Here is my day one, animal one experience.
After that, I was hooked to Africa, 5 safaris will folow till now, and total of 45 days of boots on the ground:
Oryx
After the drive, we stop on the track, climb over a low cattle fence, and enter the hunting area.
After a few hundred meters, two gemsbok (oryx) appear about 100 meters away—a cow and a bull. They spot us, however, and disappear into the bush. This is the hilly part of the concession.
The terrain becomes increasingly undulating, with rocky outcrops replacing the thorn bush in places.
As we move through the bush, we spot a herd of red hartebeest. We try to approach them with the wind blowing straight into our faces. The herd, four to six animals, is a few hundred meters away, appearing and disappearing among the bushes. After 20 to 30 minutes of stalking, we get within shooting range. The tracker scans the area through his binoculars while I watch through the riflescope, the rifle resting on an African shooting stick, preparing for the shot...
Bad luck. They're all females. We move on. The distance was good, and the opportunity was there, but there was no mature bull.
The terrain follows the bed of a dry river. I assume the river flows only after the rainy season. I ask the tracker about it. He mumbles something in reply, but I don't quite understand him.
We continue along the dry riverbed before turning right and climbing deeper into the bush. Visibility varies considerably—sometimes no more than about 30 meters, while in other places it opens up to 200 meters or more. Classic African bushveld. To make a long story short, after perhaps another kilometer of stalking, we spot a gemsbok (oryx) browsing on leaves along the edge of the bush. He doesn't stand still but walks slowly as he feeds.
In any case, our animal—an older bull—keeps to the edge of the bush, moving steadily while maintaining a distance of roughly 300 meters ahead of us. We make a wide detour, using the bushes to stay out of his direct line of sight. We increase our pace to catch up with him. The wind remains in our favor, blowing into our faces. Good. We follow the contours of the terrain, weaving from bush to bush.
After about half an hour, perhaps a little less, we manage to close the distance. Every now and then we catch glimpses of him through gaps in the vegetation. He takes a few more steps, stops, and through an opening in the bush exposes his shoulder. Then he turns toward us and looks straight at us. The tracker whispers, "This is your chance. If he turns, he'll be gone."
It isn't exactly a clean shooting situation, but it is what it is.
I range the distance—96 meters to the bush in front of him. He's standing a little beyond it, so the actual range is about 110 to 120 meters. The shooting sticks are ready. I settle the rifle into position and place the reticle on the animal.
The reticle in my Swarovski scope is the German No. 4C. That is an advantage because I have the same reticle in my Zeiss scope and in my wide-angle Meopta. After years of using it, it simply feels natural to my eye.
The target isn't completely clear. I can't see the lower part of the shoulder, only the upper shoulder and part of the middle of the ribcage. As I bring the crosshairs onto the gemsbok's right shoulder, I begin applying gentle pressure to the trigger, expecting to feel the familiar first stage of resistance, just as I do on my own hunting rifle, where I don't use a set trigger.
The rifle suddenly fires sooner than expected.
The light Steyr trigger catches me by surprise because I am accustomed to a heavier trigger pull. The shot breaks before I intend it to, and the bullet strikes well to the left of the shoulder. The moment the rifle fires, I know exactly what has happened—and I am painfully aware that I have made a poor shot.
Tracker says:
"Excellent shot!"
"Excellent shot? Yeah, right," I think to myself.
When the rifle recoiled, the muzzle jumped, and the gemsbok disappeared from my field of view. All I know is that the shot went a little left—or perhaps far too far left. I had been aiming for the right shoulder, so the bullet could have hit the middle of the rib cage... or who knows where. Maybe even the hindquarters.
"How do you know it was a good shot?" I ask.
"I heard the solid thump of the bullet striking," the tracker replies.
"Did you see any reaction when he jumped?"
"I didn't."
What I know is simple: my shot went to early covering rib cage.
I'm having terrible luck. The only question now is whether I've wounded him badly or only slightly. And who on earth is going to find him now? Looking at the dense thorn bush around us, I almost feel sick at the thought of searching for him.
