DRUMS OF THE MORNING

Wayne Grant is a fourth-generation African born in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia in 1960. He’s been a professional hunter for 41 years, 36 of them as an independent operator, and is one of the most experienced hunters of lions and leopards still operating. His first book Into the Thorns is the definitive book on modern leopard hunting. His second book Drums of the Morning is about lions and lion hunting in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Tanzania. This article is a review of Drums of the Morning. Drums of the Morning is a big book and contains 15 real-life lion hunting stories pulled from Wayne’s four decades of professional hunting experience. The writing is lively and Wayne has a real gift for making the reader feel the true excitement, adrenaline rush, and even fear of an African lion hunt. But, Drums of the Morning is more than a hunting book. Anyone who loves southern and eastern Africa and is interested in its modern history and culture will very much enjoy reading Wayne’s account of growing up in rural Southern Rhodesia and the 11 years he spent at boarding school at the edge of the Matobo Hills and the trouble he got up to there. More serious, and perhaps more fascinating, is his 41-page chapter about his time spent in the Rhodesian military during the Rhodesian Bush War. Wayne joined up in January 1979 and tried out for officer training and special forces. Wayne passed the officer selection course and special forces basic training and joined One Commando, 1st Battalion, Rhodesian Light Infantry.

As a junior officer in the famed RLI based in Mutoko, Wayne participated in many Fireforce operations and saw plenty of combat. This chapter goes into detail about how Fireforce operations worked and what it felt like to jump out of helicopters and immediately engage in combat. Wayne includes his personal memories of Operation ‘Uric’ in which 370 Rhodesian and South African special forces attacked roughly 2,000 enemy soldiers in Mozambique. It was the single largest loss of life for the Rhodesian military in the war. When the war ended in 1980 Wayne became a professional hunter. Just as he credits the 11 years he spent in boarding school for giving him the toughness needed to make it in the

RLI, those years also gave him the independent spirit needed to start his own hunting safari operation in 1985. He has hunted in

Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. He’s won several awards including professional hunter of the year. Wayne currently lives adjacent to the Blaauwkrantz Nature Reserve in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and continues to run safaris in

Zimbabwe and South Africa.

CLOSE CALL AT DEKA

One of my favorite aspects of Wayne’s writing is his insistence on honesty and self-reflection. He doesn’t just describe his wonderfully perfect hunts, he also writes about the not-so-perfect hunts and the mistakes he’s made along the way, and the lessons he’s learned. In Close Call at Deka Wayne describes the closest he’s ever come to being killed by a lion. It took place in the mid-1980s. He and Dave, a repeat client who became a close friend, were hunting for lion, buffalo, and some plains game in the Matestsi Safari Area in Zimbabwe. Normally a buffalo hunter, Dave was intrigued by the chess match of lion hunting and badly wanted a large manned lion. After setting out lion

Top left: Me, laying a South African ‘Rose’ mine Above: The Mkanga lion had a thick, deep mane.

bait and seeing few signs of lion, they drove down to the Deka Safari Area near Hwange National Park.

In the early morning of the next day, they spotted the very fresh tracks of a good size buffalo herd crossing the main road. About twenty yards off the road, they found the tracks of a large male lion and four female lions following them. Wayne parked the Land Cruiser off the road in Mopani scrub and he and his party loaded water and food into backpacks and set off on foot after the lions. The party was unusually large and consisted of seven people – Wayne, Dave, Peter the head tracker, George the number two-tracker, the government game scout, a friend of Wayne’s who was filming the hunt, and Crispin who was carrying extra water. They walked for several hours until:

In Wayne’s words - “It was about 10 o’clock, the cool of the early morning long forgotten, when Peter, in the lead, suddenly dropped to the ground. Everybody went down... I bellied up to Peter who, whispering, talked me on to where he had spotted

the flank of a lion. It was hot now, and like snakes, we all slid on our stomachs into the shade cast by low Mopani scrub.”

