SOUTH AFRICA: Cruiser Safaris Hunting Report

A Ten Day Plains Game Hunt for the First Timer.
PART 1

Introduction:

During this trip I attempted to keep an abbreviated journal so that when I return home, I can properly sit down, reflect, and offer a hunting report to you, the wider hunting community. I had hoped that I would be able to write with the safari fresh in mind, but literally the day after I arrived home, my wife started labor and our first baby was born shortly after about a month earlier than expected. Fatherhood has since eaten up a lot of my free time in the last couple months as my life is broken down into three hour subsections between feeding the baby and the little sleep she affords us. I have attempted to steal a little time away from the sandman to write to you and I apologize if it is a little self indulgent. However, I will try to write in a way that really brings you along with me. I know the kind hearted of you will forgive me if it is ever dry and I believe a lot of what I say will be a common experience for everyone. But for old times sake, it may be fun to see it again from the eyes of the first timer, and one who very likely is younger than the typical Africa hunter today, apart from all the children either enthusiastically or otherwise brought along with dad. I am 33 and in this case, I was very much the one bringing dad along with me instead of the other way around.

My descent into Africa hunting madness, albeit in its early stages but very likely terminal, came from a general interest in outdoor sporting life. Hemingway was a patron saint in our home. Saltwater fishing and shooting quail with a well loved side by side was our religion. Then at the advent of YouTube, Ron Spomer popped up with his first videos in the Caprivi strip and the Zambezi Delta, pulling viewers through their phone screens to this world. Ron had a kind, accessible, and an “aw-schucks” attitude toward Africa that made it seem inviting, affordable and even practical. Then came the required reading list of the Green Hills of Africa, Horn of the Hunter, and Death in the Long Grass. The combined cultural influence of my youth almost made going to Africa inevitable. Lastly was the economics of it all. Dad was talking about an elk hunt out west and I floated that for the same price we could go to Africa and take four animals in the same amount of time. His interest was piqued. For Christmas I got him a copy of Horn of the Hunter as well, and he was fully converted. We found three others to come along including one observer coming just on the good faith that we typically find fun adventures, and off we went.

I found Cruiser Safaris back in college about a decade ago. At the time, Cruiser was one of the most transparent in pricing. Other outfitters pumped up pricing by the inch, or mysteriously withheld pricing until the negotiation game could be played. It seemed if you happened to get lucky with a decent animal, your safari could go up in price by 30%. While this makes sense to some degree (their own market pressures fluctuate based demand, changing access to concessions and the quality of animals year to year) for the young man in college who is trying to determine whether a plains game safari is at all feasible, I needed more than that. No outfitter would talk to a 22 year old to play hypothetical pricing games ten years out, and I would not want to put them into that position anyway. There are more serious clients to attend to. However, I wanted to go while I was still young. All the old black and white photos of the men that stirred my imagination were relatively young. They looked like me (though maybe skinnier). In going to Africa while still young, I felt that I could be a part of them in some way, where the experience could inform the rest of my life. While my child grows up, a photo of a younger and better looking me would show that I had adventure not at the end, but the beginning. I’m sorry if this sounds insulting, and its probably naïve or arrogant but I found that Africa hunting now is mostly the retired set. It’s an older man’s game. This makes sense. They have the time and the money to do it and they give up less by doing it. I was spending money that would otherwise compound with interest. I was taking time off work that could be used to get further ahead. I feel like often you’ll see don’t wait, go on safari and I agree with this. However, its clearly not the same cost for people in different phases of life. In this way too, I felt that going to Africa meant more. It was a higher price to pay in my life, and as such it mattered more.

The Package:

I called Pieter Lamprecht, the owner of Cruiser Safaris, at 3 in the afternoon mid July from the 16th tee box of the North Course of MacDill Air Force Base about 14 months prior to my departure. I told him that it was time. I had known of him for a decade and had finally the money to make the trip happen. We planned a three animal package to include Kudu, Gemsbok, and Impala over seven days with a three-day Free State add on property of a colleague of Pieter. There I had planned to go for Springbok which had strangely attracted me since high school. I bought half-skull mount of a springbok cull off eBay at 16 and threw them up in my room over an African mask. Mom never said anything but I doubt she liked it. Pieter agreed to the terms and seemed impressed that I had known his outfit for so long. In truth, I waffled on going with Cruiser. I did a lot of research and came close to some others but always came back to Cruiser for their turn key operation. I then coordinated with his wife Lizelle, who ironed out the details. We would go with Africa Sky to get us through with our rifles and take us to their overnight house and in the morning, Cruiser would pick us up. Time ticked on by and eventually, my wife screamed from the bathroom and came out with the pregnancy test. It was positive and we had been trying in earnest for not too long. It was the greatest news of my life, but the due date was projected to be bang on when I would be in Limpopo. I texted Lizelle to please look at the schedule and see if we could move the trip up. My wife even kindly suggest that I just go anyway. That was a test that I passed luckily, and Lizelle moved us up without any issue. Delta on the other hand demanded an additional $1200 to move our flights. Everyone in our party paid this price without complaint. Only one, a father of three, joked that this is a perfect example of how babies are expensive.

We Depart:

Flying Delta from our home town was relatively painless. They followed a checklist for bringing rifles though seemed to lean on us to understand the rules. They asked us if we had a permit, to which we said we did (meaning both the 4457 and SAPs form to be received on arrival) and they did not even check. We opened our guns to slip in the unloaded tag, they checked our ammunition box and allowed it to be checked in our separate checked bag. Another friend flying out of another location experienced the check-in differently. They insisted he pack the ammunition inside his rifle case and refused to believe him that that was against South African protocol. Eventually, they relented wherein he just threw in his ammunition as loose boxes into his secondary checked bag. How he made it through, I do not know how, but he did. In our check-in, they took our rifles to be x-rayed for ammunition, and then kept the cases. A TSA officer emerged from an nondescript door and gave us the thumbs up and from there we were off. I was terribly worried we would miss the “Safari Express” DL 200 from Atlanta to O.R. Tambo. Our connection was an hour and a half in Atlanta and daily afternoon thunderstorms could blow the trip out of the water. Sure enough, our flight out to Atlanta was delayed forty minutes. We picked up time in the air and boarded at breakneck speed. By the time we reached Atlanta, we were only ten minutes late and I was greatly relieved. We flew through the connection and we made it to the gate. My God, you sure can tell who was flying out for a Safari. I suspect people in their excitement dress for the flight as if it is day one of tracking Cape Buffalo. It was really comical and I thought to myself that I was glad I was wearing plain clothes. I would have felt self conscious dressed as Van Pelt in line for boarding. But who can blame them. Everyone was so excited and so happy to just be there, including me.

Upon sitting in steerage at the back of the Safari Express, my Delta application informed me that my rifle had not made it onto the plane. This greatly distressed me because this could either delay the start of our hunt or my rifle would be sent to the Bermuda Triangle never to be seen again. I had built a 30-06 pushfeed Winchester from the 1970s specifically for the trip, restocking the rifle, glass bedding it and installing express sights and a barrel band. It was my romantic impression of safari hunting physically manifested in this rifle, a homage in form factor to the Rigbys, Hollands, Mausers, and Westley and Richards I would never be able afford. I considered it what Larry Potterfield would call the nearly perfect plains game rifle. I spent months finding a load that patterned well and practiced with it until I could shoot reliably just under an inch at 100 yards. It was the Winchester Expedition Long range 190 grain loaded with a Nosler Accubond, surely good enough for any plains game on our list. The gun was something to be proud of safari or not. However, I also learned from Larry Potterfield and from this forum that sometimes luggage for some reason or another doesn’t show up. This is Africa and things don’t always go as planned. I remained stoic and resigned myself to let the chips will fall as they may but kept hope that this was a scanning glitch by Delta. I promised myself that no matter what, I would not lower myself to whining. I would find out in about seventeen hours no matter what. The flight is both miserable and somehow also tolerable as you all know. You sit in a sort of fugue state and time goes by simultaneously slow and fast. You disassociate in the dark, watch a couple movies, and try to sleep. Eventually we cracked the window and I peered out onto the dark continent for the first time. The sun rose and Namibia unfurled below us. I saw the open desert rippling on forever. “That’s it!”, I told my father. “That’s the Kalahari!” He shrugged disinterestedly and rolled over. Eventually, we landed and deplaned.

I had paid Africa Sky for a VIP pickup for about fifty dollars a head. This turned out to be fifty dollars extremely well spent. We were collected immediately off the gangway, whizzed through passport control and brought to the carousel. Delta marked all our luggage as not to be placed on the carousel because it contained ammunition. From prior research, we believed this to be a mistake for South Africa but weren’t in the fighting mood. Our handler said it was very likely that it would come out anyway, but the rifles would be brought to the SAPS office. At this time I still didn’t know if my rifle had made it. Dad had airtags smartly placed in both his rifle and clothes bag and it showed that both were in the airport. My primary luggage with clothes and ammunition came out but Dad’s did not. We waited about forty minutes for the last of the luggage to be put out due to a loading blockage. Then our handler asked an attendant who said that was all the luggage there was. My father showed that his AirTag was about a hundred meters away. The handler looked at the phone and then walked through a restricted door. He re-emerged and took Dad into the bowels of the airport and sure enough they found the bag tucked into a dark corner of a loading car. If we didn’t have this service, it was obvious this bag would be lost forever as the primary staff seemed not too motivated in going the extra mile here. We made our way to the SAPS office and there was a bit of a line. We now were last due to the baggage delay. Gilbert from Africa Sky introduced himself, collected our passports and went into the office. My heart sang as I saw my rifle case emerge from behind the desk. Looks like we had a hunt after all. I also admired the trophy heads inside the office. It really put you into the hunting mood and made me feel that this was a country that did not view our presence as an annoyance. Other passengers, mostly white Americans or Europeans walking past the SAPS office gave us the side-eye, clearly imagining us going out to blast the last Rhino on earth. The officer in charge examined the numbers on the forms and on the rifles and the guns were released to us. All in all it took a couple minutes once it was our turn. The horror stories I’ve seen before were quashed by Africa Sky and rifle permits. We said good bye to our VIP handler, we tipped him and gave him some rice crispies my wife made for the trip, which he enjoyed immediately in the airport waiting area. Then Gilbert brought us and another group to a white van to transport to the Africa Sky lodge.

By now it was dark and this was our first view of Johannesburg. Not much could be seen but we could detect the distinct smell of burning tires wafting into the van. It wasn’t a pleasant smell and it created an alien atmosphere. One of the others joining us in the drive was attempting to hunt Cape buffalo with a revolver in a gargantuan caliber, I cannot remember which. He was incredibly interesting, and very kind. I have no doubt he is a member here. We explained our entry level trip to which he gave a knowing smile and simply said “you’re going to really enjoy yourselves.” In about twenty minutes we passed through the high gates of the compound, stepped out into the lobby which was also an amazing gift shop. Every item referenced the promise of an amazing safari ahead. My crew embarrassingly, but not enough to stop, made short work of the free port served at check-in. We probably had three a piece, but after a long trip we were ravenous for diversion. Our guns were taken away to a safe and we were directed to the dining room.

It was already nearly ten in the evening at this point and we were clearly the last to be seated for dinner. All the other parties eyed us almost suspiciously, I’m not too sure why. Did we not look the part? Where we too loud or in too good of a mood? I promise we were not drunk. Some people are just quiet a strange, I thought to myself. No harm there. Dinner was a choice between steak, fish and schitzel. Everyone unanimously ordered the schnitzel with some wine and a Castle or two. Overall it was a delicious dinner and we ate with good appetite. We immediately returned to our rooms and attempted to sleep. This was a struggle due to the jet lag. I woke up somewhere around 3:30 in the morning and scrolled on my phone until sunrise. At the crack of dawn, I went for a stroll around the grounds and really appreciated the beauty of the spot, listening to the birds chirp and watching the palms sway as the blue of the morning dissipated into a radiant sunshine. It really is an oasis and their handling of our arrival, our rifle permits, and our transfer was smooth as can be. I was extremely impressed. Overall the grounds of Africa Sky are beautiful. They strike a beautiful balance between a modern resort and an “out of Africa” style home. I sent a photo to a British buddy of mine and responded that he expected Sir Ruff Diamond to walk on by at any moment.

Breakfast was also lovely, but best of all they had Bovril, that delightful gelatinous meat tar that I learned to love during my days living in Scotland. No one else liked it but me but this British colonial hold-over found here in South Africa delighted me. The staff informed us that Cruiser would pick us up at 8:30 but in fact he came earlier. A young man appeared in the lobby, scrolling and texting on his phone (presumably coordinating with the outfitter to let them know he had made it.) He wore wildebees short shorts thick as rhino skin, a khaki expeditionary shirt, a ball cap, and a Glock on his hip. He sported a scrubby short beard newly filled in. He cut a figure straight out of the bush war. He appeared preoccupied and quickly shook our hands. I later learned how he had just turned and burned with the previous clients, did some shopping in town and rushed to collect us, all in all still arriving early. I paid Africa Sky at the counter and our guns appeared. They were loaded into a small trailer behind the van. We boarded and off we went.

