Okay, on to day 5! I had some rough notes but I'm remembering quite a bit of the details as I go back and type this up. I also took quite a few pictures and it helps to go back and look at those and the timestamps on them to help me piece everything together. If someone is looking for a brief summary they are reading the wrong posts!
Day 5 broke cold and rainy. The temperatures so far had been in the low 50's each morning generally warming to the mid 80's in the afternoon. This is winter for them and it was interesting to see the trackers with 3 shirts, 2 jackets, gloves and a toboggan on to start the day and by the time we were down to just a short sleeve shirt in the afternoon they still had 3 shirts layered on. The wind was blowing steady and a light rain was coming off and on. Cathy made a poor decision and decided to come with us and in retrospect she wished she had stayed back at the lodge.
Pieter was excited about the steady wind. He said that gave us a big advantage both in scent and sound and he felt we were going to have a good day. The negative thing was that because it was cold the animals wouldn't be moving around as much so it would be tougher to spot them. The wind wasn't really that strong, less than 15 mph which wouldn't be considered very strong most places but after 4 days of light and variable winds that were constantly shifting, we were happy with it. We discussed that back home on an overcast day like this the animals would most likely be out and about, but he said that there the animals seemed to prefer the warm sunny days instead.
Kudu was the target this morning and we drove around looking for tracks. Since Jewel was off the zebra track, he rode on the front bumper looking for tracks in the road while Tefferi rode in the back.
I forgot to mention that Cathy was sad that the boys were back in school and not able to go out with us anymore. They had been great company at the truck and had explained to her the different sounds that went with each of the animals and explained the different tracks and birds. They had a book with all the tracks, birds, animals, etc. in the truck that was helpful as well.
We came on a VERY fresh leopard track and we stopped the truck and we all got out an looked at it. Pretty neat to see, no doubt about the track and it was very fresh.
Continued driving, it was a bit hard to stay focused with the rain. It wasn't a hard rain but trying to spot game from the truck while it was moving hurt your eyes as the rain hit them. We developed a sideways type style to block the rain from our eyes but still at least attempt to spot things. I wasn't sure how Jewel was doing it on the front bumper and he was wearing a tobaggan, not a cap with a brim. We ended up driving over the the western boundary of the property and spotted some impala here and there. Nothing that interested Pieter enough to get off the truck and go after though. Somewhere in there we start hearing a woosh whoosh sound like something is stuck to one of the tires. Tefferi gets of and listens as they slowly drive forward the spare tire that is on there from the other day now has a hole in it. We are close to another lodge that they have that is setup pretty much like a dormitory style with probably 20 beds in it and park under an awning while they change the tire. Pieter goes out looking for tracks while Jewel and Tefferi change the tire. We went in the lodge and it was a pretty neat setup. This was where Pieter lived before he got married and for the first few years after he got married. Several of the stories we had heard over dinners centered around this place so it was neat to see it in person. Lots of neat taxidermy as well but we forgot to take any pictures.
After the tire was changed we went and found Pieter. No interesting tracks so we continued to drive. Much as Pieter had predicted there just didn't seem to be many animals out and about, they must all be hunkered down somewhere. We did spot some impalas intermingled with some giraffes but didn't see a good ram in the mix so didn't go after them. After a while we finally spot a group of impala with a good ram and go after them. The wind is good but sure enough we end up with a group of giraffes between us and the impalas. Giraffes can make quite a bit of racket with they run off and when they ran some zebras that we hadn't even noticed ran off with them. Needless to say the impalas were gone as well.
One interesting thing on this stalk was that when the giraffes ran off one of the baby giraffes didn't go with them but hang around checking us out. A "baby" giraffe is still probably 9 or 10 feet tall and probably weighs 1,000+ pounds but it was obviously a young one. Probably a male since it seemed pretty stupid. We ended up walking by about 10 or 15 yards from it as it stood there and watched us. Of course I didn't think to take a picture of it but Eli did. His phone camera isn't as good as mine so the picture quality isn't great but hopefully you can get an idea of how close it was to us. I have some other pictures of giraffes that are probably just as close but those were taken from the truck. With Pieter's strict policy of no shooting from the truck the animals aren't nearly as afraid of the truck as they are of people on foot. This was by far the closest that we got to a giraffe while out walking.
