The door was shut.De Beer looked the hut over carefully. ""Bugger hit the village just this side of the Munyamadzi--know it?--around midnight last night, so far as the report goes. One of the worst is Central Africa, especially near the Great Rift Fault that crosses the continent perpendicularly. Suddenly, the upper hinge had broken, and the woman lost her hold. 56 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Death in the Long Grass. There is no sound as she slips along on thick pads, the white sickles of her claws sheathed, the aching throb of hunger hollow in her chest and loins.At twenty yards she freezes, the thick, acrid man-scent dank in her nostrils. Many animals that I had to previous impressions of, were described much differently than I wouldve expected. He rolled over, face-up on the dirt, listening to the lion chewing on the young man. We might be able to stalk him while he was actually eating his kill or intercept him on his way to water before he went to lie up for the hot hours. But he is an American who attended the University of Virginia! Some of these items ship sooner than the others. Yet, they kept at it until, almost at dark the last day of the safari, they heard a lion roaring a mile away. A low, incredibly sinister rumble welled up through the dark, and the hut shook under a heavy shock. We were greeted by the headman, a born politician who always wore eyeglasses and carried a fistful of ballpoint pens despite the fact he could see perfectly well without glasses and couldn't write a letter. Of course, a pharaonic lion hunt must have made a duke's Scottish grouse drive look like a girl scout outing. There followed a scratching, thrashing sound and a thump like a meal sack dropped down an empty elevator shaft. "Sorry to bugger your holiday," he told me, "but something's come up . Half the time was spent on hands and knees peering under the dense growth for a patch of tawny hide, hoping, when you saw it that it wasn't attached to a growing halo of teeth hurtling at you in a close-quarter charge. Aware, from related incidents, of the Zambian Game Department's policy on the killing of unlicensed game, I knew that the department would conclude that since the lion had not actually eaten me, there was no proof that it was a man-eater, and I was therefore guilty of lion poaching. Peter Hathaway Capstick's 'Death in the Long Grass' continues to be one of the true classics of written hunting tales. It's one of the more interesting lion-in-camp tales I have heard.It was the first shooting day of Cox's safari with the French hunter M. Cornon, and the party had driven all day from Fort Archambeau, on the Bahr Aouk, to their hunting area on the Chari River. . Lions were everywhere. I almost meant it, too. Nobody had any interest whatever in coming down until we found out what 'gave' with those lions. I felt that just as the day before, the lion would travel a few miles, then stop to feed, although after the meal he had taken the previous day, he couldn't have been terribly hungry. A pulsing fountain burst from the wound in a tall throbbing geyser as I thrust it back again, working it with all the strength of my arms. With a loaded rifle and shotgun, I ventured into the now-lighted grass which had so nearly proved my undoing. If interested please advise re post code for postage estimate. The big cat runs off into the bush where Joubert takes up the blood spoor.Over the next hour the lioness inscribes a large circle through the heavy riverine cover and incredibly, despite her wounds and the men following her, returns to the man she has killed and resumes feeding. My dear, dumb friend, who had never fired a gun in his life, Marcel, had unloaded it without my knowledge. Seconds later, as the woman sat mourning her husband, she was terrified to hear the lion scratching at the hut. Four years later, in the Njombe District of Tanganyika's Southern Province, Rushby was again enlisted to hunt the Njombe man-eaters, a collectivity of feline mayhem that, between the fifteen members of the grisly pride racked up a confirmed score of over 1,500 natives and colonists. The Death in the Long Grass: A Big Game Hunter's Adventures in the African Bush book is in average demand now as the rank for the book is 35,593 at the moment. Like New/Fine. See details Discretion being the better part of lion hunting, it was we who cleared off, returning a few hours later for the old boy's skin. Fumbling, he loaded them both, jacking a round into each chamber. Widow Jean Harvey recovered from her bites, if not her nightmares, and was released from the hospital within two months of the tragic night.I have often wondered what became of the two other starving lions that were reported as accompanying the lioness that killed Len Harvey. This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on Death in the Long Grass by Peter H. Capstick. The man, named Teapot, heard the struggle and the first scream and bounded off his mat to the door. In her death throes, she had moved down the young man's body and, in a final reflex, bitten the kneecap completelyoff Colin's leg. The luck of the draw.Willy De Beer, surprisingly, survived his wounds. Learn more Seller information better_world_books_uk (399231) 99.2% positive Feedback Save seller Huge bands of beaters concentrated the game while the pharaoh shot them with arrows from his chariot. It was hard, dangerous hunting that I had quit rather than risk a client's being chewed up. Four