The total journey from Africa Sky to Cruiser was about four hours in a North-Westerly direction. We passed Pretoria, the outskirts of Centurion, then forked off toward the West progressively gaining in altitude. Limpopo seems flat but in reality it undulates like a great plateau pockmarked with ancient worn down mountains. We passed some small towns dotted with surrounding shanties. Quickly things began to seem remote. The observer among us asked to stop to buy tooth paste. This became a running joke because we had to stop three times in total until he found it, each time another 45 minutes further along. We remarked often how the land reminded us at times of scrubby California or Texas dotted with acacia trees instead whatever similar tree they have over there. This being the deep winter, things mostly were golden in color. In the drive, we really got to know Nathan, our PH. He was to guide dad and me, and had been a professional PH for a year or two and with Cruiser for about 7 months full time. He said he enjoyed his work and preferred it to previous outfitters where clients were less than desirable. “I used to have clients from the Middle East and they would call every single animal a gazelle. They would shoot the animals center of mass and would just ignore me on whether the animal was in their package or not or where to shoot them. They said if they miss left it’s a hit and if they miss right it’s a hit. Each time they would shoot, they would then sit down and expect me to track their animal and finish it. They would then cut its throat when I would drag it over to the truck. It wasn’t hunting to me. They just wanted exotic meat to take home and say they went to Africa but they weren’t hunters. They weren’t nice to either me or the animals.” As we entered the bushveld, suddenly there were no more views, just high fences to left and right covering up impenetrable walls of scrub. The sides of roads began to show some humorous signs. “Patrolled No Poaching Area” one said which seemed to infer that the other areas WERE either poaching areas or unpatrolled area, but not here. Another was a Kudu crossing sign which showed the spiraled horned antelope jumping into the road. Looking at those high fences, the sign seemed kind of silly, but I was just ignorant to the fact that Kudu do not care if a high fence exists or not. We would come to see clear evidence of this disrespect that animals exhibit to the loathed high fence. Impala delicately crawl through dugouts made by warthogs. Leopards cross without any trace or trouble, and even giraffes simply step over them, gently tumbling to the other side. As an aside, one day a truck on the other side of a fence drove up to let us know that one of their giraffes had crossed over. They had no intention of getting him back, they were just letting us know and were simply expecting it to return in a day or two, or maybe never. Just keep an eye out for him. Our PH later showed us a YouTube video of three Kudu bulls jumping from a dead stop at the base of high fence and carried it with ease. They were good shooter bulls too, likely 600 lbs a piece. He explained that if you keep bumping Kudu and eventually reach a fence line, they’ll just slip away on the other side, maybe to never return. “We don’t hunt along fences typically, there’s a lot of space to hunt where the roads and game trails make sight lines that open up to difference areas. While the fences generally contain the game (some species more than others), the fences are mostly to keep people out”, Nathan said. “The animals always find ways, and honestly, bad people too.”

We approached the Cruiser Safari camp after about forty minutes down a dirt road. An old steam powered tractor marked the turn off. We saw some breeding pens to our left that were smaller enclosures a few acres in size with tall golden grass and herds of black shapeless masses. My God, there were Sable and some of the largest I have ever seen. It was actually the largest anyone had ever seen. Pieter Lamprecht was in possession of the largest Sable bull in the world and not only that. Something along the lines of the three of the top five. Sable breeding was his master opus, his true craft. The land and hunting was only part of re-wilding his family’s cattle territory. I say territory because land seems to be too de minimus an expression. We then pulled into the general parking area for the trucks which was a splendid read streak of that iron-rich African dust wrapping up to a parking bay with a wooden canopy and a brick wall hiding grass thatched structure just beyond. Two members of staff, one other PH and a young lady waited with juice on a little plate. I had seen this before online, the sort of ritual of welcoming guests to camp. We hopped out, took a refreshing swig and looked around. Only the young lady spoke english particularly well. The other PH, a burly fellow with a pronounced limp named Fiya, spoke mostly Afrikaans and enough English to be commercially proficient in the business. He was in bad need of a knee replacement, and I winced to think of his pain while on the hunt all day every day as his profession.

We toured the camp which is delightfully pleasant. All structures are brick and mortar with straw thatching creating a classical expeditionary appeal. The main room has a bar and seating area to the right, a pool table in the middle and the dinning table to the left. It is an open air room with the back wall missing, instead opening up to a pool and a jacuzzi area, with some reclined seating, and a pathway leading to the camp kitchen and laundry. The main hall is almost overwhelming with the amount of trophies. We were not used to seeing so many mounted heads and their size was incredible. They take up almost every square inch of real estate on the walls. These were the combined 30 years of hunting from Pieter and his family to include the largest Kudu ever seen, Eland, two problem leopards, a Gemsbok, and a massive Elk taken by bow while on a trip to the US. By this point it was early afternoon. Pieter was not in camp, but his son Christian played host and answered our inane questions. The staff encouraged us not to fall asleep but instead to stay up until a reasonable time.

Nathan and another professional hunter in camp named Renys marshaled us to a small thatch hut overlooking a stream. A long dirt patch ran the length from the stream to a small mound where a wooden target block was mounted. I can with certainty that this was the most nervous moment of the entire hunt. We produced our rifles and one by one took our place to see if our zeroes had held. I shot two rounds creating a rather poor two inch group but rightly two inches high at the 100 yard target. A week before at my own range, I shot a .75 inch group. I had truly felt so much pressure to impress my PH that I was not able to relax. I questioned whether my scope had loosed. “Better not mess with it”, my dad said. We agreed this wasn’t the place to make sudden changes. Dad shot similarly poorly, not in grouping but in shot placement, low to the left. I asked Nathan if he was happy with our shooting and he answered yes without showing any emotion. “It’ll be fine. I’ve had clients show up with their scope in a box with a rifle they’ve never shot before.” That gave us comfort. In front of game, I’ve never really noticed shooting mechanics anyway. The shot sort of just happens, and I hoped muscle memory would prevail over whatever this demonstration of pride turned out to be. On the flip side, the PHs loved my rifle. Christian, the owner’s son spent quite some time handling it. This helped soothe my wounded pride. At least I was the prettiest girl at the dance.

Nathan our PH disappeared, and we were left to relax and sit around the camp. The young woman who served us juice brought out some snacks of biltong, chips, and friend Vienna sausages. Those Vienna sausages were incredibly addictive and quickly disappeared. While sitting in camp, a group of Nyala females walked by and later, a large bull. They tentatively walked past, warily looking at us. They were not tame but clearly not pressured. Christian told us that this was a breeding group. Eventually dinner was served, Impala mince with some potatoes, a salad, and a sort of roll to make a sandwich out of the impala. It was tasty food and the first of a lot of game meat eaten on the trip. I had a romantic idea to sit out and look at the stars after dinner but by this time, exhaustion set in and I was looking for the pillow. I walked into the shower to find a spider about the size of my palm on the side of the shower wall. “Well it looks like this will be my first kill in Africa” I thought to myself, wadding up some tissues and blasting the poor old guy to oblivion. After showering, I laid in bed and looked at the thatched roof above me shining dark blue in the darkness wondering what tomorrow would bring. I felt the air starting to turn cold which brought on sleep only more sweetly.


PART 2 forthcoming.

Day 1:

We woke about 5:30 in the morning, excited and raring to go. We sat and scarfed down a standard breakfast of bacon eggs, and leftover impala on toast. I saw once again we had that marvelous inky black Bovril tar that makes the best breakfast toast one could dream of. Our party was broken up into two. My dad and I would hunt with Nathan, the same young man who brought us in, while the other two hunters would go with Fiya, the limping older PH. This was perfect, as one of the other shooters had his own knee replacement a couple months prior and would not be covering too much ground. Cruiser seemed to have sized us up accordingly. The observer joined in with us too in Nathan’s truck. It was a white Safari converted Toyotas Hilux with all the prerequisite aluminum piping on the front and around the bed. We hoped into the bed and began about a thirty minute drive to Rose Valley, the primary hunting property owned by Pieter.

Rose Valley was divided into two large sections, one I’d describe as relatively semi-open parkland with game trails everywhere leading to water holes, grassy meadows, clearings, and bushy thickets. The other side, what we called “the backside”, was all nasty thorns thick brush with few sight lanes. We commenced our spot-and-stalk loading up our rifles in the back, sitting in our aluminum basket seats while Nathan perched himself on the back right of the vehicle giving hand signals to our driver/tracker Amon. Immediately we saw an incredible abundance of game. “Oh take a look at that”, Nathan said. He pointed to leopard tracks in the dirt. “Don’t see those too often. Leopards are here but they keep to themselves.” Impala bursted across our path every fifteen minutes as we drove along. We wound our way through dirt roads, slowing down to take peaks through sight lanes. If something suitable was seen, the game was on, where upon we would hop of and begin what was most likely a doomed stalk. Zebra was on my list, and Nathan snapped his fingers to stop the truck. He claimed to see some, but in all honesty, I didn’t see anything at all. We began a stalk walking off the road into the thick stuff. Nathan studied the ground, picking out a game trail and following the hoof prints. We worked for a certain amount of time. Time seems to contract during a hunt. I guarantee we had some stalks for an hour or even two but time seemed to slip through your fingers.

Eventually there was a rumbling, I looked up and saw the mass of three zebras thundering away at about forty yards, their bodies mixing with one another’s stripes. They were gone. Well that’s it, Nathan said. We’ve bumped them twice and now that was a good scare. I don’t think we’ll be seeing them again. We pursued anyway but eventually popped out onto a dirt road. The zebra had moved without stopping, and Nathan radioed for Amon to bring the truck around. We drove for a while, then came across what really was picturesque bend in the road where the land beautifully opened up to our left. A light understory created a sort of meadow with sparse acacia trees up to a wall of scrub in the background. We saw two decent impala rams among maybe five females to the far right of the field as we came into view. They spotted us and made a run across the field and stopped. Nathan snapped his fingers at the same moment and the truck came to a halt. The game was on and we all hopped out. Since impala was not on my list, this was my dad’s opportunity. All four of us got low and slowly approached. The impala ran maybe 100 yards across the meadow from their starting positing and the two rams were looking at our direction. It was still early morning and I couldn’t make out much detail. They seemed like light blue silhouettes at a distance. Now, four people on an impala stalk is not ideal but this was our first day, we didn’t know any better and our PH was kind enough to say nothing. This seemingly was how we wanted to hunt, everyone on every stalk every time. It could never last. We positioned ourselves so that a tree midway through the clearing provided cover from the two rams, but far to our right about thirty degrees from the tree were a couple frozen females staring at us. This is never going to work, we all thought, as we made the stalk.

In single file, slowly and bent over as low as we could go, we approached the tree. Once at the tree, there was no more cover and no going back. Nathan seemed to run out of patience. The rams were still frozen and so were the ewes miraculously. Nathan made his move about fifteen yards from tree, popping to the right and putting up the sticks. Dad got on them in a moment and asked for range. Nathan said 100 maybe 150. The observer and I stayed low, I looked through my binoculars at the ram. Take the one on the left. Dad exhaled smoothly, then a loud click range out. Oh my God, he never put a round in the chamber. He quickly realized this, and worked the bolt. Once again, letting out another exhalation then waited. The shot broke after what seemed like an eternity but in reality was about three seconds. I saw sand kick up past it between its legs. The Impala crouched down and ran at full sprint to the right looking like it had dodged an arrow. In the commotion I saw maybe six impala run away to the right after. Had he missed? Nathan exhaled loudly. “It looked good, I saw him gushing.”

We all rose and began our walk over to the impact spot. Once there we realized it was a bit further than 150. It was probably more like a 200 yard shot. Dad had a point blank zero set up for about 275 yards, and despite our poor range session, is famously a precise shooter. If he thought it was 100 yards he would have shot it like it was 100 yards. Nathan looked down at the prints. There were too many of them from all the impala. There was only a couple spots of blood, just tiny specks. We we know it went off this way, so we all pursued. We called up the tracker and all began meandering in the direction of its flight. The minutes passed and we patterned in zig zags like bird dogs. After nearly forty minutes and going about a quarter of a mile it began to sink in to me that this impala may be wounded and lost. Maybe something really was wrong with the scope, or maybe the longer range than anticipated made him hit the impala’s paunch just below the vitals. It was his first time shooting off sticks too. A lot could go wrong. I then heard my dad whistle loudly. I walked back to the site of the impact. Then about twenty feet away simply a little more to left than the direction from which we set off, there was the fallen impala crumpled up, perfectly camouflaged half inside an thorny bush. My god, all that effort and it barely ran at all! It was down dead as a doornail well in sight of the impact spot. Correctly, the miscalculation in ranging caused the round to hit low at the very bottom of the vital triangle but still clipped the front of the lung. It expired almost instantly. We could then see that there was almost no blood at all. A bit of lung or entrail blew out the exit side. That was probably what Nathan saw as gushing blood. As all the other impala flushed, the tracks became too trodden. Too many tracks and not enough blood. The ram was a decent size but then again, I had never seen one in real life before. Everyone was happy that it was a clean kill, one shot and down, the second kill of our safari after the spider.

We brought the impala to hang near a watering hole and continued to do some stalks throughout the morning. We covered quite a lot of ground on foot chasing nothing in particularly, just crossing into large blocks of vegetation, working the wind, strolling about. We spotted gemsbok at a great distance down the road, always looking at us with their ghost mask of a face and disappearing long before we got close. While covering some ground, we spotted a warthog hanging in a tree. This is the leopards’s lunch and the old cat is probably around here somewhere. Nathan explained that only one other time has seen a kill in a tree. The rest of the morning we chased Kudu, Gemsbok, and Zebra, but apart from the Gemsbok that seemingly were laughing at us at a distance and the first party of Zebras we bumped in the morning, there was nothing but other impala.

