. Then Kevin walked up to it after it was dead and shot it in the head. Twice. Ruined the skull and trophy. Said he wasn’t sending it home, so it didn’t matter.”
Kevin is a dick.
“That skull definitely would have been granted some wall space in the lodge,” Dave, the owner of the property and outfitter said with a forced smile. “But, it was his trophy, so he could do whatever he pleased with it.”
Dave thinks Kevin is a dick too.
Then Dave said, “How’s Kevin’s cancer doing?”
Glad I didn’t say the dick part out loud.
“He died a few months ago,” the Californian said.
Correction: Kevin was a dick. May he rest in peace.
“But he is here with me on my hunt,” the Californian said. My fork fell out of my bandaged hand, bounced off the table, and clattered on the tile floor.
The fuck? This is getting weird.
I left the fork where it was. No way in hell was I missing whatever came out of this guy’s mouth next. A movie quote popped in my head in the voice of Leonardo DiCaprio playing a southern plantation owner.
You had my curiosity. Now you have my attention.
“He was cremated, and so I added a little bit of Kevin’s ashes into each of my reloads,” he said with a smirk while looking over at Mrs. California.
The fuck? This is getting really weird.
“54 grains of gunpowder to 3 grains of Kevin;” the Californian said, “the perfect mix.”
Dead Kevin. Back in Africa. All cramped up inside brass cylinders on this guy’s ammo belt.
Then the Californian started talking politics again. I picked up my fork off the floor and began munching on some eland tenderloin taken that morning with my bullet, propelled by plain old boring gunpowder and no dead people mixed in.
The next day, the Californian came back to camp unusually quiet. After my nightly dosage of mystery opioids and a shower, we sat down for dinner once again, but, uncharacteristically, he didn’t say a word.
Perfect. A mute liberal, fresh impala capes and skulls from both me and my dad in the salt shed, and a pile of back straps on the table. The world is right again.
I took a sip of my beer, then set the bottle down.
These elephant pills feel really good.
I looked at the Californian with absolute, over-the-top interest and enthusiasm.
These may be the same pills Bradley Cooper used in ‘Limitless.’
“How’d the hunt go today?” I said, eyebrows raised, my face like a sponge ready to soak up with eager expectation the events of Mr. California’s day.
Silence.
I might be getting somewhere. This could be good.
“That bad, huh?” I said and gave him the awe-shucks shrug.
Then his PH piped in, diplomatically, of course, but it was obvious to everyone at the table by this point in the hunt he thought Mr. California was a dick: “We had a nice stalk, got on a big kudu bull, well, huge actually. Just a giant. Anyway, unfortunately the shot wasn’t quite on, and he got away.”
The 16 hours stuck on that plane over the Atlantic was worth it for this moment alone.
“Yeah,” the Californian said, “I hit just under him. Barely. Even skimmed some hair off.”
A few seconds passed. I looked at his PH.
Time to stir the pot.
“How big was he?” I plied.
“Probably 60, give or take an inch or two,” he said.
I would choke a baby harp seal to death at a PETA convention in exchange for another moment as glorious as this.
Mr. California shot an accusatory look at his PH and quipped, “I still don’t think you gave me the range correctly.”
He’s a bigger dick than Kevin was, may he rest in peace. Or pieces? Whatever.
I made eye contact with his PH. He pleaded with his stare for me to ask one more question.
Another little stir.
“How far was the shot?” I said.
“About 130 meters,” the PH volunteered quickly.
Silence.
Not even these back straps are as delicious as this silence.
I looked at the PH and saw a change roll over him.
A hint of courage, mixed in with an incurable case of the ‘fuck-its.’
He waited three more seconds, then he sacrificed his tip for a week’s worth of work in exchange for one satisfying moment.
“Prone,” he added.
Mic drop.
Mr. California shot him a nasty scowl.
That glare alone would kill a baby harp seal.
I thought of the prior five dinners he ruined with his political ramblings and all of the thoughts I suppressed, thoughts that sat inside me, marinating, waiting like a coiled spring for this moment that seemed to be preordained before the foundations of the universe.
I looked the Californian right in the eye. I clasped my hands together in front of me, one bandaged, one not, my fingers interlocked, my elbows gently resting on each side of my plate, like I was about to say a blessing upon the food. I grinned, ever so slightly, then used my best fatherly tone, like a pastor speaking to his flock that he so dearly cares for.
“It sounds like you need a little less Kevin in your reloads and a little more gun powder.”
