Boet, Me And Other Friends

By Luc Iver de Vil

Forty years of friendship, between two men from vastly different backgrounds. Making for some humorous and at times hair-raising adventures. Drama in the air, with the female persuasion. In the bushveld hunting and fishing on the Atlantic coast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luc Iver de Vil
• Release date: Oct 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223468806

Book preview

PROLOGUE

THIS IS NOT A STORY exclusively about hunting and fishing; - although these occupations at times did play a large part in our lives - the reason for us becoming friends in the first place, and will come up in this narrative regularly.  Nor are the incidents that I relate in chronological order, I tell them as they are recalled in my rusty memory, some possibly funny, some sad and even a few that might be interesting.

My friend Ernst cautioned me to not use peoples’ real names when I write about my friends, as this could possibly incriminate them, and me.  I will pay his advice some heed, and change some names where I think it necessary.

Some of us were not known by our given names, but by nicknames, or some by their surnames. Boet's (Boet = Brother) first name on his birth certificate and driver's license is George, a name he did not respond to easily those days when called, for he was Boet. Dries was Andries, Vossie's given name I never knew, but his surnamed was Vorster, le Roux's first name was Jacobus, never used except by his wife and mother. In this narrative I will only refer to the names we called each other, not the full names, I do not want some people identified and then ridiculed because of my literary efforts.

Many place names had been changed throughout the years, but in my story I shall use mostly the old names, for these incidents happened then and there.

I will also try and put related adventures together into chapters, like flying, hunting, women, smuggling, etc. where possible, even though years could have gone by in-between incidents.

Some events will appear to be in the wrong chapter, like a story about fishing with another friend, do I put it under Some other friends or under Fishing Stories? I have put it in the chapter during which it came to mind.

You will find that I often digress, but that is how my memory works, one thing might remind me of another, and at times to explain a technical point or the background to a given situation, so I had to write it down there and then in case I forgot.

If you do not hear from me again, please know that somebody objecting to some of the dirty sheets I hung out in this narrative to dry had me exterminated, for that is the way to eradicate squealing rats. Culling is for the higher species

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND MORE

IT WAS TUESDAY, 9TH December 1980, approximately 17h00. I remember this as on that day it had come in the news read over the radio that John Lennon had been assassinated. Lennon was killed in New York on the 8th, but because of the different time zones South Africa already had the 9 on its calendars when the tragedy became public knowledge. It was a great shock to me, Lennon, his friends and their music had influenced my life tremendously.

When I parked my little car on the dusty road at the gates to the large homestead I felt tired, and filthy.  I had been travelling all day on dirt roads in the summer heat with the windows of the Ford Escort down; there was no air-conditioning in small cars in those days.

My curly hair had always been on the long side, since I had stopped having it trimmed regularly the day I had left the Navy. I let it grow to touch my shoulders, and the wind had played havoc with my coiffure. I was dirty, full of dust, and under my eyes were two muddy trails, tear flow caused by the wind through the open window, or by the news of Lennon’s death.

I saw a man and his wife standing on the lawn, just outside the kitchen door, obviously waiting for me. He was not very tall, about 1.8 meters, but big, I guessed at 140 kilograms, dressed in khaki shirt, khaki shorts, brown socks and brown worker boots. His hair was cropped very short, and neatly oiled and combed. There was a frown on his face when he looked my way; this was my first view of Boet.

His wife was dressed in black slacks, a white blouse, a little make-up and her dark hair neatly set.

As I stepped out of the car I heard Boet mumble under his breath to his wife: Oh damn, how are we going to get along with this long-haired city hooligan?

I sincerely hoped that Aunt Sally and Uncle Bill, who had given me Boet’s name and telephone number, had put in a good word for me, despite my looks.

AT THE TIME I WAS RUNNING a company that was exporting venison to Europe. All the meat we were exporting up till then came from Namibia, where I had a hunting group, known as a culling team, under the leadership of a man named le Roux, supplying our processing plant in Cape Town.

I wanted to expand our operations into South Africa and to put two more teams in the field, one operating in the north of the country, the other in the south.

Boet’s name and phone number had been given to me by the sister of my then mother-in-law, and I phoned and made an appointment to meet him on his farm. I had decided to combine my trip to meet him whilst travelling through the larger Northern Transvaal meeting as many game farmers as possible who hopefully would need culling of their herds, and coming to some agreements in case I did get a culling team together.  My visits were mostly successful, except for the amusement my looks and mode of dress caused, so when I stopped the car at the impressive homestead I was optimistic.

A quick side remark, my first marriage did not last very long, within a year or two after meeting Boet my wife and I parted company, and I became a bachelor again, a state I enjoyed for twenty years.

I WAS INVITED IN TO sit on a comfortable chair in a large lounge well-appointed with obviously expensive furniture and carpets; offered some tea, or coffee if I preferred. Gerda, the name by which the wife was introduced, disappeared into the kitchen to brew some coffee which she served accompanied by a platter of koeksisters and Hertzogies. She then left us to get on with our negotiations.

