A short version of this article was first published in the March ’05 issue of Magnum under the title ‘The Honeyguide‘.

In 1960, I spent some time in the bush of what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania) working for Williamson Diamonds Ltd, prospecting for diamonds. In the course of this, I met many a honeyguide and waterbuck.

This was after Williamson’s death, when De Beers had taken over the company. Williamson’s at the time held about 2/3 of Tanganyika under prospecting concessions, and in the run-up to independence had been told by the Colonial Government to do something about those or lose them. There was a huge prospecting effort in progress in 1959/1960, and that was the reason I was there; having arrived in January, fresh from university.

Above Left: On the way up to Nairobi. Victoria Falls.

Above Right: The most perfect volcanic cone in East Africa, 40 km NE of the centre of Ngorongoro.

After a short training spell at Mwadui (Williamson’s diamond mine, some 80 miles (130 km) SSE of Mwanza, on Lake Victoria) I spent the first month in the Itigi Bush (solid, incredibly dense scrub – most of it vicious thorn – 3 to 4m high, with scattered trees, and full of black rhino) and the Rungwa and Lupa areas, after which I was transferred to Songea. Here I worked for a time in an area NE of Songea. All these parts were mostly dense forest (or bush in the Itigi case), and I never met a honey guide in any of them.

Right: The two tins hold stones up to 1 carat and 1 to 10 carats, respectively. On paper, stones over 10 carats. The brown rock at rear is 'boart' - industrial quality.

Then I started work in the area to the SW of Songea, which contains some serious mountain terrain for some distance south of Songea. This eventually falls away to lower  country towards the Rovuma.

The lower country is more or less lightly treed savannah, and once we were working there, we started meeting honey guides.

Left: Landy is facing south towards Rungwa and Mbeya.

Right: Easy to work in but difficult to navigate!

Initially, up to early April, there was still almost constant rain, game was scarce and honey guides absent or hiding. Once the rain stopped, however, I cannot remember a single safari on which we didn’t meet honey guides.

The method used in Africa for prospecting large areas for kimberlite pipes, (which may or may not contain diamonds) is to search for kimberlite-derived garnets and ilmenites in the drainage systems. Garnets should be familiar to most readers as red-wine coloured, translucent semi-precious stones, while ilmenite is a black iron-titanium oxide, which can often be found concentrated in the tail ends of little rivulets after rain. It is one of the heavy minerals extracted from the dunes at Richard’s Bay. Both these minerals are found in a host of different rock types, but garnets and ilmenites derived from a kimberlite pipe are distinguished from all others by containing magnesium and are, therefore, indicator minerals. Another indicator mineral is chrome-diopside, a green, often translucent, calcium-magnesium silicate, containing a small amount of chrome in its crystal lattice. I never found it in river samples. It is usually confined to the soil on top of a kimberlite, or immediately adjacent to it.

We planned safaris to last for upwards of two weeks to take in one or two river systems, along which we collected heavy mineral samples at roughly 6-mile (10km) intervals.

Left: L to R, porters, Tex Murray, YT and Hannah, the shotgun.

This meant that we went out with a dozen porters or so, a headman and a cook, and in the two weeks covered a distance of some 100 to 150 miles (150 to 250km) depending on terrain. Progress in the mountains was – well, progress in the mountains. Once we got to the lower country, a traverse between rivers was usually easy in the open forest, while on the river terraces, in the riparian forest, travel was impossible except along game (read elephant) paths, due to the extremely dense undergrowth. Here, again, we never met honey guides, but in the open forest of the savannah country they were common.



Left: Barbel, caught in a stream while taking river sample.



Right: Grilled, smoked barbel - a glorious treat!




Now it is no more possible to prevent a bush native from chasing a honey guide, than it is to retain mercury between one’s fingers. The usual procedure was to allow three of the porters to go chase the bird, while the safari continued. The loads of the bee chasers were distributed among the other porters. The latter never complained over being loaded with more than the regulation 60lbs now: they all keenly looked forward to a share of the honey. The honey seekers would catch up with us later, often only in late afternoon, when we made camp for the night.

