Tools of the Trade
By: R. Scott Anderson, MD
Part One
There is something almost cyclical in nature when it comes to using an especially historic tool. It means evenmore if the instrument is something that has at some time belonged to and been used by one of the giants on whose shoulders you yourself stand. It’s almost like being able to reach across the bounds of time and seize the past in one’s own hands. I was reminded of this as I read an account by professional hunter Harry Selby about hunting an elephant with the little .275 Rigby that W.D.M. “Karamojo” Bell had used to harvest so many bulls in the early days of the ivory boom in Africa. Selby had been given the rifle as a gift by the famous author Robert Ruark, complete with an inscribed plaque commemorating the event. It’s an interesting and nostalgic tale that ends with the little rifle being sold off through Holland and Holland in London by Selby’s son while Selby was still alive. I couldn’t comprehend it really. How could you sell something like that? It seemed like selling your grandfather’s false teeth. Even if you didn’t plan on using them yourself, there is something unsettling about the idea of them belonging to someone else. The more I thought about it, the more I found myself enraged at the lack of appreciation and understanding that selling such a treasured artifact entailed. I determined that something had to be done to right such an egregious wrong. Someone had to take up the torch of tradition and be history’s champion. I decided right then and there that that someone was I.
This would be a quest, and I set onto it like a Templar after the grail. Finding the owner of the rifle wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined. I tracked him watching carefully for his footprints along that electronic trail we call the internet. A broken twig caught my attention. The owner had taken the rifle to Botswana on safari in 2009, and much had been made of the event in the shooting press. Even seeing it in pictures I could tell how special the little gun was, but why had somebody whittled a hole in the middle of the stock? I read on gathering clues. The hole was to shove a stick in so you could carry it on your shoulder. What idiot would do that? Had they never heard of a rifle sling?
I switched from tracking the rifle to stalking the owner. I sent him an e-mail. I was cautious. I didn’t want to tip my hand and let him know how much I wanted the gun. It read, “I saw your gun on the internet. You probably should go ahead and get rid of it. After shooting that many elephants, the barrel is probably shot out already. I bet it won’t even hold a two-inch group for three shots from a rest anymore. The hole in the stock is kind of ugly, too. If you decide you want to get rid of it, I’ll give you what a new Remington costs, even though I know it’s too much.”
He didn’t respond, even after several even more lucrative offers on my part so I changed strategies. The gun’s owner didn’t really take it all that well when I showed up and knocked on his door unannounced at 5 a.m. one morning to ask if he’d gotten any of my e-mails. I didn’t get very much time to haggle though. The police station must have been less than two blocks away. The squad car was there before he even came back to the door with the gun.
With a restraining order that kept me from ever returning to Manhasset Township, it was pretty clear even to the forces of the universe that there was going to be hardly any way for me to return the gun to Africa to set it free in it’s natural environment.
Most people would have become discouraged at this point and told the cosmic forces of the universe to go to hell, but not me. I knew if I just applied a little creative thinking that there had to be some other way to set things right. I’d just have to do something else important. Something just as symbolic as getting Bell’s gun back from the domestic captivity of a gun safe in New England. Maybe I could return some other famously historic stupid ugly gun? Again I ran into the stumbling block of financial restraint. All of the famous guns I found cost too much money. I’m all for returning balance to the universe, but let’s be reasonable...I have a wife, and spending the price of a new Mercedes on a gun wasn’t going to go over all that well. There had to be something else; there was direction being provided here, a message in the failures. Finally, after several weeks of obsessive deliberations, finally I got it. I wasn’t a professional hunter. I didn’t need a famous gun. I am a writer and a physician. I needed a tool that reflected my own profession’s traditions. My grail was defined by who I was, not by a scratched and beaten up old gun with a hole in it.
My first try involved Hemingway’s whiskey which was, I must say, quite enjoyable at first. But the extensive training required to meet Papa’s standard of consumption (not to mention the fact that I didn’t have a lighthouse next to my home to guide me back from the bar each night) began to have an adverse effect on my ability to accomplish much of anything at all. The crushing headaches I was getting every morning had to be another sign. I finally deduced that this was the cosmic force’s way of telling me to move on. My going to rehab was probably not what was needed to restore balance to the universe either.
I’ll spare you the details of Mark Twain’s pencil. If any one finds it (it’s the one with the bite marks that I left in that diner in Joplin), I’d like to have it back...and Roosevelt’s glasses (I couldn’t see a damned thing I was shooting at). It finally came down to a cockroach in a bottle of formaldehyde with a paper label that read F. Kafka or Marty Steiner’s Underwood. Now Marty wasn’t as famous as some of these other folks, but he had known my aunt and had written wonderful articles in the
Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper a few years ago about going to Africa during the war.
I weighed my options carefully and couldn’t come up with much to do with a pickled roach at all, even if it was named PGregor. So it was me and the Underwood, off to Africa to hunt elephants.
Part Two
I sat in the bar at the Kalahari Sands Hotel explaining to my Professional Hunter (PH) that because of my earnest desire to avoid adversely impacting the elephantine genetic make-up of the Caprivi I thought we should try to find the oldest and most debilitated animal possible. I felt bad. For all my high flying rhetoric, I knew it was a case of the nerves. But even Bell had probably knocked off a few gimp elephants before he started blasting the big ones with a peashooter. I did detect a trace of a frown on the PH’s face when I asked if he knew of any blind or three-legged animals in the area we were going to hunt.
We cut tracks on day two; a profusion of deep ovals crossed the dust of the road. When the trackers pointed out the deep furrow created by a paralyzed leg I knew we were onto our prey. We tracked for the next two hours through the thick thorn brush. The elephant’s track was wide enough to allow us to pass without difficulty, but even at that I left the Underwood cased and in the possession of one of the trackers as we walked. There was no discussion of shoving a stick into it.
Coming around a turn I found the PH squatted, eyes hard on an opening in front of us. I eased forward, my eyes
straining to see through the brush. With each step I could feel my heart beating ever harder in my throat. I couldn’t swallow; I could barely breathe. There they were, three of them. A cow and calf stood patiently watching the third elephant as it gasped for breath. It was the moment of truth. Did I have the courage to do what had to come next? I wasn’t sure, but I motioned the tracker to give me the Underwood.
I aimed carefully as I edged forward and let loose. The thump and cloud of dust told me my shot had gone low. The typewriter rolled, hitting the debilitated pachyderm in the foot. Damn, I should have taken a couple of practice throws while I was still in Mississippi, but I hadn’t wanted to damage the typewriter’s delicate mechanism and then find myself in Africa with sticking keys.
The cow and calf crashed off through the thorns plowing a clear trail. My target, startled, shuffled after them as fast as it could. I rushed into the clearing and snatched up my typewriter, needing to reload as fast as possible, but before another shot was required, the animal collapsed, coughed once, had a small seizure, and expired.
“By damn,” I heard the PH mutter behind me. I’d met the test. Now it was time to move on. I decided then and there it was on to Zambia to hunt river hippo with Sir William Osler’s nasal speculum.
Excerpted from (Tools of the Trade c.2011:52(8):270-272. Copyright 2011) and reprinted with permission of the JOURNAL OF THE MISSISSIPPI STATE MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, P.O. Box 2548, Ridgeland, MS 39158-2548.