SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa Big 5 Hunt With Bossie Of LIMPOPO BIG GAME SAFARIS

ActionBob

Lifetime bronze benefactor
AH ambassador
Joined
Dec 12, 2011
Messages
5,589
Reaction score
13,976
Location
Texas Hill Country, Central Minnesota, SW Kansas.
Media
145
Hunting reports
Africa
5
Mex/S.Amer
1
Member of
NRA life, DSC, SCI
Hunted
Minnesota, Texas, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, British Columbia, Argentina, Kansas, Macedonia, Australia, Tanzania, Iceland
Big 5 Hunt.

This report is for a hunt that took place several years ago.

As many of you know, I had two buffalo, a Zimbabwe elephant taken during the ban, fully exportable so still trying to get that imported. However my replicas are home on very nice hand carved wooden bases. A male lion that is here. And as of December, 2015, all I needed yet was leopard... Which I got about 11 months later in Mozambique! So I’ve had my Big 5 for over 5 years. So better late than never!

My primary mission on this late season hunt was a white rhino. I got talking a little bit about rhino when I was on my RSA lion hunt in April 2015, the comments were how the price of rhino was really coming down.

Then James Jeffrey posted a deal right here on AH for the old bulls with cut horns. That got me thinking but I wanted the "right hunt" for me, biggest property I could find/afford and as much a real hunt as possible. I messaged the late Pieter of Paw Print and he had some options but not quite the situations I was looking for... And then I was talking to my friend Bossie of @LIMPOPO BIG GAME SAFARIS and mentioned it to him... We had been planning to meet up and hunt together for over a year and actually had planned to get together in April but then his house was hit by that tornado, and he ended up working in Angola so it did not work out...

Bossie was going to be home for Christmas... And then he found me the rhino hunt I was looking for and things came together! In fact he showed up at the airport fresh off his flight home and just a bit behind me in the Immigration line!

I bought the hunt when the exchange rate was 13.55:1... And it was priced in Rand. As I understand it at least was at the time of my hunt, there are at least 22,000 white rhinos in private ownership in RSA. These rhino owners are in a real dilemma. Those are of course big ticket items on their inventory and balance sheet. and perishable, especially being so vulnerable to poaching. Yet they are now very restricted on how they can actually make money off them, even just to cover the maintenance cost much less make any kind of profit... Of course they can sell breeding stock, but like so many species in RSA (sable!!!), they actually seem to have topped that out and not a lot of buyers in such a restricted market. They can "farm" the horn, and the rhino I shot had his horns cut many years prior.... however they cannot legally sell it. There was some action within South Africa to open up trade of the horn, and then an ensuing legal battle and I have lost track of that. But that is not a solution as there are no legal end users of the horn there and so they would only be marketing to a speculative market, or people stockpiling in anticipation of the World trade opening up. and I'm told there are warehouses full of the stuff! The rhino situation is really complicated, there are even rumors that some owners have "arranged" the poaching of their own rhinos in order to get money out of them... I think it is despicable, but yet I can understand they get into a financial pinch. And just as despicable is the industry of collecting donations to prevent rhino poaching and profiteering from that! The white rhino and their owners are in a real plight.

As for the bull I hunted, it was 17 or 18 years old, big diameter and rubbed down horn but it had been cut... It is not like I'm going to put it in the record books any time soon, don't need protesters outside my door! But I do believe it would make it just on diameter. There was a mount at SCI I was looking at and the taxidermist showed me how it was a young bull because it still had the bristly hairs all around the base of the horn, the hair the horn is actually made of. An older bull has that all smoothed down and hard. And then just the pure body size was huge! My taxidermist got all excited and bought a form before he know how big it was. He ordered the medium or normal size he gets… This was not his first or second rhino! He really likes doing them and a friend of mine has a “Jumanji” rhino busting through a wall that is spectacular! However he should have ordered the biggest form available as he ended up adding to it considerably! He even had to split the head and add a couple inches of width. He had to cut it in half and add several inches of length. and then had to add foam to increase the size al around. He didn't seem at all concerned about any of this as he was cutting up and customizing the form anyway;)

