and just let the boat drift downstream. By now it was quite dark and as I reached the spot I could see an enormous eye glaring at me through the grass reflecting from my lamp that Goodrich held.  I could not see his head but the huge eye shone like a bright torch in my face. I was not quite sure what to do so I fired slightly to the side of it hoping that was the correct spot on his head. There was an immediate reaction as the huge croc leapt about 8 or 9 foot into the air thrashing about and crashed down with a huge splash just beside the boat almost swamping it. The boat drifted on but I knew his rough position and with a long pole felt out for him on the bottom.  I seemed to feel him move and then again he seemed to have slipped off , so I left the pole in the water at the exact spot and returned fresh in the early dawn.  Goodrich had gone home but I saw another fisher boy near by and beckoned him to help as he saw feeling with the stick.
“What’s wrong and what are you feeling for?” he inquired.
“There is a big croc down here that I shot last night but he seems to be very deep” and with that the boy dived in and said that he could see its white belly lying there but it was too deep and could not reach it.
So following his confirmation of the croc’s presence I got him in the boat to keep a look out that no other crocs come and attack me and I dived in to attach a rope to his legs. I dived down and further down and the water must have been at least 12 – 14 ft deep but I could make him out and tried to fix the rope round his leg. It was difficult and as I pulled on the line he slid off  the bank into still deeper water  probably over 20 foot deep which was quite beyond my capabilities. But as I came up gasping for air the boy shouted.
“Bwana, Bwana two crocodiles are coming across the river”
I quickly got back into the safety of the boat and did not relish the idea of swimming with those two around and maybe others that I could not see under the water.  So I left off that day

but next morning he had floated to the surface and I tied him to the boat  and towed him to my camp which luckily was downstream. But what a job we had dealing with that first croc. It took us all morning  and all afternoon to deal with him. He was over 14 ft long and must have weighed about 1,400 lbs an absolute monster. In the whole of my hunting career I only ever had two crocs that jumped into the air when shot and it was strange that this was what had happened to my very first shot! At the same time over the next day or so I got a few smaller ones, but I was having great difficulty in learning how to treat and care for the skins properly. To start with,  the boys cleaned all the flesh and fat off the skins, a slow task scraping away with knives until the skin was quite clean and then could be salted temporarily. All the while I was starting to get the feel of the river,  getting to know the limitations of the boat, and above all starting to learn how to hunt crocodiles which was totally different from any hunting that I had ever done on land.
Shortly after this one late afternoon at around 5.30pm as the sun was slowly setting I stood on the bank of a small cove fishing. Everything was peaceful and quiet, with beautiful reflections of the trees and the nearby mountains on the calm water. I cast my hand line into the water with my finger around it waiting patiently for a bite and looking dreamily at the sunset, when suddenly I became aware of a nervous  prickling fear that I cannot put into words but which seemed to be transmitted up the thin fishing line. Instantly my bush sense of danger put me on alert and then there ahead of me I at last saw the eyes of a huge crocodile swimming steadily towards me, rising and falling closer and closer until he was only a few feet away. Startled I dropped the line and jumped backwards away from the danger and the huge 12 foot saurian suddenly rose out and snapped at where I had just been standing a moment before. He rose out of the water in a huge swirl of  primeval  power as he repeatedly snapped. It was an object lesson and an eye-opener for the future that I never ever forgot.

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