Eventually, it was time for lunch. We came up on a flooded pan with high grass banks that looked like a crocodile’s dream. The other two hunters and their PH had already arrived, had a made a fire and were cooking some Eland sausages. It was a very picturesque spot and I hung my rifle whimsically from the branch of a tree and kicked up our feet. “Keep your rifle close. Sometimes a good warthog will walk out for a drink and you can blast him over lunch.” This was an exciting prospect, and I kept my binoculars close while waiting for any action. We sat there for about three hours waiting for the temperature to start to fall. The other group had no luck on the other side of the property and were excited to hear that there were impala under every fallen log on our side. Everyone remarked on how much game we had already seen. As hunters in the American South, we had seen more animals in one morning than you would see all season back home. Suddenly, far to our left, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a massive sable emerge from the golden tall grass and hesitantly approach the water. He eyed us from about 150 yards away. He looked to be about a 40 incher. I was astounded at his size, the thickness of his horns, and the ebony black of his shining coat. What an animal. “Do you want him?”, Nathan asked. “You can take him, go ahead. He’s definitely a shooter.” Nathan was half joking. He would have loved for us to take that Sable. Pieter’s sables go for about $6000, more than the average in Limpopo but my god, what a trophy. “This one is a rejected breeder. The young ones that look to be non-performers in the breeding pen get put out here. There is self-reproducing population here that they join if potential breeder bull looks like he’s not going to break 50, he gets dumped here to improve the gene pool but he’s a shooter all day, and a good one too.” I got on the sticks and put him in my crosshairs. I held on his shoulder and felt the mild almost imperceptible sway of the sticks. I was never going to shoot him. I could never afford to, but I wanted to put an animal in the scope of the rifle on the sticks with a calm mind before I would do it again under time pressure and adrenaline. I was incredibly worried about my performance on the sticks in the moment. The sable looked at me through the glass of the scope. You’ll be someone’s someday and they will be thrilled to have you, I thought. I would like to point out that for the entirety of the trip, we saw extremely high trophy grade Sable almost every single day. They weren’t going out of their way to be shot, but I got the feeling that they were not too pressured. I could have shot a 45-50 incher guaranteed if I was chasing the tape on this trip. If you want to shoot Sable, these are hands down, authoritatively, the best Sable genetics in Africa, and they are in abundance across a huge swath of territory. You very well may shoot your dream Sable on day one and then wonder what to do for the rest of your time. I am that confident.

After lunch we went to the other side of Rose Valley after a short ride in the Hilux. Once again, we were targeting Kudu, Gemsbok, and Zebra. Since dad and I both had Kudu and Gemsbok on our list, the next animal to be encountered was to be my opportunity. Here hunting in the “back section” of Rosevalley was the Africa I was warned about and had seen in countless hours of Africa Sun productions on YouTube. It was almost exclusively dense scrub forest with cutting thorns. There were no sight lines longer than thirty feet. How the hell can I get a shot off in here? As we crouched, hunched, and but scooted through the walls of thorny growth, we twice heard rumbles, crashing and saw dust plume upwards from shady grooves. “Cape Buffalo” Nathan said. I thought to myself, how could anyone possibly have the opportunity to shoot one? You bump them and they run forever. They run before you can see them and you come within spitting distance if they want to kill you! We came within thirty feet of angry snorting wildebeest half a dozen times. Dad became intrigued by them. It was arduous and slow going, ducking, and scraping by in the brush. Our rifles were getting a bit of beating and honestly was quite a lovely time. We live for this.

As we cleared one block of vegetation, we came upon a dirt road. Nathan suddenly shook with excitement. He threw down the sticks and whisper/screamed, “there’s a massive Kudu about to come out onto the road!!!!” I got on the sticks. “My God”, I thought, “my first African animal is going to be a Kudu! The ultimate!” My heart was pounding but I felt that stone cold focus come over me. I was perfectly in the pocket with the rifle, good rearward pressure, my scope was rock solid, no wobble. “I don’t see him.” All I saw was some of the scrubby brush and some trees breaking up the outline of the road. “You don’t see him???” “No…” “How can you not see him???….. Shoot!!!” I looked as hard as I could. What was wrong with me, I thought. Are they really such masters of camouflage? Is adrenaline blinding me? “Shoot!!!” Nathan said with even more urgency. “I don’t see him”, I said. Nathan began to laugh. “No, there’s no Kudu.” I turned around and dad was laughing too. I shrugged and laughed at myself. Nathan had pulled a good prank on me but I didn’t feel bad. I had passed the test. Nathan told me that some people would just put a round down because he said shoot. I told him there is no way I would shoot at something without seeing what the hell it was. He just smiled and smirked and off we went hunting phantom Kudu for the rest of the evening. Toward the twilight hours I saw a good Gemsbok right off the truck, but if I would have dismounted, he would have been gone. In the very last light, Nathan decided that it was about time to run back and collect our imapla hanging and get back to camp. Just then I heard a shot in the distance. It sounded look one of our friends bagged something. We collected our impala and raced off to camp to see what it was and how it went down. It turned out that another buddy in the group also bagged an Impala. We ran out to their truck in the parking area, shined our flashlights into the bed and remarked how similar the rack was to ours. They could be cousins or for all we knew, the second ram in the group that we shot at this morning. We weren’t surprised with all the impala we had come to see that day. We returned to camp happy and tired. The staff told us that another group in camp got a Kudu at last light too and it was taking some time for them to load it up in the darkness. This excited us instantly. Our first day hunting and someone had already zapped a Kudu! We ate dinner alone just the five of us after waiting all of thirty minutes in hopes that the Kudu would roll into the camp. Ultimately, we didn’t have the strength. We were all exhausted and went to bed. Nathan told us that we would be rolling out early tomorrow to go some property out in the mountains to look for Kudu. It would be a bit of drive, three hours, but reports suggested that it would be crawling with mountain Kudu, the big guys, and would be a good opportunity for Zebra as well. The idea of driving so far was a shock, but we knew we were not really in much control of the hunting plan. We went to bed and dreamed of Kudu in the mountains.

I'm enjoying your story. I hunted with Cruiser in 2016. Peter is top drawer in my book. Is "Tiny" still doing the cooking? Back then we referred to those massive Sable as "Peter's Pets."

Day 2

At 4:30, we rose eagerly, ate a lovely breakfast of eggs, toast, some leftover game meat with bacon, and packed into Nathan’s Hilux to roll out to the mountains. The drive was pleasant in that we saw a lot of the territory we saw coming in during the soft blue early hours now. We realized, and told Nathan, that starting our hunt at 8:00 was probably not ideal for Kudu. The best action would likely be near dawn itself when the air was cool and the Kudu would be moving down the mountains to eat and drink. Nathan said we were right about this, but it could not be helped. The game warden could only meet us at the front gate at 8. Game warden? Where the hell were we going? We pulled off the main road and up winding dirt roads to a large fenced area. The sign said no hunting. I asked Nathan what this meant and he explained that we were in fact allowed to hunt, as the game warden of what was a large estate eco-lodge would be overseeing our hunting activity. We would be actually helping them cull animals.

The area was a massive territory ripped right out of Lion King. It had a lot of verticality with interesting mini-biomes of saddles, scree covered peaks, running riverbeds, open savannah, and scrubby cliffsides. Perched on the cliffsides were what looked like multi-million dollar mansions, spaced miles apart. The game warden explained that this was a place for rich people from Joberg to come commune with nature. There were camping sites, hiking trails and game drive routes, but the rich people want to be able to go for their hikes without being eaten by lions, and they didn’t want their children stolen by leopards. Thus, the mammals need hunting pressure to maintain healthy numbers and ensure that the land isn’t over grazed. “I fly over the property a few times a year by helicopter and we assess heard size and health. We need to reduce the zebra population by ten percent this year, and the Kudu are getting out of control too.” This game warden was the real deal, a full advocate of hunting as a critical part of conservation. “I told the clients (meaning the residents of the eco-lodge) that either we allow hunting or we need to bring in literally tons of feed to maintain the population on a property of this size. It was a matter of money. They didn’t want to pay what was a massive sum. The animals would also become tame then, coming to feeding spots and acting like pets. I then said well if you don’t feed them you will see sick and starving animals on your game drives. They refuse to bring in lions which would solve all this immediately, so the only way is to allow limited, safe, controlled and fully supervised hunting. The result is what you can see. Healthy animals not over pressured by hunting but very much alert. You are our lions and we’re grateful you’re here to help us manage this animals. This is my job. The residents still hate it though. They’re usually a bunch of greenies. Don’t be surprised if they call me to complain while we are out here.” This explanation was absolutely fascinating. This made perfect sense to us, but to people who want to pretend they do literally live in Lion King without the lions, they had a purely emotional opposition to hunting and that was fine. We don’t expect to change whats in people’s hearts, and typically very good hearts at that, just what’s in their brains.

We drove by an open grassland with two groups of blesbok, about fifty in total, and about seven zebra standing about. This very much felt and looked like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, the Africa you had seen in videos of Kenya and Tanzania. This was that beautiful open land dotted with acacias that make that perfect postcard. I eyed the zebras. Nathan noticed my attention on them. “Don’t worry. Those Zebras will likely be there for a while. We’ll go for kudu for a bit then come back and see if we can get one for you.” We drove for a while up to the highest peak of the property and parked the truck across a tight valley with high verticality. We all pulled out our binoculars and began to glass. “We look for the shininess of the horns as they move. It’s hard to see their bodies, but their shining horns give them away.” I have never noticed how many branches look exactly like the spiral of a Kudu’s horns until I glassed for them the very first time. By now it was almost ten in the morning and we just began our first effort of actually hunting in earnest. I figured the morning was pretty much shot, but it was an exercise in learning to glass for Kudu in the least. We glassed for nearly two hours until noon. This was fun, and we whispered funny stories, joked and laughed at ourselves. Not a single Kudu stirred.

The game warden sitting with us was puzzled. Let’s drive to another location and glass there for a little bit. We drove to another vantage point, sat for nearly thirty minutes with no luck. By now it was noon and getting hot. We began a long and bouncing descent of roads that were barely there and often filled with boulders and gouges. On the way down we spotted Giraffes, Nyala, Impala, and a few Zebra busting into the woods. It really did make for a beautiful game drive. Lets drive over to this shoulder, the game warden suggested. We popped across a field and came into a saddle between two peaks. If this was the rut, we would have found the bulls now. Nearly ten Kudu cows walked cautiously away from us at a distance of about fifty yards. “Well we found Kudu. Strange. I see Kudu bulls really every single day. Let’s see what happens in the afternoon.” Nathan piped up. “Let’s see if we can get a Zebra before lunch!”

We drove to the base of the hills with the sprawling savannah before us. A grove of trees hugged the feet of the hills and wrapped across the savannah. We were in a low rocky basin that rose up to meet the open fields. We expected that once we crested the rise, we would be able to see some Zebra and make a stalk. We dismounted and began to walk up the rise. We did our impala hunting formation, staying in line with each other, myself up front, rifle at the ready next to Nathan with the sticks. I could hear my dad and his friend whispering to each other about fifteen yards behind me. All of us were looking ahead and to the right to where at any moment, we expected to be able to see into the savannah. Suddenly a crashing sound to our left, about fifty yards away and crossing in front of us were a mob of three Zebra, angry, running , and dashing to get to the open. We all froze. We never saw them in the trees and had already busted them. We waited a minute or two and began a slow advance. The zebras did the same, using the rise to their advantage, the approached and looked at us for a distance about 50 yards ahead of us poking just their ears and eyes over rise. We stood motionless. Of course they could see us, and the wind was against us. This was a standoff. They were sizing us up. How was this going to go? The large stallion snorted and flicked his ears. Eventually he ran off behind the rise and this engagement was over. We walked on finally getting the savannah into view. They had reached the center of the grassland about 1000 yards away and were among the fifty blesbok using the herd for protection. Well that was intense. Let’s make a go at them from a good position and with the wind in our favor. It’ll be tough with all those eyes.

We hopped in the truck and drove along a road and the base of the hill about a mile down the way and curving with the feet of the hills. We parked behind a large tree, and this time Nathan and I would do the stalk alone. The zebras were now about five hundred yards away and looking at the truck. We started the stalk, bent over as low as we could putting an acacia tree between us and the zebras. I was huffing and puffing. My lungs were compressed by bending over and crouch walking in an awkward way. We did this for about 150 yards. As we drew closer the Zebras rose out of the grass. We needed to get lower for concealment. Nathan asked me if I had ever done the butt crawl before. I said I had see it on the internet but had never done it myself. He got down and said put the gun in your lap and drag your butt like me. We scooted for about another two hundred yards. Quickly it became apparent that the tall grass was not tall enough. “I really thought the grass was a lot taller.” It was no more than about a foot tall here. “Over there!” A small clump of grass seemed to grow around what was probably an old ant hill. It was about two feet of grass in an area about ten feet long. By now every single animal was looking at us. We made our approach as slowly as possible toward the cover. About halfway there, one group of blesbok at about our eleven o’clock ran across in front of us, spooking almost the other half at our one o’clock. “This might be good.” Nathan said. “The zebra didn’t run. Hopefully they stay separated and wont get busted by the blesbok now.” This was hopeful nonsense. By the time we reached the cover. The zebra had busted and were now running toward us strangely at a diagonal. Nathan got ready. We telepathically communicated that if they came to a good angle and distance, this was our moment. He opened up the sticks and I got on them. They stopped about two hundred yards away. The one on the right. Nathan said. I got on him but the second I steadied the rifle, they busted again, this time running in the complete opposite direction with a full stampede of nearly fifty blesbok. The ran about a thousand yards away securing themselves on the other side of the Savannah in the shadow of a mountain. I could hear them laughing at us along the way. So began a deep hatred of Blesbok in me, the spoilers of the savanna.

Nathan sighed. “There were too many eyes and the grass got really short on us. It wasn’t going to happen.” I reflected that in that stalk through the not so tall grass, I really felt like a predator, like a big cat closing in for the kill. I felt that every smothered breath bent over crouching and crawling was payment for something primeval and ancient. We walked back to the truck. The guys had watched, cheered and laughed and commiserated though their binoculars. I left dad my pair as he broke his vortex while descending the bumpy roads. It hit the bed of the truck and one eye lost focus never to be resolved. Nathan said, we can try one more go at them. “They’re not afraid of vehicles here”, said the game warden, because of all the resident game viewers. “We can drive up and shoot them from the truck if that’s okay with you.” This was very much not okay with me, but the game warden really did see this as a cull. It was his job to get a zebra in the salt today and if I didn’t get the job done, he probably would have done it himself the moment we left the property. I hemmed and hawed that it would not be right for me but I’ll do what I have to do. Nathan detected immediately what this meant. He said “come on, we’ll give it a shot.” We drove back the way we came, nearly to the position where the zebras busted out of the trees. “Let’s go”, and we hopped on out to pursue on foot.

