(Note: Been out of circulation lately, as my young trophy wife had hip replacement surgery.
She's now in recovery and her sister is staying with her while I'm at work so, aside from the Surgeons converting her little by little, into a titanium fem-bot, my woman is mending up nicely.)
Anyway, back to the hunting report......
JOURNEY DOWN INTO THE KALAHARI DESERT:
DAY #9:
O'Dark Thirty, we were up and loading our things onto the vehicles for a road trip.
After spending some time in Windhoek, getting a punctured tire repaired and buying some carvings at an outdoor "trinket market", plus one or two other stops for one reason or another, we left town, back in route to our hunting plans.
Our primary objective was for me to hunt eland, on a 37,000 acre private Kalahari area land holding, called "Okambara" or interchangeably, "Elephant Camp".
This specific place exists primarily for tourists to sleep in semi-fancy conditions, dine on truly gourmet level foods / refreshments and be driven about by professional Tour Guides, while taking photos and video of wild animals, from elephant and giraffe, down to various medium and small African animals, as well as birds and lizards, etc.
To the Owner's / Manager's credit at Okambara, their non-hunting Guests are served game meat.
And as far as I could tell, no limp wristed excuses are offered to them about it.
There was a small group of German Photo Tourists staying there during our hunting foray.
More than one approached us at our table (which I quietly dubbed: "Table of Barbarians") and thanked us for the wonderful game meat they were able to enjoy, due to our efforts.
I felt a hint of emotion by their kindness but remained stalwart, however not easy that may have been under the circumstances.
Now at age 64, until that moment, I've never heard such kind words about our revered and ancient tradition of hunting, from any non-hunting tourist, until that moment.
Photo 1. Danny with local biltong, from roadside "mom & pop store," on our way to hunting, down in The Kalahari.
At the turn-off from main highway, onto the side road to camp, Philip decided to stop, so we could buy some local biltong from the above pictured store.
Unfortunately, they were sold out of game meat (only half kidding, we offered to help them with that problem) so, we instead enjoyed their beef biltong.
Nonetheless, it was quite tasty, no worries.
By this time in our journey, we had begun seeing red sand which, is characteristic of the Kalahari.
Seems like I had read somewhere that, The Kalahari Desert is the longest continuous sand dune in Africa, (traversing 5 countries ?)
Whether or not that is so, this part of Africa nonetheless is interesting to me.
Photo 2. Yours Truly, on front steps of: "Okambara", aka: "Elephant Lodge".
This photo does not come close to doing justice for the sheer size of this building, not to mention the fancy accommodations and gourmet level of food and decent wine selection enjoyed within.
Photo 3. Philip glassing from "The Kalahari Escarpment" (perhaps not the real name of this geographic ridge but, that's what we called it).
Upon getting our kit and caboodle put away in each of our respective rooms, I rode in the bakkie with Philip and Adab, for about a half hour, up a 4 wheel drive track, eventually placing us onto the above pictured ridge / escarpment.
It seemed to go on forever and the view alone up there was worth visiting this ridge, even if we had not seen our intended specie.
Below us was the desert floor, mostly flat and covered with a sea of thorn bush, who's stunted canopy was perhaps 7 or 8 feet high.
It went from the base of our perch, to over the far horizon, giving it an "ocean surface" sort of look, until viewing it with binoculars.
We glassed for an hour or so.
Present were at least elephant, oryx and giraffe (which had to lower their heads for feeding on this comparatively stunted foliage).
Then lowe and behold, Adab spotted a half dozen or less eland, perhaps 1 or 1.5 kilometer away.
It took me awhile to find them in my binoculars, because A. I am a city slicker and B. there were no land marks to reference as he was telling us where to look.
Well anyway, at about the same moment I finally saw an eland move in the thick bush out there, Philip announced that we would go try to have a closer look at them.
Onto the vehicle and down from the escarpment we carefully rolled in low gear, like a giant tortoise, with frogs riding on it's back.
This part of Namibia is endowed with millions of sharp stones, ranging from about thumb size to brick size, sticking up everywhere, including where our tires needed to go.
Adab took it easy though and we eventually made it down to the bottom and a kilometer or so out onto the flats.
We had to bush whack a detour around some elephants and later we discovered that this apparently resulted in two punctured tires.
But at any rate, we eventually got back onto the "road" (two tire tracks through the bush) and after a few more kilometers, we reached a spot in what I figured was all the same featured wilderness, yet somehow Adab knew just where to stop and so we did, while Adab then climbed up to join Philip and myself.
Glassing for a minute or less, Adab made a hand gesture indicating we should walk, so all three of us quietly exited the bakkie.
As instructed to do, I then chambered a round slowly and as quietly as possible.
We walked slowly for only perhaps half a kilometer, if that when we encountered a small group of eland.
At first they spooked off but, walking fast on the quiet sandy ground, we soon caught up to them again.
One large bull glared at us down an elephant trail, through the otherwise very thick bush, at perhaps no more than 100 meters distant.
Adab quickly set the sticks and I put the .375 in place, moving the "Safety Catch" to its "Go" position.
All I could see of him was from about his shoulders / top of the brisket level up and he was squarely facing us, about exactly straight on.
I placed my crosswires into the juncture of his throat and brisket, exhale, press, Kaboomski ....Smack ! !
The bull staggered but then leaped out of view.
Adab and Philip both grinning, congratulated me on a shot well made.
However, I had lurched to my right at the moment of ignition, resulting in my 300 grain PMP round nose soft, fracturing the animal's left shoulder but sadly, continuing its path, outside the rib cage, ultimately exiting without damaging any vital organ.
We only discovered things had gone awry, when we reached the spot where he had received my bullet.
There was no dead eland, only small amounts of blood and hoof prints indicating which way the animals had fled.
So, off we go, Adab in the lead, followed by myself and Philip, walking fast at times and running at times (again, very thankful that I had put forth the effort to get in shape for this hunting trip).
More than once or twice we caught a glimpse of the wounded bull, as it bolted from cover, limping badly.
During three of these fleeting encounters, Adab would jump back to my left side, simultaneously gesturing for me to fire and I did so each time.
Once I cut the animal's left (already broken from my first shot) shoulder hide and muscle only.
Once was a clean miss as he lurched to his right just as I fired.
Once was a pretty much center hit ("Texas heart shot") almost in the exhaust pipe and he collapsed.
Shooting animals in the caboose that can weigh an honest ton is not cool, except when already wounded and fleeing, as this one was doing.
And, for such as this exact scenario here, I cast another vote for Ruark's declaration of, "always use enough gun".
I ran forward until parallel to where he lay on his belly and head up, sort of like The Egyptian Sphinx , except that his front legs were not outstretched like that iconic statue.
Upon reaching him, I fired one round through his shoulders, from the squarely broadside angle.
(The exit hole was as shown in photo #5, this page.
Photo 4. My not so easy to bag, bull eland.
Photo 5. Another angle of said eland.
I neglected to write any more notes for this day.
However, I do have the bullet from that rear end shot that put this animal down.
It had punched a hole through the pelvis and was recovered just under the spine, about half way through the length of the eland, and was a more or less perfect mushroom shape.
Likewise, there is no doubt supper was spectacular, but again, I neglected to write notes on it.
TO BE CONTINUED ....
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