We got back to the truck and headed off again. We had seen a few kudu tracks but evidently nothing that Pieter thought was worth going after. Either they were headed the wrong direction based on the wind or they weren't big enough. I've never been a big believer that you can really tell much about the size of an animal based on the track and for the most part these African animals have MUCH smaller feet than you would expect so telling the difference between a big kudu track and a small kudu track seems like it would be difficult, but they were very confident when they saw a track as to whether the animal that left it was big or not. We did end up seeing a some roan which as neat, they are a very pretty animal but to a layperson they would just think they were a small sable so it seems crazy that you would want to spend considerably more to shoot a roan than to shoot a sable that looks similar but is much bigger and I think prettier. Oh well, the rain had stopped and it seemed like things were getting out and moving now anyway.
We spot a very big group of impala walking right down the road and are able to stop and look at them pretty well. There are several big ones and a few big big ones and maybe even one or two giant ones in this group. The wind is wrong for a stalk so we just continue past them in the truck and go on by 500 or 600 yards and unload. The impala all cleared off as we drove past but the two biggest ones ended up on the opposite side of the road as the bigger group so we move quickly to try to get setup on them expecting them to want to come back across the road.
We move parallel to the road through the brush for a couple hundred yards and then move back to the road for a look. Pieter sets me up on the sticks looking down the road but nothing ever shows up. We pull back and move on a intercept course for the bigger group with a steady wind in our favor for once. We move super slow and with extreme patience. Sometimes we stand for 4 or 5 minutes with Pieter looking through his binoculars into the brush (8x32 Swarovskis which seem perfectly suited for this type of hunting). We literally take an hour to cover about 400 yards. Every once in a while we could catch a glimpse of brown or a leg through the brush. We could hear them several times vocalizing. I would have never expected the sound that they make to come from one of them. The rams make a noise that sounds like a pig oinking. This should not be the rut at all for impala but it has been a very weird year with all the moisture they have had and Pieter wasn't sure if possibly a few of the ewes that hadn't been pregnant were going into heat or exactly what was going on but there were rams fighting and roaring a few times while we were stalking them throughout the week.
Patience paid off this time and somehow Pieter was able to verify that the ram barely even visible through the brush about 60 yards away was a good one and setup the sticks and told me to shoot. I felt good on the sticks and squeezed the trigger and he maybe went 5 yards and was down. Another sigh of relief that there was not going to be any tracking needed. My shot ended up being a little low and forward but broke both legs and hit lungs and possibly heart so it worked out pretty well.
Pieter headed for the truck while we waited. I joked that I could carry him on my shoulders to the road but he said he would get the truck. It seemed to take longer than I would have expected to get the truck and we never did hear it and then the dogs came running up with Pieter, Jewel and Tefferi close behind. We took the field photos and then Pieter asked if I wanted the skin or not and I said just the skull and you could see a little relief on Jewel and Tefferi's faces. Since I didn't want the skin they were able to drag it the 200 yards or so to where the truck was parked and if I had wanted the skin they would have had to carry it. Impalas aren't big but carrying one through the bush would have been a bit more effort than just dragging it.
This impala was an old warrior. It's left ear was split nearly completely in two and it had several scars on it's neck from fighting.
It was nearly 2 by the time we got back to the lodge for lunch so we set the time for 3:00 to go back out that afternoon. Again the priority was to get on some kudu tracks with the steady wind in our favor, but it just didn't work out and we ended up chasing around some zebras instead. Same story different verse but the zebras ended up mixing in with some giraffes and we couldn't maneuver around them without everything running off. We went back to the waterhole that we had seen the kudu at the previous afternoon but nothing was going on. Did see some more roan leaving the waterhole and a few warthog sows with piglets but that was about it. Spotted some more zebra heading back to the lodge as it was getting dark and shock of all shocks they were mixed in with some giraffes and a quick stalk proved pointless.
I think this was the earliest we ended up back at the lodge in the evening. We had been going pretty hard and it was actually nice to have some time to relax before dinner. We discussed bringing in another PH so that we could split up to possibly have a better chance of checking some animals off our list and Pieter started checking to see if he could line someone up.
Ended the day with 6 miles walked. Didn't seem like we had walked that far, some of those miles were very slow stalking but thinking back on it we did cover some ground trying to maneuver around the giraffes on several of the stalks that day. By the time you leave the truck, put a stalk on and then come back a mile or two goes by pretty quickly.
