The Dallas Morning News                                                                     Sunday April 23,         1967

By KENNETH FOREE

Both look like bankers and Michaux Nash is, but his guest, right, Mohamed Iqbal, is one of Africa

Of all places for a charging  elephant was over the snowy white tablecloth of the Dallas ‘ Country Club and. not a few necks of young people at the  adjoining table  craned to listen

It was two paces for life. Two  seconds to the hospital.

One Mohamed Iqbal or “Bali,” as he is familiarly  called, was talking and from the name one would have thought that if he were being charged  by an animal certainly it would be a tiger.

But Bali, 42 and looking 52. is one of those oddities that a man will find at the recent San Antonio International Big Game Hunters and Fishermen’s Conference or in ‘Dallas calling or banker-hunter  Michaux Nash  Sr., or his guest at dinner at the dig­nified Dallas Country Club, There, Bali, who is more used lo the bush of Kenya, asked if he could keep one of the  ornate menus.

“Yes, suh,” said a very fine waiter and then an elephant man had to have the autographs of his party.

BALI IS ONE of those rare persons of Africa, one of two East Indian hunters. He is a na­tive of Africa, but most East Indians there-and there are very many-are in  business.-In  fact-much of African business is run by the East Indians and as a class they are not too well liked. But this Bali  is vastly dif­ferent from the money changers. First, he is a big man of six-feet-one, wide .of shoulder and weighing 215 pounds. Second he specializes in the biggest of all game, that great hulking mas­todon of the elephant.

The man who called the San Antonio sessions of professional hunters and sportsmen “s great conference.” also said .”I’ve been to all the others; there has been nothing like this: I take off my hat to, those be­hind it.”

And looking much like a bank­er, a dignified, business-appear­ing person, in reply to questions said, “More 100-pounders (that is elephants with tusks each weighing 100 pounds) have been killed by my clients than those of anybody else.”

THE BEST HIS clients have gotten were 130 and 132 pounds. ” “My own best is 151 and 152 . … More than 100 big elephants have been shot under my guid­ance. I  have shot more than 300 myself.”

The logical question is why a man in his right mind likes to go into the bush, the beast’s habitat, and there match his little black stick and slug of lead the. size of his thumb end against an animal that weighs five to seven tons anyhow?

“Oh, it’s just a sense of ac­complishment, of overcoming obstacles, of accepting a chal­lenge and winning.” Like piling up a lot of money, marrying the prettiest girl, rising in gov­ernment.

In thick country, it’s no prob­lem. You walk very slowly, very gently, make no noise, have a good wind. I’ve gotten within five paces.” Five steps, 15 feet to eternity if he isn’t careful

IN HIS 17 YEARS of profes­sional hunting, now with Ker, Downey & Selby Safaris, Ltd., of Nairobi, Kenya, an elephant hunter experiences charges by the great beast.

“Have you ever been mauled by an elephant,” he was asked?

“You get mauled by an elephant just once. Then you’re gar­bage,” he said. “Many alert elephants with ears out wide and sniffing trunks have been killed by inexperienced hunters. When an elephant charges, he flattens his ears, rolls up his trunk like a hose, sometimes shifts from one forefoot to the other and here he comes at 20 to 25 miles an hour. That’s fast in bush!”

Oddly enough his closet ele­phant call was in Uganda above Murchison Falls, not Kenya.

“We were following an ele­phant with 90 and 92-pound tusks and he went right in the  middle of a herd of several hundred  My client shot and killed the elephant. The herd stampeded. “I GRABBED MY client and  we ran to the big fellow. The  only chance was to get behind  his back and go flat, and let the  herd bypass us. _;

“Most did. But a cow got whiff or glance of us and  charged. I was using a British double, a .470. I hit her twice between the eyes and dropped  her two paces away. Her trunk  fell on me like a tree. I went  back to camp and had three or  four stiff drinks of whisky,”

Two paces to life for a man who drank Coca-Cola only at the Dallas Country Club. Two paces Six feet.

“But I had a much close shave from a leopard,” and he  put his  big finger on a great scar. on the side and  back of his neck

“A client had wounded a leopard and it had gone into rocky hills. I had to go in for it..You must not leave a wounded dangerous beast. If it recovers ii will kill the first human it sees.

“My tracker followed the blood past the, edge of a rocky hill. He was ahead of me a cou­ple of paces when out of the cor­ner of my eye I saw a spotted streak in the air.

“The next moment I was -knocked, flat with the leopard on top of my back. Its claws went in the side of my neck. I ran my hands back to jab it in the face and keep ‘the teeth from my neck. I felt a’ chunk go out of rny neck. And another from my lower back.

“Somehow we .rolled over. I raised my knees and feet to keep the leopard from disemboweling me and jabbed it in the’ face with my hands. Then my track­er, who was a well-trained, care­ful man, put his light rifle against the leopard’s ear and fired.

“It all took place in about two seconds. But I spent 20 days in  ; the hospital.”

Two paces for life. Two sec­onds to the hospital. Little won­der that the young people at the Dallas Country Club and near us politely turned their necks our way as terrible , beasts charged over snowy-white linen!