bluey
AH legend
- Joined
- May 21, 2012
- Messages
- 4,742
- Reaction score
- 2,095
- Location
- australia/zambia
- Media
- 52
- Member of
- ssaa, aba ,bairnsdale field archers SFP
- Hunted
- australia south africa (limpopo, north west,eastcape) canada (b.c)zambia
on the 17th of july, me and my better half , jumped on a couple of planes and ended up in j/burg to do what we cancelled last year .
we were supposed to do a pakage hunt with a couple of extras, with roy wormald of wormald hunting adventures this time 12 months ago, but due to things we didn't plan on ,we unfortunately had to renege on last years adventure , and re booked when things were better for us.
they made a great effort to stay in touch with us ,and us with him and his wonderfull wife jenny, planning our trip
right at the end of long awaited ,wait.
roy emailed and said the dreaded words , change of plans ,mate .
instead of jumping on the plane to port elisebeth , we were booked into African sky ,for the night of the 17th
and were heading north to a place called Mankwe lodge up near the Botswana border for my walk and stalk , archery lioness hunt.
he would meet us in the morning for breakfast before we hit the frog and toad .
by the time got sorted with saps , after our luggage never arrived when we did , infact it never left Melbourne(Tullamarine) with us at 0515 that morning (go figure).
it also had the ammo box ( in its locked container) safely stored inside with all our clothes including my see me no more(camo )
18th of july
at 3/4 past 6, I went into the dining hall to meet the bloke id been emailing on a regular basis for over 18 months, with a few phone calls included.
with in seconds we were joking and talking freely , while my joysie was getting her ass out of bed and readying herself to meet us for a feed before the long drive north .
roy immediately took charge , ringing the airport to find out where the hell our kit was.
he said we will stop by here on the way back through , to make sure we had it this week ,so off we go north to about an hour drive past a town called Tosca, where the road turns to sand and the kudu seem to like the feed on the side of the dirt road , and the eland and the springbok.
as it changing from day to night , I seen my first bat eared foxes, they are pretty looking little vermin, id like put one of them on the wall ,one day.
when we arrived at Mankwe lodge in the Kalahari ,after getting the shit shocked out of me by the gate ( note to self , don't touch both gates at the same time ) we were met by the manager Joe and his lovely wife Aneliese, who is one of the best cooks ive ever had the pleasure of being treated like a most welcome guest from , this girl cooks up a storm every meal and takes great pleasure form treating your tatse buds to tantalising treats every course of every meal .
these people make you feel most welcome as soon as you are in their pressense.
19th of july
up early to eat breaky and flick a few sticks to make sure the bow is good and let the trackers know l can shoot a bow , they set a coffee cup on a sand bank ,and said if l can get close to that at 45 metres I should be o.k.
a smashed it on the first shot and broke the biggest piece left on the second shot .
it seemed to put them at ease. so l unscrewed the rage practice heads and set up the real deal,
and headed for the ute.
we drove and drove looking for a track to follow , as the sun rose to a bueatiful cloudless, sunny day.
looking at a plethora of game , but no lion .
one of trackers, found a print in the sand amongst many prints from an assortment of animals.
we stopped the ute and geared up .
roy had an A bolt in 375 HH , Joe had a 416 rigby ,and one of the trackers had a 300 wm.
I had my hoyt maxxis 32 , set at 92 lbs ,with 609 grain carbon express pile drivers with 125 grn rage 2 blade expandables up front , these were travelling at 287 fps, delivering 110 foot pounds of kenetic energy.
id been practicing for a while out, any where between 40 and 70 metres and are getting 3 inch groups
before we set off on foot , we had an exciting chat , of the do"s and donts .