Some where in here we talked it over and decided that if we wanted to have any chance at filling most of the animals on our list that it was going to mean extending our stay and skipping our planned trip to Kruger National Park that we were going to make the last 2 days that we were there. The primary reason we had planned the Kruger excursion was for my wife and she was pretty adamant that we needed to keep hunting if we needed to. With some more arm twisting on her part we made the call and canceled the Kruger portion of our trip. They had another group who were planning on going with them to Kruger in September and this was a extra long holiday weekend with Monday and Tuesday being national holidays to they were able to transfer the deposit that they had made for us to the September group and we didn't end up having to pay any cancellation fees for that. Thinking it though it sounded like it wouldn't really be a good time to visit Kruger anyway and the crowds would be at the maximum over the long holiday weekend.
With that decision made we talked through the option we had discussed on getting another PH so we could split up and Pieter wasn't having much luck with the guys that he normally worked with. His top 3 options were all unavailable and he wasn't sure he wanted to go much further down the list for us. Not because he wasn't willing to but because he wanted to be able to guarantee the quality of the person that we would be hunting with and after those 3 guys he wasn't as familiar with some of the others. We decided we could hunt together again and he would check around a bit more and get some options for us.
Day 6 started with a little bit of an uptick on the weather. A little cloudy to start and again we had a decently consistent wind but it was supposed to clear up and warm up. It still didn't make sense to me that the animals would be on the move in the warmer weather but these are for sure different animals than what we are used to dealing with.
We head out and not too far along we cross a fresh gemsbok bull track. Gemsbok is on both of our lists and the wind is good so we offload and start on the track. Not far in and we cross some kudu bull tracks and then some more gemsbok tracks. Then some zebra tracks. This is looking promising. My memory is a little fuzzy here but I'm pretty sure we just left the .270 at the truck and Eli was carrying the .375 H&H. I'm sure the .270 would do the job on a gemsbok but with the somewhat questionable shot placement on the first two animals he shot it wouldn't hurt to go up a bit as gemsbok are pretty notorious for being hard to bring down.
We were moving pretty slow and deliberate but not catching a glimpse of anything. One thing that was interesting is that I constantly found myself looking for shed antlers that simply don't exist. There were a few dead heads and some random bones scattered around though. We saw several impala skulls and some seemed to be pretty big ones. I did take this picture of a kudu dead head that we saw.
Pieter also pointed out this rub that he said was from a kudu. It looked to me like it must have gotten upset at this poor tree, it had done some pretty major damage to it. Obviously a good sized animal to do that much damage to a tree.
We spend probably a couple hours on the track and end up coming out maybe a mile or two and as we come out onto the road Pieter gets excited and throws the sticks up and tells Eli to shoot the gemsbok that is standing in the road. It's slightly quartering away and another one starts to come out but it was pretty clear that Pieter wanted him to shoot the first one. Eli has never shot the .375 yet but feels confident and has shouldered it and put it on the sticks a few times and is impressed with the balance and the quality of the scope so he is confident when he pulls the trigger. I am standing to the side and can't see any of this going down other than I can see Eli and the result of the shot is a very obvious hit based on the whomp when it hits the animal. Peiter tells him to shoot it again anywhere. I didn't realize it at the time but the gemsbok is now on a dead run straight away from them. Eli reloads and shoots and another whomp indicating another hit and I hear from Pieter "you dropped him".
Pieter does tell Eli that the gemsbok had been pretty cooperative and that a kudu wouldn't have hung around that long. He probably spent 15 or 20 seconds on that first shot but the second shot was quick, especially since he was running the bolt on the same side he was looking through the scope on. I was thinking the animal had just taken the hit and stood there for his follow up shot but after talking about it I was super proud of him that he was able to hit it that second time when it was on a full run. We were doing MUCH better now on eliminating the need for long tracking jobs.
We walk up to the gemsbok and determine that it is actually a her, not a him. Gemsbok females actually have longer horns than the males and this one had exceptionally long horns. Pieter said they were 40" and they also had really good mass for a cow. We set about getting setup for field photos and again I was super impressed with the quality of the photos that Pieter took for us.
Examining the shot placement, the first shot had again hit a little farther back than the preferred placement, but on a gemsbok their lungs do go back a little farther than some of the other African animals so it probably wouldn't have been that bad of a tracking job. The second shot was through the neck but she must have been turning or something because it isn't in the back of the neck but there is a clear entry and exit hole on opposite sides of the neck. Without a doubt it dropped her though as when we walked up to her she was all tangled up from the tumble when she dropped and never moved a muscle after that.
