JGRaider
AH fanatic
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2012
- Messages
- 789
- Reaction score
- 989
- Location
- West Texas
- Media
- 15
- Articles
- 1
- Member of
- B&C, DSC
- Hunted
- US, Mexico, S Africa, Namibia
I was in the central part of Namibia, about 90 miles S of Windhoek, a mixture of flat ground and rocky, sandy, with very large hills. I arrived in camp around 1:00pm and was shown to my room to get myself and gear situated. Once accomplished, we customarily headed to the range to check things out. My Gear:
Rifle: Tikka 695 7mm RM
Ammo: 160 Accubond, 71.5 Retumbo, 3110 fps
Scope: VX6 2-12x42 duplex
Binocs: Cabelas Euro (Meopta) 8x32HD
I was sighted in at home 1" high at 100 yds. Turned out to be perfect and the rifle still grouped 3 shots within 1" off the bench. Then I told him I wanted to fire off the sticks. For some odd reason, and remembering all the advice here I learned about shooting off the sticks, everything seemed to "click" off of the sticks. I did practice quite a bit at home off the standing Bog Pod, and I managed to put 6 into a 3" group. I felt really good about that.
To finish up my arrival day, we road around the ranch looking at game, and a lot of game there was. I was also treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my life that first evening…..
First hunting day came and I was reminded what I felt like when I was 11 years old, going on my first mule deer hunt with dad...you couldn't wipe the smile off my face, or the excitement. I love that feeling. After a traditional bacon and egg breakfast, we were off. My agenda was to do a cull/management hunt of 10 animals, plus two trophies including a kudu bull and mountain zebra. The landowner and PH felt that one of the more difficult trophies was going to be the mountain zebra, and in my case they couldn't be more right, so we decided to tackle this one first.
We climbed a small hill after sunrise, overlooking a large valley with more hills intermixed. After 30 minutes of glassing, the PH, Matheus (Mathews) found a group of 5 with 4 mares and a nice stallion, so off we went on the 1/2 mile stalk. The altitude was no problem for me, but the sandy, rocky, knee high grass covering those hills was brutal on my arthritic knees. I could've cared less though. To make a long story short, we wound up stalking those zebra for over 4 hours and could never manage to get a shot off. They either stayed in nasty cover, winded us, or just managed to stay out of range during the whole adventure that morning. We broke for lunch at 1:00 pm. Matheus found them again about mid afternoon and we were off again. About 2.5 hours later we had managed to make our way to a point in which we could intercept the small herd and at about 5pm I was staring at the stallion through my VX6, set on 6x, at 130 yards. He made it to an opening and I fired and hit him almost perfectly through the shoulder. He twirled, whirled, and crashed within 60 yards......man was I happy, and wore smooth out all at the same time. This is absolutely one of the most gorgeous creatures I have ever seen.
The 2nd day we decided to go after springbuck. Now we would look for kudu every day as well, but I figured out you kind of need to be really looking for kudu in kudu country, primarily mountains with thick cover, to be effective. At least that's the way I saw it. Anyways this country was loaded with springbuck so locating some of them was not very tough. Several times during the day the PH's and tracker would climb up to aid in locating animals. Getting close to them was a little tough, but within a couple of hours we managed to do so, and I knocked this one down, quartering toward me, with one shot.
Backtracking a bit to the zebra hunt……
Rifle: Tikka 695 7mm RM
Ammo: 160 Accubond, 71.5 Retumbo, 3110 fps
Scope: VX6 2-12x42 duplex
Binocs: Cabelas Euro (Meopta) 8x32HD
I was sighted in at home 1" high at 100 yds. Turned out to be perfect and the rifle still grouped 3 shots within 1" off the bench. Then I told him I wanted to fire off the sticks. For some odd reason, and remembering all the advice here I learned about shooting off the sticks, everything seemed to "click" off of the sticks. I did practice quite a bit at home off the standing Bog Pod, and I managed to put 6 into a 3" group. I felt really good about that.
To finish up my arrival day, we road around the ranch looking at game, and a lot of game there was. I was also treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my life that first evening…..
First hunting day came and I was reminded what I felt like when I was 11 years old, going on my first mule deer hunt with dad...you couldn't wipe the smile off my face, or the excitement. I love that feeling. After a traditional bacon and egg breakfast, we were off. My agenda was to do a cull/management hunt of 10 animals, plus two trophies including a kudu bull and mountain zebra. The landowner and PH felt that one of the more difficult trophies was going to be the mountain zebra, and in my case they couldn't be more right, so we decided to tackle this one first.
We climbed a small hill after sunrise, overlooking a large valley with more hills intermixed. After 30 minutes of glassing, the PH, Matheus (Mathews) found a group of 5 with 4 mares and a nice stallion, so off we went on the 1/2 mile stalk. The altitude was no problem for me, but the sandy, rocky, knee high grass covering those hills was brutal on my arthritic knees. I could've cared less though. To make a long story short, we wound up stalking those zebra for over 4 hours and could never manage to get a shot off. They either stayed in nasty cover, winded us, or just managed to stay out of range during the whole adventure that morning. We broke for lunch at 1:00 pm. Matheus found them again about mid afternoon and we were off again. About 2.5 hours later we had managed to make our way to a point in which we could intercept the small herd and at about 5pm I was staring at the stallion through my VX6, set on 6x, at 130 yards. He made it to an opening and I fired and hit him almost perfectly through the shoulder. He twirled, whirled, and crashed within 60 yards......man was I happy, and wore smooth out all at the same time. This is absolutely one of the most gorgeous creatures I have ever seen.
The 2nd day we decided to go after springbuck. Now we would look for kudu every day as well, but I figured out you kind of need to be really looking for kudu in kudu country, primarily mountains with thick cover, to be effective. At least that's the way I saw it. Anyways this country was loaded with springbuck so locating some of them was not very tough. Several times during the day the PH's and tracker would climb up to aid in locating animals. Getting close to them was a little tough, but within a couple of hours we managed to do so, and I knocked this one down, quartering toward me, with one shot.
Backtracking a bit to the zebra hunt……
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