I had this sinking feeling in my heart that this wasn’t going to work. I didn’t have confidence in my shooting ability now for some strange reason, and I didn’t have confidence in this stalk. We walked down the road, and the zebra and blesbok busted but this time running across us rather than away from us. They seemed to know something was wrong but didn’t know where we were. In doing this, they closed the distance from about four hundred yards to about three hundred yards. “Okay, you know the drill.” A lone acacia tree stood ahead of us about 100 yards away. We bent over as before putting the tree between us and the zebras. Halfway there, we crouched down to our knees. Nathan popped out and glassed the zebras. “There is the big one there on the right. Let’s go.” We rose and crouch walked toward the tree. I could feel my heart start to race but inside I felt a focus and calm. It was weird flow state between nervousness and resoluteness. At this point in my life I had only shot quail and hogs. I sat in tree stands for tiny Florida deer with no luck over the years. This was my first large animal. The tree was rapidly approaching. I was hoping for a moment to calm myself down, catch my breath in the cover of the tree, but the wind was against us. Then, about ten yards before the tree, Nathan popped out to the right and opened the sticks. What? This is before the tree! I am not ready! Is this the time already? I put the rifle on the stick without fouling it up in the course of about two seconds. I looked through the glass and saw the three zebra at about 150 yards. Nathan whisper, “the big one on the right, send it.” I found the crosshair, exhaled and held my breath, put backward pressure into the rifle, putting into the pocket of my shoulder, and then put the crosshair on the Zebra’s sergeant’s stripes. The shot came in about another three seconds. The rifle recoiled, I immediately cycled, and got back onto the scope. I couldn’t see anything. All of the zebras had bolted and were no longed in the reticle. I came off the scope too see the action and saw a blur of black and white blur off to the left. I then saw the big one running, shaking his head behind the other two zebra. They made a large half circle then I lost sight of him.

I wondered if I had blew it, missing or worse, maiming the poor creature. “Oh man,” Nathan said, sinking my heart. “You hit him hard” immediately raising my spirits. I couldn’t see the zebra’s behavior at the impact, and I couldn’t see where it hit. “I can’t see him”, I said. “That’s because he’s down. Good shooting.” We walked over and saw the zebra fallen over on it’s side, mouth slightly agape, eyes glazed already. He was shot right in the shoulder. The game warden, dad, our tracker and observer drove up after a few minutes. They had watched our stalk and the shooting from afar. The game warden craned his neck over the downed Zebra with a big grin. “That’s exactly where you want to shoot him. That’s right in the heart.” I felt thrilled that I had done it and even more so because the game warden seemed impressed at best, and satisfied in the least. “He was right,” I thought to myself. “It was good shot.” I was amazed how he still ran what was probably 100 yards in all, albeit 50 yards in a straight line away with a destroyed heart. He did turn out to be a nice stallion, not that I could compare with anything. He had a heavy neck, good weight and a thick mane. Beautiful stripes, too. Amon, our tracker quickly started pulling on his legs and mane to pose him for the trophy photo. This was my first African animal (after the spider of course), an iconic one too, and it was a clean kill done the right way in my opinion.

We loaded up old stripey in the back of the truck and took him to the skinning shed. The game warden spoke to the skinner and told him to save the vitals. He wanted to show us where the shot had hit. The skinner was an older black man with a kind face. He gave me a big smile and a thumbs up. “He seems nice”, I said to the game warden. “Oh yeah, what you see there is thirty years of managing this property. He knows everything. He’s the institutional knowledge.” The game warden clearly had a deep respect for his staff, at least this very man before us.

By now, it was about two o’ clock, and we drove to a game viewing gazebo sort of thing on the edge of the savannah for a packed lunch. We asked the game warden about his background and his thoughts on life in South Africa. He had become a PH and went to university studying game and environmental management. That was a very specific degree and one that fits remarkably well for his job. “Yes, there are too many people in the program. Probably only three in my class actually got a job doing it. Most study it, then go on to do something else.” It seemed that passion really drove this career. This man didn’t have to spend his day hunting with us, though maybe it was a condition of the community to supervise hunting, but it was obvious that he was enjoying it. Suddenly his phone rang and he broke into a quick conversation in Afrikaans. Apparently a resident had spotted us and complained that we were hunting in the morning for kudu. The game warden said that the report was useless for two reasons. Firstly, he was overseeing legal hunting and was in the vehicle, and secondly, how could he interdict poachers if the call was for a sighting this morning! “This happens all the time. The people complain not only about what they don’t understand or don’t like, but they don’t even complain in a useful manner. Not all the residents are like this. Some understand and grew up hunting and see it as part of conservation, but they are always very quiet and nice people.”

After a long lunch of lazing around, waiting for the sun to get a bit lower. I rested happy that Mr. Zebra was hanging in a shed nearby and dreamt of what all my rifles and shotguns would look spread out over his hide. I had seen a video from Holland & Holland or maybe it was Westley and Richards where a customer requested looking at some double rifles and the clerk threw down a zebra hide with a flourish over the Victorian green felt table and gently laid down a handmade buffalo killing masterpiece. I wanted to do that with my dinky AYA side lock and basement-butchered Winchester Model 70 highland stalker wannabe. I wanted to pretend I was fancy. While the guns may be imitations of classics, the Zebra will be real and shot by me after all, and after long hard work in the Savanna’s tall grass chasing a herd that definitely was not interested in sticking around.

Our bellies full and after chatting for hours about South Africa’s complicated history and current politics, we loaded up and drove all the way back into the high hills. We parked at the same spot we had observed this morning. This time it’s spot the kudu part 2. We sat for maybe an hour and a half. The sun began to sink, by now it was maybe 4:30 turning the world golden in the African winter afternoon, when suddenly Nathan says “I got one.” Sure enough, about twenty yards below the ridge line gracefully descending from the summit toward our right side, you could see the glint of a bull’s spiral horns. He was browsing, moving his head slowly, making his horns seem heavy. We lasered the kudu. At this range, the bull was about six hundred yards away. Really? It looked a hell of a lot further. I had just shot my animal, and because we both had Kudu on our list, dad was up. We assessed the situation. The Kudu would have to descend a large scrubby gulch and cross a flowing stream to approach us directly. We watched him for several minutes. Which way was he going? If he was going to continue to browse in this direction he would continue moving across us and eventually crest the hill going to the other side. He could also turn around completely and head back toward the left. Either way, it looked like a shot from this position was not going to happen and even if it did, the presentation would not be ideal. The gamekeeper and Nathan held a sidebar in Afrikaans. Then the gamekeeper piped up. “Okay, we’re going to drive around valley and come up on the other side of this mountain. If he keeps moving forward, we’ll be in a good ambush position to get a shot at him.” We did exactly that, passing some beautiful waterbuck by the stream that ran through the valley, and popped up to a saddle on the other side of the ridge.

We parked the truck and glassed. It was now about 300 yards essentially straight up to the top of the ridge. We anticipated the Kudu would emerge about halfway down from the summit before a drop off to where the ridge becomes a sheer cliff. He could crest, we imagined, horns catching the failing sun and begin walking down the hillside. When about 200 or 250, he would give us a good broadside, if presenting a window between the scrub. We held our breaths in anticipation. We kicked the red dirt to see the wind in our favor. This would be the spot. Behind us another mountain erupted in steep verticality another 300-400 yards straight up. To our left the valley opened up and plummeted far below leading for miles to the open savanna of Mr. Zebra’s former home. We kept our eyes fixed on the ridge and waited and waited and waited. Eventually, at nearly dark, the game warden and Nathan began speaking in Afrikaans again. We knew this meant the game was up. They were just being polite in letting us know that Mr. Kudu declined our invitation. “You know they call the Kudu, the grey ghost of Africa”, the game warden began. This is a phrase I had heard a thousand times in books and on the internet. “Oh yeah?” I said, not letting them in on it. “Yes, sometimes they just disappear. They are good at that. It makes the hunt more rewarding.” Dad and I smiled and shrugged. It was only day 2, and I was thrilled to had a zebra in the bad and to have actually hunted and seen Kudu in the mountains. Mountain hunting is it’s own flavor and I was expecting the totality of our hunting to be in scrubby flat Limpopo properties with a lot of animals but not with pretty views. This was the ultimate spot. It looked and felt like the Africa of imagination. If there was a rhinoceros grassing in the valley below, he wouldn’t have looked an inch out of place.

We started the drive out of the mountains in the dark, passing the entrance gates to the property. Just next to the entrance, Nathan hit the breaks hard. A massive waterbuck was sitting just on the outside of the high fence with a couple cows. I shined my flashlight at the windows and caught the reflections of his gleaming retinas in radiant green. What a spread and thick bases too. This was a massive trophy. Nathan admitted this was one of the bigger ones he had ever seen. The cow went first and jumped over the high fence onto the property we were just hunting with ease. The bull then did the same, and bounced up on the other side and ran into the inky black tall grass. “I’ll remember him”, Nathan said and we set off back home to Pieter’s main house contented to have our striped friend in the back.

We pulled over for gas in a truly dark town where only the odd lightbulb illuminated black entranceways. It was not the least bit strange to see a Zebra in the back illuminated by dim phosphorescent light hanging over head as the smell of diesel floated by. I realized that in this simple moment, I was truly happy, gazing at the fallen zebra in the back of Hilux, in a dingy gas station, surrounded by oil stained concrete and the black void of a thousand miles of nothingness. I was the happiest I had been in a long time. I really felt like I was in Africa and on an adventure, communing with so many sportsmen and writers before me through a shared experience. We made it home and regaled the camp with the zebra stalk and how the kudu gave us the slip. We met the young man who got the Kudu in the dark the night before, but he was not too talkative. I had a drink of port and toasted my first African animal and slept one of the best sleeps of my life.

Super article. Best . J.

Man, keep it coming. Very enjoyable.

SCHUNTER73 said:

Man, keep it coming. Very enjoyable.

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thank you! I have it all written but with a lot of typos as you can see. Some have snuck into the posts. I’ll keep posting as I proof the rest of the days.

Wow! You really need to talk with African Hunting Gazette and submit an article. You write very well. Keep it coming.

I hunted with Pieter’s crew in 2018 and loved it.

This is a fantastic read! Keep it coming and thank you for sharing.

Really enjoying your writing style. your first safari is coming along fantastically.

Thanks for the positive feedback, everyone. I really appreciate it and will keep posting the trip. As I re-read it, I notice a million grammar and writing errors that my eyes just skipped over when writing and posting. I wish I could go back and edit it but there is a 30 min limit after posting. I ask you guys to do me the favor of ignoring mistakes as they come up lol.

Day 3

We woke up at 6am, had breakfast and were informed that we would be hunting just over the road, in a nearby property targeting Gemsbok. We had discussed with Nathan about how the properties work, what preferences he had, and how he liked to hunt them. Pieter ultimately made all the decisions on where clients hunted and he made them based on the success of the hunt, their interests, and physical ability. We were more than happy to walk up to ten miles a day or more and that meant we were the travel team. Our other team had one man who could barely walk after a recent knee surgery and another who was happy to shoot from the truck as he was used to hunting hogs from a swamp buggy, it was natural for him. Without any judgement, that clearly wasn’t the way we intended to hunt and Pieter had also determined this.

We drove through some large gates and onto the property. The first area was mostly open with little tree cover. There was plenty of cover from shrubs and trees but the overall vegetation was less dense than Rose Valley. Suddenly we saw the ghostly white and black face of a gemsbok looking at us at about three hundred yards. We halted the truck and the stalk was on. We proceeded through the semi open parkland cruising along, working the wind, and winding toward where we had seen the gemsbok. There was no mistake he had seen us though. I began to find that if you saw that face, the element of surprise was gone. You cannot see the face without it looking right at you. After walking quite the distance it was obvious he had ran off without stopping and there would be no catching him now.

We called the truck around and proceeded deeper into the property entering an area with more tree cover. We saw a giraffe flailing along a fence line. Was he stuck? Nathan got his radio ready, this could be an incident. The poor creature was really agonizing over the fence, his neck wrapped in the top wire. We approached, the giraffe looked at us and disentangled himself with incredible ease. He then eyed us for a bit, then finding that we meant him no harm, he put his neck back into the wire. He was scratching himself! Oh well, that was a relief to see and off we drove. We stopped after a while, dismounted without seeing anything, and decided to proceed into a vegetation block following a game trail. We proceeded for an unknown distance, keeping quite and keeping in line peeking into each clearing and sight line, anticipating that Mr. Gemsbok would be there. Nathan said that this game trail meanders toward a watering hole. As the watering hole came into view, we could see a group of Eland including one large shooter bull. Nathan asked if anyone wanted it, we could swap a Kudu for it. We said no and just watched them for what was likely five or ten minutes. We had favorable wind and great concealment and could have gotten on the sticks easily. Though we didn’t shoot the Eland, we definitely felt as if we hunted them. It was an impressive stalk with good use of tactics. Nathan’s skill was on full display. Dad and I, based on hunting experience with pointers used the term “birdy” to refer to Nathan’s shift in attitude when he sensed game. He focused, walked with clear intention, looked at the ground, kicked dust, and peered out from under his ballcap visor. He was birdy as a gun dog.