“The male lion was lying on its stomach in the sphinx position, facing our direction. He was panting, eyes half-closed. The wind was not ideal. What little there was, wafted sporadically from the east – our left-hand side as we faced the lions – who were laying to our southwest. Any slight change and they would catch our scent, so we were not going to be able to bed down and wait for the lions to change position. I had to make a move before the wind changed.”

“I am very much against shooting at a cat that is not standing...the vitals all sag lower in the animal’s body, and a hunter would need to know exactly what he is doing to make the shot. We continued to glass the male until finally, he turned his head, showing us that his mane was indeed a full one. His overall color was dark, also denoting age.”

“I decided to make a low gentle lion call, to make him inquisitive enough to stand up. Dave organized himself into a solid prone position, leaning his rifle on a couple of folded jackets. I began calling, but nothing happened. I called louder, and one of the females stood up, peering in our direction. This was make-or-break. The lions were surely going to take off soon. I called again. The male, eyes open now, stared straight towards us, still laying down, but alert. Looking hard at this male, I was now unsure if his body was in fact face-on toward us, as it now looked as if he was lying side-on, with just his head and neck towards us.”

“Dave and I whispered feverishly to one another. The lions were onto us, and we had to make a decision. I could now see all four of the females, and they were out of our line of fire. I told Dave to go for what we decided was a low-shot show behind the shoulder.

“The rifle boomed, and the lion jackknifed into the air, snarling and biting at itself, as the females took off... We stood up, watching the lions run, Dave following the male in his scope. Just then the lion stopped, and I told Dave again to fire for the shoulder. Dave fired, and I saw a wristsized sapling go down, cut perfectly in half by the .375 bullet. The lions all bounded off, disappearing quickly into the scrub.”

The male separated from the females and the blood dried up within 500 yards. That part of the Deka is a “blighted, dry, inhospitable place. It looks like a nuclear testing ground.” Without a single drop of blood, Peter continued to track the lion. By 11 am it was “blazing hot” with “millions of Mopani flies hovering around our eyes, ears, and noses.” By the afternoon Peter had tracked the lion to a small, dry watercourse and the “only cover in the area was patches of dry knee-high grass and clumps of thorny acacia.” Wayne understood the party was too large and made too much noise to catch the lion so he “decided to take

my shoes off and leave the cover of the dry w, walking several hundred yards in front of Peter and the others, and about 50 yards up, away from the dry stream bed. I was silent and thought I had a good chance of seeing the lion run for it when he heard the group approaching.” They went on that way, with Wayne shoeless and in the lead, for several hours. At 4 pm Wayne was close to calling off the hunt, they were a long way from the Land Cruiser, and they needed to be able to get back to it before dark. “About a hundred yards ahead, I saw a large sausage tree and made my way to it, pausing to decide on what we were going to do...At this time, my rifle was resting on my shoulder. The ‘alert-ready’ mode had been replaced by ‘resigned-tired’ mode a long time ago.” “I had only walked about 10 yards when I saw the lion! I had actually walked right past him on my way to the sausage tree! He was lying down, crouched, underneath a fallen Leadwood tree. He was watching me, and as our eyes met he must have seen the recognition in my face because he came out of the crouch into full charge in one fluid movement. He was only about 25 yards away and as he leaped into action, he emitted a loud, deep grunt that I felt inside my chest, and he came for me undulating and low, at sickening speed. I don’t remember exactly those fractions of a second, but I remember realizing that I did not have time to get my rifle into my shoulder. I pulled the rifle down off my shoulder, into my left hand, thumbed the “When the war ended in safety off, and fired with the butt at about my chest height... I have had some close 1980 Wayne became a calls in my career, but with regard to death professional hunter. Just by animal, this was probably the closest I as he credits the 11 years have come.” he spent in boarding Although Dave was happy with the school for giving him the toughness needed to make it in the RLI, those quality of the lion trophy, he felt he didn’t truly deserve it. He did get another wonderful lion himself on a later safari with Wayne.years also gave him the independent spirit needed THE FAMiLY to start his own hunting I thoroughly enjoyed Close Call at Deka safari operation in 1985.” and the other 14 true hunting stories in Drums of the Morning, but perhaps the part of the book I personally liked best was the chapter entitled The Family about the people Wayne has worked with over the years – his close clients, staff, and colleagues. I especially enjoyed the part about Peter Sebele, the exceptionally talented tracker Wayne has known since 1981. When they first met Peter was “a man of about 32-years of age...a small man of about five feet seven, and slightly built.” Wayne describes Peter’s first day tracking for him for two clients who wanted buffalo “Along the basalt ridge, Peter stopped the vehicle every time he noticed tracks crossing up into the forest. Buffalo. Yesterday. More driving. Stop. Eland bull, last night. Further, they went. Stop. Sorry, cattle this morning. Stop. Peter got down, walked a few paces on more tracks, picked up something, and dropped it. ‘Five buffalo bulls passed this way early this