Bossie had found a great property to hunt rhino, everyone has their own preferences, and this was my number one concern. That it was as real a hunt as possible. It did add to the challenge that we had to find the exact bull. Every time we found rhinos, the on-site PH had to look them over closely and decide if we had the right one. We saw 13 rhinos, but they had about double that on the place, it was 7500 hectares (18,500 acres) and I think we walked over most of those hectares looking for the right animal! I had the opportunity to set up and practice aiming at some from different angles so that was nice, something I was wishing I had done when elephant hunting. Rhinos are so prehistoric they are really different than other animals. I studied The Perfect Shot book quite a bit. You line up back from the point of the shoulder and then up that big crease well behind the shoulder and shoot a solid into that junction. Then follow up and get as many more solids in as possible... The regulations in that province are really strict and that was part of the appeal. They ensure a good hunt and the best fair chase hunt and challenge for the hunter. The PH is restricted from shooting unless humans are in danger of being hurt by a wounded rhino. If the hunter wounds it, the law says he must finish it himself, no matter how long it takes. I had to provide proof of owning proper rifles for the hunt, a full resume of hunting experience as well as photographic proof, proof of DG hunting experience, again with pictures, proof I was importing my DG trophies. Letter from the taxidermist ensuring he will properly handle and export the rhino including the horn. It came right down to the wire before we got the permit. Then on site a government game manager had to be present to ensure all the rules were followed, he and the on-site PH read us the riot act, in a professional way and I appreciated it as it required the hunt to be as real and fair chase as possible... The government guy was a very competent and professional fellow and I had to shoot a target with two shots from my Ruger RSM 505 Gibbs for him to prove I was capable. I got two shots within 2" of the bulls eye off sticks and he was happy. This particular rhino had been hunted before by a guy who ran out of time and never got it. Made me want him even more! They wanted this bull gone as he was old and was not the primary breeding bull any longer, he had been on the place for 6 years and he would be breeding his daughters if not removed. And he was fighting with the new main breeding bull they wanted doing the breeding now. All this made him a good bull to hunt and of no further value to the procreation of the species. And face it, it does not take all the bulls to be able to cover the breeding needs so even some younger bulls can be taken without any negative effects to the species.

The first day we only looked around, actually got quite occupied taking pictures of Sable, giraffe, and a plethora of other PG. We got real close the sable and herds of blue wildebeest, giraffe, and saw a 3 member family of rhinos. They had a white lion pride right by camp in an enclosure, the big old male would roar every morning about 50' from my bed! He was behind a double fence but it was pretty cool to wake up to that anyway. And they had pet hyenas on the other side of camp.

They also had buffalo and hippo we got to see close up so that was cool. On the day I got the rhino, we were walking a ridge line when an old dagga boy charged out of some bushes off to the side of us and ran right down the trail we had just switched off of.. We took a Y to the right and had we taken the left, we would have been right on the trail he charged down. As it was, he was plenty close to get the blood pumping!

As we came around a big bend in the bush along an open prairie, coming up on a dam, we spotted a lone rhino in the shade under a tree probably 300 to 400 yards away. We got back out of sight along the bush and stalked up behind the dam. He was laying facing us and the wind was directly from him to us so were were good as long as he did not see or hear us.. We had to get closer for the PH to determine if it was the right animal but we were optimistic as he had the cut horn and appeared very large bodied. There was a dry river bed coming into the dam so we snuck behind the dam wall and got into the river where we could look out over the bank and through the bushes while staying in the cover well enough so he could not see us. It was determined this was our bull but there was no good approach lane as the wind would get us if we circled around behind where the rocks and bushes would give us cover. To approach dead on into the wind, it was all open other than about 4 termite mounds that were just over knee high and big enough to hide one person well, two not so well. We spent a lot of time just waiting to see if he was going to move as we had a decent ambush spot, or at least a good chance of being able to re-position if he went to drink out of the dam. He got up and re positioned himself as the shade moved and to switch around to lay on his other side. But it became obvious that he was settling in for the afternoon and it was getting to be close to noon so it was getting hot!