Even if he ran only 100 meters, that's nearly 10,000 square meters of thorn bush, tangled branches, and dense scrub to search. This should never have happened. I should have waited for a cleaner opportunity.
I try to calm myself down. I light a cigarette and think to myself once again:
Now we have to find him in this godforsaken wilderness.
Of course I hit him badly, I tell myself, and of course we won't find him—because in terrain like this, it seems practically impossible.
This is exactly what I didn't want. Now I feel bad, for suffering animal
The tracker remains confident.
"We'll find him," he says. "The hit was good. If we can't follow the blood trail, we'll bring in the dogs."
Incidentally, the dogs are back in the pickup truck with the professional hunter and another client, hunting on the far side of the concession.
The tracker radios the PH, explains the situation, and we begin the search.
We reach the first bush behind which the gemsbok disappeared and cross the dry riverbed. After roughly 200 meters, we find the first drops of blood. The thorn bush is so dense that we can't follow the trail directly and have to detour around a huge clump of brush.
Nothing here is small—and especially not the bushes when you're trying to recover a wounded animal.
Another hundred meters farther on, we emerge onto a low hill.
The tracker leaves me there and says he's going to make a wide semicircle to the left, hoping to cut across the animal's line of travel. If the gemsbok turned left, he'll pick up the blood trail again.
Then he disappears into the bush.
More than twenty minutes later, I finally catch sight of him again on the next hill, about a hundred meters away as the crow flies.
A moment later, he vanishes into the thorn bush once more.
After another half hour, there is still no sign of him, and in this thick bush the frustration and bitterness are beginning to churn in my stomach.
The terrain is also quite rocky, making it difficult to follow even an ordinary track.
The tracker heads off to the right.
About twenty minutes later, he shouts to me from a hill on my right that he has found blood again. The moment I hear him, I feel a deep sense of relief. Hope returns—I begin to believe that we may actually recover the bull after all. The blood trail is becoming increasingly heavy.
I make my way over to the tracker. I take the compass from my belt and calculate the animal's line of escape from the point where it was shot. The bearing is almost a straight
60 degrees, or
east-northeast (ENE). I know that, with a tracker of his experience, this exercise is unnecessary, but I do it for my own benefit—to keep myself oriented and mentally focused on the search.
After following the increasingly obvious blood trail for another 200 meters through the thickest thorn bush, the gemsbok suddenly bursts out of a clump of scrub.
He has no strength left.
He is moving at a slow, exhausted trot.
For a brief moment, he stops. He is quartering away from us, presenting his right hind side. The distance is about 80 meters. It is a clear shot as he slowly walks downhill, too tired to continue climbing. However, he has only another ten meters before he reaches the next patch of dense bush.
I settle the rifle onto the shooting sticks.
This time, the opportunity is almost perfect.
I fire, aiming just in front of his right hind leg so that the bullet will travel diagonally forward through the vital organs.
He shows no obvious reaction to the hit and disappears into the bush.
This time, however, I know with complete certainty that I have made a proper shot.
Fortunately, we find him again without much difficulty and cautiously approach him, stopping at a safe distance.
I unload the rifle and sling it over my shoulder. The tracker runs back toward the road to guide the pickup to the best approach, since the terrain is particularly difficult.
Now is finally the moment for another cigarette—and a chance to gather my thoughts.
The tension begins to fade, along with the fear that we might lose such a magnificent animal.
I replay the events in my mind, analyzing my mistakes. I am satisfied with the second shot, and I make myself a promise: next time, I will pay much closer attention to the exceptionally light trigger on the Steyr rifle.
Of the two hits, the first bullet struck the middle of the right side, behind the shoulder. After impact, the heavy bullet deflected almost
90 degrees downward and came to rest beneath the skin of the abdomen.
The second bullet entered just in front of the right hind leg, travelled diagonally forward through the body, and stopped beneath the skin just short of the left shoulder.
Neither bullet exited the animal.
That surprised me, considering the power of the cartridge.
