SOUTH AFRICA: My Hunt With Lategan Safaris 2015

Buff-Buster said:

Thanks Aaron!.….Its not over yet! Sandy gets in on the act!

Click to expand...

Well.......

I just came across your thread and really enjoyed reading through it. My wife and I hunted with Bennie in Aug of 2014 for our wedding anniversary. We met Bennie and his family at DSC, then I proposed to her a month later and decided to make our wedding the weekend before we left for the hunt. We stayed a week with them at their place, then spent another week down at the primitive camp. I also had issues with the Duiker, but got lucky at the second camp and got a nice one. Your story of hunting with Hennie brings back a lot of memories!!! He was a class act and a true highlight to our time there. His English was broken, but you always knew what he was saying. We where told beforehand that he rarely talks, but found that once we where done with our hunt and back at his house, he because a chatter box talking about hunting Caracal and his pet birds. One was a stork of some kind with a broken neck. His wife went into the pen with their pet Caracal to help us get better pics, then we spent a little time visiting with them inside their home. Again, he was one of those people that give South Africa a great reputation and you just feel better about the world after meeting!!!! Did Bennie have any buffalo yet? When we visited with him this past year at DSC, he said he had started fencing an area to start a breeding herd. We also gave him a photo album of our trip that he was showing to people at DSC who where considering hunting with him. Curious if he had it with him at Houston?

Funny thing about the Red Lechwe. He asked me if I wanted one when we got there, and I told him I did, but that I was just about maxed out and couldn't afford the trophy fee for it. Then a few days into the hunt, he said that the owner of the ranch with the red lechwe had called and said that one of them had escaped and that he was worried it would leave his land and he would never see it again. If I wanted it, the price was greatly reduced, but we had to leave first thing in the morning. The price was too good to pass, so I went into debt with the visa card in order to take advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity.

If you want to hunt Nyala, his primitive camp was our favorite. No power, everything is off of propane. The kitchen area was open without a wall on one side and we cooked on the fire pit. I shot Nyala, Bushbuck, Common Reedbuck, and Duiker out on low fence cattle ranches. Then after we finished hunting, we spent an amazing day at the beach picking up seashells.

I'll just add that I also highly recommend Bennie Lategan with Lategan Safaris!!!
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009017348786&fref=ts

And if anybody wants to see more pics of what to expect there, here is a link to my FB album showing the trip my wife and I had there.
https://www.facebook.com/EdwardDavidWalker/media_set?set=a.10204867866799148.1313824209&type=3

Beautiful pictures Eddie. It was great to see you and your wife having a great time. I'm extremely jealous of that steenbok, he is GIANT. The vaal rhebok, and red lechwe are super nice too. Congrats on the great trip.

Thank you. The steenbok was from a sheep farm off the road going to town. We got up early and where there at first light. We where still driving through the farm when we started seeing steenbok out in the grass. Mostly they just stood there as we drove by. Some as close as ten yards, others where a hundred yards or more out there. With every one we saw with horns, my PH would stop the truck and we would glass him, and then look around for others. When my PH saw mine, he never got his binoculars out, he just said to shoot him, shoot him NOW!!! We had seen so many of them, that when we stopped at mine, the first thing I did was get out with my camera to take his picture. He was only ten yards away, laying in the grass and just watching us.

Wow, thanks for the story on the steenbok, that only makes it sound even more interesting. I would love that little guy in my trophy room.

Bennie has his new website up

http://www.lategansafaris.com/