The first time we were intercepted by a honey guide, I stopped the safari and went along on the chase, as I was very much interested in the procedure, having read about, but never witnessed it. Later on I only went along when we were not pressed for time, usually on the ‘shuka’ (retreat, literally ‘get out’) the return to our base camp.

It was a fascinating process. The bird would find us, having heard the porters talking or singing, alight nearby and start his twittering. Once he saw that we were interested, he would fly to a branch a short distance ahead, and start chirping again. When we got close to him, he would fly on, usually some 30 to 50 meters, alight on a conspicuous branch and start his calling in earnest again. They also called in flight, but much less than when perched. Occasionally a bird would exhibit elaborate flight patterns, twisting, fluttering, dipping and even looping, along his path to the next tree. If we ‘lost’ him, he would come back for us after a while. When we got to the tree with the hive, he sometimes perched in the tree, still chattering, but usually this was not necessary. When we got close, the flight of the bees guided us in over the last stretch. Once it was obvious that we had found the bees' nest, the bird would sit quietly in a nearby tree, regarding us with interest and occasionally changing position to get a better view of proceedings.

The men present would now make torches of dry grass, mixed with some green grass or leafy twigs to create a lot of smoke, and the intrepid gentlemen detailed to extract the honey (usually two) would prepare for the attack: they would borrow additional bits of clothing from their pals and wind these around their heads and necks. Then they would light some of the grass bundles and ascend to just below the entrance to the nest. This sometimes required the felling of one or two smaller trees, which could be propped against the honey tree and used as ladders.

They were not stung all that often. They were very good at using their smoke generators to advantage: one chap applying his faggot to the nest entrance, to make the bees drowsy from the smoke, while the other kept waving his torch about in order to keep the two of them inside a cloud of smoke. This worked well so long as there was no strong wind. When they were stung it was usually because the wind blew the smoke away, and the bees returning to the nest from their forays got to them. After a while, these bees collected into quite a little cloud, swirling around the smoke cloud of the honey hunters. If the fellows did get stung, however, two or three stings were sufficient to send the bees flying around them berserk (triggered by a pheromone, contained in the bee poison – apitoxin{footnote}Apitoxin, which is similar to snake venom and nettle poison, consists of a complex mixture of pheromones and (six or more) biogenic acids and amines, which have been used in medicine as anti-coagulants and in the treatment of rheumatism, multiple sclerosis and sciatica.{/footnote}) and a headlong retreat was the order of the day.

When all went well and my heroes judged that the bees in the nest had been sufficiently calmed down, the man at the entrance would tap the tree with the back of an axe, to determine where it was hollow. This was never done early in the operation, as it then resulted in an immediate sortie from the entrance of a very agitated mob of bees. Once the honey fundis had determined the lowest (or highest) part of the cavity, the guy covering the entrance would start to hack away the wood at that point. When a breakthrough was made, he immediately applied more smoke.  The fellows on the ground were constantly replenishing the torches and passing them up.

The idea was to create a ‘chimney’, to suck in smoke at the bottom and thereby distribute it throughout the nest. Needless to say that this did not always work very well, as the shape of the cavity and the denseness of the combs sometimes didn’t allow much air circulation and, in one case, first the dry rotten wood inside the tree, and then the wax caught fire, resulting in a total disaster. When satisfied that the bees had been subdued, the axe man would complete the job of paring away the wood, until the honeycombs were laid bare. These were then prised out and dropped to the men below, who caught them in some garment or other.

The actual robbery was the riskiest part of the operation: the axe man would do the robbing, while his tail gunner doubled his efforts at laying down a cloud of smoke to cover the crime. And usually, the men on the ground had one or two smoke fires going at the base of the tree.