I was of the understanding that we were hunting a dangerous , unpredictable animal and if worst came to worst she would have to be shot ,by one or more of the gunners,
this had been made abundantly clear , by young roy from the very first email , and joe would of mentioned it half a dozen times since I first met this straight up bloke last night .
it was hard trying to communicate with joe as his accent is very thick , but roy made sure he knew that I know the rules .
joe speaks great English , but thick with Afrikaans accent and at first I couldn't get the gist of it .
so off we go into the sand and scrub bush
with in 25 minutes one of the trackers freezes and squats down looking into a bunch of bush, he asks if l can see it , im glassing , and as it turns l see a yellow eye glaring back at me , its maybe 35 metres away with no shot what so ever , then another ,as it/they glare through the bushes. I tell him l think its a young male , and Joe agrees.
we move around to the right to see if we can get an id and a shooting lane .
we do nearly a full circle ,be fore we get on the tracks ,of the departed lions , we go maybe 600 metres , with an arrow knocked and on high alert , each and all of us.
looking ,and hearing, and feeling for it .
then the grunt , more grunting ,and a warning roar ,which made every hair on my body stand on end ,a whole lot better than that bloody electric gate ever did .
then for a fleeting second a big bueatiful golden , lioness presented herself , twisting her head as she grunted and roared another warning to us intruders , her tail lashing from side to side as she paced in a forboding fashion
in the sand ,between the small thorny bushes, giving only fleeting views of her vitals, roy ranged her at 67 metres
but there was no more than a few little windows of opportunity , until she turned and fled throught the scrub.
we stopped for a few more seconds before moving off in her departure course.
what seemed like an eternity ,we were on her again as she let out a fair dinkum roar some where ahead to the left of us , then silence.
we ever so slowly moved ahead , when there a sudden movement towards us , every safety was off and I was instantly at full draw , more grunts , then nothing , this happened again a few seconds later.
wow this was getting intense , rapidly........
then joe seen her tail moving off a few hundred feet away .
we stopped for water and to give her time to settle .
roy asked if l was ok.
hell yeah im ok ,ive wanted to do this for 25 years .
on ,on we cautiously stalked, maybe an hour later and another kilometre or a tad more ,the tracker near does a back flip and tells me to shoot ,I step foreward and draw , searching for this illustrious feline .
im looking out at 30 to 40 metres, and not seeing her, l whisper how far and what direction , when she explodes to the right out from under a small shrub ,maybe 12 metres away into some thicker bush where she turns and come straight back at us in a split second mock charge before turning and hoofing it out of there.
Now that was cool , unsettling , but real cool .
im in a heightened sense euphoria right now and cant beleave how intense this is becoming , im growing an unimanginable amount of respect for this bueatiful cat.
we have another drink , and l ask the tracker if this happens again just tell me the distance ,whether its in feet ,metres or yards . as I looked straight over the top of her then at an un comfortable distance .
we had a laugh ,and l was offered the 300 , but shook my head .
aw we walked on , another set of prints came in from the right ,so now there is 2 lions ahead on in the shrubs , they travelled together for quite a ways .
the tracks were very dictinct in the sand , at one point they stopped at a 5 way convergance of game trails
and the trackers went about untangling the jumble of tracks , each coming up with wanting to take separate ways as the lions split here .
one said that we should be staying on the original track , it became confussing here as the boys debated it out .
l couldn't make heads or tails of which way this topic was going ,as the trackers walked up and down ,and around in circles .
roy later told me that younger tracker was the one that had the right cat ,and the lioness was heading towards the perimeter fence in the distance.
we had done some walking in past several hours , and she was keeping on moving , we put here up again a while later, but she took off in the distance .
both joe and roy agreed that she wouldn't keep departing for much longer , she had already walk a ways and would make a stand soon ......
she got to the fence and walked along the track beside it for a long way ,maybe half a kilometre then turned back into the bush ,
im very surprised by the amount of game we are seeing ,while this stalk is going ,blue wildebeest ,black ones also , gemsbok and a couple of kudu cows .
after a good time stalking through the broken shrubbery and sand , we see another mob of black wildebeest and a few impala,standing out in the open near a muddy puddle, looking in front of us to their left
not thinking much about ,l thought they resting in the warm late afternoon .
when the older tracker turns on his heal ,and ran smack bang into roy knocking him near kleen off his feet ,immediately followed by the loudest sound ive ever heard ,which was our girls final warning ,instantly roy was on his feet ,I was at full draw ,stepping side ways to the left two small steps , at what l guessed was 30 metres , she was lying flat in a shallow depression nearly in a straight on position ,looking through the peep l settled the top pin on the tiny point hehind her shoulder ,due to the angle the window was only a slither
there was a tiny twig almost horizontal across the lane which at the time looked like a 7 inch limb.
