THE PLAN

George then asked the dreaded question "how many"? but the answer that question was difficult to say, Smith showed him that the lions covered an area of about 20000 square miles. Long before the man-eating, people lived more spread out in small family units but as the killings went on people came together in small villages.

There weren't any records of the killings especially when people were more spread out and again, it was difficult as people didn't want to speak about it at all. Apparently, one sub chief kept the record. Even though the attack started in long time ago, he managed to keep the record of the last four years. In the four-year-record, which just included his followers, 211 names were listed as killed by the lions. George was shocked by this and its implications. This was one sub chief over four years. The lions had also been active in two other some chiefs' territories where attacks were just as bad if not worse. He grabbed a piece of paper and work out a rough estimate; the total figure of death must have met 1600 quite some time ago. Smith looked at George and said, "that's why I sent you the message as soon as I heard you arrived". He also stated, "something pretty drastic should be done about these creatures quite a few years ago". George promised to do something about it.

George set about going on a tour to the affected area. He met with local sub chiefs and hope to devise a way to determine the lions' current whereabouts. He did most of his driving at night hoping he'd get lucky and see the lions crossing the road, he didn't get lucky. Local settlements had a grim silence where people tried to mostly stay inside, and children were no allowed to play. He visited a local mission and spoke to a reverend. The reverend also had been keeping records for the past two years and his list had 200 names. He told George how locals thought of the lions to be a result of black magic, and he personally thought it was the visitation from the devil. George didn't really believe that, but the reverend was firm saying, "I think Mr George, by the time you really get to know these monsters for yourself you will agree with me". He told George that a few evenings before just after sunset a kitchen servant was heading home but when he walked past the church he screamed. The Reverend and his assistant ran out with torches and rifles, they found a blood trail that led them to the dead body of the servant in a maize field. A month before this incident, someone had been carried off in broad daylight.

Travelling through the areas was a depressing sight, many abandoned homes and settlements. People didn't like to talk about the man-eaters, but George was starting to gather some few crucial information. Like most man-eaters, these animals were particularly cunning. Sometimes the lions would come at night, jump onto the roof of a hut and scratch their way through the thatch and jumped inside the hut. They were also bold and arrogant, one man told George of how a lion had stormed into a village one evening knocking people down before finally grabbing the man's wife and dragging her outside the village where other lions were waiting and they fed on the corpse. The man did try to shoot the lion, but his gun malfunctioned. In general, though many feared hunting the lions, as they thought it would cause the man-eaters to target them.

George spoke with a sub chief about when the killing started. He also seemed to think they began in the early 1900s which just so happened to be around the same time that a chief and a certain witchdoctor were deposed of their accusations of corruptions. Now there is a chance that the lions began man-eating before the 1900s but it seems like this was when it became well known and because of the timing many thought the lions were owned by the witchdoctor, with rumours that his assistants were herding the lions.

 The rumour was that the killings would continue until the witchdoctor was reinstated again. Apparently, the witchdoctor had even become quite wealthy with many offering gifts and money to be spared from "his lions". Stories circulated that it was pointless to oppose the lions, and some said they were not lions at all but to basically were lions. George returned to his office and started to organise a plan, sending for as hunters as possible but the plan would have to wait, he got an order to go and help with the locust outbreak in a neighbouring village.

It wasn't until January 1946 that George could return to hunting the man-eaters. He took six of the village game hunters and broke them up into three teams of two each. Two teams will be placed in specific locations while the third team was always mobile, trying to chase down any rumour of a recent attack, they also put down twenty trap guns with a variety of different bait including live goats, dogs, and human remains recovered from a recent kill, but unfortunately for them the traps didn't work. Tracking the lions was also difficult as the ground was hard and dry and although the lions would descend on a village together, they would often disperse into smaller groups.

They also never attacked the same village two nights in a row. After three weeks of failing to hunt down any lion, George knew he would have to change tactics. Since the lions operated near the roads he tried to set up a sort of information network with those driving transport vehicles on the road to inform him for any information of attacks, he set up his base camp from side of the road and he would then drive to the area as quickly as possible, sometimes trying to drive ahead of the lions to double back and cut them off but this didn't prove fruitful. He spent many nights in hides near villages but when being up in the night winds proven uncomfortable, he switched to digging out pits, three feet deep and four feet wide with a tarp covering three corners from the fourth corner propped open to see and shoot out of. George shot any shadow of an animal he saw in the dark, hoping for it to be a lion. He shot one wild pig, two hyenas, one leopard, one Jackal, and one stray goat, but no lion.