Louis’s head was pounding and his dry eyes were going blurry. He was barely conscious, but stillalert enough to be really scared; he was lying in the desert in 107- degree heat, and he knew he hadonly one chance to save his life. He and reached toward the dead kudu. If he could slash it open, he could suck the water from its stomach. “NO!” !Nate stopped Louis. Unlike other antelopes, kudus eat acacia leaves, which are poisonousfor humans. !Nate calmed Louis, told him to hold on a little longer, and took off running: eventhough !Nate had already hiked twenty miles and run fifteen, he was able to run twelve more milesto bring Louis back some water. !Nate wouldn’t let him drink it. First, he rinsed Louis’s head, thenhe washed his face, and only after Louis’s skin began to cool did !Nate allow him tiny sips. Later, after !Nate had helped him back to camp, Louis marveled at the ruthless efficiency of thepersistence hunt. “It’s much more efficient than a bow and arrow,” he observed. “It takes a lot ofattempts to get a successful hunt by bow. You can hit the animal and still lose it, or scavengers cansmell blood and get to it before you do, or it can take all night for the poison on the arrow tips towork. Only a small percentage of arrow shots are successful, so for the number of days hunting,the meat yield of a persistence hunt is much higher.” Louis found out only in his second, third, and fourth persistence hunts how lucky he’d gotten in thefirst; that debut kudu dropped after only two hours, but every one after that kept the Bushmen onthe run for three to five hours (neatly corresponding, one might note, to how long it takes mostpeople to run our latter-day version of prehistoric hunting, the marathon. Recreation has itsreasons).
