Just picked up my duiker mount this weekend so I’ll tell about that guy. Was on my first safari and enjoying myself immensely hunting with game4africa. My brother had his kudu bull in the skinning shed and it was my turn to carry the .300wm. Wik has us looking ofF a sort of plateau into a more open bottom and there is a nyala all fluffed up trying to impress the ladies and there were some kudu cows. Nothing to shoot at but so much fun that I forgot to use my camera.
Next small canyon and Wik is pointing out this ear in the spekboom or that rear end on the field edge and I spot something before he does and feeling awful proud of myself. “What is that little brown thing down there?” Only animal I spotted first the entire hunt and it’s a duiker. I struggled the entire trip to sort duikers from steenboks and didn’t care about killing either one. But Wik tells me it’s huge and it’s horns splay our wider than usual and please shoot it. Well I’m not interested in tiny brown things and it’s horns aren’t tripping my trigger. I tell Wik I’m not just here to kill for the sake of killing and with no more said about it, we move on. Maybe I just didn’t want a duiker for my first African animal and I had read A LOT about taking what Africa gives you and not kicking sand in her face.
Just around the corner from top of the plateau and Wik spots a nyala bull. I get on the sticks and it disappears at the shot. Trackers and dogs come in just in case and we watch the show from up on high. Very dead bull, no tracking required.
Skip ahead a couple days and my brother is working for a zebra. I’m having a blast, with camera following along taking pix of thorns and bugs and tracks in the dust, horns sticking up over the spark boom. My brother still is haunted by a miss and later an issue with that darn safety (he is left handed and using my rifle which isn’t) and Wik is showing his ph mastery skills in patience. Then a little girl duiker comes bustling around a hill about a hundred yards off and unaware of us. Nice ram right behind her and Wik asks my brother if he wants a duiker. He doesn’t but I have now decided that I want one-rather badly. So I get on sticks and as soon as the scope fills with hair I snatch the trigger. What a sloppy damn mess that shot was. Wik called in the jack Russell’s and we started them at the first glop of gut matter. It was less than a minute and they had him bayed under a bush. Trackers finished him with a knife poke that separates the atlas from the axis and thankfully I get to carry him to the truck. Not my only bad shot of the trip but thankfully the trackers and miniature wolves keep me from losing anything other than some pride.
The mount turned out great, and when my wife made fun of me for shooting the tiny antelope, I just told her to hold her tongue, I was awful happy to have that guy!