“You never see Eland unless you are not hunting them”, Nathan chirped with and exasperated tone. “I was hunting them all last week and they just weren’t around.” This would have been the moment if one was on our list. Eventually the Eland moved on and we walked up to the watering hole with no sign of Gemsbok. Oh well, let’s drive on and see what we see. We walked into another block and saw two giant porcupines. Nathan opened up the sticks and motioned for dad to take the animal. He did so with a childlike smile on his face, and dad laughed saying he wasn’t interested in shooting one. Nathan whined at this. He really wanted something in the bag for the morning, even if it was a comical animal. “You don’t see them too often!”, he chimed.

We walked further into the block and saw another wonderful shooter waterbuck. He was at about fifty yards. I could have thrown a rock at him. He didn’t give us much time, and thundered off into the direction we were going. We expected his flush would have spooked everything, and we were right. It was a ghost town from there on out. We walked until we reached a dirt road and called our tracker to bring the truck around. Another failed stalk. Well not even that, just a walk. We hopped in and rolled slowly down the road. Some Zebra busted out flushing into the bush. Then after a while, we saw a gemsbok run from across the road and into the vegetation block. We halted the truck and leapt off. Dad was still up for the next opportunity as he also had Gemsbok on his list. We proceeded down the trail until we met the road at a T intersection. We saw movement right, and all looked. There was a warthog running off at about sixty yards kicking up dust and making a commotion. We then looked left. My God, it’s the Gemsbok! He was right there at maybe 100 yards looking right at us quartering toward. The sticks came up and dad rushed to get on, landing on them in an field expedient but technically incorrect manner in the course of half a second. However, too much time elapsed and the Gemsbok bolted off. If only we had looked left first we could have had the shot! We laughed at how the warthog saved the Gemsbok.

We then came to an area with long power lines, the high voltage ones that cross the countryside bringing power from one city to another. This power comes from Botswana and flows to Thabazimbi and on into greater Limpopo. The government cuts the large areas for maintenance of the lines. They make incredible sight lines for animals. This is my honey hole, Nathan said. “We love a good honey hole.” “Every sportsman has one”, Dad said. We drove the road and saw gemsbok probably a thousand miles away as well as maybe 75 blesbok. We never dismounted, nothing was working. The big sight lines means that everything can see you too and a long way coming. It became essentially a blesbok game drive and by the time we were in position fort the gemsbok, they had completely disappeared, likely running without stopping once again. Damn blesbok, spoilers again.

By now it was already noon and it seemed our morning hunt was only virtual on that Eland and Waterbuck. We had lunch but were told it had to be quick. We were driving an hour and half to sit in a blind for Kudu. Oh really? That kind of stinks, we thought to ourselves. The mountain glassing, while passive, was much more engaging. However, back home we have sat in blinds for Osceola turkey for literally days. It is a legitimate form of hunting, albeit not glamorous. We made the drive out to a property with a beautiful Cape buffalo painting on the front gate. The property owner came out, shook hands with Nathan and gave us one of their workers. Nathan explained this is customary to keep everyone honest. If we wound an animal, we cannot and would not go back to say that we missed. The worker seemed unenthused and sat on the earth and attempted to sleep the entire time. I don’t blame him. What else was he supposed to do? Tell us stories? The blind was a camouflage tarp around a tight grove of trees and shrub thickets. We could not see through it and had to pop our heads up to see what was going on. The expected firing area was about 100 yards away from the blind. I got on the sticks before things got active and sized up the image down range. We sat down and waited.

For two hours nothing really happened. I occasionally popped my head up. Eventually some zebras came in from the right into the shooting lane. About thirty minutes later, red gemsbok arrived. Then about an hour before dark, four kudu cows came in, but no bulls. Once dark was upon us, we radioed for Amon who had fallen asleep. Nathan got frustrated at the poor fellow, and shook his head and likely cursed in Afrikaans. Amon required repetitive hailing, but eventually he crackled through with a whispery and tired “okay.” We drove home not too enthused with the blind experience, but ate Kudu steaks for dinner from another hunt. We heard that one of our other party managed to take a Gemsbok! The shooter is a wonderful and loveable man, so I decided to spring a little prank that I had prepared.

When you engage with Cruiser for a safari, they send you a request list for things you’d like. This guy had the wild idea of asking for Fresca, a drink likely not found on the African continent, but also, what a bizarre choice for a safari drink! Naturally, I stowed a can in my luggage, slipped it to his PH and told it to give it to him in congratulations. The PH was very confused but did as requested. Our friend immediately exploded in joy. “How did you get this??” The PH shrugged, raised his eyebrows and hobbled away, unaware of the significance of the joke or the part he played in it. That was also the night that we meet Bob the Australian. Sometimes you mean someone so gregarious and joyous, you feel like you’ve met your long lost uncle. Bob was such a man. With a booming voice, and such a pleasant temperament, he would lighten any conversation, and likely annoyed to no end any curmudgeon or Scrooge he come across. He immediately became my favorite person in camp. We chatted and laughed, and enjoyed the night until sleepiness hit around ten o’clock and off to bed we went.

Day 4

After breakfast, Nathan told us that Gemsbok was still on the menu, and so we were going back to the same property across the road and hopefully get one bagged. We entered the middle of the property and hopped off to walk a game trail. This wound for a few hundred yards then opened into a clearing with short grass and tall trees. Suddenly three gemsbok sprinted from our right, across the opening. Nathan brayed like a goat and one of them stopped. Nathan opened up the sticks but by the time dad started to get on them, he moved on. We pursued them through the entire block until they popped out into the grand opening of the power lines and their delineating hedgerows. We crouched down and took stock. There were far too many blesbok to put a stalk on them. The herder around the gemsbok and whats worse, positioned sentries outside the herd to form a recon picket. Damn blesbok, again!! I will add blesbok to my package next time just to remove one from the earth and reduce the surplus population! Seriously, you guys need to shoot more blesbok. By now, they were looking at us at about 500 yards away and in good company. We retreated and made our way back to the truck to then drive out to the powerlines and reassess the situation.

By now the sun had fully risen, and the earth quickly began to warm up forming a strange temperature clime of cool ground and warming air above. We looked down the long sight lines of the power lines and we saw once again a thousand miles away a group of three Gemsbok in the long clearing. “Okay, game on”, Nathan said. We hopped out and kept close to the vegetation on left the side of the power line alley. The wind was not ideal. It was coming in at about a forty five degree angle across us and the gemsbok. They may get a whiff, but maybe not. We approached for what was nearly a mile to where the gemsbok were about maybe three hundred yards away. At this point, the observer and I held back and let dad and Nathan close in. No busting the herd now from a haphazard stalk of too many people. I sat low in the grass and relaxed for what seemed like a half an hour. Then I laid in the grass and looked at he clouds and wondered how many ticks I would be getting at this very moment. I left my rifle in the truck and realized this was a bad move. It didn’t want to carry it with me on a stalk I wasn’t in the lead for shooting, but then I remembered the leopards, and Nathan said that the property next door had cheetahs and Rhino. I had no expectation that any of these things would both me, at least not Rhino or Cheetah, maybe leopard on a weird day. Either way, I should have had my rifle, a mistake I wouldn’t make again.

After what nearly felt like an hour, I heard a shot. The boom thundered like a low grumble in the cold and wet morning air. I shot up. I crawled out to look at the shooting lane down the power lines. Suddenly, two Gemsbok ran toward me and stopped at about 75 yards staring at me, all of us in disbelief. If I had my rifle, I would have put a round in one off hand. After about five seconds of the standoff, plenty of time to get the shot if I could, they ran away into the bush and I walked forward. I saw dad and Nathan standing much further on. The were standing over a small, old and short horned gemsbok covered in ticks. Dad had shot him through the grass at about 200 yards and spined him. They approached ready to shoot him again if he popped up, but he was down for the count. Dad was fired up. The stalk was impressive, lots of patience and crawling, with a shot through the grass at a good distance. He admitted that he hit higher than he thought but he could not see the shoulder through the grass and had to approximate where the should war. This turned out to be too high. Nathan scoffed at this criticism put on the hunt. The gemsboks was dead where he stood and is now going into the salt. We posed the gemsbok on some red dirt near the road for a better photo spot and dad raved about much fun the stalk was. The gemsbok really was not too impressive, but it was a clear moment where the stalk, not the trophy was what mattered. “Did you see those other gemsbok” Nathan asked. “I was thinking Shoot! Shoot!!! Hoping you had your gun!” I told him I left it behind and he hung his head in frustration. Dad was exhilarated in the long stalk that resulted in the downed gemsbok, calling it one of the best stalks of his life. We all admitted it was a little small, so as a joke to claim we had a bigger gemsbok than the other friend on our group, we took a forced perspective photo making it look massive in size just to pull a prank.

Driving back toward the lodge, we spotted more blesbok, springbok and a finally gemsbok that had seen us and was trotting away. Well, lets give it a shot. Dad stayed in the truck and Nathan and I alone pursued. This stalk went on for a mile or two with no success, except for finding the desiccated corpses of two old Gemsbok either wounded and lost or dead by natural causes. Shame, one of them was a great shooter too. His horns were budding with mushrooms and his eyes were ghostly empty sockets.He gave off that old sweet reeking smell of slowly rotting death. I reflected on mortality for a second. I think hunting, particularly in Africa naturally makes one think about death and our own place in the circle. It is confronting in that regard, in probably a healthy way. We called the truck and headed home.

Once again, we had an abbreviated lunch. Nathan told us we were going back to the same spot to sit in a blind for Kudu. “Oh no”, I thought. Last time wasn’t miserable but it sure wasn’t what I would call fun. “Don’t worry though”, Nathan said. “I have my own camo netting so that we can see out the whole time now and don’t have to pop our heads over. It should be much more interesting.” We made the drive, chatting and joking and I got the feeling that Nathan enjoyed our company but thought we laughed and talked too much. We are Americans so his assessment would have been correct. We arrived at the same spot and received the same worker to observe us. Nathan made a viewing window with his netting and we took our seats. The worker began to burn dung closer to the golden hour to obscure our smell in the blind. Once again, some zebras passed by and single red gemsbok. The Zebras were spooky. They knew we were there but the burning dung concealed our location. They busted out for no reason when the gemsbok arrived, fleeing anything that moved. I started thinking nothing was really going to happen. We had run out of dung to burn as well.

Suddenly, I saw the distinct white chevron of a Kudu nose coming out of the bushes to the left. It was a cow. The light was fading fast, the sun had already set by now. Suddenly three more cows, then another. There were six cows now. Suddenly, a Kudu bull emerged and another walking and standing next to each other. The light was just dying now. I got on the sticks preemptively and flicked off the safety, ready for anything. Nathan was speaking to me the whole time in a hushed whisper. Which one did he want? With the low light I had to be exactly sure. One was too young, his horns making only one turn, and the other two were on the cusp of being shooters. One was probably on the low end of a shooter. I got on his shoulder but he constantly had cows in front of him and behind him. Nathan joked “You may get two Kudus today if you shoot.” For nearly five minutes I stood on the sticks with kudu in my glass without having a possible shot due to pass-through danger. My heart was pumping in my ears. This was insane. It was Kudu madness, the mosh pit of six cows and three bulls milled around each other in probably a space no bigger than fifteen square feet. Eventually Nathan spoke to me to keep me on the right one when I realized I had been looking at the wrong one for the last minute and could not see the one he was talking about. No, this was over. I decided it’s too dark now and possibility for a bad mistake is too high. I flicked off the safety and said I can’t get a shot on them and Nathan agreed. We walked out of the blind toward the road. The Kudu immediately vanished before I could look back up the shooting lane after emerging from the blind. Amon brought the truck around once again with a creaky and sleepy “okay.” “One of the kudu was probably just a shooter but they were all immature”, Nathan said. “That’s why they were with the females outside the rut. Soon they’ll be on their own in a bachelor group.” I blew the long held sigh of relief. It was a tense few minutes in the dark, and I didn’t want to shoot something and haul it out in the dark fearing I had done something wrong. We had a lovely dinner with Bob who delighted everyone with his stories affable manner. We went to sleep dreaming once again of Kudu dancing in the dark.

Love it.

GREAT story being told!! I will be going on my first safari for plains game with Cruiser mid 2027 and it cant get here soon enough.

Very nice rifle that you put together. Could you please tell me what sling that is? Thank you.

Linkerman said:

GREAT story being told!! I will be going on my first safari for plains game with Cruiser mid 2027 and it cant get here soon enough.

Very nice rifle that you put together. Could you please tell me what sling that is? Thank you.

Click to expand...

Rigby makes a canvas safari sling but it’s about $250 or so to get it to the states. Sorry Rigby, I love you (they’re on this forum) but economically, I have to love you from afar. The sling is a Tourbon canvas two inch sling. I used a Jim Green lace to tie the front to my swivel stud effectively creating a silent sling. It worked excellently. The long winded story has a ways to go, but without spoiling the ending, I’m pretty sure you’re going to have an amazing time with Crusier in 2027. “You’re going to really enjoy yourselves.”

Day 6

We woke up cold. Cruiser Safaris on cold nights slips a hot water bottle into your bed in what is a charming touch of civilization and coziness. We used up all that heat from the bottle on that night. Through the night, the temperatures dropped below freezing which was surprising for this time of year. A cold front stalled over us. We dressed quickly and braced ourselves for the open air breakfast to come. Nathan told us that we were going back to Rose Valley which should have Gemsbok for me, and Kudu for both of us.

Driving around the back roads into Rose Valley, we spotted a group of five Eland walking slowly away from us at about 200 yards crossing a wide field. “You never see this many Eland in one week”, Nathan was astounded. Altogether we had about ten by now. It’s true that I had heard how slippery and spookish they can be. Nature loves to be a comedian and always seems to know your plans clearly. Eland we obviously not on the menu and they knew it. As we drove on we spotted steenbok busting out of low cover and down a dirt road, prancing like a flushed hare with his ears folded back. He ran down a trail leading our eyes to a Gemsbok at a great distance. He was looking at us directly at us, showing us that ghostly face again. He walked off at a slow trot, seemingly unbothered by our great distance. Nathan kicked the dirt and watch the plume float toward the gemsbok’s prior position. With the wind against, and his seeing us first, we chose not waste our time.