Our discussion did not take long, and an understanding was quickly reached. Boet was going to put a team of 6 to 8 hunters, with their crews, together while I went back to Johannesburg to draw up contracts, arrange for the construction of a mobile abattoir, buy a generator, get a water tanker built and have sterilization equipment made. Lighting, hot and cold running water was essential, so was steam generation, to sterilize equipment. I had to contract a transport company that ran large refrigerated trucks to transport the venison to Cape Town. I had to arrange with government departments to make a State veterinarian and a meat health inspector available whenever required. This was difficult; we did not know long in advance as to when and where we would be culling on any specific farm, and I had to make special arrangements to cover these short-notice calls.

We hoped that all this groundwork would be done by the time we met again to sign the agreements, setting a date in late January 1981. 

After our meeting and me turning down an invitation for dinner and to stay over for the night, I set off on the four hour journey back home in Johannesburg. On entering the small town of Naboomspruit I felt that the long day of driving in the hot sun had caught up with me, and decided to find a hotel and a bed for the night. There was only one hotel in the town, and it certainly was not of a standard I would recommend to anybody. The meal served in the dining room was also rather tasteless, but it did fill some gaps. I spent an hour or so in the public bar to catch a tribute program the SABC broadcast on the life of John Lennon, but could hardly hear anything, the din the regulars to the pub made even drowned out the sound of the Beatles. After a fitful night on a knobby mattress with unwashed previously used linen I continued my trip to Johannesburg early in the morning.

Christmas and New Year were not celebrated, too much work had to be done, and companies closing for the festive season did not make it any easier. This put some serious strain on my relationship with my family who would have preferred to have me at home for the traditional get-togethers.

However, the necessary was arranged and done, contracts were written up ready for signing; all the equipment was in the process of being built, the department of Nature Conservation had agreed to make a vet available when needed, the Department of Health would have an inspector on standby, and two transport companies were working on quotes.

We arranged for me to meet the potential hunters, and it was not a day trip to Sterkrivier this time, it was going to be a weekend affair from Friday to Sunday, starting on the 23rd of January 1981. I was to stay over on the farm where Gerda would prepare a bedroom for me.

On arrival the Friday afternoon I was introduced to some farmers, the hunters, and we settled around a table on the veranda for our discussions.  Some not too kind words were whispered amongst them about my long hair, my corduroy bell-bottoms and my flowerily blue shirt. Rather skeptically they signed the contracts I had had drawn up by an attorney, smiling at the clause that insisted that only carcasses with headshots would be accepted, happy with the payment arrangements. These meetings and discussions went on late into the night, and continued the next morning.

By Saturday lunchtime we had finished and all the required documents were signed, and I was ready to return home. This was not to be, I had to stay for a celebratory party that had been arranged for that evening, held on an airstrip used by crop sprayers, on Boet's farm.

When Boet drove me there the fires for cooking were already going, Boeremusiek was blaring from a record player and the drinks were flowing. My outlandish appearance caused some whispered chatter amongst the wives and girlfriends as I was introduced, me doing my best to fit names to faces and imprinting it on my memory.

Never in my life have I seen a bunch of guys so eager to pour me drinks with heavy hands, rum was my drink of choice those days. I immediately suspected that some foul play was in the offing, so I repeatedly emptied my glass onto the grass when nobody was watching. I am sure more than a bottle of rum was soaked up by Mother Earth, but I never had the opportunity to go and check how much of the grass had succumbed to alcohol poisoning.

After a while the plot came to light, we were going to have a shooting contest, lit by the glare of spotlights used for night hunting, over a distance of 100 meters. I was handed a Remington .243 rifle and a box of ammunition for my exclusive use that evening, and I sincerely thanked my instincts for keeping me sober.

As guest of honour I had the first shot, way off target to the bottom left. The buggers had adjusted the telescope on the rifle! I cursed, making it clear I knew a little bit more about rifles than they thought, and it took five more shots to set up the telescope the way it suited me.

Out of the nine men participating in the shoot I came second, trailing Boet by a few points. This was certainly not a reflection of natural ability, more of a state of sobriety. As the ants had had my drinks and Boet was not a heavy drinker, most times limiting his intake to one glass of sweet wine or one tot of rum, we were the only sober participants.

The ice was broken; I was one of them, despite my long hair and funny clothes. After the rifles were stowed, the serious partying started, drinking, eating and dancing until the break of dawn. One farmer even went so far as to fetch a young school teacher who lived nearby to partner me for the evening, teaching me the lang-arm style of dancing. As the Afrikaans saying goes, it was a real Stof-opskop (Kick-up of dust). Fun and hangovers were had by all.