at this point in amongst the roaring and snarling , she turned he head ever so slightly to her left and gave me the shot , which travelled like a bolt of lightning and entered perfectly behind her right shoulder and exited just between her last rib and hip .
as quick as a wink , l knock up another arrow .
all hell was breaking out in front of as l thought ,her she comes whilst drawing again .
with in 2 seconds she had turned in 2 circles trying to bite what had pierced her heart and lung ,
from behind me to my left ,I heard joe say in an excited whisper f@#$ k me , bluey you have killed her . well done .....
by now she was one her side,and the damage from the rage broad head was taking its toll
at about this point the shakes were just kicking in all the hairs on my arms were stand at attention .
l was still at full draw ,and letting down was going to take some effort .
l looked over at roy and he was looking over at me , and l swear we were both shaking about the same .
then we cracked up laughing and he said if you shoot like that l will bow hunt with you any day .
and l jibbered something like ,Roy weve gotta do this again ........
he said bullshit , not for a long time .........
this hunt had been going for 7 hours now and we had travelled 12 kms by the gps.
we set her up for photos , while joe called for a quad bike to get the ute
when we were happy she was finished we waited some more then cautisiously approached this regal queen .
the depression she was lying in was a bed , she obviously had used before, on the way in l snapped the twig that was my only obstruction when l fired , roy laughed and said that was a concern for him aswell.
after joe got back ,with the ute and we took a stack more photos, we loaded her up and headed back to the homested , on the way while going past a blind of sorts we seen some blue wildebeest , with a cracker bull in amongst them , which got the ball rolling on a late afternoon hunt for my wife from the blind.
this bull was huge with the outside spread of his horns at least 2 inches past his ears on either side , maybe more .
once we got back to camp we had a quick bite to eat gathered up what we needed and got joysie into the blind for the last 50 odd minutes of daylight .
with in 15 minutes in came a few girl blue wilde beests , and shortly after there was the big fella looking straight in the side window of the pit blind , he gave snort and they were gone .
that quick
we sat there until way after dark but other than a few eland cows , nothing else happened .
it was beer oclock ,by the time we got back .......
we were supposed to do a pakage hunt with a couple of extras, with roy wormald of wormald hunting adventures this time 12 months ago, but due to things we didn't plan on ,we unfortunately had to renege on last years adventure , and re booked when things were better for us.
they made a great effort to stay in touch with us ,and us with him and his wonderfull wife jenny, planning our trip
right at the end of long awaited ,wait.
roy emailed and said the dreaded words , change of plans ,mate .
instead of jumping on the plane to port elisebeth , we were booked into African sky ,for the night of the 17th
and were heading north to a place called Mankwe lodge up near the Botswana border for my walk and stalk , archery lioness hunt.
he would meet us in the morning for breakfast before we hit the frog and toad .
by the time got sorted with saps , after our luggage never arrived when we did , infact it never left Melbourne(Tullamarine) with us at 0515 that morning (go figure).
it also had the ammo box ( in its locked container) safely stored inside with all our clothes including my see me no more(camo )
18th of july
at 3/4 past 6, I went into the dining hall to meet the bloke id been emailing on a regular basis for over 18 months, with a few phone calls included.
with in seconds we were joking and talking freely , while my joysie was getting her ass out of bed and readying herself to meet us for a feed before the long drive north .
roy immediately took charge , ringing the airport to find out where the hell our kit was.
he said we will stop by here on the way back through , to make sure we had it this week ,so off we go north to about an hour drive past a town called Tosca, where the road turns to sand and the kudu seem to like the feed on the side of the dirt road , and the eland and the springbok.
as it changing from day to night , I seen my first bat eared foxes, they are pretty looking little vermin, id like put one of them on the wall ,one day.
when we arrived at Mankwe lodge in the Kalahari ,after getting the shit shocked out of me by the gate ( note to self , don't touch both gates at the same time ) we were met by the manager Joe and his lovely wife Aneliese, who is one of the best cooks ive ever had the pleasure of being treated like a most welcome guest from , this girl cooks up a storm every meal and takes great pleasure form treating your tatse buds to tantalising treats every course of every meal .
these people make you feel most welcome as soon as you are in their pressense.
