What was your first African Animal?

Hartmann's zebra. 68 days ago.

My first was an ancient blesbok. He was just over 200 yards away, and I made a perfect quartering shot on him from a bipod. It’s one of the few times I had a perfect setup for a bipod in Africa.

An Eland with game4africa, outfitter provided 375.

An oryx in Namibia in 2009. An old, heavy bull with a broken horn tip on one side. Shot him with a 300 Win at about 100 yards. Was shooting 200 grain TBBCs, loaded by Federal. One shot and done. That Browning rifle and those cartridges served me very well for many years. Only rifle I’ve ever named, call her the “Decorator” since about 80% of the taxidermy in my house is a direct result of my squeezing the trigger on that rifle. Great memories for sure.

The afternoon hunt went much better. We started at 3:30pm and found a lot of animals, including Giraffe, Zebra, Waterbuck, and Gemsbok. At about 5:00pm Dirk found three Cape Eland, the oldest was a shooter. We tracked them up a wide canyon and the two younger bulls moved to the right side of the canyon; the older bull moved to the left side. I had not seen them at that point, but Dirk had. Dirk asked me if I could make an 800 meters stalk. I told him I was mean enough to make it if it meant getting a shot. We walked in single file up the canyon about 800 meters. He set up the shooting sticks and told me the animal would be coming out from behind a set of bushes on the left about 120 meters in front of us. I got set, Dirk steadied me on the sticks, and about 15 seconds later the Eland Bull came out and stopped broadside to us. A fatal mistake. I squeezed the trigger, and he took off running over a small noll. Dirk asked me how I felt about the shot. I told him I felt good about it. He told me he felt good about it, too. About that time the tracking dogs came running by us and over the noll. They had heard my shot, too. About 3 seconds later I heard a sound I hadn’t heard since I was a teenager squirrel hunting with my uncle’s dogs. The dogs found him, and it was “Yap, Yap, Yap, Yap, Yap”. I knew what that sound meant. We walked over the noll and there he was about 60 meters from where I shot him. Nice Cape Eland Bull, about 1800 pounds according to Dirk. I got extra credit for dropping him about 10 feet from a road. I didn’t understand why until a short time later. I was on an adrenaline high.

First morning of my first safari (Mozambique) getting the Buffalo jitters out. Great memory!

Mine was a blue wildebeest… just about the only animal I never intended to hunt… just got caught up in the hour long stalk following the herd on the first night and, next thing you know, after a 278yd shot, he was in the salt!

My first was a Gemsbok! What a story behind that one!

A gemsbok in Namibia in 1987--it was still SW Africa back then. Used my father's pre-64 Model 70 30.06 with a Leupold scope that dates to the 1950's. One shot at about 150 yards.

1 through 11 Africans took my customized BMX bicycles from the bucolic gentlemen's farms of PA across the moat to the People's Republic of NJ. Gazing out an upstairs window of my G. Grandfather's home, I realized, if i was a law-breaker like those low-life Dem-created Scumbags that I could've gotten a few back (and my 1st African trophies!!) w/ my hard-earned .300 WM (lol you could clearly see the bridge at 600 yds!) Yeah, my friends/fam would joke about it all the time, but I sadly have been taught by real parents/fam to follow the laws. Impala 30 yrs later in Zim w/ my prized .264 WSM simply because I was being pressured to collect food for the village...

My first was a Greater southern Kudu in the Waterburg mountains area of Limpopo in June 2024. It was our first evening of hunting having arrived at camp around 2pm. We checked the outfitters .308 Winchester and headed out. My daughter killed a nice impala ram around 3pm and an hour later we found a nice Kudu bull. Never one to pass up an animal on the first day that I would take in the last I took him with a single shot from about 100 yards.

