My Mother Shoots Elephants - Chris Kellogg

My Mother Shoots Elephants (eBook)

Chris Kellogg (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
276 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-7189-9 (ISBN)

Short adventure Chronicles on African safaris in British East Africa.My adventures and misadventures include growing up on the family farm in Bedford New York. Hunting and fishing from Palm Beach to Alaska and Russia.

My mother shoots elephantsShort adventure Chronicles on African safaris in British East Africa. Nonnie ( Fernanda Wanamaker Munn Kellogg)who's pals in the 1960s included Robert Rouark, she was Kathie in his best selling book UHURU. Richard Leakey and George and Joy Adamson of born free were also pals . Many other notable's like Thomas Shevlin and Rip McIntosh from Palm Beach who were there during those golden years. Mom a department store heiress spent some 20 years on her farm call Treffos and in the jungles hunting and collecting specimens for museums. She raised funds for the first and second airplane for the game department plus antipoaching units for Meru and Tavo national parks. A 32 page report on her LAWANA FUND projects is also attached with each book. My adventures and misadventures include growing up on the family farm in Bedford New York. Hunting and fishing from Palm Beach to Alaska and Russia. Stories of my hunts getting the BIG 5 in 1961-Lion ,Leopard, Buffalo,Rhino, and Elephant . On Safari where Mom,Uncle Gurnee and me the Kid at 18 -One of the most successful Safaris ever, with the story of bagging the largest Elephant taken in the past 60 years.Also why not,some Palm Beach society stories. Enjoy all the many adventures in My mother shoots elephants.

BEGINNING WITH MOM

MOM’S BUFFALO HUNT

“Mom, tell me about the scariest hunt that you had in Africa.”

Mom and I were in the Old Town canoe fishing for bass on our farm in Bedford, New York. I was about twelve when I first heard this story:

“Okay, Chris. Well, John Sutton and I were looking for a trophy buffalo. We were in the southern open plains district of Kenya in Block number 53. Matuka and Matua, our best skinner and tracker, were with us in the lorry. John stopped several times to glass a herd of buffalo.

“‘Nonnie,’ he said, ‘here is an old big buf that looks good, let’s get a better look.’

“So we stopped in this open area with rolling hills. It was warming up now at 10:30 as we got out of the lorry. John told the boys they’d better stay in the vehicle because there wasn’t any cover except for the knee- and waist-high dry grass. By the way, Chris, do you know buffalo are considered by many to be the most dangerous of all game?

“So we carried our own rifles, which Matuka and Matua would normally carry for us. I moved single file behind John, who stopped and scanned the herd every thirty-five yards before moving forward. He would check the wind by picking up and dropping some of the loose soil. There was a light breeze in our faces, and we wanted to be downwind so as not to spook the herd. We moved forward slowly, now crouching, and I remember the strong, sweet smell of hay in the dry grass as we moved on. Funny what you remember.

“I was excited, since we had been looking for a trophy buf for several days now. ‘Nonnie, see that one on the left? That’s the one,’ he said as he handed me the binoculars.

“‘Yes, that’s big,’ was all I said.

“John was closely eyeing the herd to make sure they hadn’t spotted us. We moved only when we were sure they weren’t watching. We didn’t have scopes on our rifles and needed to be close to get a clean kill shot to take down this trophy bull. I was right behind John when he raised his hand up, a sign for me to freeze. He whispered, ‘Wind shifting around,’ and I could feel the change of the breeze from my face to my side to the back of my head.

“The herd was on alert as their heads came up from grazing. They bunched up together as they caught our smell, and then I heard their feet just stomping in place—they were nervous. All of a sudden they all charged us as they caught our scent from what they thought was behind them. The wind had come around 180 degrees. They were trying to run away, but coming straight for us, only a hundred yards away.

“John shouted, ‘Nonnie, drop your gun!’ and stood up, yelling ‘Run, run!’ as he waved his arms and ran toward the charging herd. I followed, screaming and waving my arms. No choice, nowhere to hide or run to, no trees to get behind. We were going to die; we were going to be trampled to death. Couldn’t stop the entire herd of some thirty buffalo with our guns. I remember—euphoria, adrenalin, heart pounding—as we charged them. It was unreal; my mind couldn’t grasp this nightmare in what felt like slow motion. But it was real, and thoughts of what I was going to miss in a few mere seconds when trampled to death—the pain, but sad at the goodbyes to friends, family, loved ones, and my life—all this flashed through my mind. The thunder of the hooves shaking the ground grew louder as they came for us. Terror, that’s what I felt, simply terror. At forty feet and two seconds away, the herd split in half and came thundering past. My knees felt weak and I sank to the ground, my hands going to my face as the tears fell. I looked at John, and his face was flushed—but with a big smile, or maybe a grin.