The combs were covered in drowsy bees, which were brushed off gently with a stick (crushing a bee would result in an immediate kamikaze attack by the ones which were buzzing around) and collected into a little pile, so that everyone knew where they were; it wouldn’t do to step on one. Once there was honey on the ground, it attracted a large part of the flying bees, and the combs would be wrapped in a shirt or a kanzu (the loin cloth worn by most bush Africans) to keep off the bees. The collectors of the combs showed great restraint. They never tried to shoo the flying bees off, and even tolerated the ones, which settled and crawled around on them. Me? I stayed well to the rear!

I have often regretted that I never had a camera with me on these occasions. While I had a beautiful little 35mm Yashika, which my mother had given me as a parting gift, this was the apple of my eye and I didn’t often take it to the bush with me. I considered the rigours of a foot safari too much of a risk. At first there was the incessant heavy rain, but even in the dry season there was always the risk of going in while crossing a river or bog, a fall when climbing the countless hills and mountains of this area, plus myriad other dangers, such as dirt, dust, bugs, etc. In fact, I once did fall off a log with the camera, while trying to cross a large creek (My rogues nearly died laughing! Nothing tickles their funny bone as much as seeing someone falling – preferably out of a tree! They’re not being rude. They just can’t help themselves. A point I did not appreciate at the time! Maybe this affliction goes all the way back to the days when our ancestors still lived in the trees.) Fortunately, no water got into the camera and it was not damaged, as I managed to lift it clear of the water almost immediately. However, the condensation from the sudden drop in temperature ruined all the exposed film. And swimming single-handed some 20m in fast flowing water, with a rifle across my back and a bag of personal gear trying to float away to freedom, while wearing a pair of mosquito (three-quarter length) boots, proved quite interesting.

Besides any safety considerations, there was the weight and clutter: I was already carrying a Winchester Mod. 70 in .375 H&H (given to me for Christmas ’59 by my future wife – as ‘life insurance’) a hunting knife, a water bottle and a satchel of ‘possibles’, such as one might need when separated from one’s safari.

This bag contained a compass and clinometer (to take the dip angles of rock strata) a Fitzsimmons snake bite kit, razor blades (for cutting open snake bite punctures) soap, toothbrush and paste, roll of toilet paper, ‘Citronella Oil’ (bug dope) spare cartridges, tin of gun oil, brush, patches and home-made pull-through, an Arkansas stone and small tin bottle of sewing machine oil (to keep the knives sharp) some fish hooks and line, bandages, sticking plaster, a folding Swiss army knife (complete with scissors and tweezers) bottles of Camoquin (antimalarial), aspirin, and permanganate crystals, as well as salt, pipe, tobacco and matches (the latter an absolute must, even for non-smokers – we used green-headed ‘waterproof’ matches, but even so, we carried a goodly supply of them, with a couple of striking surfaces, in some small, screw-top tin tubes) a little booklet on tropical diseases (which proved to be worth its weight in gold, when one of my field assistants caught dengue fever in an area where none was supposed to exist) another small booklet entitled ‘Up-Country Swahili’, note book and pencils and other odds and ends. The total kit (including the rifle) weighed in at over 25lbs. This may not be a lot when you are walking around your lounge, but at the end of a stinking hot day of slogging through bush and climbing over young mountains, it weighed about 25 tons!

Now let us return to the honey collection: as soon as the first comb had come down, a portion was broken off and put onto a tree branch, well off the ground, as an offering to the honey guide. The bird would immediately accept this (he never showed the slightest fear at our proximity) and start eating wax and grubs. Contrary to some accounts, they do not appear to value the honey at all. They eat some as a matter of course, but none of them ever made an attempt to suck out the honey, before they attacked wax and grubs. My revised edition of Roberts’ Birds of South Africa (1963) states: “Food: insects of various sorts, wax, bees and their larvae” No mention of honey! That is exactly my experience: I never saw any of the birds paying attention to the honey itself.