The winch setup again worked great and we had her loaded up and headed to the skinning shed to drop her off. Eli now had 2 animals in the salt and I had 2 as well. A little behind still but it seemed like things were turning back in our favor and the animals did seem to be moving better now that the sun was shining and it was getting warmer.
Looking at the pictures made me realize that we finally had our luggage! We left the house at noon on Tuesday, arrived at Johannesburg at 6 pm on Thursday their time and got our luggage finally delivered to the lodge the next Tuesday late afternoon. The crazy thing is that we could have probably been okay without it because they had done such a good job buying and borrowing clothes for us. My wife had run out of some of her medicine though so it was good to get the luggage for that reason as well.
We get the gemsbok to the skinning shed and it is still fairly early so we head back out.
Kudu is still the number one priority and we have jewel sitting on the front bumper looking for tracks. We end up finding some and again they can tell it is a good bull just based on the tracks. The wind is still holding steady and the tracks are headed in a decent direction for the wind so we start tracking.
Again, it is pretty amazing to see these guys follow a track. It's almost like watching a magician do tricks. I had a hard time believing that it was real. It's not like we were following a track down a trail or down a road, they were wandering around through the brush and somehow they are able to stay on them. We are moving very slowly and somehow they can tell that we are getting close and things slow down even more. We are back to the take a few steps then stop and glass through the brush for a couple minutes then take a few more steps. Somewhere in here we hit a big snag, a flock of guinea fowl. These are just as bad if not worse than the giraffes. They are everywhere and about the only way to deal with them is to wait them out. They are not dumb like the francolins, more similar to a turkey in that they will bust out and make lots of noise doing it if they see you. Maybe worse because they will take flight more easily and they are really loud when they do that.
We are stuck there for probably 15 or 20 minutes just standing there frozen waiting for the flock to move through. I'm tired from standing and it seems that they are pretty much all gone and so I lean over a bit to stretch my back. I stand back up straight and two guineas are way behind the rest of the flock and see me stand up. They take flight cackling and screeching and the whole bush explodes all around us as the other guineas take flight and we can hear some large animals running off through the brush probably 50 or 60 yards in front of us. We start following the track again and sure enough it leads right to where we heard the animals run off and you can tell by the tracks that they are at a full run. Pieter says it is not worth trying to follow them as they will be very wary for at least a couple hours.
Looking through my pictures on my phone these pictures would have been taken right about the time we were stalking the kudu. Pretty good representation of what we were stalking through a lot of the time.
By this time we are past time for lunch which seems to be turning into the norm. It seems that peak animal movement is early in the morning then around noon then again in the evening so it is hard to go back to the lodge at noon for lunch when it seems to be a good time for animal movement. Each day it seems we have gotten later and later going back for lunch so we've learned to start packing snacks. It's nearly 2:00 by the time we get to the lodge and we set 3:00 as the target for getting back after it.
After another good lunch we climb back in the truck and head out. Again with Jewel riding the front bumper looking for tracks. We find a sable track and they can tell by the track that it is a good bull and the wind is good so we offload and start after it. Again we are moving slowly and trying to really take advantage of the steady wind for both scent and noise control. We follow the sable for quite a while and then it turns and starts heading the other direction. The wind is still steady but now it is not in our favor anymore. We do a few circuits looking to skirt the wind but it isn't looking good. We leave Jewel to keep an eye and see if anything changes and head back to the truck.
We drive a bit and I can't remember if we saw some zebras or just crossed their track but I have in my notes that at this point we started after some zebras. We had talked it through and decided that since zebra were near the top of Eli's list that we would let him have another chance at one. We follow the zebra a good ways and it is looking promising when we get a radio call from Jewel that the sable had moved and he was able to get eyes on him and it was a very good bull and that the wind was now in our favor again. We immediately stopped following the zebra track and headed back to the truck. Eli was surprised to see the Pieter was capable of a very brisk walk, both of us would occasionally have to jog a little just to keep up with him. We get back to the truck and start heading that way.
