Day of the Duiker
So we are up at 6 and all of the animals on our list are filled. There is really no pressure and we hunting Duiker today. The only pressure I have is that Bruce’s 7mm SAUM only has one bullet left…one shot and I have got to make it count. Well sort of, we also have the camp .223 and Bruce’s .375 Ruger. But in my mind I want to make the shot count. So off we go, and we are seeing some Duikers, either too small or female. I have seen a lot of Duikers while hunting, but I never paid too much attention to how antsy they are. They don’t hang around long and when trying to do trophy evaluation it makes it extremely tough. Bruce and I are on the back and trying to spot them before they take off but we are not having much luck with good males. After about an hour we are getting better at it but we are mostly spotting resting females. We finally get on a good one, he takes off but not too spooked and goes walking thru the brush. We tried to get back on him, but it was not to be. He was a good and I think one we had seen earlier in the week. I think knowing what I know now, we might have got him before he got spooked.
We then decide to take a walk and check Ant Hills, as apparently they love to sit in the shade during the heat of the day. We were walking right to within 20 or 30 yards before they would take off. But we still were having trouble finding a good male. After a mile and ½ walk, we have gotten close to many but hadn’t raised the gun. We then decide to go to another spot and go for a walk, we again are bumping females, bump a few small males but still not close. We come around a corner and there is one on the other side of fence to the game breeding operation. So I dial the scope up and I am getting myself mentally prepared to thread the needle. When we turns and ducks the fence and now is walking across the path (left to right). I am following him in the scope and trying to get him to stop but due to the wind direction, there was no way it could hear us. So as I go to squeeze trigger, I see the bush on the right side and stop moving and yank the trigger, shooting directly behind the Duiker. He is unhit and goes meandering through the brush and we are trying to get another shot now with Bruce’s .375. But it wasn’t going to be. I am pretty frustrated with myself as I made another rookie mistake of stopping my swing, and messed up the pretty awesome record that Bruce’s rifle had by finishing it with a miss. So in the truck going back to lunch Bruce becomes a spotting machine. To make a long frustrating story short, we (and by we I mean Bruce) spotted 3 decent males in 30 minutes but before we could even size them up they took off. It was now my mission to get a duiker
The afternoon came, and I said I have no problem shooting one from the truck. So we had a new plan, look at the Ant Hills, see if we can catch one resting and see if we can get a shot before they get out there. The new system was working immediately as I was able to get on females and small males and I was able to do some better trophy evaluation. We passed on a male that was a borderline shooter, he was pretty good but we have seen better. We keep going and looking over ant hill after ant hill, and I have to be honest Bruce and I were getting pretty good at seeing them. We come around a bend and jump one and he takes off, crosses the road and slows down, we are slowing moving forward and can see him slow making his way back to the road. A quick tap on the roof, the truck stops, turns off and I am on a bag steading for the shot. As he starts to cross, I see horns and they are about ear length, safety off and as he crosses the road, I am following the shoulder, breath and squeeze, solid shot and he flips over and down. My quest for a Duiker was over and I could not have been happier. From what I was told he on the better side for this farm but everyone was pretty happy.
As far as the “shitshells” story, to make a mind numbing experience somewhat entertaining, we decide to shoot a few guineas for the camp staff. We had about an hour of hunting to go and both Bruce and I enjoy bird hunting so figured it would be a fun way to end it. Well we think the only way we got and guineas was from them laughing at us. We LITERALLY saw the shot bouncing off the birds. We got lucky a hit a few in the head but man with good shells we could have got a few more or at least been done a little sooner. I took a picture of the shells so I know to never buy them and Bruce said, shotshells…more like shitshells. I couldn’t agree more and that was a great and necessary laugh.
