Our Point of View

Laying Low On The Zambizi River Delta

By Mark A. Jicha

The very first computer file I opened after returning home from remote game fields on the other side of the globe was this: NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR RESIGNS, DISCLOSING GAY AFFAIR.

I kid you not; right off the bat, I had more information than I needed to know about something absolutely irrelevant to me.

Then there were, the stories on Hurricane Charley and another Arabian outbreak, but even a barrage of screaming headlines couldn’t blunt my recent memories from the trip of a lifetime to four countries that quite nearly comprise the Southern African plains. While there, I was blissfully ignorant of the outside world - no phones, internet, newspapers or radio. Depending on your perspective, that seemed like another good reason
to go back to Botswana.

Sadly, I had just returned.

Coming back across the Atlantic in steerage on a new Airbus that fits my 6-foot-2 frame like a straight-jacket is a lot of laughs, but I kept rewinding those flashing images of feathers
and light. There, you could, without looking too hard, lose yourself in the bush when gamebirds literally erupted from the brush aside sunflower fields that went on forever.

Whether emerging from the mist at the northern top of Victoria Falls or flushing covey of spurfowl in the Botswana vedlt, there is nothing in this
world like a foray into Africa. There were seven of us Southern nimrods - six from Georgia and a seventh from lovely Dyersburg in NW Tennessee; and then we were joined by Dave & Diane Freeman from Texas and another couple from Maryland (They beckoned from a Maryland farm just a little close to the Beltway for my tastes, but Alice & Mike Reid were real sports nonetheless.)

Our rag-tag band was assembled under the stewardship of “Bwana” Jack Bell, and while he overwhelmed the noviates with awesome displays of scattergun prowess, he proved equally adept at taming the wild, tail-walking tigerfish of the Zambizi River delta, and carried the day on the day on an impromptu fishing tournament with a dozen fish that wonderful African morning. He accepted kudos with a quiet modesty, thank goodness.

We were treated to wildlife and wild vistas of all flavors, a smorgasbord to delight an inquiring mind and overwhelm any appetite. We hunted often but also spent hours and days observing incredible close-up performances by elephants and hippos, buffaloes basking by immovable crocidiles sunning in a warm winter sun. There were antelopes of all sorts and plenty for our resident rifleman, Robbie, who collected an impressive array of bruised and battered appendages in a successful forays for big game. His beautiful wife, Teresa Cheeks, endured his accomplishments Bird-Hunting In Botswana & Beyond with dignity and grace.

There were many times when the shotguns were cased as we perused the plains and rivers for wild bird life that defies the mind. With the help of a small army well-trained professional hunters and local guides, I was able to identify more than 100
species in a fortnight: bee-eaters and and fire finches, weavers and wag-tails, bulbuls and babblers, the Grey Go-Away Bird (no kidding) and the huge Southern Ground Hornbill. The names were wild as were the species: African Hoopoe, Laughing Dove, Yellow-Throated Sandgrouse and the majestic white-headed African Fish Eagle. There three varieties of the wiley Francolin we coveyed, and for some reason no one could adequately explain, ornithologists have decided the species needed a new name: Spurfowl. We saw Knob-billed Ducks and the African Sacred Ibis, Hammerkops, Openbills, and Spur-winged Geese.

Bright as a brand new penny was an African Jancana, and even though I’d seen an African Secretary Bird on a dry dusty morning, my personal favorite was the Kori Bustard, the heaviest flying bird of the world that can reach 70 pounds and boasts a wing-span of seven feet.

I was lucky to share this special trip with my good friend Tom Schwartz, a Tennessee hunter who has welcomed me to many duck blinds along the Mississippi Flyway over the years. We celebrated each other’s success and jeered with self-deprecation, sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of the game birds in their natural
haunts.

No one but a bird hunter could understand the combination of comraderie and accomplishment it ended up meaning, and the sheer avalanche of shotgunning opportunities that made it so much durn fun! Jerome Guinn and his brother-in-law, David Moore, rounded out our motley crew, and when it was all over but the long flight home, we
all had more than our share of memories to cherish.

“Bwana” Jack, Tom and Jerome floated like cream to the top of our little shotgunning group, but when we were bolstered by our new friends from Texas & the Great Chesapeake, we soon enjoyed more than enough wing-shooting action for everyone in the crowd.

From the head person who wears the pants at Bird Hunters Africa, Mark Haldane (actually his wife Paula to be precise), his brother Glenn, Richard, Anita, Dylan and a collection of the most capable characters one could assemble, we enjoyed the services of professional outfitter in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbawe.

We ended the adventure at Victoria Falls in Zimbawe. One cannot help but be humbled by the magesty that is the Seventh Wonder of the World, an incredible maw that takes the entire flow of the mighty Zambizi River, the lifeblood that is Africa’s central plains, like Atlas or Mother Earth taking full draught. The water shatters upon impact and is thrust up and out of the gorge, raining like diamonds in the bright sky of the Southern Cross.

That’s where the story should end; instead, I now know New Jersey’s governor has come out of the closet; that’s more information than I really needed to know, and I’d rather be back on the Dark Continent again.

Truth.