“That’s it. We went back to camp for lunch and spent the rest of the day in recovery. I’ve never been so scared. There was no choice, no running away!

“Chris, there were other close calls, but that was the most frightening one.”

* * *

TEACHING ME TO HUNT

My mother taught me gun safety. Her first lesson was to tell me about her instructor in Scotland. “He said never point a gun at anyone,” she explained. “Then he took my sixteen-gauge loaded Dickinson shotgun and slammed the stock on the ground. Even though the safety was on, both barrels went off!”

When I was thirteen, Mom said, “Let’s sight in the Sako 243 rifle.”

We went up to the barn and used some old sofa pillows to set up a gun rest on the hood of the Jeep. I placed the target a hundred yards away using the upward-sloping field as a backstop. This was before there were adjustable power scopes, so it took forty-five minutes to sight in the four-x fixed scope. But we were soon hitting thumbtacks in the bull’s-eye at a hundred yards.

“Well,” Mom said, “now we’re ready to shoot a deer.”

We decided to set up a bench rest next to the pool, because the grass in the fields above it was often a favorite grazing area. We had numerous sightings of deer early and late in the day. The next day, we were up early and took our stand at 7:00 a.m. Soon, we saw some bucks and does milling about. Mom took the binoculars and scanned the field for several minutes.

Finally, she whispered, “I want you to shoot the doe on the bottom left side of the field.”

I whispered, “Why a doe?”

“It’s young and tasty,” she said. “We’re not after a trophy rack.”

So, I put the crosshairs of the sight on the spot Mom had told me to, and aimed for the heart like she taught me: Take a deep breath, let half out, and slowly put pressure on the trigger. Bang! The shot seemed extremely loud to me, and the deer went right down. We waited some five minutes before approaching because, in Mom’s African safari hunts, dangerous animals could jump up again and charge.

All was okay, and Mom said, “Now we will need to bring the Jeep up and field dress the deer.” I wasn’t expecting that. I thought the deer would be sent to the butcher just like the cows on the farm. Mom was very proud of all she had learned over many safaris in Kenya, and she wanted to teach me how to prepare the deer.

“Christopher, make a long cut with your knife down the belly; that’s right. Now open up the stomach area but don’t cut into it.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Now, son, reach in all the way around the innards and pull them out.”

I began to do as she said but soon stopped. “This is awful,” I said. “Do I have to put my face right in its guts? Agh!”

With steam rising from the cavity, I finally pulled out the guts using a bear hug. We loaded the deer into the back of the Willy Jeep after sawing off the head and feet, another unpleasant experience. I spent the rest of the weekend skinning the hide and stretching it out on a board. I also got instructions from Mom on how to quarter the meat, which I packed and put into the icebox. The work was physically and emotionally exhausting. Fortunately, it was my only experience at doing this. But later, at eighteen, while on safari with Mom, I saw field dressing done so often that I still felt sick at the sight of so much blood.

I had gentler beginnings with Mom fishing on the lake for bass and perch out of the Old Town canoe. I learned a lot in those early days, listening to my mom tell stories of her experiences while we were fishing.

Mom and I practiced shooting snapping turtles from the back porch. They were killing Dad’s rare collection of ducks and geese. One time, Dad and I caught a large snapping turtle and stuffed it in an apple crate. The snapper was crossing from the lower lake to the upper pond. We took it several miles away in the Jeep and dropped it off at the lake next to the property of Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren, which seemed to delight my father, who was a friend of both of them.

The famous Mill Pond Farm pigeon shoot began after several of my father’s highbred pigeons with fancy feathered feet, fancy fantails, and fancy everything mated with New York City park pigeons, and the offspring lost their plumage. Then the pigeons multiplied and nested at the top of the barn, where they made a terrible mess. The answer was a pigeon shoot. Engraved invitations were sent out to a select few.

Dad caught the pigeons, with help from our friend Paul, crated them, then transported them in the Jeep to the upper fields, where we shot trap. Some were banded with different colored silk ribbons tied to their feet for extra prizes. Two of these events brought the pigeon population back under control, and everyone was delighted—except the surviving pigeons, who flew over our heads back to the barn below the fields.

I must say, this sort of thing is not for me. I enjoyed participating in an historic pigeon shoot at the oldest and most famous Philadelphia Gun Club, where pigeons were thrown into the air from a box in a sixty-foot circle. You had to kill the bird before it crossed out of the enclosed circle. But usually I find killing animals you don’t plan to eat unpleasant and less than sporting, much like the tower shoots of pheasant and ducks where the birds are launched off a...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	12.6.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
ISBN-10	1-6678-7189-7 / 1667871897
ISBN-13	978-1-6678-7189-9 / 9781667871899

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