Finally a plan was made to try stalking straight on. We were 184 yards from him and although I felt I could have made that shot if needed, it was not what any of us wanted to do on a rhino.. And I had plenty of days if needed to track him down again if we blew this stalk. The PH was certain there was a good chance that if he made us and took off, he might angle past us and possibly offer a shot if he stopped to look. So it was determined this was as good an approach as we had and we set out leopard crawling to the first termite mound. I had my Ruger RSM in 505 Gibbs and it only holds two of those big cartridges down, and I did not want one in the pipe as I was crawling behind the PH! So we made a plan for me to get two shots off and then reload with the PH having a round in each front pocket and me having 6 on the stock in the Murray shell holder I was using also to add weight to control recoil as that gun is a bit light for caliber. We slid over the river bank and started the painstaking journey! Thankfully there were not as many cactus as in the EC! But the grass was dry and thin and about 8" to 10" tall so we had to stay lined up behind the termite mounds and even then only move when the rhino looked away. And man those ears were going on a swivel non stop! Bossie had a video camera and was heading to the mound to our left, and we had another guy following us with another camera and he was going to stay behind a mound as we moved forward to the last one. The government guy stayed back in the river watching through binos. We got out there about 30 yards and came into a bare spot and that red dirt was so hot I was very grateful to get back to the prickly but cooler grass.. Finally made the first mound and rested up a few minutes, waited for the rhino to lay his head sideways and had to angle to the right further to get lined up behind the next mound. More open ground, long minutes of staying flat and still when he would look our way (thankfully rhinos have very poor eyesight) and inching forward again. We made the last mound, and both of us tucked in behind it. I got my gun up on it to aim through the scope at him... The PH ranged him at 130 yards. He said we should try to get closer and I was hoping to shoot him at close range just for the thrill of it so off we went again but totally in the open now so we had to stay really flat and hidden in the sparse grass. We got to 80 yards and the PH was feeling good about the position when suddenly the rhino got up. The PH set up the sticks real low and splayed out (Primos type tripod) and I had to shoot from a sitting position, which I had never done with the 505. The rhino turned broadside and the cross hairs lined up, squeezed off the shot and worked the bolt as the rhino ran in a small circle and was behind the bushes facing the other way when I got a second one into him and then had to reload. I stuffed one in and closed the bolt as the PH was saying to load two but I was already back on the rhino as he circled back to near were he was on the first shot and was snorting and plowing his head into the dirt. The PH had coached me to make a good first shot and then just get as much lead into him as possible. I felt really good about the first shot and thought the second was real good as well and the rhino was looking like he was going to go down but I was going to keep shooting.. I mean it's a Rhino! So pulled the third shot pretty quickly and that one was forward and high. He dropped like a brain shot on that one... it had broken his neck, missed the skull but the 525 grain solid had gone through the neck vertebrae, exited and went through the back side and out the top of the ear.. That last bullet actually made 4 holes. I should mention, by law you can only shoot solids.. I would have used at least one TSX as I have a lot of confidence in that bullet out of the 505 and it makes a massive wound channel. But the government guy did not even want any softs in the backpacks. The Flat point brass solids blew right through, and that first shot was right on the money the way it shows in the perfect shot book, the second was a little further forward in the front shoulder and all blew straight through. That rhino hide is so thick that the exit holes looked like 30 caliber. There was no blood coming out at all. That hide just closed up after the bullets went through.

This was a completely exportable trophy and at a cost comparable to or less than an exportable elephant at the time. I actually jumped on this opportunity because I was concerned that the South African government may negotiate off the right to hunt them in trade for opening the World market for the horn trade at the next CITIES meeting. That did not happen and the cost of these hunts have gotten even cheaper. As have elephant. Although white rhino from RSA continues to be importable to the USA through a relatively painless process.

rhino AH Dec15 4906.JPG

Africa Dec15 4512.JPG

AH rhino Dec15 4940.JPG

rhino AH Dec15 4922.JPG

rhino AH Dec15 4931.JPG

rhino AH Dec15 4924.JPG

rhino AH Dec15 4925.JPG


Bossie had his big SUV and a trailer to the airport so we all loaded up and headed to the Afton House for a steak dinner and to spend the night. The next morning after a great breakfast we drove out to the place where the rhinos were. Long drive but mostly good roads. It was all very hush hush. No emails or texts to be sent from anywhere near the ranch. All out efforts to keep the location isolated as part of their poaching control.

