G’day All,
I’m looking at heading to South Africa next year, and in addition to my plainsgame dreams I was pondering trying to hunt a spotted hyena. Whereabouts do they live in South Africa, and what is the experience like? Is it spotlight from a blind over a bait? Do they hit baits during daylight? Any information welcome. Fascinating creatures.
Cheers,
Ben
I could not agree more that these are fascinating creatures. The first live one I ever saw was when I was sitting on a leopard bait and it came in towards last light. This enormous creature, with the fading light hitting it at just the right angle, looked other-worldly. I was hooked. I did take that one - a spotted - and since then have taken other spotted and a brown. I've taken them in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia.
As has been noted, you can hunt them different ways, with night hunting and baiting being perhaps the most common and most productive approach. Day hunts tend to be opportunistic - you see one and decide (quickly - they don't stick around during the day) to go after it. In Ethiopia I was sitting under a tree with "the crew" waiting for the sun to come up on a meadow, hoping to find a mountain nyala, when a hyena came trotting up a path, to a point no more than 20 feet from us. He became aware of us at the point, and my PH whispered "take him'. He began to move off towards a thicket, and I quickly raised my rifle (which was on my knees) and one tracker whistled. The hyena stopped just long enough, and he was down. An excellent start to the day!
These are smart animals, so you need an experienced PH. In trying for a brown in the Limpopo, we found that one was coming to our bait every day, just after we had checked it in the morning, but never at night when we were there. Twice we sat on that bait early in the morning, and kept our trackers away, but he never came. But then the light went off. We sat early, and told one of our guys to come in at around 10 am, as he normally would, check the bait, and then leave. Within an hour of his departure, the brown came in to the bait, and we had him!
Enough stories. Pick the right area - some are better than others - and pick an outfitter who has experience hunting these animals. They aren't so common that you can afford a lot of mistakes as you hunt them and as I said, they aren't dumb either. They will come to bait during the day, but it's not very common, and especially in an area where they've been under some pressure, I wouldn't count on it. But at the same time, you don't want to ignore the possibility. If you're really committed, you can set up baits with cameras, just like for leopard, and see when they are coming in. This takes dedication though, and it's hard to do with a regular plains game hunt underway.
But you won't get one unless you try! Good luck . . . I'm envious . . .