I, not being in the same school, never mind class, as Billy Shakespeare, Bobbie Stevenson or Charley Dickens, am not always sure as to when it is the right time to elaborate on a story. So, here goes; Boet's drinking habits do need some explanation as it formed part of our friendship. I had a reputation as a moderate drinker and womanizer, but Boet was the gentleman, in most respects, in the friendship. Often, after a culling expedition, we would stop at a pub and have a few drinks, each to his own taste, Dries on whiskey, Vossie on brandy, me on rum and Boet on milk, while the other guys had their own preferences. Anybody who knows his way around a local will know what followed when we stopped for drinks in one small town. The regulars got rather verbal about the fact that Boet was drinking milk, and words like 'baby',  'nappy' and 'mother's boy' came up often, (I shall not mention the other words used to refer to him). As we wanted to enjoy our hard earned drinks in an atmosphere of peace and quiet, there was only one way of achieving this - clear the pub of all other patrons! Unfortunately the police did not appreciate us doing their work for them in teaching the locals and regulars how to treat visitors to their town, and we were asked to get on our way or to go to jail. We got on our way.

The next few months were hectic, some equipment like the collapsible for transportation abattoir had to be redesigned, built and tested. Some of our ideas failed, and rethinking was necessary. The hunters had to have the vehicles they intended using modified to meet requirements as laid down in the agreements. Staff had to be trained - it was absolutely essential that the culling and meat processing be done according to strict European standards. A knowledgeable person had to be employed to manage the processing part of operations and the staff at the mobile abattoir. A young man, Jaco, who had trained as a butcher, was eventually appointed to fulfill this role.

For those interested, some of the technical requirements of culling follow:

Culling took place from May to August, and only night shooting was permitted, during the two weeks surrounding dark moon. During nighttime insects were less active, and the ambient temperature was low.  Also, animals tend to be much calmer during darkness, and stampeding rarely occurred. It was also much easier to achieve hundred percent headshots at night, getting an eye reflected through a rifle telescope in the glare of a spotlight made it easy.

Bleeding out the carcass had to take place within 10 minutes of the animal having been shot, and this had to be done with the carcass in a hanging position. This required all vehicles to be fitted with rails built for this purpose. All hunting cars also had to have a bench over which the hunter could take dead-rest aim, flanked by two spotlight operators. Except for the driver who had to be highly skilled, and very lucky, in racing through the bush, over rocks and through dongas without getting his crew killed, each vehicle carried two men armed with a number of sharp knifes who collected the carcasses and saw to the bleeding out.

Within forty five minutes of being shot the carcasses had to be gutted, beheaded and behooved at the abattoir. This had to done very carefully, as no gut leak or blood could be visible on the inside of the carcass. Washing the carcass was not allowed as water leaves a whitish stain on the meat and could spread bacteria. Certain organs had to be kept for health inspection, such as the lungs, kidneys and livers, numbered with plastic tags to correspond with the number of the carcass which was stamped on the rump of each animal. This numbering system also helped in identifying the hunter so accurate payments could be made.

The heads, feet and guts were usually utilized by the farmer, his labourers and the workers from neighbouring farms, or at times a farmer would get a local butcher in to collect it for cutting up and packing as pet food. The horns were sold next to roads as curios, sometimes modified to act as reading lamp stands, to support an ashtray or as the legs to small tables. I could never fathom who would stop to buy a set of not overly impressive horns next to a road, but then again the world is filled with strange humans.

The onsite health inspector thoroughly inspected each carcass and its corresponding organs, looking for previous not yet healed injuries and diseases such as pleurisy. Once the inspector was satisfied he certified the carcass by marking it with a rubber stamp on the rump. The animals were then hung, with its organs in netted bags, in a refrigerated truck, running at 0 degrees Celsius.

It was also required that such a truck had to deposit its load, be it one, be it 300 carcasses, at the processing plant in Cape Town within 72 hours after the first animal was loaded. This put tremendous pressure on the hunters, running a half empty truck to Cape Town was very costly, and the journey itself could take anything from 24 to 36 hours, limiting the time for shooting.

The processing means that the animals were skinned and deboned; the meat was then cut and packed into 5kg boxes under the categories of Hinds, Saddles, Shoulders and Goulash, frozen in blast freezer ready for shipment to Europe. Shipping was done in 6 meter refrigeration containers set at minus fourteen degrees Celsius.

The skins were salted and dried before being railed to a tannery in Port Elizabeth for treatment while the organs and bones were sold to a pet food factory, where everything was crushed and minced before drying or canning.

We never culled in the same area for longer than 48 hours, or two nights in a row. Research by Nature Conservation specialists had shown that sustained operations in an area had a detrimental effect on the breeding of the remaining game population for at least two years, because of stress caused. To ensure compliance, and to obtain valuable information, I had the company become a corporate member of the Wild Life Society of Southern Africa, and each member of our teams had to sign a declaration that he will operate according to the rules laid down by the Society. The Society also inspected our sites from time to time to ensure compliance.

To conform to the 48 hour rule we had to move camp often, which was hard work. Cleaning and sterilizing all equipment, from knives to steel floor panels, pillars and rails of the abattoir, packing up, unpacking and setting up