It was an astonishingly impressive place. There where 3 trophy rooms each more spectacular and many times larger than the previous. The accommodations were luxury private chalets. The big newest trophy room included an exquisite dining hall. Food and service was of course fantastic.

After a late lunch the day I took the rhino, the horns were removed and paperwork done with the horns receiving serial numbers in indelible ink as well as being micro chipped. The full skin, skull, and horns were transported by an armed driver to the taxidermist who tanned the hide. That process thinned it and reduced the weight and size dramatically. My advice to anyone who wants to hunt rhino is to consider leaving the horns behind if that is a decent option. In the Rhino Special currently posted, leaving the horn behind equals a $9475 discount. I would save that money but negotiate to be allowed to have a cast made of the real horns so that your taxidermist can make replicas. Let me tell you, owning the horn is a PIA! Mine is locked away in a safe deposit box. A friend just had his get infested with moths (worms/maggots). You cannot legally transfer it much less sell it. Perhaps to a museum. I would certainly not risk displaying it. I had two sets of replicas made for display and they turned out great! One is as is, the other is a guess as to what it would be if it had not been cut. One is on the rhino and the other on the skull.

After loading the transport truck and seeing him off, we loaded up ourselves and headed to Limpopo for some PG and especially night critter hunting with Bossie. I took a big old giraffe who had darkened nicely. We had a blast mostly taking what Africa offered and just messing around.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
 
Grand old bull Bob!

Rhino has become a dream hunt of mine…they are so magnificent and “prehistoric”. Congrats.
 
I really enjoyed your hunt report. story and photos of this hunt (I know absolutely nothing about rhino hunting, apparently more to it than I would have thought). Congratulations on a grand hunt! Your full body mount looks great as well.
 
Thank you for sharing, Bob! Would you mind detailing the load you used in your 505?
 
Well that’s just cool! Congrats! The mount looks fantastic!
 
Good on you. A story that needed telling and you told it well. Merry Christmas to you and your lovely bride. See you in Dallas!
 
Love the story!
 
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
 
Wonderful job! I have a noob question. How do you get the full size rhino in your house? Does the taxidermist deliver it?
 
Wonderful job! I have a noob question. How do you get the full size rhino in your house? Does the taxidermist deliver it?
Well I read on another rhino thread that you need to drive in a Volkswagen Bug to size up the space you need...... So I went ahead and got the pickup truck version ;) LOL
 
Could you take a picture of the door please? Need to see what to look for in a future house haha
 
WOW!! What a hunt. Congrats on a great trophy.
Bruce
 
Wonderful job! I have a noob question. How do you get the full size rhino in your house? Does the taxidermist deliver it?
Seriously, the taxidermist had showed it at a couple events and then brought it out in his trailer. He has those "human forklift" straps to carry it with.. Between us we had 8 guys to carry it in. 6 could do it but we had to maneuver through Between the fireplace and a big post so 6 held while 2 at a time got around.
 
Bob, really good story covering many aspects involving modern rhino hunt!
Congrats on big 5, accomplished!
And Merry X-mass to you!
Thank you for sharing!
(And thino mount is awsome!) (y)
 

Forum statistics

Threads
53,632
Messages
1,131,571
Members
92,695
Latest member
NickolasAr
 

 

 

Latest posts

Latest profile posts

Early morning Impala hunt, previous link was wrong video

Headshot on jackal this morning

Mature Eland Bull taken in Tanzania, at 100 yards, with 375 H&H, 300gr, Federal Premium Expanding bullet.

20231012_145809~2.jpg
 
Top