One interesting tidbit is that I never saw any of them us a GPS for anything. I thought one time that they must be using the find me feature on their phones or something to be able to come out on a road several miles from where we went in and within a minute or two at the tops the truck would be pulling up to pick us up. They used their radios but they weren't talking about their location in much detail so it made sense that must be what they were doing. They weren't. They just knew the property so well that just a couple words about where they were at was all that was needed. Even when they left a track to pick it up the next day or had an animal down and left to get the truck, they didn't mark anything with a GPS waypoint like I normally would. They just used the GPS in their heads as they knew the property so well. Pieter did tell a story about leaving a client one time when he was looking for a track and he spent a lot of time finding the track and when he went back to where he had left the client he couldn't find him. He said he walked back and forth for nearly an hour and couldn't find him and finally started calling for him. The client had sat down behind some brush and called back to him from maybe 100 yards away. Pieter asked him where he had been and the client said he had been right there and watched him going back and forth but thought he was still looking for the track so he didn't say anything. Thought that was a funny story.
Okay, all that to say what they do use a GPS for. The dog collars are tracking collars and a few times during the week they would take a collar off a dog and one of the trackers would carry the collar with them. Jewel had taken a dog collar with him earlier so we were able to know exactly where he was and used the GPS tracker to be able to go right to where he was so we didn't risk coming in and blowing out the sable. Somewhere in here I felt a little like the guy from Jimmy Johns showing up to pull the trigger on that monster elk last year. I really wasn't involved in stalking this sable, I had been on the stalk with them earlier but this time Jewel had found it and we were just coming in to pull the trigger. Anyway, we got to where he was and the sable had moved. He hadn't followed it but remained back so he didn't risk bumping it. We then started following the track VERY slowly. They figured he wouldn't be far but we didn't know how far. The wind was still good and that helped a lot but we again were doing the take a few steps then glass for a few minutes type stalk.
We go a couple hundred yards and they think we are getting close. We actually hear the sable's horns clacking on the trees as he is feeding ahead of us. He is very close, for sure less than 100 yards. The very slow stalk turns into an extremely slow one. It is now take a couple steps and glass for 5 minutes. We've gone maybe 50 yards in 20 or 30 minutes and Pieter spots the sable ahead of us. He is bedded down in some pretty thick brush. We take a few minutes glassing him and determine that he is looking away from us. The wind is right and this looks like it is going to be a slam dunk. Pieter gets the sticks setup and I'm on them. I can see him flick his ears and I slowly can make out his back through the brush. The easiest thing to see is actually his horns as they are sticking up above most of the brush. We whisper back and forth about whether I should shoot him through the brush laying down. Pretty much everything is partially obscured by the brush and Pieter doesn't want me to shoot. His quote "It is an expensive animal, we need to wait for him to stand". I'm on the sticks waiting for him to stand for at least 15 minutes. I keep replaying the earlier chance I had at the bedded impala where it went from laying down to out of my visual window in about 2 seconds.
The wind is still good, we wait some more. Finally he starts to shift around a little. He's still bedded but now his neck is completely clear of any brush and you can see his head clearly. I'm still thinking of the earlier missed chance at the impala, I think of the gemsbok earlier that morning that dropped like a sack of potatoes when Eli hit it in the neck on the run. We had watched several YouTube videos on shot placement and one of them that I had discounted at the time had some head and neck shots shown as a preferred shot placement. We were 50 yards away and I was on the sticks and steady and I was shooting a small cannon... I pulled the trigger.
Everyone was completely surprised by the shot except me. Instead of falling over dead on the spot the sable exploded out of it's bed and took off. 110% not what I was expecting. We run after it hoping to possibly get another shot but it is gone. We see the direction it went and hear it running off. It doesn't sound like a mortally wounded animal at all. I'm starting to wonder if somehow I completely missed it or something. I really was expecting to see it just flop over dead. My previous shots on the zebra, wildebeest and impala had all be nearly perfect, I am in shock.
We pick up the track and before long see a tiny little drop of blood. I did hit it, but that sure wasn't much blood. Pieter asked me where I was aiming and I pointed at my neck where I had aimed and he grimaced. Evidently on a sable their spine drops low on their neck with a large muscle mass above it. It sure seemed like I had just shot through the muscle and this was going to be a VERY long tracking job. I marked in red where I aimed. Right in no mans land. On most North American animals and even on some of the African animals that would have been a dead right there instant kill shot. Not on a sable.