wrist-thick sticks of the biltong washed down with a cool Castle Pilsner from the condensation bag on the Land Rover's bonnet completed my dinner. He ran forward, spear leveled. The Death of Grass was the first of several post-apocalyptic novels written by Youd. Also, there is the small consideration that he probably won't be alone. In the vicinity of Fort Mangoche there was an isolated hut some hundred yards from the main village. There have been literally hundreds of man-eaters reported in the area since 1900 and, as the case of Peter Hankin so horribly demonstrates, there is still not much of a shortage.One pride, for example, the Ubena man-eaters, had been in operation for a full ten years before George Rushby, a game officer of Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and one of the greatest man-eating lion hunters of all time, began to put the screws on them in their thirty by fifty mile range in 1942. Login to YUMPU News Login to YUMPU Publishing Unlucky bwanas and unfortunate natives get pounded with monotonous frequency by running inadvertently into females with small cubs, mating lions, feeding lions, and the like. I'm not much of a reader, but this may have changed that. Older people like me will remember him from Outdoor Life and Field and Stream. At any rate, lions certainly have a creditable record for killing the famous. Capstick writes with absolute authority on an Africa which is rapidly receding into the past. Hook-and-bullet adventures had by tough guys such as Teddy Roosevelt and Papa Hemingway may be out of favor in these times of eco-awareness, but Peter Hathaway Capstick's account of big-game hunting in Africa remains a classic. Minimal signs of wear. The Chabunkwa man-eater was dead.Ripping off my belt, I placed a tourniquet on Silent's tattered arm. However, if you spend the best part of eleven years, as I did, living with big, live, genuine lions all around, you might discover that your balding head never hits your pillow without that little niggling of doubt. We looked at them and they looked at us. That bloody Chabunkwa lion chopped another Senga last night. At twenty yards there was the familiar Whuff! Louis Tipungwuti is a Tiwi Islands man. Silent wrapped the pitiful fragments in, bark fiber and we started back to the village. Still, I knew that there had been cases of lions killing as frequently as twice the same night and that, anyway, man-eaters have an uncanny way of showing up where least expected. What if Len wasn't dead but only unconscious? Imagine the number of people they had eaten in the ten years they operated unmolested! Whatever may be left falls to the African Sanitary Department and, after even a few days, it's difficult to examine a piece of skullcap the size of a demitasse saucer and state unequivocally that the cause of death was a lion. He taped out at a bit over nine feet, one inch, a very fine trophy. It worked, since she backed up, but not without some violent muttering. Reaching their campsite, Cornonhad some mechanical difficulty with the truck that hauled provisions, tentage, and such. May contain highlighting and or writing. If they have less apprehension about the scent of man through familiarity, I feel they are more likely to attack. To treat your dead grass, run a lawn tiller over the grass and water it every day for a week to help it . Very bad form, indeed. We were checking a bait one morning when I caught a movement out of the corner of an eye and saw this lion walking sedately across a small, , or flat, as casually as you please.I told the gentleman to please place a large hole in it with all dispatch, and he got into shooting position. Just maybe tonight Man-eating lions have had an almost unbelievable influence on the continent of Africa since the first European explorers and developers began to open up the bush in earnest. ${cardName} not available for the seller you chose. We have dispatched from our book depository; items of good condition to over ten million satisfied customers worldwide. He comes across as a rather bad boy of the English gentry. I have never decided in my own mind which animal, the elephant or lion, has killed more people. Watching the sun sink and waiting for time to pass, We prepare for darkness and possible death in the long grass; Moving slowly, one step and then two, we lay in position waiting for what to do . That lion was one trophy that Silent had earned.The doctor examined Silent's wounds, bound them, and gave him a buttful of penicillin against likely infection from the layers of putrefied meat found under the lion'sclaws and on his teeth, then released him in my care. Waves of agony made him gag and wobble, but he pushed the rifle barrel through the window again. Please use a different way to share. Look at it this way: why fool around with Cape buffalo and zebra when man is such a pushover?There are many natural catastrophes, such as plagues and epidemics that litter the bush with corpses, that may lead to lions' learning to eat man. A "big" bite in the thoracic region by a lion is almost sure death, but victims caught by a shoulder or leg can live a long time in the most unspeakable horror and agony. A sheet of blood burst into his eyes as he threw himself backward, gasping in pain.Most men who had just had their foreheads ripped open by a man-eating lioness would not be anxious for an encore performance. It was an interesting few minutes. When I had the aerial rigged after breakfast, he answered my call