Crispen, George, Peter and Dave

morning.’ he said. The hunt commenced. Two hours later, buffalo bulls, five of them, were caught unawares, still grazing. Both clients connected with beautiful well-bossed gnarly old bulls.”

Peter’s influence on Wayne was profound. “Once Peter entered the picture, I began to become a true hunter. I had grown up in the bush and knew more than most white people my age about birds and animals and the secrets of the wild, but the age-old cliché has to be repeated here – there is no better way of learning something than by doing it. By doing, and failing, and doing it again. And I had the master teacher... I learned from him how to really hunt. We used to hunt barefoot in the Gusu forest all day long, and we were silent. Creeping up to a sleeping bull eland was no big deal for Peter. For me, it was thrilling... Peter knew nothing of safaris, trophies, and foreigners... But, being a natural, it was not long before he was an expert. He took to safari work like he had done it already in a previous life.”

Peter only got better with time. “Peter’s tracking ability, already extraordinary, grew with every hunt we did. I was learning from him, and he was learning from experience alone. From what I gather about the numerous books I have read about the San or Bushmen, it would seem that some of their hunters are magicians on spoor. They have a special gift, a higher, more sensitive, finely developed level of the rhythms and pulse of nature, and they are able to sense and anticipate, even know what certain animals, in certain situations, are going to do. This is how it was with Peter.”

Peter is retired now, a small businessman who owns his own store to provide for his children. Wayne helped build that store and provide for Peter’s retirement and when Peter came down with HIV during Zimbabwe’s horrible AIDS crises, Wayne and his family stepped up to help. One of Wayne’s clients is an American medical doctor, and he sent over the needed medicines with the very next hunter. Peter has been on anti-retro virals since 2004 and is doing well. Wayne’s current right-hand man is Themba Mkhwananzi. Themba joined Wayne’s operation in 2000 and had the opportunity to learn from Peter and the rest of Wayne’s sterling senior staff. Over the last 21 years, Themba has become the most versatile worker Wayne’s ever had, good at just about everything, and constantly pushing himself to learn new skills and better the ones he already has. When Wayne and his family moved to South Africa in 2005, Themba went with him. He’s since married a South African woman, and they have a son.

Wayne takes on some controversial issues in the book including canned lion hunts, Cecil the lion, anti-hunters, government corruption, and the future of safari hunting and how to do it sustainably, as well as the lack of general trust in the industry compared to the 1980s and 1990s. I imagine readers will have their own opinions on these issues that may or may not agree with Wayne’s, but anyone who reads those chapters comes away convinced of two things – Wayne knows the subjects extremely well, and he’s a man of honesty and integrity.

ViDEO iNTERViEW AND MORE

If you’re interested in knowing more about Wayne and Drums of the Morning, I invite you to come to my website, www.goodbooksinthewoods.com. Signed first editions of Drums of the Morning are for sale there, and you’ll also find a link to my video interview with Wayne where we discuss Drums of the Morning and his professional hunting life in general. I hope you’ll enjoy it. The video interview is currently on YouTube. Wayne runs an annual shooting school on a ranch in Texas and if you’re interested in attending, please drop me a line at jay@goodbooksinthewoods. com and I’ll get you in touch with Wayne. ★