No, I Must Confess, To Me The Lion Is An Object Of Great Respect;
And So, I Gather, He Is To All Who Have Had Really Extensive
Experience.
Those like Leslie Tarleton, Lord Delamere, W. N.
MacMillan, Baron von Bronsart, the Hills, Sir Alfred Pease, who
are great lion men, all concede to the lion a courage and
tenacity unequalled by any other living beast.
My own experience
is of course nothing as compared to that of these men. Yet I saw
in my nine months afield seventy-one lions. None of these offered
to attack when unwounded or not annoyed. On the other hand, only
one turned tail once the battle was on, and she proved to be a
three quarters grown lioness, sick and out of condition.
It is of course indubitable that where lions have been much shot
they become warier in the matter of keeping out of trouble. They
retire to cover earlier in the morning, and they keep more than
a perfunctory outlook for the casual human being. When hunters
first began to go into the Sotik the lions there would stand
imperturbable, staring at the intruder with curiosity or
indifference. Now they have learned that such performances are
not healthy-and they have probably satisfied their curiosity.
But neither in the Sotik, nor even in the plains around Nairobi
itself, does the lion refuse the challenge once it has been put
up to him squarely. Nor does he need to be cornered. He charges
in quite blithely from the open plain, once convinced that you
are really an annoyance.
As to habits! The only sure thing about a lion is his
originality. He has more exceptions to his rules than the German
language. Men who have been mighty lion hunters for many years,
and who have brought to their hunting close observation, can only
tell you what a lion MAY do in certain circumstances. Following
very broad principles, they may even predict what he is APT to
do, but never what he certainly WILL do. That is one thing that
makes lion hunting interesting.
In general, then, the lion frequents that part of the country
where feed the great game herds. From them he takes his toll by
night, retiring during the day into the shallow ravines, the
brush patches, or the rocky little buttes. I have, however, seen
lions miles from game, slumbering peacefully atop an ant hill.
Indeed, occasionally, a pack of lions likes to live high in the
tall-grass ridges where every hunt will mean for them a four- or
five-mile jaunt out and back again. He needs water, after
feeding, and so rarely gets farther than eight or ten miles from
that necessity.
He hunts at night. This is as nearly invariable a rule as can be
formulated in regard to lions. Yet once, and perhaps twice, I saw
lionesses stalking through tall grass as early as three o'clock
in the afternoon. This eagerness may, or may not, have had to do
with the possession of hungry cubs. The lion's customary
harmlessness in the daytime is best evidenced, however, by the
comparative indifference of the game to his presence then. From a
hill we watched three of these beasts wandering leisurely across
the plains below. A herd of kongonis feeding directly in their
path, merely moved aside right and left, quite deliberately, to
leave a passage fifty yards or so wide, but otherwise paid not
the slightest attention. I have several times seen this
incident, or a modification of it. And yet, conversely, on a
number of occasions we have received our first intimation of the
presence of lions by the wild stampeding of the game away from a
certain spot.
However, the most of his hunting is done by dark. Between the
hours of sundown and nine o'clock he and his comrades may be
heard uttering the deep coughing grunt typical of this time of
night. These curious, short, far-sounding calls may be mere
evidences of intention, or they may be a sort of signal by means
of which the various hunters keep in touch. After a little they
cease. Then one is quite likely to hear the petulant, alarmed
barking of zebra, or to feel the vibrations of many hoofs. There
is a sense of hurried, flurried uneasiness abroad on the veldt.
The lion generally springs on his prey from behind or a little
off the quarter. By the impetus his own weight he hurls his
victim forward, doubling its head under, and very neatly breaking
its neck. I have never seen this done, but the process has been
well observed and attested; and certainly, of the many hundreds
of lion kills I have taken the pains to inspect, the majority had
had their necks broken. Sometimes, but apparently more rarely,
the lion kills its prey by a bite in the back of the neck. I have
seen zebra killed in this fashion, but never any of the buck. It
may be possible that the lack of horns makes it more difficult to
break a zebra's neck because of the corresponding lack of
leverage when its head hits the ground sidewise; the instances I
have noted may have been those in which the lion's spring landed
too far back to throw the victim properly; or perhaps they were
merely examples of the great variability in the habits of felis
leo.
Once the kill is made, the lion disembowels the beast very neatly
indeed, and drags the entrails a few feet out of the way. He then
eats what he wants, and, curiously enough, seems often to be very
fond of the skin. In fact, lacking other evidence, it is
occasionally possible to identify a kill as being that of a lion
by noticing whether any considerable portion of the hide has been
devoured. After eating he drinks. Then he is likely to do one of
two things: either he returns to cover near the carcass and lies
down, or he wanders slowly and with satisfaction toward his happy
home.
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