So to add a little more to the story now that I have some time...
We left home here at 6am from Calgary Alberta. After 28 hours of travel we were met at Tambo by Chris from Ct-Safaris. We made a 4ish hour drive to camp and absolutely passed out!
The next day was for getting used to the time change and we made a trip to the range. I was borrowing one of Chris's guns and he wanted to be sure that I was comfortable with it. After a couple of shots I am sure he was terrified of my shooting abilities. For whatever reason I couldn't get used to the trigger on his gun and had some horrendous results. We switched to a different rifle and I was much more comfortable with it. I had never hunted with a .375 H&H before so I was excited to be able to do so.
Day 1 of hunting had us in some very thick bush looking for Gemsbok. We made 4 stalks and one walk into a waterhole that were all unsucessful as the wind was swirling in every direction that day. We finally had the wind die down later in the afternoon and made another walk into a waterhole. We found my Bull all by himself and I put one behind his shoulder. He was quartering away and we thought the shot was a little far back at first but he piled up about 200 yards away. Upon closer inspection the bullet was right where it should have been.
The second animal was the Impala. We came upon him by accident but I made the shot count and he was down in a big puff of dust. He is a great animal that should score nicely.
Day 2 was fairly uneventful looking for Bushbuck and Kudu but I managed to take a Warthog at last light while sitting in a hide overlooking a field that the pigs had absolutely destroyed. He was a big, very old one tusker. He was very skinny and was probably on his last legs.
Day 3 found me looking to upgrade my Warthog and look again for Bushbuck and Kudu. We found the Warthog in the afternoon after seeing piles of pigs that just didn't meet the criteria for an upgrade. This is the only animal that didn't fall to a single shot. I misjudged the range and shot too high. We needed to finish it off but after a few minutes we had the big old boar in the back of the truck and were looking for Bushbuck.
We were only a mile or so away from the Warthog spot in some thicker bush and we came across the Bushbuck. I made a running shot from about 80 or 90 yards and dropped him in his tracks. He had all kinds of very small ticks on him. They were crawling everywhere. I believe they were pepper ticks???? Gross is all I can say. I'm not a fan of ticks. The evening was dedicated to finding Kudu.
Day 4 was dedicated to again finding the Kudu. At around 0930 we seen my Kudu bull standing on the side of the montain and we looked him over. The PH and tracker both said to take him so I knocked him down where he stood. The tracker Micklaus kind of had a weird look on his face and said something to Chris. Chris started to laugh and said "you said we should shoot him Micklaus". Apparently Micklaus asked how he was going to get him down from there.
It wasn't easy getting up to him because of how steep and thorny it was, but we made it up there for the photo op. Again he was a very old skinny Bull. He had almost no teeth left and was very scarred up from living in the mountains all of his life. The tracker asked if I was going to shoot any fat animals for the meat or if I was just going to shoot the skinny ones. Getting him down wasn't as bad as they thought. He rolled quite easily down the hill.
Day 5 had me upgrade my Bushbuck and kill my Baboon. Again the .375 was extremely efficient. most of the animals hardly even twitched. This Bushbuck however somehoe made it 35 yards or so with his vitals and both shoulders busted apart. They are tough little critters for their size. He is a very nice Ram and I am very happy with it.
The remaining days were spent souvenier shopping and sight seeing. We made a trip to the Cheetah project in De-Wildt. We also made a trip to Pilanesburgh game reserve with hopes on seeing the Big 5.
More later guys. Work calls.