We follow the track a little more and Pieter points out the tiniest drop of blood and there isn't a doubt that I did hit him. At some point I was hoping that maybe I misjudged the mane and it was a clean miss but obviously I have drawn blood. I'm immediately questioning my terrible decision making process. When Eli shot the zebra earlier it wasn't really a bad decision, it was poor execution. I think my execution was fine, I'm pretty sure I hit him exactly where I was aiming, it was my decision making that was terrible.
We are maybe 100 yards on the track and now we start to find real blood. Like 1/4 cup splashed on the ground in a spot about the size of a coke can. They aren't super consistent but there is 100% no doubt that it is bleeding pretty good. Not good enough for it to be a mortal wound probably but there is some hope that he is hurt enough to be slowed down enough for us to catch up to him and finish him.
Pieter had gone back to the truck and updated everyone on the status that we were now on a tracking job and he grabbed the .270 left handed rifle that Eli had been using. He checked my rifle and adjusted the scope all the way down to 2.3x and said that we needed to be ready because we could bump him and we needed to try to get another shot into him. He asked me if I was good with him shooting if he saw him and I told him that was 100% fine with me.
We go another 100 yards or so and I'm thinking about it and there is no doubt that Pieter is going to have a much better chance of hitting him than I would if we bump him and there is a close running shot through the brush. I ask him if he would like to switch rifles and he is 100% for it. We are actually in the process of handing the rifles across to each other and the sable bolts less than 100 yards away. By the time either of us get the swapped rifles shouldered he is gone into the brush. Not sure we could have timed that worse if we had time traveled and planned it out. One thing that really strikes me is that a sable is a big animal. That thing was massive. It was a little encouraging that we bumped him because that made me think that he was hurt pretty good and not wanting to just take off and keep going. We still had over an hour before dark and if we could just stay on the track there seemed to be a good chance we could make this happen.
We head off on the track again and it is pretty easy to follow. The ground is sandy and we are still in the thick brush so there are limited options for where he can walk/run. We see some more blood where it looked like he had been standing for a while before he bolted. Another 200 yards or so and we see him again, this time he is maybe 200 or 300 yards ahead of us and on a trot. Pieter shoulders his rifle, takes aim and fires. It's a miss. When we had swapped guns back he had left the scope on 2.3x and the sable was tiny in the scope at that distance with it on that magnification. All the sudden we seem like we have all turned into the bad news bears.
We continue to follow and the blood slows way down. It seems that when he is moving there isn't any blood, but when he stops he bleeds quite a bit. Over the first mile of tracking we see sporadic blood but then we are following the track for another mile without any blood at all. It is starting to get dark and there had been some pretty tricky spots on following the track and I'm loosing faith that we are even on the right track. Somewhere in here we end up maybe 50 yards from a large herd of buffalo and that got a little exciting. Several of them ducked their heads down low in the brush and gave us the stink eye for a bit but then they all ran off. They made quite the racket running off.
Tracking gets tougher in the low light and I'm starting to feel unwell. I still can't believe my terrible decision making and then the comedy of errors that happened early on the track when we had a real chance. By now I'm fairly certain that we are just walking aimlessly. There are more rocks than normal and some grass and it it nearly dark, there is no way we are still on the right track. It gets full dark and Jewel calls me over and points at the ground and say blood. It's too dark to see so I turn the flashlight on my phone and sure enough a large patch of blood where the sable had been standing. We were still on the right track at least!
It was too dark to continue so we headed to a road and radioed to get picked up. It was a pretty depressing ride back to the lodge.
Dinner that night was the tenderloins from the gemsbok that Eli had shot earlier that morning. It now seemed a LONG time ago. Hunting has some of the biggest roller coaster swings of emotions from high to low of about anything I can think of.
I'd heard that gemsbok (oryx if you are in New Mexico) is one of the best tasting wild game animals and it lived up to it's reputation. Absolutely delicious.
The day ended with 6.5 miles walked and me still in a major depression. They told some amazing stories of tracking successes and seemed pretty confident that we were still going to get him. This was much different than tracking Eli's zebra though where we were expecting to find a dead animal, the consensus was that it was going to take some more shooting to get this one on the ground for sure.
We discussed again the option of splitting up so that Eli might have a chance at getting something instead of working the track of the sable with me. Pieter was on the phone again trying to work through our options.
Plan for the morning would be to start on the track at first light and if he could find someone to take Eli out we would split up.