19th of july
up early to eat breaky and flick a few sticks to make sure the bow is good and let the trackers know l can shoot a bow , they set a coffee cup on a sand bank ,and said if l can get close to that at 45 metres I should be o.k.
a smashed it on the first shot and broke the biggest piece left on the second shot .
it seemed to put them at ease. so l unscrewed the rage practice heads and set up the real deal,
and headed for the ute.
we drove and drove looking for a track to follow , as the sun rose to a bueatiful cloudless, sunny day.
looking at a plethora of game , but no lion .
one of trackers, found a print in the sand amongst many prints from an assortment of animals.
we stopped the ute and geared up .
roy had an A bolt in 375 HH , Joe had a 416 rigby ,and one of the trackers had a 300 wm.
I had my hoyt maxxis 32 , set at 92 lbs ,with 609 grain carbon express pile drivers with 125 grn rage 2 blade expandables up front , these were travelling at 287 fps, delivering 110 foot pounds of kenetic energy.
id been practicing for a while out, any where between 40 and 70 metres and are getting 3 inch groups
before we set off on foot , we had an exciting chat , of the do"s and donts .
I was of the understanding that we were hunting a dangerous , unpredictable animal and if worst came to worst she would have to be shot ,by one or more of the gunners,
this had been made abundantly clear , by young roy from the very first email , and joe would of mentioned it half a dozen times since I first met this straight up bloke last night .
it was hard trying to communicate with joe as his accent is very thick , but roy made sure he knew that I know the rules .
joe speaks great English , but thick with Afrikaans accent and at first I couldn't get the gist of it .
so off we go into the sand and scrub bush
with in 25 minutes one of the trackers freezes and squats down looking into a bunch of bush, he asks if l can see it , im glassing , and as it turns l see a yellow eye glaring back at me , its maybe 35 metres away with no shot what so ever , then another ,as it/they glare through the bushes. I tell him l think its a young male , and Joe agrees.
we move around to the right to see if we can get an id and a shooting lane .
we do nearly a full circle ,be fore we get on the tracks ,of the departed lions , we go maybe 600 metres , with an arrow knocked and on high alert , each and all of us.
looking ,and hearing, and feeling for it .
then the grunt , more grunting ,and a warning roar ,which made every hair on my body stand on end ,a whole lot better than that bloody electric gate ever did .
then for a fleeting second a big bueatiful golden , lioness presented herself , twisting her head as she grunted and roared another warning to us intruders , her tail lashing from side to side as she paced in a forboding fashion
in the sand ,between the small thorny bushes, giving only fleeting views of her vitals, roy ranged her at 67 metres
but there was no more than a few little windows of opportunity , until she turned and fled throught the scrub.
we stopped for a few more seconds before moving off in her departure course.
what seemed like an eternity ,we were on her again as she let out a fair dinkum roar some where ahead to the left of us , then silence.
we ever so slowly moved ahead , when there a sudden movement towards us , every safety was off and I was instantly at full draw , more grunts , then nothing , this happened again a few seconds later.
wow this was getting intense , rapidly........
then joe seen her tail moving off a few hundred feet away .
we stopped for water and to give her time to settle .
roy asked if l was ok.
hell yeah im ok ,ive wanted to do this for 25 years .
on ,on we cautiously stalked, maybe an hour later and another kilometre or a tad more ,the tracker near does a back flip and tells me to shoot ,I step foreward and draw , searching for this illustrious feline .
im looking out at 30 to 40 metres, and not seeing her, l whisper how far and what direction , when she explodes to the right out from under a small shrub ,maybe 12 metres away into some thicker bush where she turns and come straight back at us in a split second mock charge before turning and hoofing it out of there.