In addition, my copy of Roberts states that the birds “will guide ratels (honey badgers) to bees nests”  and “it is not known whether both sexes do this” {footnote}  See also: C.T. Astley Maberly The Game Animals of Southern Africa, Thomas Nelson & Sons (1963) p 228; Clive Walker Signs of the Wild, Struik (Pty) Ltd (rev. Edtn. 2nd impression 1984) p 67 and Burger Cillie Mammals of Southern Africa, Frandsen Publishers (1987) p 23. {/footnote}. To the first question I can only say that the only two ratels I have ever seen in the bush by day were both in the Kruger Park, and that no honey guides were in attendance on either occasion. However, all my men in Tanganyika, who were all born and raised ‘porini’, i.e. in the bush, were adamant that ratel and honey guide have been friends since the day Ngai created the world, and that, most definitely, they have this working arrangement. To the second question I can say that in about five months of dry season, we were latched onto by honey guides a good twenty times (we got honey on rather less than half these occasions, but unfortunately I have long since lost my diary of that period) and the birds were always males. I was shown the females by my men, occasionally: “there is the honey bird’s bibi (wife)”, but they never showed the slightest interest in us, and, indeed, my men said that only the male will lead you to honey. Neither would the female follow to share in the feast. Nor did I ever see a female around, when the male ‘picked us up’. I only saw them separately with, apparently, no male present – or at least, none seeking our attention. There was never more than the one bird involved in a honey chase.

But to return to the honey gathering operation, once again: when all the accessible combs had been removed from the nest the thieves retired some distance away from the scene of the crime, where someone had started another smoke fire or two (the extent of the precautions was in direct proportion to the size of the hive and the time available for its pilfering) to escape the attentions of the bees which were still buzzing around. Even so, many bees would follow anyway, as they can smell the honey. The men then squeezed as much honey as they could from a couple of combs into a jar, and took the wax and grubs back to our little friend. Unless, of course, he had finished his first piece and had followed us, asking for another handout. As often as not, though, the bird would stay behind to investigate the remnants of the nest, as it was rarely possible to get out all the honeycombs. The men knew, of course, that wax and grubs were what the bird wanted, not the honey.{footnote} For an account of how the Ndrobo (Wild Men, Honey Chasers) of East Africa go about this, see Eric Balson’s book On Safari with Bwana Game, Safari Press, 2003, p 155. (Incidentally, it was George Adamson, who was best known as Bwana Game.) {/footnote}

All of the nests we were shown by honey guides were of the normal wild African honeybee. The honey was dark and had a strong herby scent and flavour. I have never eaten better honey in my life! I found that the best way to eat it was in the safety of my tent, with the mosquito screen zipped up. Even if you got away from all the original owners of the honey, other bees in the area of the camp would take an immediate interest. And they are incredibly aggressive. Touch one while trying to shoo it away and ZAP! {footnote} Scientists say that stinging is a defensive mechanism, which is only triggered in the vicinity of the hive. I beg to differ: I have been zapped by bees in the middle of the bush, where no hive was anywhere near! Touch one, or worse crush one, and you’re for it! {/footnote}

On two occasions we accidentally (we were not led there by a bird) found the nests of mopane ‘flies’,{footnote}Actually minute (about 3mm nose-to-tail-tip), stingless bees with shiny black bodies and gossamer wings, looking much like small ants with wings. They mostly have their tiny hives in hollow trees, but we found one of them in an abandoned termite mound at ground level. Liotrigona (Moure) sp. There are three descibed species in Africa, being L. bottegoi from South Africa, L. parvula from East Africa and L. bouyssoni from West Africa (Gabon), but there are several more awaiting classification and description. There are six in Madagascar, and rather more in South America. They are also found in Australia.{/footnote} those incredibly pesky little fellows who torment you in the bush by constantly buzzing around your face, trying to get into your eyes, ears and nose, looking for moisture. One of these nests was in a small hollow tree, the other in the soil of an abandoned termite mound. The nests were pitifully small, and I was sorry to see them robbed. Both wax and honey were very light coloured. The wax was translucent, showing just a trace of yellow. The honey looked like water and was almost as thin. It was also nearly tasteless, though fairly sweet. Not a patch on the real thing!

