Death Comes Calling

Selous Scout, buffalo hunter, barroom brawler… "Dog" Varley thought he was tough, until the day a wounded buffalo did a tap dance on his back

Hard men settled the harsh country that once was Rhodesia. On the surface, life in their spar tan colony mimicked that of the old world. Homes were built, families were raised and the young men went away to school. But one academy, Plumtree School, on the country's western border, at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, was a far cry from the prep schools in jolly Old England. The regimen there would please a Marine Corps drill instructor.

Plumtree became a nursery for Rhodesian soldiers, whose fighting spirit was legend in the Second Chimurenga (1971-1979), the civil war that led to the establishment of Zimbabwe. Leon "Dog" Varley was one of those fighters. After Plumtree he joined the Selous Scouts, a multiracial special forces team that operated through the end of the conflict.

When the war ended, a scruffy, irreverent Varley found work as a buffalo hunter in the Rhodesian Tsetse Control Department. The life of a roaming rifleman, eliminating Cape buffalo herds to make way for ranches, was arduous and dangerous. Each day brought a shootout in dense cover with wily beasts big on aggression.

Seeking a career with more of a future, he became a guide at a lodge where tourists paid top dollar for a pampered look at the Zimbabwe bush. The spoiled life wasn't for Varley, though. After wrestling with a crocodile in front of the guests, he was fired. Next he worked as a professional hunter, and then he branched out into me tamer business of walking safaris. Ironically, it was this job that led Dog Varley to his deadliest encounter in the wild. This is his story.

Mission of Mercy
While walking one day on a photo safari, I picked up Cape buffalo tracks hut quickly noted a drag mark. I looked closer and followed for a while until I realized that not only was a foot dragging but it was connected to something. It was almost certainly a snare.

Since this was not a hunting safari, my clients were unarmed, which left me without any backup. I also had to carefully consider their welfare. I should have erred on the side of caution and abandoned the tracks, but the thought that the animal was in a state of agony made me want to find it and put it out of its misery. I checked my weapon again, made sure there was a solid in the breech and pressed on warily.

There was no blood on the spoor, so I figured it was probably a fairly old wound, yet I knew flail well the buffalo was not going to be happy. I followed for a while, but movement became tough as the bush closed in. I struggled through thorn thickets and over some rocky ground underfoot. It was damned hot, and I felt the heat in more ways than one when I got a premonition that something was about to happen. The hair on my neck stood up, causing me to pause for a moment before easing forward into the cover.

The tracks led me into some particularly dense bush, and I approached with great caution, searching for any sign of the animal. Suddenly, there was a puff of dust, a burst of black and the thunder of hooves as the animal came crashing toward me. The brush obscured my vision, but I caught a glimpse of the buffalo's head held high, his beady black eyes riveted on me as he lowered the tips of his horns.

Blindsided
It happened incredibly fast. By the time I got the .458 to my shoulder, the head and horns had disappeared into a bush in front of me and it seemed the whole bush was moving. I fired blind at where I thought his head was just before the bush and the buffalo arrived at speed and smacked into me. Everything went dark for a moment. I went flying backward and landed face down in the dirt, my mouth full of sand. With my rifle lost to me (it was pegged barrel-down in the ground), I was helpless. I told myself that this was probably the end of the road. But my thoughts of an early departure to the great saloon in the sky were mightily interrupted when the bull landed on my back, knocked all the wind out of my lungs and started a thumping tap dance on my spine. Using my back as a stage, it pounded its hooves into me. I heard stuff cracking. I assumed he was going to break every bone in my body, and I felt bolts of sheer bloody agony as the hooves ripped into my skin.

What could I do? I lay there and prepared for the worst, certain my spine was broken, because everything had gone numb. Then the stomping suddenly stopped. I couldn't feel or move my legs. The thought went through my mind that this was simply payback time and that I should take this as punishment for all my sins. To my horror, I looked down and saw a pool of blood appear before my eyes, getting bigger as I watched. I panicked and checked for a new hole in my head but found nothing. I couldn't locate the source of the injury, which made things worse.

My mind wandered. I had always been of the opinion that I'd rather be dead than paralyzed, and now it looked like I might have to make that call. Gingerly, I tested my arms--they seemed to be working. I lifted my chest off the ground and was thrilled to see the top half of my body functioning (although the aches and pains were agonizing).

With my prognosis looking up, I immediately decided to change my view of life as a paraplegic. God willing, I thought, I'd like to live on even if my walking days were over. I thought of the upside. I could still go to the pub and shoot the breeze. Demands on me to perform would be greatly reduced and life was certain to become more leisurely. Yes, there was hope.

Insult to Injury
Unfortunately, my legs felt like they were lost to me. Everything was smashed; my glasses and binocular were smithereens. I assumed my spine was in similar shape, but then I twisted my neck slowly, looked over my shoulder and got the fright of my life. I suddenly realized that the reason I couldn't move my legs was because the buffalo was squatting on me! To my great joy, I jerked my legs and saw them move. Then the buffalo stood up and, without a backward glance, trotted off into the thicket.

Battered and broken, I came slowly to my feet and was trying to get a grip on my situation when a new problem revealed itself. An awful smell blasted my senses and I felt something warm and soft on the back of my legs that stank to high heaven.

Horrified, I feared I had committed the absolute worst of all possible improprieties and filled my pants. An exquisite sense of embarrassment overwhelmed me as I struggled to come to terms with my fall from grace. Then I reminded myself that I had just had 1,500 pounds of muscle and bone using me as a dance floor, and the forces of displacement, rather than nature, had probably had their ruthless way with me. I reached tentatively behind me to sample the texture of the offending substance when again I found relief.

My adversary, I suppose to add insult to injury, had used the opportunity to empty his ample bowels upon me. Talk about bullshit--I was completely covered in the stuff.

Blood streamed down my face as I looked for the' others in my party, but my group had understandably run for cover. First to reappear was Obert, my tracker, who approached very sheepishly, looking unusually timid, almost as if he'd seen a ghost. I asked him what my face looked like and whether there were any new holes I should know about, but he seemed to be in a trance and just shook his head forlornly. Unable to get any sense out of him at all, I spotted a digital camera in the dirt and took a self-portrait. High tech saved the day. I was very pleased to see that my head was intact and the blood was coming from a minor cut above my eye.

When my guests regrouped, I cleaned and dressed my wounds and then managed to get in touch with staff from National Parks, who sent in a team. They tracked the animal down and destroyed it. As it turned out, my shot, although virtually blind, had not been far off the mark but a tad low. That's the thing about these encounters. An inch can mean the difference between dying and dying of embarrassment.

By: Hannes Wessels, Outdoor Life, Dec2006