immediately. And of the few who have known this dangerous way of life, fewer still can recount their adventures with the flair of this former professional hunter-turned-writer.Based on Capsticks own experiences and the personal accounts of his colleagues, Death in the Long Grass portrays the great killers of the African bushnot only the lion, leopard, and elephant, but the primitive rhino and the crocodile waiting for its unsuspecting prey, the titanic hippo and the Cape buffalo charging like an express train out of control. A Spanish client, Armando Bassi of Barcelona, a fine hunter, had wounded a good-maned lion, but it had escapedinto the thick, before Paul could get in a finishing shot. Still conscious, Len screamed for his wife to get out of the hut and run. If they were made the night before, the standard procedure is to say your prayers, load your heavy rifle, and follow the tracks to the point where the lion has "lain up" for the hot daylight hours, usually sleeping in the thickest tangle of crud it can find until it cools off and darkness falls.The impossibly slow and hopefully soundless creeping through the blast-furnace heat of midday, with visibility often less than ten yards, is enough to rattle the nerves of a snake charmer. I am not a hunter, nor have I any interest in hunting. A typical charge by a lion from sixty feet takes a blinking of an eye. Over. He triggered the first shot, then, as fast as his smashed hands could work the bolt action, fired twice more. I was sure it was badly hurt, perhaps crippled because it stayed in the same position without moving away or attempting a charge. After all, fried chicken anyone? Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. I stopped by the Italians' hut to advise them of the state of affairs and was able to talk them out of their .460 Weatherby magnum elephant guns, figuring that a pair of tyros opening up blindly at some night noise with those cannons could well have tragic consequences. Showing 4 featured editions. In tangles like this, a long charge would be twenty-five to thirty yards, which gives you some idea of the time left to shoot.Ahead of me, Silent stiffened and solidified into an ebony statue. A single hyena had crossed the blood spoor and followed the lion, but a threatening rumble from the man-eater kept the other animal shuffling twenty feet away.The big cat rolled the body over and, holding it down with his forepaws, began to feed. His friends will later decide that even if he had the rifle now he would still have less than one minute to live.Fifty yards from Hankin's tent, in the shadowy skeleton of a fallen. Download Season Of The Long Grass full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. The wild thought raced through my skull that if the lion came now, the rifle would be too slippery to hold, since my palms were sweating so heavily. After reading Death in the Long Grass I ordered and read 4 of his other books. Catch-22, Afro style. Slightly after 11 P.M. a large lioness leaped through the window of the hut, hurling Jean from her bed to the floor. Everything was in the lion's favor in this growth, and I hadn't kidded myself that the man-eater had left it. beer. Never having fired a rifle before, he did not know where the safety catch was or even that there was one. It was that sun-downer or three that made you forget the saber-toothed tsetse flies and the pain in the small of your back, like a hot, knotted cable from too many miles bent over tracking. One night they nearly caught up with me, too. It's an average rank, and the book has a moderate amount of sales on Amazon. The walls seemed intact, as was the roof. As most men who have written about the hunting of man-eaters have confirmed, the majority of really high-scoring lions have been hunted badly by an amateur or clumsy professional before. At all. I fished out my flask of Scotch and poured a hair-raising shot into the little, scratched plastic cup while Silent recruited men to cut thorn for a, , a spiky barrier or fence to keep out nocturnal unpleasantries. I felt the first lukewarm slug burn the dust from between my teeth and form a small, liquid bonfire in the pit of my stomach. Just one chapter will leave you hooked. I already have a copy of this and I bought this one as my "lending" copy. Slowly, and I do not misuse the word, I eased a step back. Few men can say they have known Africa as Capstick has known it--leading safaris through lion country . Capstick writes with absolute authority on an Africa which is rapidly receding into the past. Well written true stories about big game hunting in Africa. For Peter Hankin, one of central Africa's most experienced professional white hunters, the last safari is over.It is light before Hankin's clients, unarmed and cowering in their tents while listening to the wet feeding sounds, can escape and seek help. Apparently, the pride had left, so I went back to my cot and fell asleep, lions or no lions. As I left in the hunting car to take Silent to the small dispensary some seventy-five miles away, I warned the headman that if anyone so much as disturbed a whisker of the lion for. We are after them. Charging lions have been known to cover a hundred yards in just over three seconds. One day, with a client from Philadelphia, we shot a very fine male lion at about ten yards after tracking him off the carcass of a wildebeest for three hours. Snarling fit to freeze the man's blood, he tore away a section of the grass wall and squeezed his head through, right next to Silent's waist.The little gunbearer scrambled around the floor trying to find his spear without success. Actually, before Cornon left, a group of nomads came to camp adjacent to us, so we had quite a gathering. Deciding that repair was imperative, Cornon elected to drive back through the night for spare parts. I have seen the, in the British Museum, dating from approximately 1400 B.C. Quantity: 1 Add to Basket Hardcover. And not all the tales had happy endings in an often kill or be killed environs. Seconds pass, then the lioness rises and begins to ooze forward, gliding like a tawny wraith between deep clumps of shadow. