The Last of Old Africa The Last of Old Africa Big-Game Hunting in East Africa by Brian Nicholson Safari Press Inc. The Last of Old Africa © 2001 by Brian Nicholson. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical reproduction, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. The trademark Safari Press ® is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Nicholson, Brian e-Book Safari Press Inc. 2001, Long Beach, California ISBN 978-1-57157-454-1 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-69161 Readers wishing to receive the Safari Press catalog, featuring many fine books on big-game hunting, wingshooting, and sporting firearms, should visit our Web site at www.safaripress.com. iv DEDICATION This work is dedicated to the memory of my late wife, Melva, who spent so many years in East Africa with me. It is also an element of family history for my two daughters, Susan and Sandra, and my son, Philip, who grew up in the sunlight and storm of the Selous Game Reserve. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I started to write this book in 1995. For various reasons there were repeated delays, followed by a break of nearly two years. Many people have suggested I write an autobiography, and some have persistently followed up on this. John Moller went to much trouble to type and print the original draft of my story up to when I joined the Tanganyika Game Department in February 1950. Others who encouraged me were Richard Bonham, Skip Essex, Trish Luke, and Sharon Barucha. My daughter, Sandra Harwood, dedicated hours and days of her time to typing, correcting, and reprinting every page in the book and then reprinting the final draft of the entire book. It is impossible to express the depth of my appreciation for all her work on my behalf. Sorting through and selecting photographic records of people and events involved a great deal of critical thought and discussion. My eldest daughter, Susan Testa, was a valuable aid in doing this, along with Sandra. Without the unstinting help of my two daughters and John Moller, this book could never have been completed. My late wife, Melva, was with me for much of the time in Tanganyika. I must acknowledge that her continuous care, loyalty, and support contributed to my ability to cope with many problems that arose over the years and on occasion contributed to my very survival. This book could never have been started were it not for her. I wish to express my appreciation and thanks to the following people who provided me with photographs used in this book: the late Melva Nicholson; Sandra Harwood; Allen Rees; the late Dan Maddox; Bert Klineburger; Game Coin President, Harry Tennison; Susan Testa; and especially Jon Speed. I also thank Tony Dyer for writing the foreword to this book. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword ...................................................................................... ix Introduction .................................................................................. xi Chapter 1~ Early Memories ...................................................................1 Chapter 2~ Growing Up .........................................................................3 Chapter 3~ Learning to Hunt ...............................................................11 Chapter 4~ First Big-Game Hunts........................................................21 Chapter 5~ Game Catching ..................................................................29 Chapter 6~ Capturing Rhino and Hunting Lion ...............................41 Chapter 7~ My First Elephant ..............................................................55 Chapter 8~ Professional Hunter ...........................................................63 Chapter 9~ Ivory Hunting ....................................................................83 Chapter 10~ Elephant Control Officer ...............................................104 Chapter 11~ Hunting in the Eastern Liwale District ..........................114 Chapter 12~ The Mbarawala Plateau .................................................128 Chapter 13~ A New Elephant Control Technique .............................136 Chapter 14~ Ruvuma Safari ................................................................140 Chapter 15~ The Northern Wilderness ..............................................160 Chapter 16~ Some Man-Eating Lions .................................................167 Chapter 17~ Safaris in Western Tanganyika ......................................183 vii Chapter 18~ Trekking through the Ulanga Range .............................190 Chapter 19~ Hunting the Kilombero Flood Plains ............................202 Chapter 20~ Safari with the Boss ........................................................216 Chapter 21~ Unexpected Close Encounters .......................................218 Chapter 22~ The Western Selous Again .............................................228 Chapter 23~ Southern Highland Interlude .........................................239 Chapter 24~ I Take Over Liwale Range .............................................243 Chapter 25~ For Better or for Worse ..................................................251 Chapter 26~ Opening Up the Selous: A Beginning ..........................255 Chapter 27~ Northern Tanganyika .....................................................259 Chapter 28~ Cattle Killers at Kongwa ................................................ 271 Chapter 29~ Looking for Devils ......................................................... 275 Chapter 30~ Start of Hunting in the Selous ........................................284 Chapter 31~ A Writer’s Ordeal ...........................................................294 Chapter 32~ Background to Hunting the Selous ...............................298 Chapter 33~ Some Trophy Hunts and a Bad Lion ............................305 Chapter 34~ Epilogue ..........................................................................321 viii FOREWORD This book tells of exciting boyhood hunting years and many years in the life of a game warden in Tanganyika (now called Tanzania). Brian Nicholson was responsible for the vast Selous Game Reserve and all the great southern ranges in Tanganyika. He was eventually responsible for about 100,000 square miles of roadless country where foot safaris were the norm. When he first moved in, it was a fourteen-day journey to his base camp. Transport started with the railway, followed by the bus and then a DC-3 flight; the last five days were on foot. Over the years he was to journey more miles on foot than by any other form of transport. The Selous Game Reserve was nearly doubled by his legendary predecessor “Iodine” Ionides, and later by Brian Nicholson between 1951 and 1973, to a total of 22,000 square miles. It is difficult to visualize such a large area—imagine a square 150 miles long on each side. They created forty-seven separate concession hunting areas, which profoundly changed the hunting safari business in East Africa. All of those who have hunted there owe these two men a great debt of gratitude. As game warden the author was required to try to ease the trials and tribulations caused by crop-raiding elephants and man-eating lions. After over twenty years of this work, he has probably shot more elephant, on foot and with normal sporting rifles, than any other man living today. His personal total is over 1,300, with only two out of that great number wounded and lost. He quite candidly describes these two losses. They caused him so much distress that he offered to resign his job. At the beginning of his career he employed twenty-five scouts and his team accounted for a thousand elephant a year. By the time he resigned from the game department, his team had grown to one hundred scouts and they controlled up to three thousand elephant a year. Yet the elephant numbers remained stable or even increased. The dramatic reduction in numbers took place after he retired and was caused by poaching on a massive scale. The hunting of man-eating lions was almost without exception a long, hard, and dangerous job. Here is his description of one exceptionally easy hunt. One of his porters had been dragged off at nighttime from within ten yards of Brian’s tent. He followed the drag with his .470 and a torch, and a man to hold the torch while he shot. After a hundred yards or so they came up with the lion. “As Mbukuri took over the light,” writes Brian, “the lioness sat up on her haunches staring straight at me. I shot her in the chest and she collapsed on the spot. At the rifle shot, the cub, which until then had ignored me, sat up facing us with the man’s arm jutting out of each side of its jaws. I fired the left barrel into its chest too and it instantly fell to the ground. It was all over. One man and two lions were dead. The porter was buried that morning with Islamic ritual, and we moved on that afternoon, as we still had seventeen days’ walk to reach Gumbiro, our priority destination for that safari.” In all he shot—in a letter to me he uses the word “destroyed”—about fifty man-eaters or stock killers. He told me that some of the stock killers he hunted would have inevitably have become man-eaters if they had been allowed to live, for they were already killing domestic dogs and hanging around human habitations. This is a significant number because of the nature of the beasts. These were cunning and furtive rogues lurking