June 8 – Day 22
A Kori (I think) bustard - saw quite a few on Ozondjahe. Hard to get a sense of the size from the picture, but this is one big bird!
Day 8 of our 12-day hunt in Namibia, and still on the lookout for cheetah. Perhaps worried that we might never find the elusive cat, Theo has us looking for bait for hyena. I’d like to get a brown hyena, but it’s really only a like – I wouldn’t be worried if I didn’t get one. But after our morning rounds looked like they were going to come up empty again, we came upon some impala on the road, about 100 yards ahead.
Theo quickly identified that the male had poor horns, and said we should shoot it for bait. I quickly got the gun out and set up on the roof of the vehicle, took the shot, and the impala ran about 10 yards and piled up dead.
Everyone on the vehicle was a bit surprised, thinking I’d missed. I said no way; we’re not playing that game again, especially since I can see it! But they said it looked like a miss, because from the dust, the bullet hit about 6 feet to the right of the impala, and about a yard behind it. I said not possible – it’s over there dead, and it didn’t die of fright.
We looked at the video and sure enough, you could see the bullet enter on the shoulder, but the dust raised by the bullet hitting the dirt is quite a bit right and behind the impala, which had been standing broadside. The bullet had to have hit something and been deflected about 90 degrees inside the impala. I didn’t think anything in an impala was hard enough to deflect a Barnes VOR-TX, but we had the proof.
As we were heading to hyena country to hang our bait, Gottfried suddenly stopped the truck – quickly enough that I almost flipped over the front. “What the . . .” says I. Theo starts to say something to Gottfried about his driving, while Gottfried was trying to say something at the same time to a clearly annoyed Theo. Theo got the gist of what Gottfried was trying to say, and said the magic word: “cheetah”, and there it was, about 400 yards in front, staring at us from the middle of the road. I moved to grab my rifle, but before I could, it leapt up and ran off like a rocket. It was wonderful to see for two reasons. Firstly, what a graceful and beautiful animal, but secondly, it was a real, live cheetah! After all this time, I had proof that they existed!
We quickly drove up to where we saw it, and within a few minutes, we found the tracks. In fact, we found lots of tracks. Two cheetahs, going back and forth along this general area, apparently to a waterhole some ways off, but that was just conjecture.
What wasn’t conjecture was that the cheetahs were clearly comfortable with this path. Theo was a bit worried that having spooked the one, they might change their pattern, but given our options, it made sense to focus on this area. Theo wanted to get back to camp to get a blind ready and have it brought out and set up, so we scouted for the best location. That done, we went back to camp, gave the instructions for the blind to be dropped off, and had lunch.
We spent the afternoon on the other side of the property so as not to further spook the cheetah. Quite quickly, Peter had the opportunity to take my favourite animal, an ostrich, and decided to go for it. He made more or less the same body shot I did, but was unable to seal the deal with a head shot. I told him to practice. On ostrich. He wasn’t entirely thrilled at the opportunity to hold the bird for the pictures – he had seen just how many horseflies lived on these things and how hard they were to get rid of once they found a home on you!
We then went back to camp, dropped off all non-essential personnel, and headed out to the cheetah blind. The set up had been perfect, and there were three comfortable chairs in the blind. We quietly got ready, and sat, quite still, until we lost the light. No sign of the cheetah, but we agreed to be back in the blind before first light.