Once again, we drove to the “back” part of the property and started some stalks into vegetation blocks. The wind was visibly swirling around us and there was an eerie silence. Not even the birds were singing. “Things are very going to be quiet today”, Nathan said already known the change in weather had shut down the activity. I imagined the once abundant impala, packed together hunkered down in the thickest and most remote section of property, busting only if an old leopard itself jumped on their heads. It was all in such a stark contrast to the the swarms of impala we had seen on our first hunting day. As such, we spent the morning hours covering ground seeing almost nothing. It wasn’t unpleasant though, as walking around the woods on a cold morning with a rifle, is always a day well lived.

Noon came around quickly with little to remark about the morning’s stalks apart from a lot of drawn blood from the thorny scrub. Nathan called up Amon to bring him his backup rifle before proceeding through the thickest cover yet to come. Amon pulled out a well loved Sako 85 in .375 Holland & Holland. Nathan said that he wanted it with him as we moved through the next few sections, just in case. We made way in the direction of the flooded pan with the tall grass that we met for lunch on our first day of hunting. Sure enough, after a ways of walking though walls of thorn bushes, a group of Cape buffalo thundered away kicking up clouds of dust that inundated almost impenetrable cover. Nathan froze as did we all as they moved off. Once again, we hadn’t really gotten a good luck at them yet. They were just moving walls of mostly obscured black blobs. By then we reached a road, where after quick radio to Amon met with his familiar creaking “okay”, we climbed onboard the Hilux. The DG rifle was cased, and we grabbed bottles of water from the cooler to enjoy a short ride to the lunch spot. After driving for a ways, we seemed to catch up to the run off Cape Buffalo. They were clearly bachelor group of three lone bulls, standing now in plain view through a break in the bush. We sized up their horns. All had hard bosses, one smoother, one thicker, another craggier with a long drop in horns. Either one would have made an excellent trophy. I felt better seeing the high up on the truck. We each weighed the pros and cons of each one, and selected our preferences. I guess there really were Cape Buffalo in this area after all, and the dust storms and Nathan’s rifles weren’t really just a show.

We pulled up for lunch and it was just as lovely as the first day. An lunch, Fiya, the other PH for our other two hunters, intended to re-zero one of our crew’s rifles. He was having a sort of issue likely from screws walking out on his scope rings and bases, and without lock tight, under firing his gun became increasingly unpredictable. The hunter who brought it had largely failed to practice with it in its current set up. He also didn’t purchase proper ammunition taking the age old advice of bringing heavy for caliber and of good construction. With a wandering zero and improper ammunition, he was hitting all over the place, unfortunately also on game. This was a bit of a bungle that frustrated me. How could someone relate to hunting, especially in Africa, without the same obsessiveness that I had? Is that even possible that not everyone feels exactly as I do? I laughed at my own inflexibility and orthodoxy. It’s true, it was an obsession, but the ethics involves the expedient taking of life. That’s a burden we really should try to meet. I had to let it go, but to my credit I didn’t let it show.

PH Fiya ran out a white box with a target and put it on a tree across the grassy water pan. During this process, our old friend, the trophy sable from the first day emerged once again. It seemed that it was his custom to get a drink of water around noon. It was a part of his pattern of life. Our companion shots from a table at the box. At the sound of the shot, the Sable lifted its head from his drink, looked around, then went right back to drinking. He clearly had never been shot at and assumed that all the regularly shooting on the property that must have happened surely didn’t concern him. The shot impacted about one inch above the bullseye. Fiya was happy with this result, but this was false confidence. His rifle was still more a shotgun than a rifle and it simply got lucky on this one shot. I wasn’t going to correct, Fiya. He was clearly a good guy and just doing his best. But you should always shoot a group to test these things, and this was no exception. For god sakes, the man brought 100 rounds of Hornady American Whitetail, he could afford to shoot a few more. But unfortunately for the animals, he did not shoot a group, and to my own disappointment in my self, I also said nothing.

After lunch we learned that all four of us were going to another property to sit in blinds for Kudu. So far no one in the party had gotten one, my dad and I were the only ones who had seen one, and we were about at the half way mark of the trip. We needed four kudu to make our packages. “What is so special about hunting the free state for you? You want to hunt Springbok? We have them here!” Nathan was suggesting that it would be a better use of time to stay in Limpopo and hunt. To be honest, what I wanted about shooting the free state was an experience of hunting in a different biome than Limpopo’s scrubland bushveld. However, already hunting in the mountains scratched that itch for me. “It would take six hours to get out there. More likely we would get more hunting time by staying put.” I completely agreed, as did the rest of the group. This greatly relieved Nathan which saved him the driving time and lessened the pressure on getting our package in just a couple days. We were now hunting all ten days on Cruiser properties and partnered concessions.

We drove over the Matlabas river to a new territory. We were separated into two groups near two different watering holes and sat in what was a sunken brick blind with vertical slits cut for shooting. It looked like a WWII pillbox sitting over Omaha Beach. On top of the bunker, we laid out a line of dung like fallen dominos and lit one side. This began to slowly burn like a long match creating that wonderful smokey, earthy, dirty, musty smell that is oddly enjoyable. As we sat in this hot box and time almost stood still. We stared at the watering hole. Monkeys came, craning their necks to delicately sip from the water. Their eyes darted around, smelling the dung and knowing that something was off. However, like in the previous blind, the wariness wasn’t enough to drive them off. Soon some pretty birds bathed in the water. I turned my eyes to Nathan who sat slumped over, hand on his face, with his other hand playing on his phone. He was playing what was clearly a hunting game, which was hilarious. Even while hunting, he was hunting. We sat there until dark and the only seeing monkeys. I would have been happy to even see a blesbok, but nothing came. We went home frustrated and tired of sitting in blinds.

Back at camp we went over to the skinning shed. Our Fresca friend saw my Zebra hanging out of the salt like a big folded cracker. He loved it so much, admiring it’s stripes and mane. By this time, he himself had flushed angry zebra multiple times. Before he questioned my decision to target zebra but now he viewed them as a real challenge and an iconic species. Since they never even saw a Kudu cow, he decided to take a Zebra instead of a Kudu on his package, but would take an Kudu anyway if the opportunity came up and just take the Zebra off the price list. Pieter of course agreed to the terms.

It always seems to come down to the kudu, doesn’t it? It’s the iconic plains game species for a lot of people. Ruark saw them as eponymous with the safari itself, a metaphor for hunting beauty, the elusiveness and beauty of the game, in sight for a moment, but gone the next. At least we had seen them. However, the lack of Kudu in the camp did create a frustrated cloud over us. It always comes down to the Kudu. Time was ticking for us.

We arrived back at camp in the dark. Everyone was having a beer, laughing, and soaking in the fellowship that hunt camps are famous for. It became obvious by now, that at least dad and I, were getting in last every night, hunting always the furthest and the longest and still without great success. It was frustrating but we really were optimistic. However, I wished we had a bit more success by now just so that we could spend time listening to Bill’s stories and enjoy camp life. Nonetheless, we came here to hunt and this was hunting, not shooting. Nathan approached us and seemed seemed agitated. He told us that once again we were driving out to a property in the mountains, a different one than the first mountain area. It would be a two and half hour drive, but there should be some Kudu there. We cringed but accepted the price must be paid for Kudu. Nathan turned to Amon and told him in Africaans. Amon let out a loud wail. We laughed, smiled, and said, “yes we know, Amon.” This was a moment of true international, interlingual, and probably intercivilizational commiseration, at it was hilarious. We felt very endeared to Amon in this moment. We felt how he felt. “It’s too far!!! Aye aye aye…,” he said in his first complete English sentence. This sent us rolling with laughter, including Amon. We definitely felt like we were paying our dues. No port tonight, and off to bed as early as possible to wake up at 3:45am. We gave our polite excuses to the camp which was turning a corner toward being rowdy and tucked in for another cold night.

I should say that PHs, at least at Cruiser, are required to spend time with you when you are relaxing in camp. They go to bed when you go to bed. They also wake up earlier than you to prep their truck, load lunch and supplies, and make arrangement for concessions. However, they still have to sit like geisha girls and watch you drink too many castles and yell about your ultimately boring life (in comparison to theirs) back home, then watch you hobble to bed at 1am. It’s incredibly hard work being a PH. However, going on safari and getting drunk with your friends is also fun and something worth doing. I suggest this. Tell your PH you’re going to bed at a reasonable hour, then go to your room. Come back out five minutes later, and your PH will have magically disappeared. As the alcohol is self serve, go nuts, keep the place clean and have a good time. Let your poor PH rest. They deserve it. Also don’t forget to tip. This isn’t Europe.

Day 7

I do not remember too much about this day, other than the beautiful drive in morning which I spent mostly studying the back of my eyelids. We were not going to miss the early hours chasing Kudu this time. When I was awake, I could see the beautiful orange sun come out of valley between tall buttes. We pulled up to a property, and took on a worker to be our observer, as was the custom on these properties. He sat in the front with Amon, while we dad and I with Nathan sat in the back. This area was similar in its verticality to the first mountain property but arguably less pretty. There were no vistas, no grand sweeping landscapes, just constant ups and downs of densely packed hills, with the occasional field or watering hole in a saddle. We drove around all morning, seeing zebras, wildebeest, nyala, and giraffe, however, the movement of game clearly had not recovered since the frost. The place felt eerily empty of both people and animals. This is a strange feeling to articulate, because after all, we always were hunting alone far from anyone, and the animals while abundant don’t walk up and smack you in the face (expect for dangerous game of course). But here, we felt decidedly alone. There was a strange energy in the air. There was no way we were getting a kudu in this, I sensed.

We drove to the top of the property, then plunged back down into a dark cover of trees by a lush cool and green watercourse that looked like beautiful habitat for Bongo if they lived this far south. I peered into it, hoping to see Mr. Kudu’s white chevron shining in a sliver of sunlight that created a mosaic of light shards across the truly back jungle floor. But nothing was there. Eventually, we popped into a saddle that looked like an old cow pasture at one time. A grey commotion caught our attention. There at the edge of the clearing under the cover of some trees, two wildebeest were sparing while a small number of them watched the fight. My dad, having the extra days added in Limpopo, decided to add wildebeest to his list out of a childhood fascination with the animal and the great wildebeest migration shown on nature documentaries of the 1960s and 70s. They represented Africa to him in a deep sense.

Dad and Nathan made a short stalk to the base of a tree. The shot would have to be across the entirety of the field and reach the copse of trees. I do not remember if he made it onto the sticks but by the time the shot was supposed to happen, the wildebeest had run off, not from seeing us but to clear off from the fight that just happened. Oh well.

We drove for a couple hours seeing nothing and taking a beating on the rocky roads, before working our way back to a camp that was under construction for lunch. Nathan cooked pork chops over the fire and we laid on beautifully manicured golf course style grass for a nap. There was decent cell phone service here, so we listened to music as we ate. “Do you know that in the Southern Hemisphere, the moon is upside down?”, I said to Nathan. Nathan looked at me like I was on drugs. “No, it’s true! It’s from the change of perspective from being on a globe. Looking out into space being south of the Equator, the moon looks flipped.” Nathan wasn’t buying it. I had first noticed it a few years ago in Argentina. I was swimming in a pool at night and looked up at the moon. The man in the moon was upside clear as day! Well, clear as moonlight. Nathan didn’t know what to say. It clearly sounded like nonsense to him. We then hopped into the truck to go back it for the afternoon.

From what little we saw in the morning, things had gotten even worse. Now there was nothing to be seen at all for about four hours. As the sun began to set, the valleys became cloaked in shadow and the sunlit summits of the surrounding hilltops were quickly evaporating. We began to speak now at full volume. The hunt was clearly over and we began our drive back down out of the high hills to property entrance several miles below. Suddenly, about thirty yards ahead of us, a mature Kudu bull bolted across the dirt road and began to scamper up the hillside next to our right. I marked it, “Kudu bull right there.” “Let’s go”, Nathan said. I grabbed my rifle, leaving the trackers, and my dad behind, jumping from the truck as fast as I could. We started up the hill at nearly a 45 degree grade. The foliage was thick, and in climbing up, we were well into an understory of thick trees and bushes. Visibility was minimal in all directions. Due to steepness, we had to switchback up the side, trying to be as quiet as possible, but it was an almost impossible task. After climbing nearly a third of the way up, we heard crashing about twenty feet above us and saw rocks rolling toward us. He was in front of us somewhere in the thick stuff. The twilight had turned everything light grey and blue. We pushed further up and then for a split second I could see him walk forward through a small gap in the bushes. He was not maybe forty yards away mostly straight up. He had a tight rack, nice curl but almost straight up, very little V shape to him, but he was plenty big. We scrambled up the side of the hill until about twenty yards from the summit, which slumped into a pass between another hillside.

It took us about fifteen or twenty minutes to make the climb, hearing him just in front of us the whole time. As we climbed the foliage got thinner and shorter, likely from browsing from kudu like him. Nathan stopped and studied the ground. There were Kudu prints but they looked old. He looked perplexed. I said to him the Kudu probably wouldn’t go down the hill. He either stayed to the right, hugging the ridge line to the next hill over, or he crested the pass. We had to choose. “Let’s go to summit, look down at the pass and I bet he’ll either be right there ready for the shot, or he’ll be gone”, I said. “I agree, let’s do it.” We went straight up to the summit, a short scramble up. I readied myself to make what would likely be a fast offhand shot once we got there. We crested the summit and scanned below. The setting sun was now in full view, bathing the the pass and the saddle below in golden light. We saw some zebras at the end of the saddle run off, and hoped to see the Kudu’s rack glinting in the dying light, but he was gone. I turned to Nathan. “You know, they call the Kudu the grey ghost of Africa”, I chuckled. He looked like he wanted to smack me.