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club thats right for you for free. One of the lions had a shot which had broken its tail--a testimony to my marksmanship. Awkwardly, he reversed the rifle, found the safety, and, still unseeing, listened to determine where to fire. What the hell was Silent looking at, anyway?Moving a quarter of an inch at a time, he began to back away from the bush toward me. The tracks showed definitely that we were on the trail of the right lion.The spoor led through thinning, winter-dry bush studded with thorn, scrub, , and towering ant hills for a couple of miles, then turned off to the dense riverine vegetation that bordered the shallow Munyamadzi for about 500 yards of depth along each bank. "Right, Cyril," I answered. We found two dead lions, which were triumphantly dragged back to camp by the now-intrepid occupants of the tree. Sometimes, however, the victim is grasped by the body and dragged off to be eaten alive. It looks like WhatsApp is not installed on your phone. television series, it's understandable that most Americans don't regard the average lion as much tougher or more dangerous than Rima the Bird Girl.And speaking of the Adamson lions, you might be interested to know that one of those cuddly creatures sprang upon an open car driven by one of Kenya's top game officers, who was riding with his wife and young son in a game reserve a year or so ago. Perhaps covering his head was a conscious gesture, perhaps reflex. Silence blanketed the camp."Colin! Good, old Silent, trying to draw the lion off me, armed with nothing but a spear. They are hunted for the oldest of motives: the challenge of man against a fast, deadly animal on the animal's terms. I looked out and saw the world's biggest lion walking past my cot, growling in that low, gutteral tone they apparently use to scare things. Yet, in only one six-month season as a professional hunter in Zambia, I learned of six definite cases of man-eating by lions in just one concession area of twenty by sixty miles. In addition to writing about hunting, he was also featured in an award-winning safari video and audio tapes. A blind shot might kill him. They stuck around for almost an hour, probably attracted by the odor of our hung meat, a fringe-eared oryx I had shot that afternoon. Since the previous year had been a record one for heavy rainfall, much of the grass was twelve to fourteen feet tall and offered the visibility of minestrone soup. As thrilling as any novel, as taut and exciting as any adventure story, Death in the Long Grass takes us deep into the heart of darkness to view the Africa that few people have ever seen. To add the following enhancements to your purchase, choose a different seller. Somehow he tugged it free, the sudden release making him fall backward. Martin's Press; 1st edition (January 15, 1978). Lately I've been reading through the series by C.J. A lion with a bullet in his guts will do everything he can to repay the favor by lying in wait until the last moment before he charges.The second factor contributing to a lion's dangerousness is the combination of his speed and strength and the small target he offers in a frontal charge. There was no proof, but circumstantial evidence pointed to the fact that the big, healthy, glossy-coated cat (who is now a full-mount in Milano) had decided that things were getting a bit hot where he was operating and moved south, just happening to pick the wrong hut for his first foray in a new zone. A deep, warning snarl cut the thin light of the naked bulb outside the hut and De Beer cursed. Inside the travel-dented locker lie three flat five-packs of Kynoch 300-grain soft-point cartridges for the battered, silver-worn, old rifle, a Cogswell and Harrison, .375 Holland and Holland Magnum in caliber. Then, against the eighteen-inch open strip that ran under the flat roof for ventilation, a dark lump was silhouetted against the slightly lighter sky. Before he is even awake, there is the soggy snap of crushing vertiebrae, then silence. Some damage to the cover sleeve. Excerpted by permission. Death in the Long Grass (1978 edition) | Open Library Peter Capstick Last edited by Tom Morris January 5, 2022 | History Edit An edition of Death in the Long Grass (1978) Death in the Long Grass A Big Game Hunter's Adventures in the African Bush by Peter Capstick 0 Ratings 0 Want to read 0 Currently reading 0 Have read Overview View 1 Edition Each chamber bad boy of the draw.Willy De Beer cursed 1400 B.C left! Tail -- a testimony to my marksmanship snap of crushing vertiebrae, then silence system your... Million satisfied customers worldwide about big game hunting in Africa luck of hut! To writing about hunting, he answered my call immediately a lion from sixty feet a... 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