It is often stated and, indeed, my men were absolutely certain about this, that the bird will sometimes lead you to game, or to a snake. The latter, if you have thwarted him by not giving him his fair share of the loot on a previous occasion. Taking the last point first, I was never led to a snake, neither were my men. In spite of this, I think that it is not wise to doubt the basic truth of what the bush dwellers have to tell you. They have lived amongst the wildlife since time immemorial. Sure, there are many superstitions, but all the same, there is usually some truth underlying these. Now I don’t think that the bird is vindictive. Far more likely the snake is living in his territory, perhaps in his favourite lookout tree, and is apt to eat him, if he is not very careful. So the crafty little fellows have learnt over the ages, that people are likely to bash any snake they can catch to a pulp, while the ratel will kill and eat it. In either case, the snake is removed from the bird’s precinct. Yes, I know; not very scientific, but that is what I like to believe.

Besides, any hunter-gatherer should live in harmony with, and have respect for the creatures he shares the bush with. So leaving the bird a suitable reward is the right thing to do, irrespective of whether it is done as a consequence of superstition or out of a feeling of decency.

As an example of the underlying wisdom of some superstitions, take the belief that if a ground hornbill comes and pecks away at your door or hut, it portends disaster and you had better move pronto and build yourself a new hut at some new site, far removed from the old one. This one is easy to work out: if there are so many bugs and other vermin residing in your walls and woodwork that they attract ground hornbills, it is surely time to move. However, people are lazy, and rarely do the right thing for the right reason. So my guess is that in the dim and distant past some wise old mundumugu (witchdoctor) invented the disaster angle, to compel his people to do what was good for them. Besides, bugs, mice and rats also attract snakes. And there have been many instances of snakes, hunting in the roof at night, falling from the rafters, landing amongst the people sleeping in the hut, and biting and killing some of them. So the disaster bit isn’t all that far fetched, after all!

The honey-guide-and-snake ‘superstition’ probably had a similar origin: respect for the bird teaches respect for the environment and respect for others. So I believe that both the above ‘superstitions’ are more code than superstition; part of the bush blacks’ culture of living in harmony with nature, and that most of them accepted them as such. The superstitious part certainly was there, but most of these people were aware of man’s responsibility to his environment, though this was never expressed in ‘modern’ terms.

As for being led to game, it happened twice in those five months, and I was with the honey hunters on both occasions. On the first we came upon a small herd of eland, perhaps a dozen or so. Of course, we were looking for honey, not game and didn’t bother about keeping quiet. The eland heard us and decamped. We only got a look at the stragglers, and by the time I got the .375 off my shoulder even Tailend Charlie was gone! The second time we came upon a small troupe of waterbuck, and this time I managed to shoot a young bull. While the men were cutting up the meat (about which more below) the bird stayed around and watched. When my fellows had taken all the meat they could carry (and that would be the bulk of it, as on the occasions when I went along on these honey hunts, only two or three men would be left with the safari’s packs, while the others came along for the jol – so there were plenty of porters for the meat) and when we left, the honey bird came down out of his tree and started pecking meat off the remaining bones.

In both the above cases the honey guide stopped when we got to the game and ceased to chirp. He made no attempt to lead us further, and we found no evidence of a bees’ nest in the vicinity. While, once again, this is not scientific proof, I am inclined to think that the bird actually did lead us to the game.

How far did the birds lead us? This I cannot answer with total confidence. It was a long time ago. In addition, I did not go along on all the chases, though I would ask my fellows for details, when they returned. As a rough estimate, I would say that in most cases it was probably inside 200m, 300m on the outside. However, some were longer. One chase ended after some 15 or 20 minutes, when our little informer nonchalantly flew across a small river, which we had neither the time nor the means to cross. (And was that little bird disgusted, when we broke off the search! He came back to us and followed us for quite a way, trying very hard to change our mind, fluttering and twittering around us, highly agitated.) I would say we travelled at least 500m from the starting point. This made me wonder how large a territory a small bird like this claimed, or whether he was perhaps not territorial at all.{footnote} I have since found that all of the bird books state that male honey guides have regular calling trees. So they must be territorial. {/footnote}