By then we had climbed too far to go back down and the grade was too steep to go down in the dark without considerable risk of falling down. So we went over the pass into the saddle and down a gentler game trail until we reached the road. Nathan attempted to radio Amon but the mountains seemed to interfere with the signal. “Let’s go down the road and pop out at a watering hole.” Nathan was checking the satellite imagery on his phone. By now it was getting properly dark. Amon finally radioed in and in time their headlights shone through the dark road approaching from above. We had covered considerable ground as it took a while for the truck to reach us. We climbed aboard. Nathan was tired and cranky at our lack of success. Meanwhile, I was absolutely thrilled at this chase, scrambling over rocks, fleeting glances at the Kudu, him besting us in the end like they almost always to do. Nathan said he would tell Pieter not to send clients out here. “This property is no good”, he said. Twice we had seen Kudu in the mountains, albeit different, properties, and both times they were not interested in giving us any real opportunities. Once again, we were the last in the camp, and I told them how we had a close call with Mr. Kudu. Pieter himself remarked that we were hunting hard, and it certainly felt that way. “The others are hunting close to the pot”, Nathan said. “It’s easier on them, they’re older and less fit. They can’t run up the mountains.” “Is there Kudu near the pot??”, I asked. “Of course!”, said Nathan. “But they haven’t seen them either.”

By now a conspiracy had formed that my hat was the culprit of bad luck. I brought two hats with me to Africa. One was an olive drab hat my dad got for me from a recent fly fishing trip in Mexico. The other was more of a statement piece. I ordered a Akubra territory hat off eBay and threw on some puggaree to make a sort of Denys Finch-Hatton hat. It was properly an adventure hat. Nathan called it “a safari hat” and rightly rolled his eyes every time I came out wearing it in the morning. The fact of the matter is, back home I always wore wide brimmed hats for the sun and I wanted a safari alternative that had a little pathos. The hat looked fresh off the jungle cruise and to me was a beautiful object. However the trend was obvious. Whenever I wore it, we seemed to get skunked. I was wearing a baseball cap when I shot the zebra. Nathan began to loathe seeing my brimmed hat come out. It was bad luck. I began to believe it myself. The hat became a topic of dinner conversation that night. Everyone was against me, but I knew they were playing irony as their argument. A hat that looks like a safari hat surely cannot actually be a good one. “A hat is just a hat” I said. “A hat doesn’t determine if an animal is there or not. God decides that.” This was a remarkably religious philosophy coming from me, someone who really would be the last person to speak at the pulpit. I suppose I was trying to say that its fate, not a hat, that determines whether or not something happens. Luck is an illusion and all this bad luck we’ve been having, its just a fact of hunting. If you’re out there enough, it will happen. “Have you ever had people not make their package?”, I asked Nathan. “Ehh, we usually scratch them all out somehow. It’s happened a few times but isn’t really common.” I left the hat out in the main common area overnight and awoke to see it hanging high up on the elk’s antlers over the long communal table. I never learned who hid it so well, but they must have been pretty tall. I have reasonable suspicion that it was Pieter himself. He loves a good trick. I resolved to wear it almost exclusively to break the hex. The odds had to turn eventually. I wasn’t blaming the hat.

Day 7 (actually 7, I miscounted the previous two days)

On this day, I again do not remember too much that happened, only that it was the day that I clumsily bagged a Gemsbok which I will recount here. As we planned to go for Gemsbok, Nathan told us that going over the road was the way to go. Dad had been successful and their were very good sight lines. In the Hilux, I flipped through Nathan’s miniature copy of The Perfect Shot and looked up Gemsbok. Dr. Robertson, claims they are sometimes called “the desert warrior”, which I read aloud in the rumbling truck. We all had a laugh at the melodrama, and Nathan said with a chuckle that we’re going to try to hunt some desert warriors today. “If you get one, you actually become the desert warrior”, he smiled. I asked what will we say when we see some? “I see two desert warriors in the opening just ahead!” Gemsbok are wonderful animals, bloody tough too, as I came to learn. Anything that is prey to both man and lions for the last hundred thousand years needs to be, and those horns are not for show. I mean no disrespect laughing at the desert warrior, only pointing ridicule to man’s ability to sound a bit hokey.

We passed the gates just as the sun was beginning to rise and the blue/grey world filled with color. Suddenly far ahead we saw the distinct ghost mask of face looking directly at us at about four hundred yards between a tiny crack in the vegetation. The mask turned away and we could see the grey hulk and high hump, then lastly its swishing black horse haired tail. “Let’s go get ‘em!” We descended from the truck and began a long stalk across semi-open parkland in what felt like a military patrol. Everyone was spread out in a manner that someone might get a sight line between the bushes and acacia trees revealing that grey outline, the white markings, or spear-like horns. We pursued slowly but after crossing the entire block and emerging at a long dirt road, we realized that they had disappeared. Oh well. He was a good one too, with what looked like at a distance, thick bases and a sharp rack.

We remounted and continued on past some old cattle gates into the second larger section of the “over the road” property. This area had much greater coverage, very thick blocks before opening to the wide and long sight lines and hedgerows of the powerlines, Nathan’s honey hole. This section of the hunt proved to be uneventful except for two moments. First, we busted some gemsbok clear across the power lines. We never had an honest opportunity on them. One was a serious shooter, while the other seemed to have a broken tip. In following them across the power lines, we found ourselves in another area of the property farthest from the road. This area was one of the most beautiful areas that I have ever hunted. As yesterday had a strange alien energy, this spot had the complete opposite. It felt like discovering a truly magical and special place. It had the character of an orchard of acacia trees. The trees had successfully beaten out the thorn bushes and as a result, we spotted multiple giraffe, and great herds of Eland. Nathan admitted to rarely hunt this area, but agreed it was an appealing spot. “So this is where the Eland in this property like to be.” He took out his phone and marked it on a map to help plan for future hunts. We followed game trails and had opportunity to shoot either the Eland and Giraffe bulls with deep black reticulation and bag serious trophies. However, the Gemsbok in this section were never seen again.

With time burning away and high noon coming, we decided to hunt back toward the entrance to the property, crossed passed the power lines, and the old cattle gate and were once again in the first section closest to the road. I spotted a herd of springbok stare at the truck, then delightfully pronk away. Blesbok and Red hartebeest also stared and moved themselves to always be five hundred yards away. Suddenly, Amon mentioned that he saw something move in the bloc to our right. I glanced through it but saw nothing. Nathan dismounted, and I followed. After nearly fifteen minutes of careful stalking. We saw two gemsbok in a small clearing nearly occluded by a tree. We planned to use the tree as cover and approach for a shot. Nathan put out the sticks and I put the rifle down, but the two Gemsbok trotted off toward the power lines again. We pursued once again for an unknown amount of time. Then all of a sudden they were there, at about two hundred yards. Nathan threw down the sticks again, and I lined up the shot. I held the shot on the shoulder and sent the round down. I didn’t rush but I did feel rushed. I saw the round strike the animal’s shoulder and his left front leg began to flop that pathetic, painful and frantic motion of broken bone and ligaments causing him limb to dangle. The Gemsbok threw his head and ran off. Damn, I thought. I think I hit him too low. I should have held a couple inches higher on his shoulder. Nathan didn’t say much, as we walked toward where the animal was hit. There was no blood, but clear tracks. We followed the tracks for about one hundred yards and the Gemsbok came into view, sitting on the ground, now collapsed and unable to walk. His partner, possibly his mate, was standing nearly twenty yards away from him, frantically circling near an old dilapidated cattle fence. “I’m going to put another one in him”, I said. “Do it”, said Nathan. I knew that a sitting animal is hard to hit in the vitals. They sit deceptively low in the chest. Moreover, this animal was significantly quartering away from me. I shot him in the spot I believed would be his heart and lungs. He was hit, and flopped over on his side, but continued to breath in a labored manner. My heart sank again. I wanted him dead cleanly and this wasn’t that. I wanted to hit him again, now clearly between the legs. I fired into his heart, but he once again did not stop breathing. He went into agonal breaths. By now my father, Amon and our observer had arrived, all with smiles in anticipation sparked from the clatter of shots. We all stood about and watched the poor creature die. “Should we take your pistol, Nathan, and do another shot properly in the heart?” “No, he’s on his way”, my father said. I felt awful. I felt I massacred the poor thing. Nathan could tell my energy was not that of a thrilled and triumphant hunter. I felt absolutely deflated. Nathan put his hand on my shoulder and said “You know, you anchored him and put him in the salt.” My dad said “it’s okay, you just haven’t seen enough things die. It’s like this sometimes where it’s not as pretty as you want it to be.” Dad, after a full career as an physician knew what he was talking about. They meant well but it didn’t make me feel better. I felt a terrible pity for the thing. Not because it was going to die, or that I was it’s killer, but that my actions had brought it to such a death, that it did not die well by own my standards. “Would I have felt the same if it was a Cape buffalo?”, I thought. Probably not. Multiple shots are routine, and usually the gun battle is part of the passion of their death. It’s literally like bullfighting in that regard. But a buffalo is not a gemsbok, but maybe they were more alike in toughness than I had given them credit.

Nathan manipulated the body for a picture and attempted to break the tension with humor. “Damn it, you broke both his shoulders!” It seemed that in the shooting, both his shoulder joints were blown to smithereens. I calculated that I had put 570 grains of copper and lead into him. The thing was absolutely floppy and required sticks to prop up. It was a macabre scene and I faked a smile for the photo. This is truly how I felt in the moment, but in reality, Nathan and my father were right. There was more than a good chance that the first shot would have killed him, that hit hit a lower part of lung and he was experiencing slow tension pneumothorax or cardiac temponade. We just came up on him too fast. Moreover, African animals are tough and require finishers sometimes and that’s just the way it is. The animal wasn’t lost. No serious tracking work was done to recover him. He was found in seconds after the shot and indeed put into the salt. I decided to take it as a reminder and lesson to respect the toughness of African animals, the dignity of living things, the seriousness of taking a life, and the ethical standards to which we should hold ourselves. What I really needed was a drink and I cursed the fact that we forgot to bring cigars.

Back at camp, we offloaded the Gemsbok then were left alone for lunch. Nathan told us that we would go for wildebeest in the afternoon. Pieter appeared and asked us if we wanted to see some of the Sable he was breeding. We had shown a great interest and admiration for his animal husbandry, so he seemed comfortable enough to let us peek behind the curtain. Renys came to Pieter and spoke to him quietly, to which Pieter excused himself. There was a sudden quiet over the camp. We saw some of the workers running around for about five minutes. Suddenly, Renys appeared and came to my dad. “We may need a doctor very soon. One of the workers is struggling to breathe.” We came to the back of the camp into the kitchen and saw one of the workers, a young woman who assists with the laundry, breathing in a deep labored breaths with agonal sounds. I hate to say that it reminded me of the Gemsbok. Her eyes were closed. Dad listened to her chest and back, and laid her on the floor. “She’s going into respiratory arrest, we may need to give her breaths.” I had taken a CPR course for work and had a mouth cover on a keychain incidentally for this very chance. I told my dad I had the covering and he said, “you better run and get it, we might need it in a minute.” I ran to the room and back and we placed it on her mouth. Upon my return, dad said she had stopped breathing. I knelt at her head, and positioned it rolled back her airway open as we had learned. Dad began to give breaths. The woman’s chest rose high and fell limply with each breath. We gave her maybe twenty breaths when the girl suddenly made a noise, spit up what looked like chewing gum and began to cry, eyes shut tight. “She’s back.” I would later ask why we didn’t do chest compressions. He explained that because it was a witnessed respiratory arrest, the breaths were immediate, while if you just walk upon someone unconscious you assume cardiac arrest and do proper CPR. Dad produced an inhaler to relax the airway and held it to the girl, now fetal, weeply silently on the floor. She still seemed quite delirious and rejected the medicine, shaking her head. “It’s okay, see look.” Dad took a puff of the medicine himself. Her yes softened and she took a deep breath of the medicine. She relaxed and closed her eyes breathing but asleep. We moved her to the laundry room where a bed was made for her on the floor. “She has asthma”, the cook Tiny told us. “She needs to see a doctor and get asthma medicine. This will happen again and she might not come back.” Pieter told us that he would make sure she would see a doctor. There was a distance and surprise among the staff. I don’t think anyone realized the severity of the situation. “I think you saved her life, Dad.” “No, we don’t think about it like that. She could have started breathing on her own. You never really know how things would have turned out in this sort of thing. It’s not really a good look or even necessarily true to claim that you saved a life.” He spoke again like a man who both really knew what he was talking about but also wanted to minimize his involvement. It surely didn’t look that way to me. She looked like a goner and we (specifically he) saved her.

I walked out to the main dining room/bar and saw Nathan playing on his phone. “I heard what happened”, he said. “Yes, dad had to give her mouth to mouth.” Nathan winced and shook his head. “We do not do that sort of thing in this country.” He said intimating that local black Africans often carry disease. Medically speaking, the possibility of transmitting either AIDS or tuberculosis through mouth to mouth resuscitation is essentially zero, though we weren’t certain of that in the moment. We still choose to act, albeit with the protection of the mouth guard. However, the fear of disease often leads to hesitation, and an unknown loss of life. I didn’t judge Nathan for his skepticism on our choice to help. He knew this country and its dangers better than me. Moreover, he himself was a product of its politics and social dynamics. We did what we thought was right, and he would do what he thought was right and that was all there was to it. I did think that if I was her, I was glad someone knew what to do and actually did it. “Pieter said she’ll be taken to a doctor.” “Pieter will take her to a doctor but she will have to actually go and take their advice. The locals here usually trust bush medicine and take advice from witch doctors. That won’t cure asthma.” I realized that the woman may have a short life and I still wonder if she is still alive today. Nathan never took his eyes up from his phone, either during this. He was, after all, a true predator and wanted to be hunting. Now he was entertaining himself, annoyed at the drama which caused delay. I reflected that life is often seen as cheap in Africa.

