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The next step was to get a hold of one of those Peter Capstick African safari books, which I read fervently and decided that this was for me. The book was about 20 years old and I called one of the first numbers in the back of the book and got hold of Paul Merzig at adventure safaris in Chicago who was still at the same job and address. Then I called my daughter Olivia and said “ Hey Liv, how would you like to go to the Zambezi Valley with your Dad and hunt Cape Buffalo, Leopard and plains game for 2 weeks next year” It took her about 2 milliseconds to answer in the affirmative and we booked the hunt with Butch Walker in the Omay concession near Tiger Bay on Lake Kariba, a dammed lake on the northern border of Zimbabwe. This was before all the latest political trouble with the white farmers. I bought myself a Weatherby 416 high power dangerous game gun and we were off.
The Individual Hunts:
 Sable Antelope:
This is one of the most beautiful African antelopes and is jet black with white marking and has horns that curve back with ridges on them. I remember we took our Sable quite early in the hunt. We were hanging leopard baits all throughout the region and we took our usual lunch and siesta in the early afternoon when all the animal are out of the midday heat bedded down in the brush. We had just barely awakened and started to drive back toward camp when Jeff, our spotter in the back of the land cruiser, saw a good male Sable just off the left of the road standing up under a tree. He banged on the cab roof, blurted out a few African words and John Greeff, our Professional Hunter yelled to me his famous line, “Peter, he’s a good one, shoot quickly!!” I shot him in the left front chest and the animal took off in a very quick limp into the brush about 300 yards. John and I ran up to him with
Olivia following with the video camera, swearing as usual at the sound of more gunshots. The Sable had stopped at the base of a tree and was repeatedly putting his head down and rapidly moving it up so as to hook me with his horn as he was coming toward me. This is how they can kill a lion when cornered. I put 3 more shots into his chest and he went down for good.
 Cape Buffalo:
We had hunted about 5 times for a big buff in the herds but whenever we got close they would run off after being spooked by some other animal or catching our scent. Finally on the fifth day in the Zambezi Valley we came across a herd in late afternoon. This herd spooked several times on our stalk and finally broke up into 2 herds. We ran about ½ mile up a hill where Jeff had seen a big bull. When we got to the top it was getting dark and I had about a 50-yard shot that was almost frontal. The Buff took one step toward me and I shot him through the left shoulder with the Weatherby 416 with a 400-grain Swift A frame bullet, which went through about 4 feet of shoulder and chest before exiting. The Buff partially collapsed with the shot but then in usual fashion started to trot off. We followed him up fairly quickly because it was getting dark and I took 2 more shots up the rear. Finally he stopped in a clearing and at John’s command I took three more shots broadside into his chest before he ratcheted down and collapsed. By then it was almost pitch black. I certainly did lose some hearing in my left ear on this hunt. The Buff made SCI Bronze medal.
 Kudu:
On the 7th day a good-sized leopard had hit our bait and we left camp to make a blind. On the way to the area Jeff suddenly saw a large Kudu on a hill over 200 yards away and began pounding on the cab ceiling and yelling to John. We came to a screeching halt and John shrieked “He’s a f@$*ing monster, shoot quickly!” I jumped out of the car and rested my rifle on the windshield and fired a perfect spine shot in no more than 2 seconds. I was really steady because I had taken 50 mg of Tenormin that morning. John, a former rugby player, flew out of the car with his rifle and did the 200-meter dash in about 15 seconds to the scene of the crime. He kept shouting “f@$*king good shot, he’s a monster.” John had seen several good animals lost to shots near the spine that had leaped away when the spinal shock had resolved in shots near the spinal process. John’s swearing was hilarious to me because he had been such a proper British like gentleman throughout the hunt and was in control the entire time. When he measured the Kudu I could see why he had been so excited since it measured 59 7/8 and made SCI Gold medal.
 First Leopard:
We made a blind about 65 yards from the tree and got into it at about 4:30 PM. Once it became dark, the leopard came to the blind rather than the bait. I was lying on my back with my head next to the carpet rear exit door to the blind with the leopard right outside. John was kneeling right above my head with a loaded 44 Magnum handgun like Clint Eastwood. Fortunately the leopard went to the bait in the tree. The light was very low and I had no red dot to see the cross hairs with a dark cat on a tree. My shot went through the shoulder and the pectoralis muscle, but not into the chest cavity. The cat thudded to the ground and ran off into the night with blood curdling growls. They couldn’t find it that night. The next morning John and Cliff Walker both went after the cat and in just a few minutes it charged them. Cliff’s father Butch had been mauled by a leopard so there was no love lost for cats and they gave the snarling beast about 6 shots from their buckshot filled shotguns before it went down. I vowed that the next time I hunted cats in the dark; I would use a Burris red dot scope to illuminate the center of the cross hair against a black cat silhouetted in the night.
 Olivia’s Impala:
We took an evening walk along a river bed and came up on a herd of Impala with a large male about 270 paces away. The 300 Win Mag was shooting high and John knew this so he told Olivia to aim exactly where she wanted to hit. They sat on the ground and used a tree trunk and its roots as a rest for the rifle. It seemed like forever before Liv took her first African shot. It was a perfect shot into the heart and was the longest shot of the Safari.
- Pictures from the rest of the hunt...
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