Some of the longer chases ended in failure. Usually, the birds led us to a beehive in as straight a line as the trees permitted. If, after a time, the bird started to deviate from the straight and narrow, my men immediately became suspicious. “He has mislaid his tree!” they would say. And they were always right. The bird would swerve more and more from his original course, proceeding in a rough circle. Out of interest, I did a complete circle after one, the first time this happened, when I was present at the chase. The diameter of the circle was perhaps 80 to 100m. But my fellows always broke off when the bird had deviated more than 50m or so from his original course.

It is, of course, impossible to say why the bird ‘missed’. Maybe he thought of a nest he had robbed previously with a ratel, and had forgotten that he had done so. Maybe he had known a tree, which had fallen down. Maybe he just got plain carried away on meeting a safari (all our bee chases were in totally uninhabited country) and picked us up out of principle and for practise. Or maybe he just had a bad memory.

If a honey guide volunteered to show us a nest anywhere near any form of habitation, my fellows always told him to please go away. Firstly, they said, even if there was a hive, and even if there were honey in it, there would not be much, since the locals were sure to have raided it before. Secondly, many bush dwellers hang up hollowed-out sections of tree trunks, usually baited with a small piece of honeycomb, to entice bees to settle in them. The two ends of these trunks are closed off with two discs of wood, leaving a hole only large enough to admit the bees - which keeps the honey guides out of there. The trunk is suspended horizontally below a high branch and in such a way that it is (hopefully) ratel-proof. These hives were, of course, taboo; a fine point totally lost on the honey guides. Besides, even a beehive in a hollow tree really belonged to the locals. So we only followed the birds when we were well away from any settlement.

Which honey guides were they? All bar one of the guides I saw were greater honey guides. I clearly remember the black throat patch (though it was not as conspicuous as shown in some illustrations) and also the white cheek patch. I don’t remember ever seeing the yellow shoulder patch shown in most illustrations, neither were the beaks tinted rose; they were a pale greyish colour, as shown in my Roberts. The only different honey guide, which ever picked us up, was a scaly-throated honey guide. The speckled face and front were quite striking. Of course, I didn’t have a bird book and knew little about birds at the time. But I looked them up later. And I clearly remember being surprised, when the boys wanted to follow this speckled fellow. “Ehh”, the boys said, “this is the best of them all!” So we did follow him, and he did show us a nest. (I wrote differently in the Magnum article, but memories have a way of coming back, if one stirs them up long enough.) The nest was high up in a tall, dead tree, standing in the middle of a large clearing. It had practically no branches left. So, when my men rewarded the bird, they put the comb onto a stub of a branch, high up. And when we left, the bird didn’t follow us, but hopped into the bees’ nest, to check what we had left behind. So I didn’t get a chance to observe him at close range.

The above comments on honey guides are not meant to be taken as gospel! They are merely one man’s observations, taken over only a single dry season, in a minute sector of the honey guide’s range, which stretches from South of the Sahara right down to the Cape.

Honey guides are parasitic breeders, just like the cuckoo. The most common hosts are barbets, crested and black-collared being most frequently met with. The barbets nest in hollow trees, which they mostly chisel out themselves. While the barbets feed the young honey guide mainly on fruit, once he leaves the nest, he lives mainly on insects and bees wax, grubs and larvae, of course. For detailed information on the honey guide's lifle cycle, see a good bird book, or the internet, starting with Wikipedia.

One final point of interest regarding the honey guide: some years ago, a scientific study was undertaken, to determine what enabled him to digest wax. The object was to find out if this could be adapted for use in the fight against viruses, as these have waxy coatings. Unfortunately, I never found out whether anything came of this research.

