Blindfolded Alongside a Croc-Infested River

I once had the opportunity to meet a dozen students at the South African Wildlife College who were taking a course to become professional hunters. They were learning to track game, survive in the bush, deal with poachers, and other necessary skills. 

As part of their training, these college-age students had to stalk to within twenty yards of dangerous game—rhino, elephant, lion, hippo, and Cape buffalo— in Kruger National Park. And then they had to slip away safely, knowing that a shift in the wind, or a failure to move silently or camouflage their movements, could bring an elephant or lion charging to kill them. The students had to master their fear as well as their bush skills, and they needed to know how to shoot in order to defend themselves and others in their party. 

As part of their training, they had to sit blindfolded for hours alongside a river frequented by crocodiles and hippos or by a watering hole used by lions, hyenas, elephants, and other wild game. A retired game ranger was nearby with a rifle, in case things got too dangerous—though the students weren’t told this. The goal of the exercise for was not merely for the students to conquer their fears, but to heighten their senses of hearing and smell.

One 20-year-old student told me, “It’s deathly frightening, but you feel so alive. You start to smell things you didn’t know you could. You hear things and sort them out…. The primal fear sharpens you. There is nothing more terrifying than being certain you hear a leopard or a lion close and coming. But still you have to keep control. Running would only trigger a predatory response. You have to master the fear to pass this part of the course.”

Every job has its own dangers. Every employee is subject to certain fears. The gentleman is the man who masters fear, who stays calm in times of danger, and who knows that what he does in this world is not solely a matter of ideas or opinions but of hard physical fact; it is a matter of real world success or failure, even do or die. That’s another way that the gentleman’s philosophy is grounded in reality.