IN pursuit of Africa’s Big Five – elephant, lion, buffalo, rhino and leopard – camera-toting tourists and gun-carrying “hunters” spend small fortunes. Uncle Opie and my son, Matthew, his apprentice, pursue the small edible six around us with homemade equipment, clear eyes and sharp hearing. Wild game is still an important part of the diet in our parts of rural Africa, far from the expensive and tasteless protein offerings in supermarkets. They recently updated me on local trends and strategies.
Wild pigeons are downed with a robust catapult using smooth pebbles from the bed of our stream or placing a mousetrap baited with maize seeds or groundnuts under a likely tree. Several months ago we began breeding pigeons in a homemade loft and, as ignorant learners, were surprised when they returned every evening. While less exciting than traps and catapults, this does ensure a regular tasty meal. A cousin in Scotland used to repeatedly pepper pigeons on their farm with airgun pellets, the somewhat unimaginative birds circling round the trees until the weight of lead accumulated caused a crash landing.
Guinea fowl are delicious but alert and anxious. Opie does not mess around with finicky netting as some purist hunters do but cuts to the bottom line using what is referred to with some awe as the “bear trap”, a spring and plate contraption made from pieces of scrap iron. The area will be prepared for a day or two with a handful of seeds, then the trap placed and covered with grass.
Small antelope like the duiker use game tracks through the riverine bush, well away from our own paths, and that is where Opie will be found after dusk placing his trap. The trap’s spring is crushingly strong and takes two people to prime it.
In Swaziland, we would occasionally drive out on summer nights using a dirt road smothered in inches of dust. The younger impala would run towards the car lights, hence a supply of excellent meat for several weeks. If the dust cloud had lingered after a previous vehicle had passed, obscuring visibility even with headlights on, half a ton of very solid eland or kudu might have been our nemesis instead.
Termites and mopane worms (which are caterpillars found infesting the mother tree) are highly nutritious and savoury after drying in the sun, richer and nuttier than locusts. Our visitors, having enjoyed their breakfast omelette or scrambled eggs, are not usually told the source of the distinctive flavour.
Fortunately, the giant African snail, frogs and snakes are not on our hunting duo’s menu. The former is an aesthetic challenge unless you’re a West African, frogs are fungal, bacterial and parasitic cesspits, and snakes round our farm are prone to eating house-orientated rats which are not gourmets but scavengers.
The importance of hunting in Africa, whether for food or as a male ego-booster, was brought home to me one Saturday evening when I was phoned by one of Swaziland’s High Court judges. We met as agreed in the hospital’s casualty department. About 20 white acacia thorns were removed from his chest wall, arms and legs. He and a fellow lawyer had been hunting game in Hlane, a huge tract of wild country on the country’s eastern border with Mozambique.
Like most of their countrymen, they regarded this as their right, not a privilege. The complicating factor was that Hlane had been declared a game reserve and was now patrolled by armed wardens – who had spotted the two interlopers and gave chase. His unfit colleague had been detained, but the judge was tall and had a huge stride, so he steeplechased his way to safety, sailing over bushes and streams but misjudged one tight corner and pitched into a thorn bush. Hence our happy half-hour behind screens in casualty.
A year or so later, rhino poachers were caught in another nearby game reserve and were shot by the wardens. After the judge had sentenced the survivors and the dust had settled, I left an unsigned letter with the High Court interpreter. It was addressed to the judge and read:
“Hlane’s impala are thriving and await you.”
Inside the envelope were six acacia thorns.
Dr David Vost studied medicine at Glasgow University and is currently working at a hospital in Swaziland. He and his family live on a small farm in Northern Uganda near the Albert Nile.
davidvostsz@gmail.com
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