Now that was cool , unsettling , but real cool .
im in a heightened sense euphoria right now and cant beleave how intense this is becoming , im growing an unimanginable amount of respect for this bueatiful cat.
we have another drink , and l ask the tracker if this happens again just tell me the distance ,whether its in feet ,metres or yards . as I looked straight over the top of her then at an un comfortable distance .
we had a laugh ,and l was offered the 300 , but shook my head .
aw we walked on , another set of prints came in from the right ,so now there is 2 lions ahead on in the shrubs , they travelled together for quite a ways .
the tracks were very dictinct in the sand , at one point they stopped at a 5 way convergance of game trails
and the trackers went about untangling the jumble of tracks , each coming up with wanting to take separate ways as the lions split here .
one said that we should be staying on the original track , it became confussing here as the boys debated it out .
l couldn't make heads or tails of which way this topic was going ,as the trackers walked up and down ,and around in circles .
roy later told me that younger tracker was the one that had the right cat ,and the lioness was heading towards the perimeter fence in the distance.
we had done some walking in past several hours , and she was keeping on moving , we put here up again a while later, but she took off in the distance .
both joe and roy agreed that she wouldn't keep departing for much longer , she had already walk a ways and would make a stand soon ......
she got to the fence and walked along the track beside it for a long way ,maybe half a kilometre then turned back into the bush ,
im very surprised by the amount of game we are seeing ,while this stalk is going ,blue wildebeest ,black ones also , gemsbok and a couple of kudu cows .
after a good time stalking through the broken shrubbery and sand , we see another mob of black wildebeest and a few impala,standing out in the open near a muddy puddle, looking in front of us to their left
not thinking much about ,l thought they resting in the warm late afternoon .
when the older tracker turns on his heal ,and ran smack bang into roy knocking him near kleen off his feet ,immediately followed by the loudest sound ive ever heard ,which was our girls final warning ,instantly roy was on his feet ,I was at full draw ,stepping side ways to the left two small steps , at what l guessed was 30 metres , she was lying flat in a shallow depression nearly in a straight on position ,looking through the peep l settled the top pin on the tiny point hehind her shoulder ,due to the angle the window was only a slither
there was a tiny twig almost horizontal across the lane which at the time looked like a 7 inch limb.
at this point in amongst the roaring and snarling , she turned he head ever so slightly to her left and gave me the shot , which travelled like a bolt of lightning and entered perfectly behind her right shoulder and exited just between her last rib and hip .
as quick as a wink , l knock up another arrow .
all hell was breaking out in front of as l thought ,her she comes whilst drawing again .
with in 2 seconds she had turned in 2 circles trying to bite what had pierced her heart and lung ,
from behind me to my left ,I heard joe say in an excited whisper f@#$ k me , bluey you have killed her . well done .....
by now she was one her side,and the damage from the rage broad head was taking its toll
at about this point the shakes were just kicking in all the hairs on my arms were stand at attention .
l was still at full draw ,and letting down was going to take some effort .
l looked over at roy and he was looking over at me , and l swear we were both shaking about the same .
then we cracked up laughing and he said if you shoot like that l will bow hunt with you any day .
and l jibbered something like ,Roy weve gotta do this again ........
he said bullshit , not for a long time .........
this hunt had been going for 7 hours now and we had travelled 12 kms by the gps.
we set her up for photos , while joe called for a quad bike to get the ute
when we were happy she was finished we waited some more then cautisiously approached this regal queen .
the depression she was lying in was a bed , she obviously had used before, on the way in l snapped the twig that was my only obstruction when l fired , roy laughed and said that was a concern for him aswell.
after joe got back ,with the ute and we took a stack more photos, we loaded her up and headed back to the homested , on the way while going past a blind of sorts we seen some blue wildebeest , with a cracker bull in amongst them , which got the ball rolling on a late afternoon hunt for my wife from the blind.
this bull was huge with the outside spread of his horns at least 2 inches past his ears on either side , maybe more .
once we got back to camp we had a quick bite to eat gathered up what we needed and got joysie into the blind for the last 50 odd minutes of daylight .
with in 15 minutes in came a few girl blue wilde beests , and shortly after there was the big fella looking straight in the side window of the pit blind , he gave snort and they were gone .
that quick
we sat there until way after dark but other than a few eland cows , nothing else happened .
it was beer oclock ,by the time we got back .......
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you promised a write up and you have delivered 
