In the Salt
By PH Lou Hallamore
In the old days when I attended the SCI Convention on my own and hauled booth and baggage cross-country while Rudy guided in the C.A.R., there was always a pack of slightly rowdy, amazingly hirsute, but inevitably polite Zimbabwe PHs at the back of the plane – lead by Lou Hallamore – to come to my rescue.
Sometimes it took an hour to get from disembarkment to the luggage carousel with a lounge stop on the way; other times, we all spent Superbowl Sundays at the airport, waiting for our names to be called on Delta’s stand-by list as we each hop-scotched across the USA during “the convention season.”
Lou, already bearded and grizzled even then, was clearly the boss, giving direct orders in his unmistakable voice, “Mike, you take this. Graham, grab that. Brooke, follow me.” I owe my back to those boys. No surprise then that his natural authority has made him, in his 25-year career, one of Zimbabwe’s most well-known and respected PHs and possibly the best man to write an authoritative book on the hunting skills which are imperative for PHs and desirable – even prayed for - in their hunting clients.
Talk about “cutting to the chase,” Lou’s straightforward and candid second book, In The Salt, (his first book, Chui! A Guide to Hunting the African Leopard, is sold out and virtually unobtainable on the resale market) published by Trophy Room Books, would earn a nod and a chuckle from Hemingway himself as it strips away the purple sunsets of most safari books to discuss and give explicit advice and cool diagrams on what a hunter needs to know to get an animal from in the wild to in the salt. For example:
*Choice of weapons and ammo for everything from the Big Four to the Little Four;
*Methods of locating and baiting game (baiting road intersections, road river drags, etc.), and following it up when wounded. A Bit of Advice: Follow a wounded lion with a scoped rifle as backup to take that 100-metre shot if the chance presents itself;
*Judging trophy quality in the field, for example, “If the horns of the duiker or klipspringer go past the ears, you’ve got a trophy.”
*And, all important, a section he calls “The Way Things Really Are,” which is his sound advice on reasonable expectations for trophy results, especially for the first-time safari hunter: for buffalo (aim for a 40-inch trophy on your first safari), kudu (53-55 inches is acceptable, anything over is a bonus), elephant (“Never turn down a 50-pounder on your first safari”); and reminds hunters that only 1% of lions have completely black manes, and that out of a quota of 5, the quality inevitably will be: 1 excellent, 1 very good, 1 good, 1 average and 1 poor lion.
*Shot placement, accompanied by colored drawings of what he calls “The Pay Line” on where to shoot elephant, buff, hippo, croc, wildebeest, etc. Lou warns, for example, that the dark chocolate color of the sable makes hunters tend to shoot a little high. More important, he says: Never shoot a lion lying down; the Pay Line disappears.
*What to know about approaching game, for example, hippos on dry land or in the water, as night-time crop raiders or “returning night feeders.” His advice on buffalo? “Never, never take a neck shot… Concentrate on breaking bones.”
*Recovery, which means how to get a four-ton hippo out of the water and a 1,500-lb buffalo into the back of a Land Cruiser; and to bring your skinner on your crocodile hunt to skin-out a nice 12-foot-long, 1,800-lb beast on the spot.
*Aspiring PHs should read with especial attention his counsel on trophy care, for example that impala should be gutted and caped ASAP because, “for some unknown reason, hair slip occurs even under the best of circumstances.”
All of this is peppered with Lou’s on target “Moral of the Story” anecdotes: The time the chirping bird was heard the instant prior to a wounded leopard springing out at Lou and his client. “If you hear any noise (squirrels, birds, etc.), something might be letting you know “Mr. Chui” is right there. Get nervous.”
Lou, of course, is on the front line in the discussion, for both PHs and clients, of weapons and ammo, scopes versus open sights, etc. He has owned everything, tried every ammo. “If I had to do it over again, and money were no object, my optimum PH-battery would be:
-.22 Magnum, for the pot;
-.44 Magnum revolver, as a lifesaver in close encounters;
-12-gauge shotgun with Rotweil SG 9 pellets, for pissed-off Chui;
.416 Rigby by Ruger (he likes the positive feed system, good rear express sight, and easy removal of the scope, as do his two PH-sons, George and Clive);
.470 double rifle, because it’s the ultimate butt-saver.
