An American Girl on Safari:  A huntress-in-training? By Whitney Anderson

It was the Day of the Hippo Hunt. I made my way to the hunting vehicle and climbed up – it was high! That ride was torture on wheels - not city gal stuff. Our PH's NASCAR driving abilities on bumpy gravel roads seemed geared to flinging me off.  And it was freezing.

When we got to the farm where dad was to hunt hippo, we were stunned. None of us had ever seen one in the wild before, and there they were huge grey boulders in water.  We were told they are Africa's most dangerous animal, killing more people than any other big-game species.

Kevin used a Ruger Model 77 in .375 H&H and custom-loaded Barnes X-bullets.  “I had solids with me, but in the last-minute confusion, I apparently loaded the gun with the expanding ammo.  Due to the range - both animals were about 25 feet away – they worked fine, although I would normally use solids for a brain shot on dangerous game.”

First we had to figure out which one was the male.  All you could see was their faces, and you’d have to wait ages for them to open their gigantic mouths and display their long white teeth. Everyone would look through binoculars and then discuss which one they thought was the male and why.  I felt as though we were a pack of lions looking to see which one we could take down for brunch.  We were taking our time so as to not get the wrong one, and not have more than we’d bargained for on our hands.

When dad was finally ready to shoot, he put his big elephant gun up on the flimsy wood shooting sticks being held by our PH.  As he put the crosshairs on the hippo, the PH said, "Don't shoot." He didn't have a clear shot of the kill zone, which is an inch-by-inch spot right between their eyes where you aim for a guaranteed kill.

The PH had our tracker, Pete, throw rocks at the animals to try to get the big male to rise up out of the water to look at us.  With each rock, Pete got closer and closer to hitting them.  The last rock he flung sank the ship - it hit right next to the big male.  He just went under the water and stayed there; we were messed up on that shot, all because of a little rock hitting too close to the large target.

We drove around, looking for other species on my dad’s list, but it was just a very long and boring way to try to pass the time until the hippos felt safe again to surface.  They were like submarines, and once you scared them they would go down for what seemed like a lifetime, but was really only half an hour, though I didn't realize that at the time. When we went back, after killing time but no animals, the hippos had surfaced, but they were farther away from the bank than before.  So the PH decided that we should wait for them to move closer, which seemed like a year and a half.  While waiting, another hunter shot an almost nine-foot crocodile in one of the many ponds and waterways on the property.

When we went back the third time, our PH was getting nervous because it was our last day to hunt hippo and it was getting late.  As the sun began to set, the PH finally decided they should wade into the murky, unsafe, crocodile-infested water that the hippos called home, to see if they could get closer to them and get a better a shot at the male.
 
As he and my dad started to wade out in the water, they got unwanted attention from the grey boulders in front of them.  By the time they decided which was the male and were ready to shoot, the hippos started to charge them – a herd of slow, but lethally intent animals on a mission to kill whoever they thought was a threat to them. Dad got motivated and shot the male, and stopped the charging hippos in their tracks.  It sank into the water, then unexpectedly came right back up. He shot again.  And again the hippo ducked under the water almost too fast to see it.

When we were sure that it was dead, there were excited hugs all round about the new big kill of the day.  We were also relieved that dad made it out of the water safely with all those charging hippos and crocodiles close by.

Next was to plan how to get the hippo out.  We decided to borrow the landowner’s dinky little rowboat and have the trackers go and try not to get killed by the remaining, now very temperamental, hippos.  We finally got the boat in the water, but the trackers only made it halfway before they saw that the rest of the hippos were still surrounding the dead bull - and in a vengeful mood.
 
Exciting, but we realized we were going to have to wait until the next morning to retrieve the hippo when the rest had their backs turned, like trying to steal the treasure chest being guarded by a bunch of pirates.

Sure enough, next morning the hippos were gone.  The trackers rowed back out in the dinky boat and discovered that dad had actually shot two hippos, one big male and one female. Everybody was in shock!  He’d shot the male, with the bullet going right up into its brain.  But when it dropped like a rock into the water, the female popped her head up to charge, and dad shot her right in the kill zone.  Boom!  She was instantly dead and also dropped like a rock.   They dragged the two bloated carcasses onshore. They tried trying to pose the hippos for pictures, which was extremely difficult because rigor mortis had already set in.  It took a big tractor and seven guys to move them onto their sides so that we could take pictures.

We raced back to the hunting lodge and got all of our stuff packed, as we were leaving that day for the excruciating 24-hour flight home.

I love going to Africa and I can never get enough of it.  I have lots of memories to keep forever, and this is just one of them.  I can't wait until our next visit. I am so ready to go.  Tomorrow is not soon enough.

19-year-old college sophomore Whitney Anderson, while not yet a hunter, has been on her parents’ last three African safaris. “She has a sharp eye for spotting game and enjoys our hunts,” writes her dad, Kevin, an attorney and SCI vice-president of SCI who has hunted Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa.