Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/496918
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 9 2 were both a lot younger, perches precariously on a rope stretched across the back. We pass through Jeremiah's village, a cheerful tangle of children and cattle and goats and woodsmoke among thatched roofs, then head down the narrow track that threads its way around rocky hills and thornbush ravines toward the Mungomawe River, which in Kisukuma means "River of Rocks." It's a good ten miles and more than an hour's drive before we drop out of the hills onto the broad floodplain, newly green from recent rains. The bush has been full of life this morning: impala, giraffe, zebra, a couple of kudu cows, and a zoo-full of smaller stuff, but nothing we want to stop and hunt. It's fun to see it all through Reid's and Stacy's eyes, hear the same questions Daphne and I remember asking, watch the spell of Africa take hold. The sun is well up and we've all shed our fleece I n the weeks leading up to our safari, Reid Freeman insisted that on this, his first, he'd go slow on buffalo, wait until he'd gotten a feel for them, maybe stalk a few with me and see how it all worked, maybe not hunt them at all. That sensible plan worked for about two hours, right up to the point when the first buff turned and came for us. The trip was a last-minute thing, a call from an outfitter with whom I'd hunted many times and who needed a few buffalo culled from a mostly photo camp aptly named Mwiba, Swahili for "thorn," near the Serengeti in northern Tanzania. Could I get there in, say, early November before the rains set in and take three or four old bulls? Oh, and bring a friend. I called Reid, who had long lusted for a taste of Africa, and a few weeks later we and our wives, Daphne and Stacy, were on a plane. I t's our first day in Mwiba and dawn comes up pink and gray and even a little purple over the hills toward Ngorongoro Crater as we drive out to hunt. Reid and I and professional hunter Paul Olivier are standing at the roll bar, the ladies sit shivering a little just behind us on the bench seat, and my old friend and tracker, Jeremiah, who was in at my first buffalo kill when we reid & Stacy freeman