Pieter emerged with a big smile alongside with Renys and said, “okay, lets go see the sable”. We drove out his large breeding pins, and Pieter personally explained his breeding program showing us the largest male and female Sables in the world. Renys produced a dart rifle, powered by a 22 caliber blank connected to an upper pressure chamber. We drove to another pen and Renys darted a Sable right in it’s hindquarters with what really was an expert shot. The animal bucked and ran and then slowed down. He stumbled to his knees, and stuck out his tongue. Pieter went to work measuring the horns and taking detailed notes while we held the animal steady. We gave the animal what is essentially Narcan, and he came back in a matter of minutes then walked away as if nothing happened. An impala with an impressive rack had somehow jumped into the breeding pen. Renys was ordered to dart him too, but the Impala ran wildly about and eventually got its horn stuck on some fence wire. It broke a horn and began to bleed. He was darted, some chemical was put on his broken horn to stop the bleeding and sterilize the wound, then he was Narcan-ed and released outside of the breeding pen. “What a shame he broke his horn. He had a wonderful rack”, I said to Pieter. Pieter chuckled and with a glint in his eye said “Yes it’s a shame but don’t feel too bad. His most important horn is just fine and now he’ll probably breed even more than before as hunters will mostly pass on him if they find him.”

Nathan was finally put to task. He loaded us up, but his mood was decidedly quiet. We went out for a drive to spot some wildebeest and but a stalk on. We walked along a dirt road until we heard the tell-tale snorts of a group alerting as we approached. They had either winded us, or spotted us, or both, but had remained unsure of what we were. We dropped low and worked toward the wall of vegetation by the side of the dirt road. They must been just twenty yards beyond, maybe less. I could hear their nostril flaring and angrily shooting out hot breath. Ultimately, they ran off, and though we pursued, we had no idea where they went. Suddenly, Nathan said that we had to go back to help with finding a Kudu that was wounded. This was surprising as there was about an hour of light left to hunt. It wasn’t like Nathan to not hunt to the last drop of sunlight. He didn’t seem happy about it either. We had enough excitement or the day, why not a little more, so we packed up and off we went. We pulled up alongside the Matlabas river where a fire pit and long tables were laid out. There was no lost Kudu, but Pieter had thrown a surprise braai for the camp. It was a beautiful spot, and we met with the others in camp, everyone in good spirits. Eventually, Bill, the gregarious and lovable Australian rolled onto the scene with Renys, acting as his PH, with a damn fine Kudu in the back of the truck. We all shined our flashlights into the bed and admired the majestic animal and Bill told us the tale of its end. We went to bed after what was an extremely eventful day and dreamed once again of our own Kudu, hoping they were out there enjoying the cool night air.

The journey of a hunter….sometimes we do things that are difficult for other people to understand. Taking a life is no small thing and as you say, it is sometimes more “clumsy” than we intend. The most important thing to do in my opinion is to honor the animal with respect and be grateful for our opportunity to witness them. That meat will feed a lot of people and you are having a fantastic African experience surrounded by these magnificent animals and people. You experiences remind me of my first trip over.

Day 8

The previous day, the camp discussed taking a day to go to an area that had elephants, and have a game drive for dangerous game. I thought this sounded like a wonderful idea, but the nagging feeling of losing time made me flip back and forth. “I think we came here to hunt, not see elephants”, my dad said. This had such a sense of intention, and singular focus that I could not disagree. We told Nathan we were in for the hunt, and as such, we drove out once again to chase wildebeest for dad’s bag. We drove to a neighboring property chasing mixed herds of golden wildebeest and blues across once again truly beautiful country. “This property has a lot of wildebeest. Pieter really wants us to take some out,” Nathan said. However, the wildebeest were particularly flighty. We parked on a road near a long almost canyon like depression dotted with trees against a wall of dark jungle-looking vegetation. I had spotted a group of about five wildebeest ahead at the far end of the bowl. Dad and Nathan dismounted, and I snoozed on the back of the truck with our tracker Amon. Eventually, I heard crashing and popped up to see the entire group run past me in a flurry about fifty yards away. I marked them as they passed far behind us and onto some higher ground. Nathan and dad eventually came trudging back and I told them I could still see the group watching our location from about four hundred yards away. Nathan and dad approached again in a long circular stalk, using the wind and cover to have an approach but the wildebeest were not interested again and busted out to an open alley that looked similar to the long power line cuts. By now they had joined a group of about twenty others forming a decent herd. “That’s it”, Nathan said. We loaded in the truck and ran after them. The herd ran down the alley in what was a real stampede. The largest bull held in the center of the group before braking off. This was our chance. He’ll be tired and now alone. However, he got a second wind and busted back up to the main group, reconstituting and positioning themselves in the center of a vegetation block never to be seen again. For a moment there, it felt like a real rodeo.

After what was a quiet lunch, Nathan and I discussed that I still had some smaller game to consider. I could take either a blesbok, a springbok, or an impala. Nathan said there was a group of blesbok that grazed near his house, which was situated across the Matlabas river behind the main camp. We drove into what was essentially his front yard and sure enough, there was a decent group of blesbok feeding into a small round depression about the size of a tennis court. We made our stalk, slow and steady. Nathan glassed them intently and put the sticks up. I got on them but Nathan told me to wait. We both looked at the game and after what was probably a minute, they moved off slowly into the fields beyond. Nathan and I stayed motionless. “I’m disappointed. There really wasn’t a good shooter in there,” Nathan said. This was another stoke of integrity from Nathan. He didn’t want to just get me any blesbok. He took a real pride in the trophies he brought into camp. “Let’s keep moving.” And so we began a walk for nearly a couple miles, once again kicking the dirt, moving silently and with intention.

During this walk, I thought to myself that gambles are often rewarded. This was me contradicting myself. Just the day before I boldly stated I didn’t believe in luck, invoking God himself. But this stalk had an energy. I felt that something special was going to happen. It may sound stupid, but I actually thought of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. We paid her in a way, denying ourselves seeing the elephants, committing instead to the chase over entertainment. This was an expression of dedication and faith in her. Of course, I wasn’t invoking her literally, just seeing her as the metaphorical personification of the hunt itself. There was something to it and sure enough, I felt as if she bent down and touched my shoulder just as we entered another shady grove by a stream.

The light was choked out by an upper story of hardwood and the temperature dropped. I looked to our left and facing me, at about two hundred yards, was the white chevron and curling horns of a kudu. “Kudu there”, I said, pointing for Nathan. He nodded. We crept forward when suddenly another Kudu now to our right at about thirty yards raised his head between two bushes. The Kudu busted out crossing in front of us, then meeting the other in the shady wet grove. They ran forward as we advanced in parallel down the trail. There were three of them in a bachelor group it seemed, running far ahead now until out of sight. I felt my heart rate increase. This was the first time we had seen Kudu while on stalk. Nathan took us in the general direction of their flight and I had great anticipation that we would see them at any second. However, we walked for over a mile, patterning back and forth again like bird dogs untiI was certain the trail had gone cold. There were no signs of them. I felt the adrenaline in me burn out and my heart rate return to normal.

Eventually, we came out of the gulley and into that familiar bush scrub broken in to blocks known all across Limpopo. Nathan and I walked down a game trail until we reached another road. He stopped before coming into view of the road, and slowly quartered to the edge, peaking one degree at a time cutting the pie slowly with his binoculars. “There they are”, spotting them down the road about five hundred yards. Indeed they were, beautiful, mature bulls standing unsure of what to do. They seemed to believe they had made good their escape but were uncertain of what to do next. Truly, if we happened to go left rather than right at any time in following their flight, they would have slipped away. The wind was against us in this position. “Let’s go back the way we came down the trail and come at them in the other direction”, I said. Nathan nodded to the obvious plan he already had devised in his own head. We worked our way back, and then down the road putting plenty of scrub between us and the Kudu. Then we turned and worked our way parallel to their position at the end of the road. “The Kudu will either work back to us, or they will just push forward… but, they may want to come toward us to use the wind to their advantage.” We made our way a couple hundred yards toward them, looking into the bushes waiting for their sign. Then, suddenly, there they were, walking in line like Indian Elephants, working their way across the cover of the scrubland exactly as we had hoped. The sticks came out and I got on in one fluid motion. The first one passed, then the second in a instant. The third came into a tiny window between the bush showing only the front third of his body. Nathan once again bleated like a goat stopping the kudu for a moment. I was once again in the flow state, the perfect concentration. I put the crosshairs on the shoulder of the Kudu at about 125 yards away. I still recall the image so clearly in my mind, but it didn’t look like 125 yards. Such was my focus on the Kudu it still looks in my mind’s eye to be a forty yard shot. The shot broke instantly, all in all probably two seconds from getting on the sticks. “That was a good shot!”, I said will full confidence coming off the gun, knowing the round was perfectly placed. “Yeah you smacked him!”, Nathan said. Nathan was breathing hard, he extended his hand out to give me a high five. I turned it down, saying let’s find the guy first. I had become gunshy after the gemsbok. “It’s not over until it’s over”, I said. I regret doing this. I stole a little bit of the exhilaration of the hunt from myself and Nathan. I should have joined him in this raw celebration even if it was uncertain. Nathan and I walked forward. “Look at this,” he held out his hard. It was shaking. He smiled at his own excitement. This was perfection for him.

We searched for a while but no Kudu was found and the blood trail went on for about twenty five yards then dried up. We called for Amon, and dad came along with a smile. “Kudu”, I said with a smirk. We all fanned out. I pushed forward, hoping I would find him first. Sure enough, after what felt like an eternity, but what was really only ten minutes, dad gave me a whistle and I walked back to the spot. There was the Kudu, crumpled up in a bush about seventy five yards from the impact spot, shot in the heart. Amon, our tracker had found him in our first real track of the safari. I felt such a relief. Here he was, down quick, ethically with a well placed shot. He had a nice hourglass shape, good size too for being a bushveld Kudu. He looked mature but not old, yet definitely a fine shooter. By now it was handshakes all around, high fives, and photos. I noticed that I did it all while wearing the cursed hat. The hex was broken finally. I placed the hat on top of the Kudu and snapped a photo. Dad hugged me and said it was all worth it. He was so happy that I had got my Kudu, that he felt he didn’t need one after all.







We loaded the Kudu into the truck after admiring it’s ivory tips and the curl of his horns, the white of his chevron, and dropped it off at the main camp for the skinners to start their work. We then turned and burned for more wildebeest, when all of sudden, Nathan got a crackle in Africaans on his radio. “We’re making a change”, he said. It’s something you need. We drove onto a new property and picked up Renys. Renys said he saw a Kudu browsing in a scrubby area about thirty minutes ago. If we were lucky, he would still be there. Since Bill long ago bagged his Kudu, he called us in to help out his fellow PH.

We drove into the concession and made a few turns driving slowly over the dirt roads when suddenly there he was sitting perfectly in a break in the vegetation looking straight at us at 250 yards. We slammed on the breaks. Dad and Nathan dismounted, while Renys and I stayed put. Dad and Nathan got low to the vegetation, crouch walking up to a thorny bush. This couldn’t last. The kudu had stayed put for minutes now. It was now or never. Nathan went for broke and put the sticks up for a 220 yard shot. Dad got on and we hushed. For what seemed an eternity he aimed at the frozen Kudu. The shot broke, and the Kudu stayed frozen, nonreactive for just an instant. Then his tail end collapsed straight down and his head craned to the side, and the rest of him toppled to the ground, stately and graceful likely a falling oak. We all dismounted and walked over. He was dead where he stood, looking beautiful with a perfect nearly straight on shot, entering the neck and exiting out the left flank, almost certainly striking the heart or aorta. It could not have been a perfect shot.

We stood for a good while admiring the creature. “My God, two kudu in two hours, and just after you said you didn’t even need a Kudu now!” I had a long drawn out stalk, while this Kudu just appeared, shot after a short walk after a quick spot. “The Kudu chooses you. This one was just done with running” said Nathan. “He was tired with it all.” It was true. He was an older gentleman of a Kudu, much larger in horn and frame, but heavily greying with sunken in pockets at his hip. He had begun to starve. “This guy was really at the end of it all,” Renys said. “He would not have survived the next winter. He was finished.” “This is the Kudu you want to take from the herd. Big but at the end of his life.” It really was a stupendous Kudu, with the same hourglass horns, but longer and thicker than mine and with a straighter curl.







We loaded him up as well and returned to camp in the dark, blaring on the horn in the darkness to wake up the skinners who live in an encampment just outside the main compound. “They’ll be skinning a lot tonight!” We walked into the common room in time to see our friends returned from their adventure with the elephants. “How was hunting today?”, said our Fresca friend. “We got two Kudu.” His jaw dropped, by now thinking the existence of Kudu to be a cruel myth. “Wow, well you really earned it!” He was proud and happy for us, but also envious without malice. He vowed he would take a Kudu himself. We laughed that the Kudu must have been planted by Nathan. He was sick of chasing them. Nathan laughed. “No, we are very much against put and take here and we don’t even breed for Kudu here.” He lifted up his radio and whispered in a joking fashion and wheezed out “release the Kudu!” We all laughed. That night, we drank with the happiness only 8 days of chasing Kudu across all kind of country can bring you. Nathan visibly relaxed as well. A lot of the pressure was now off. We laughed at the irony of the difference of our two hunts, and moreover, the difference in their sizes inversely proportioned to the effort spent. We were happy and slept as sweetly as the first night.