2 bikes were recovered (many statutes of limitiations ago LMAO) by my baseball coach (who said "jump in" and beat the living shit out of the dude! and elder neighbors that caught a native, tied him to a tree and gave him some sage advice as to NEVER visit our neighborhood again! Good times! Both RIP. The elders. I saw one of the perps decades later LOL a la Cosby Kids red hair/freckled African American-kinda sticks out. Gave him the look of death at an intersection, but the light changed and again, people's republic of NJ allows no proper retaliation. Democrats. LOL)

Impala with KMG in 2024.

Blesbok in RSA. May 2025. I forget the range, maybe 80 yards. Shot was downhill. 7mm-08 using 156 gr norma oryx. Instant dead.

Wildebeest from the hide with a borrowed 8x57 on the point of the shoulder. Found him piled up 60 yards away from the shot.

Blue wildebeest SA 2016 with Pawprint Safaris

Day One

Started on the range beside the camp where I managed to show rifle was sighted in with one round.

My first hunt started out badly. We were in a game reserve looking for either an impala or springbok. Did not go far down the road when our tracker spotted a head of blesbuck, so we stalked over then evaluated the herd. There was one good male so my PH set the sticks and I waited for a good side shot. The buck proceeded to lay down. The PH whistled trying to get him to stand but was not real successful. Eventually he stood and I took a shot aiming right about where the red dot shows in my book (or so I thought). Made a hit and he ran. We went to track finding a little blood and walked quite a distance before the blood trail ran out. The PH believes I hit him in front of the fore leg so thru the brisket area. We continued searching with no real success. Spend a couple of hours looking without finding him. All the time kicking myself for the shot.



Eventually headed back to the camp for lunch planning on heading back after to continue the search for the wounded blesbuck. After lunch I shot an additional three rounds, from the sticks, at the 100-yard target. The first two were about the right elevation about 1" apart vertically, but the third drifted right an additional two inches. Decided they were all good enough to hunt with so I did not adjust the scope.



Back to the game ranch where we started looking on the opposite side as we had seen two blesbuck there before we left. No joy. Continued driving around that side including a couple of attempted stalks that did not yield a shot. Driving on the PH saw the wounded animal so we started a stalk. Lost the animal during the stalk, but noticed a group of four to five blue wildebeest. Did a stalk and I took a shot at 220-230 yards. Initially we thought I had a decent hit by the way the animal acted. It stopped and gave a second shot which I took before running off. We tracked it for a while w/o finding any blood and decided to go back to where it was when I took the shots. No blood anywhere so I had missed twice, but at least I did not have two wounded animals.

Needless to say I was not feeling too good about my shooting at this time. First day one lost animal and one missed animal. Africa 2, me 0.

Day 2

Started by adjusting scope 4 clicks Left for today and cleaned the objective lens from dust and a smudge.

Headed a new property 25 miles away deciding to concentrate on springbok today. Drove in and spotted a springbok by itself and decided to note the location in case we did not find anything else.

Continued on up the 'road' and found a group of springbok. Tried a stalk, but they were skittish and we could not get a shot. Also noted a couple of impala nearby as well. After several stalk attempts, I still could not get a shot. We say the impala pair again and were able to stalk for about an 80-yard shot.

The PH had me aim at the front leg bone about 1" above the bottom of the animal which I did. Took the shot and after the rifle came back down in recoil I didn't see the impala either standing or moving. It was gone from sight. I was almost beside myself as I thought I had messed up yet another shot. Then my PH told me I had hit it and we found it had dropped at the shot. The bullet went a bit high and broke the neck, hence the immediate drop. My string of bad luck was finally over. My mood ran the full gambit in about 30 seconds from completely down to ‘YES, I have my first African animal’


Later that day, about dusk, I added a springbok making the second day MUCH better than my first day in Africa.

Black Wildebeest, RSA May 2024. Eastern Cape at Frontier Safaris.

Nice and wide bull, he is now shoulder-mounted in my office.

I made a horrible shot thanks to some faulty scope mounts and we tracked that fellow all day long.

A beautiful gemsbok bull taken at 277 strides. The longest shot I’ve ever taken on safari.

Greater Kudu at 30 yds in a treestand we had put up earlier that morning. The bull fell within sight. …28 years ago