To Can Or Not To Can Be The Main Misnomer Of A Hunt
Yes, all the posts here are to the point because it is not hunting; maybe at best it is dispatching a live animal along its journey towards becoming good steaks or coarsely ground sausage, or biltong (as we call our local jerky delicacy).
Some foreign clients of “canned hunts” where a lion was the animal to be culled out of the fenced-in pride of three did indeed know that it was an old and well-fed circus performer in its days. Nevertheless that did not distract the trigger-puller to pose with the carcass and even display the nicely draped skin or mounted “trophy” in his Vermont home.
A few years ago my one gun-shop owner pal (man I made him financially successful with all the hardware I bought from him, but he was so damn good on cold rainy days when I was not flying aeroplanes around to stock sales - he would call me in for some long-winded chillies rolled into sandwich size processed cheese and showing me the newest .375 H&H he had) went to get a gemsbok (Oryx) on a 30 000 hectare (NOT acres!) fenced farm near a town that goes by the name of Vyburg (like in “Free Town” - the name is from a rather interesting moment in my beloved country’s colourful history). Now to walk and stalk and find and shoot and kill a gemsbok around 30 000 hectares of savannah, even though fenced in can by no means described as “canned”.
Servaas (“sehr-fahs”) was a rather good shot if not the world fittest loper, so he and his 7x57 got the nicest gemsbok around 4 in the afternoon, but he was rather clapped out by the time the farmer located him and loaded him and the bled carcass onto the Ford F250 pick-up truck (which we call a “bakkie” here like in “plucking” but with a b and without the ph and the ng).
The farmer was a well-known cattle breeder as well and on the way home to the cool room he went via the small 300 hectare fenced in corral to - let’s be honest - brag with his red and white Brahman cattle living on the best natural feeding the Kalahari has to offer in preparation for his production stock sale planned a few months down the line.
Servaas stood on the back of the bakkie with his .22-250 having locked the mauser into the hard case. The owner drove around, and talking outside towards the back he was expounding the virtues of his well bred herds and pointed out some exceptionally good blood and how his good eye had chosen the bull as well as the cows that had bred these.
“How much would that tan ox at ten ‘o clock fetch you at the sale”, Servaas asked.
Now farmers are forever playing off low prices against rising costs to show how they suffer under financial pressures and in typical fashion the answer was: “You know these damn stock sales and those skelm (devious) buyers form the big cities - They’ll probably offer me no more than R3 000 if they buy a pen of 50”.
In that single moment, without hesitation, while the resonance of the burly and bearded driver of the bakkie’ voice was still hanging in the quiet afternoon sunlight of the Kalahari the ox’s front legs folded as a 45 grain monolithic solid whizzed through its brain. The rifle’s short but loud report had already left the area in its expanding shockwave bubble across the savannah and into the atmosphere. All Servaas said was: “You’ve got three thousand”.
Now that is canned hunting.
And if you know a Brahman ox living off the land you’ll want a little more than a .22-250 had you stalked him and cornered him against the fences… Man, he is sure to give you quite a bit more run for your money than any bison bred on salt licks and GM pellets!