As for eating waterbuck meat, I gave it up after the first few attempts. I agree with all those who hold it in low esteem. The waterbuck exudes an oily substance (and there was usually a final dose emitted after I shot the buck) which has a particularly unpleasant odour. John Taylor wrote that “…he smells, as if he spent his life in a public urinal” - a not altogether inaccurate description! Some people say that this acts as an insect repellent. Be that as it may, getting any of that stuff onto the meat during skinning is a definite no-no. However, since this substance is produced by the buck’s body, its wonderful aroma permeates the meat to a fair degree anyway. In addition, what fat there is takes on the consistency of cable grease during cooking and sticks to the roof of your mouth and to your teeth in the most determined way. Since it is also particularly well ‘flavoured’, it is best to remove all traces of it before cooking. That is, if you really are forced to eat waterbuck meat!

My men would also have preferred some other game, but no bush African “will turn his nose up at anything in the meat line”, to quote John Taylor again. So they ate the waterbuck I shot – and these were in the majority; we never saw much other game in that time and area.

Now my men knew all about waterbuck. When I shot one, four men got hold of its legs and turned it on its back – feet in the air, holding it in that position. Another then made the incisions necessary for skinning, usually assisted by a man wielding a panga, which he pushed under the hide to separate it from the body. Several others then grabbed the edges of the hide and started pulling. Between them they skinned the buck and none of the oil in the skin ever touched the flesh of the buck. When the skinning was virtually complete, the head, tail and the lower legs were cut off, and four, or more, ‘unsullied’ individuals lifted the body out of the skin, while the skinner cut away the last bits adhering to the back. The carcass was then laid on a bed of grass or rushes, and dismembered. Only when everything was cut off that could be cut off, would the tummy be opened and the entrails hauled out. I am sorry to say that I cannot remember whether any of the insides (liver, kidneys, heart) were eaten. They were, of course, from any other buck, the bwana reserving the right to first whack at such delicacies.

I must add here, that the majority of bush dwellers are not so fastidious. They would slaughter a waterbuck in the usual fashion, and simply live with the ‘flavour’. Since I took my gang over, almost intact, from a previous incumbent, they may well have been trained in the finer points of waterbuck butchery by their erstwhile bwana. As I was new to all this, I simply accepted their method at the time as being the approved procedure.

Now I know that there are a lot of people who aver that this dislike of waterbuck meat is all baloney. Well, I have eaten waterbuck since, and it wasn’t bad. I believe that it had been pickled, or otherwise treated, to remove the offensive flavour. This happened on a game/hunting farm in the Limpopo district. My hosts had told me that the waterbuck-is-inedible story was nonsense, and I hadn’t argued. I was a new client there, and hence mostly kept quiet. Also, the lady of the house was an excellent cook, with a rackful of credentials from European cooking academies, who really could lay on superb chow – with the help of an African, whom she had trained personally, and whom she had also sent to Europe, for further training.

About a week into my stay, when the main course of the evening meal was served, my nose told me ‘waterbuck’, before I even tasted it. It was not anywhere near as bad as what I had in the bush, but I still knew immediately that it was waterbuck. (I am not at all sure that this meal wasn’t laid on to prove a point.) Of course, I ate it. I didn’t particularly like it, but that may have been partly due to my memory of previous waterbuck encounters, re-awakened by the still recognisable waterbuck smell and taste. And, anyway, I wasn’t going to embarrass mine hostess, by informing the other diners, who included some ladies, that they were eating waterbuck.

When the other guests had retired to their chalets, the hostess asked me, what I thought the meat was. When I said "Waterbuck", you could have scraped her eyes off with a spoon (with apologies to Robert Ruark.) “How did you know?” Well  “I could smell it and taste it”. She hadn’t thought that possible. I established later that none of her other guests had ever had the real thing, so they had no previous exposure and hence no way of recognising the meat. Curiously, although the men were all hunting clients, who knew that they were being fed game meat there most of the time, that evening no one asked what the meat was. Anyhow, the point is that there are better meats than waterbuck; use these if you have a choice – leave waterbuck to those who profess to like it.

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