Why a .470? “Because I cannot afford a .600,” quips Lou. “The plot for dangerous game is ‘the bigger the better’ – It’s all about knock-down.” Today, his battery consists of a .470 John Wilkes, a scoped .458 Ruger, and a .338 for plains game.
For hunting clients, he recommends a .416 for elephant, buffalo and lion; a .338 for leopard and plains game; one gun case (please!); and two boxes of ammo for each rifle: one solid and one soft point for the heavier caliber, and two boxes of soft points for the lighter rifle.
As for when the hunting client should ask for – or expect – a backup shot from the PH, whether on the first shot or on wounded animals, Lou is pretty point blank. He estimates that 90 per cent of buffalo wounded and lost by first-time hunters never had a backup shot.
He is candid in his discussion of the role of the hunting vehicle in today’s safari; it’s almost a precision tool. He reminds that today, it is both legal and accepted to hunt crop-raiding elephants at night in areas adjacent to national parks. (Lou quotes PH John Osborne, “Zimbabwe is the only place on earth where you can sow a kernel of corn and reap an elephant.”)
As for hunting cats at night, his response is simple: “The professional hunter is working against the clock.” Such is the sad truth of safari hunting today. Fence-hunting, the coordination of vehicle and bicycle patrols, radios and walkie-talkies – that’s the stuff of hunting elephant in Zimbabwe today, under time restraints with clients paying top dollar expecting success. (Lou estimates that it takes 30 bull elephant sightings before there’s one to take down.)
Lou’s vehicle equipment lists, by the way, are so excellent that I send copies to friends preparing to cross Africa in a 4 x 4.
All of this makes for fun and informative reading for anyone having anything to do with safaris; there is no one who cannot pick up something new. But for many readers, the best part of the book is the story of Lou, which started in 1943 in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia after his parents’ arrival in 1938 from South Africa to farm tobacco. “My entire childhood was spent on a farm… In many ways, we were always on safari,” he begins his tale, as he pops crop-raiding baboons for a bounty of five shillings a tail with a .303 Lee Enfield.
The government’s decision to eradicate buffalo from the southeast of the country was his introduction to hard, big-game hunting, following up to three wounded animals a day. From his buffalo hunting days in the Lowveld with Jannie Meyer (and his .458 Ackley), his brother, Chris (and his .404 Jeffery) and Gerry Whitehead (and his and Lou’s .375s) came his reckoning that for 600 buffalo down, the average number of rounds required per animal was 3.6. The point is, “If you are not sure an animal is dead, pump one more shot into it.”
As a 17-1/2-year-old “man” (and already with a moustache, if I can recognize him in the photos), in 1959 Lou joined the military and stayed for 20 years. Only six months after completing basic training, he was on his way to the border between Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo. By 1963, the British government had “commenced their de-colonization program,” abandoning their commitments to the colony’s military on the spot. With Harold Wilson as the leader of the Labour Party in Westminster, it seems incredible, but at one point, Southern Rhodesia expected an actual military invasion by the Brits!
Lou spent time at the officer training school in Gwelo – a Rhodesian equivalent to West Point; taught the use of mortars, 106s and rocket launchers; went on long-range sorties into Mozambique and Zambia, and lost friends along the way. Meanwhile, during his off time, he started guiding safaris for his brother.
With the world against the white Africans of Southern Rhodesia, on April 18, 1980 Zimbabwe gained its independence, ending its war literally overnight. After opening the new Parliament, Lou retired from the military. And became a full-time freelance PH. Today, Lou can be found, along with his sons Clive and George, in the company of HHK Safaris “the biggest hunting company in Zimbabwe, offering the full range of Zim species, as well as fishing,” says Lou, justly proud.
Wishing the anti-hunters could hear his reasoning, Lou concludes: “Ultimately, the very survival of all wild species present in Zimbabwe, but especially the large mammals and predators, in the Tribal Trust Lands is directly related to safaris and foreign hunting clients.” And that is good news for hunting.
In the Salt is published by Trophy Room Books as a limited edition of 1,000 signed and numbered copies. 233 pages including141 black & white illustrations and 26 in full color. There is no trade edition, so be prepared for the $125 - plus shipping.