Did you know Duff Gifford? He came with me on a number of hunting trips. On this occasion he was assisting Alan Lowe and I on a hunting trip in the Nyakasanga area of the Zambezi Valley. We had three American hunters on that trip, Joe Colvin, George Bezeckny and Doug Parker. Believe me it was never dull when these guys were in Africa.

We hunted buffalo for bait as both George and Doug were hunting Lion. As the Lions were not being co-operative we had time to do some plains game hunting. One morning we were all sitting on a high bank overlooking the Zambezi floodplain just above an ox bow mud pool left by the annual flood of the Zambezi. We were about 200 yards from where we had set a Lion bait for George. We noticed that there appeared to be a dead Hippo in the pool which was covered in dense water lilies. The carcass was apparently being fed on by fish or something because it had some bobbing movement every now and then. The head was hidden by the lilies but for sure it was dead. What a find, with George’s Lion bait only 200 yards away, all we needed to do was get a rope on the carcass and drag it with a Land Rover to the bait tree and we would have what Duff referred to as a ‘Grenulch’ which is in effect a pile of meat in various stages of decomposition. Duff, being the junior member of the guide team was tasked with carcass retrieval. We left Duff with Mahlambe, my faithful right hand man, tracker, skinner, terrorist, mechanic, driver, part-time cook and the most amoral black man east of the Atlantic. The rest of us left to go hunting.

Duff, being one of those devil may care types, simply discarded his pants and waded out to the carcass with the plan being to cut a slit in the hide, attach the rope and he would have the carcass out in a jiffy. So with Mahlambe holding one end of the rope, Duff waded out into that murky stuff to the hippo carcass bobbing about obviously being fed on from below by fish or heaven forbid a crocodile. Reaching the rear end of the hippo carcass he took a good hold on his Puma knife and with all his weight behind it, gave it a full blow to penetrate the hippo hide which is very thick. The blade went in all the way and the Hippo erupted – full of life! It had only been sleeping!

Duff said later that as far as he knew there were only two people in history who walked on water and he was one of them! Mahlambe wisely abandoned the rope and took off and to add insult to injury when Duff arrived at the Land Rover, covered in mud and grime with his eyes out on stalks, Mahlambe laughed so hard that he wet himself. When I got back to camp I walked past Duff’s tent where I was told he was taking a nap and when I asked in passing how the carcass project had gone, he grunted from inside the tent some malevolent very explicit expletives that indicated to me that things had not gone exactly according to plan…

We had a Muslim cook in our house in Zimbabwe and one year we decided to take him into the safari area to assist Timoti, the tall and very much liked Matabele camp cook. The camp was on the banks of the Zambezi in the north of the Chewore Safari Area across from Zambia on the north bank. The house cooks name was Frank. The journey into the proposed camping site was crazy far from Harare and the track was a nightmare. When we did get there with the Landcruiser, hunting cars and the 7 ton Isuzu loaded with supplies and everything to build the camp everyone fell out of the truck and we rolled out the sleeping mats and stretcher beds and without further ado the whole team greeted the night by being fast asleep very quickly. The next morning everyone was famished as we had slept without supper the night before, we needed to have more than a few canned beans and corn meal to eat so I went out onto the flood plain and in short order collected an Impala for the pot.

The crew were delighted when I pulled in with the Impala and set about skinning and butchering the animal right away. The crew had the pot going with the meat along with their vegetables and corn meal which is like grits, their staple diet, when along comes Frank to say to me that he cannot eat the meat because he did not cut the animals throat and intone the Muslim prayer. Well I had a big box with earth worms for fishing which was always part of our equipment especially when our two kids were with us, they love to fish and so I gave Frank a little tin can with some worms in it and a piece of fishing line and a hook and told him he can fish for his food but not in my time and left it at that. About an hour later I was driving out in the Landcruiser to hunt another Impala as the first one was not going to last long and as I drove past where the crew were eating and there was Frank stuffing himself with Impala stew. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing eating this non-halal meat, he grinned at me with his mouth full of Impala stew and said “God will not see me this far from town.” African reasoning – can you beat that!

Had a really lovely comment from Barbara and Steve about Closing in the Long Grass. Went something like this:

Thanks for the kind words Barbara.

And as you will see, Di and I show no signs of slowing down if you look at the year we had in 2018. March in France, April and May in Africa to visit my sisters and many of our old friends and in November we headed for Australia to visit our son Riley, his wife Laura, Emmett going on 4 and Stella going on 2.

And in between some 7 new pieces. Still waiting for the latest buffalo piece to arrive from the foundry but here are 6 new pieces for you to peruse.

Black Powder – a very dynamic new sculpture of a black rhino

Fighting Talk – a bugling elk and my first sculpture of this magnificent American giant

Heading for Water – a male and female southern nyala

Little Big Buck – a male bushbuck

The Scent of Silence – a new elephant piece to add to the collection

Bait Ball Ballet – and something right out of left field – a sculpture of a yellow fin tuna

Not sure what is store for 2019 but for now, another Christmas, the festive table to consume with gay abandon, vast quantities of vittles prepared by our wonderful women folk who are singular in their frantic need to sink us into glutinous mounds of quivering Christmas overindulgence. Wonderful! The Kiddies open their presents from Santa, break some, fight over others and hide the rest!

Wishing you all a fabulous festive season. Thank you for your continued support in 2018 and very best wishes for 2019.