NAMIBIA: First Safari Lessons Learned

[Buffalo1]

Very nice recording of your hunt. Congrats on some beautiful trophies!!

 

[pilar]

Glad parts of your trip were great , and you got some great trophies!
Even though we want every safari to be a magical experience as they should be
Some PH’s just aren’t that great and shouldn’t be in the hunting industry.
Every couple of weeks I get to hear about a ruined safari my friends chad and Margie
Had with a very famous outfitter in Zimbabwe that his PH’s ruined a very expensive hunt on lake Kariba. , ( they treated the camp staff very poorly in front of Margie, and didn’t get along with the hunting crew, ect ect , didn’t even try to fill the contact on some game they had available)
These things happen, thanks for sharing the good and the bad

 

[revturbo9967]

Looks like some very nice trophies. I may have missed it, who was the outfitter and ph?

 

[Ontario Hunter]

Looks like some very nice trophies. I may have missed it, who was the outfitter and ph?

He wants to go back to the outfitter because the property is fantastic. So he's hesitant to open a wound with the outfitter by naming him here. But he will not be hunting with that PH again, obviously.

 

[cpr0312]

Congrats and thanks for sharing, some great bulls and rams you took!

 

[JG26Irish_2]

Great hunt report. Thank You. I was in Free State and Limpopo the same time frame this year. Too bad that you and your PH were not a great fit. Still, things happen and it can be hard to id an animal in the field while under pressure. In my opinion, it is easy to mis interpret a PH when shooting in a herd and as a hunter, I would have had to been there to know or have an opinion. I can relate to the PH getting excited and shouting shoot, shoot, shoot to me. Last year, my PH would get excited and do that over and over. After taking three animals, I had a talk with him and told him, that when we spot an animal, I will get on the sticks and spot him in my scope. I will estimate the range while the PH ranges it both visually and with the laser range finder. If I had questions about which animal, I would ask and when he said "shoot" once, that was enough and to be quiet after that unless I asked him a question. When the driver went too fast over rough ground, I would simply ask the PH to have him slow down. Afterall, we are the client and it is not a race. It is amazing how well these professional hunters can spot and see game. Civilized man has lost most of his hunter/predator instincts and we are handicapped in that regard. I do notice that after about three days in the bush, my abilities start to awaken but never to the degree than my PH has.

My PH did not like using his laser range finder and last year, his visual ranging was consistently short by 50y. This year, he did much better with the visual ranging but we nearly missed a black WB bull due to a ranging error. That was in Free State where shots were longer and winds were sometimes intense. I was using a 7mm/08 which is not as flat as your 300wm but that was a compromise for later use in Limpopo. Normally, I would not take shots on game past 300y but did practice out to 400y regularly from sticks and am fairly confident out that far. In our case the WB was laser ranged at 314y but the very flat ground made it difficult to get a correct reading and the actual range was closer to 400-450y and resulted in a near miss. Because my rifle had gotten knocked out of alignment, it was shooting 6" high. Due to that fact, I still hit the beast and killed it. Not ideal but it was in the salt anyways. In the end the shooting is up to the loose nut behind the trigger and all of the ranging by others is only data to be used or not used at the moment. Overall, my PH and I work well as a team. That one incident was not his fault as I ranged the shot four times afterwards and got different readings from 275 to 450y each time due to the tall grass and flat ground. It was just tough to get a clean read on it. I practice visually ranging all year long to improve my speed on tgt but will admit that on the wide open plains like in some of Free State, I struggled and often underestimated the distances in those conditions.

Stuff happens and that is no big deal. People make mistakes both the PH and the hunter and how we handle it is all the difference. My PH is also the owner/outfitter and my party is the only hunter(s) in camp when I hunt with him. He was a former Pro athlete in his mid 30's and is very fit. At almost twice his age, I sometimes have to remind him that I was old and had bad knees, lol. Overall, we get on great. I hunted last year with Fusions and this year with TSX and CX ammo and both did well but the Fusions for me did much better for plains game. More accurate and quicker, cleaner kills. But, I did use different rifles and had issues with my rifles staying zeroed this year while bouncing around in the Bakkie.

Looks like you had a good hunt in spite of a few issues and you did bag some nice trophies. My hunt last year was magical and about as perfect as once can imagine. This year was tougher and some issues were had but not with my PH. It was more with the outfitter in Free State who hosted us for the first few days. He was a good guy and I liked him a lot but his trackers were not very good and his knowledge of some of his concessions was limited. His lodge accommodations were not up to the stds, that I expected, etc. But, people are people and do foul up from time to time and once we got to Limpopo, things were great for the rest of the trip. Maybe, I got spoiled last year with such a great experience. Even so, I would go back and use the same outfitter without reservation. I will do a hunt report later when I have time.

 

[Cucuy]

Reported. Frankly, if you were dumb enough to fall for a crypto scam then you deserve to lose it. The irony…

 

[Cucuy]

Oh, and your mom has crabs.