I asked him about the lion's head above the fireplace, and just like that, the eighty-year-old man started telling me his story. "First of all", he explained, "you need a guide, someone who's done it before and is good at it. The guide goes out and finds out where the lions have been feeding. Then the guide finds a small 30' by 30' clearing in the jungle close by or he cuts one himself. He also builds a platform 20 feet up in a tree and outfits it with spotlights. Then you need an ox, a big one, for bait that you tie to a stake in the middle of the clearing." How to shoot a lion Doc excited to start tracking turned to go down the ladder but the guide stopped him. "We wait for light", he said. Light came three long hours later. Once on the ground they found a blood trail. The guide and Doc slowly tracked the lion for 500 yards, listening and looking, finding a blood drop here and there, not knowing if the lion was dead or just wounded. Then they came around a bend in the trail and there he was, not moving at all, one bullet into his back, through his heart and back out his chest. The doctor finished telling his story to me by slowly petting the lion on his head and said, "back then, in those days, it was cool to shoot a lion". |
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