Thursday, August 15, 2024

South Africa Hunt 2024 - Part 3 - Zebra, Duiker, Blue Wildebeest

Day 3 - Friday July 12

We had always planned to move to the Eastern Cape to hunt some of the plains game.  Since we were so successful so quickly at Otterskloof, we made the move a day early.

We started by heading to the skinning shed to pick up our skulls and capes.

This is where the phrase "in the salt" comes from.  The skins and skulls are preserved by packing them in salt. Arnold had a method for the transport with the trophies in the trailer inside a zipper bag with the luggage in the truck bed.  All the trophies would go to the taxidermist in Port Elizabeth at the end of the hunt.
We took the six hour drive and arrived at our lodge near Kirkwood with only a little daylight left.  Eric had added zebra to his wish list at Jeni's request.  It made the space criteria because it would be a flat skin - not a shoulder mount.
We went for a walk at last light and, sure enough, Arnold spotted some zebras bleeding into a clearing along with a few other animals.
Eric gets on the sticks and they are at 265 yards.  Arnold picks the right one and Eric takes the shot.  Shot at Zebra
Animals come out of the woodwork and run in all directions.  Eventually, a group of zebra can be seen walking up a switchback trail on the far mountainside.  Arnold picks out the wounded one and we wait for it to pass thru an opening in the trees.  Eric takes a follow up shot at over 300 yards and misses.
We go to the original shot spot and find blood.  We don't know how badly he's hit and don't want to push him deep into the mountains as we're running out of light. We decide to give him the night in the hopes that he'll bed down and die.
It's a tough night for Eric but Arnold tries to console us with kudu kabobs.  We're settled now in the Bosnes (Bush Nest) Lodge.

With most of the day spent in the truck, it was only 10,223 steps but there's elevation here.  85 flights.

Day 4 - Saturday July 13

We're up with the sun and ready to go track zebra.  We are joined by one of the property owners, Henry.
On the way out to the zebra, we stop at this awesome hunting stand with a view of the valley below.
Eric had duiker on his list so Arnold started to blow on a predator call and a duiker magically appeared out of the brush at 30 yards.  Eric whacked him.
The recovery was easy.
Duiker are one of the "tiny ten" antelope.
Eric can definitely find space on the wall for this mount.
Then we went back to the zebra shot spot to begin tracking.  We found blood.
The trail was fairly easy to follow.
Ricardo and Henry were much faster on the trail than Eric and I.  After about a mile, we fell back while they stayed on it.  Arnold decided to take the truck up the mountainside to an overlook.  His plan was to just glass and see if he could pick up the group of zebra.
The trail led to thicker and thicker cover. It was obvious that the wounded zebra was still with the herd.
We spent several hours on the trail with no luck.
We stayed on it all morning.
But eventually we gave up and headed in for lunch.
Lots of interesting terrain and plants.

Most things had thorns.
Arnold's wife Shelly (Chelle) brought us pizza for lunch.  And we had a visit with Mia.
And Arnold Jr.
We decided that our best shot was to see if the zebra came back out that evening in the same spot.  In the meantime, we went looking for blue wildebeest - and almost immediately found some.
We drove into a steep valley and Henry spotted them on the side of the mountain on the right.  There were two blues at 185 yards and Eric got out and on the sticks from the dirt track.  Arnold identified the better bull and he immediately walked behind a bush/tree.

Eric was in that position on his knees on the sticks for ages.  The target bull stayed behind the bush. The satellite bull wandered around in front of the bush.  Arnold sent Ricardo further down the road thinking it might get them to move.  We start hearing snorts from another bull that we can't see.  It is close to us but obscured by brush.  Eventually a golden wildebeest bull walked out into view and started to head up the mountain toward the two blues. He got all the way up to the other two bulls and it finally got them to move.  Eric takes the shot. Shoot until they're down
The first shot is a hit but probably high. Eric follows up and hits. He does it again and he's down but not out. He hits him again.  Blue wildebeest are "poor man's buffalo" and are tough to get down.  This one absorbed a lot of copper.  Even with all that, he took a pistol shot to finish him.
Now we had a big animal on the side of the mountain and no "recovery crew" to call.  At the bottom of the mountain is a ditch with a creek and then up the other side to the road. We got him on the transport tarp.
But first we needed photos.
He's quite a nice bull.
I'm not sure how small that Euro mount will be.
The Hollywood shot.
You can see the road in the top of the photo below.  There's a cliff in front of Arnold and a creek below.
I learned quickly that you don't want to be in front of this tarp on the way down the hill.  This was especially true on this last bit down to the creek.  Down he went

But now he was down in the creek and had to come up the other side to get to the truck.
Arnold cut a path to back the truck off the road toward the creek bed. Clearing the way
And then we could use the truck winch to get him up and into the bed.
And from there back to the skinning shed so that Ricardo could go to work. Notice the duiker behind him.
We paused for a cup of coffee then headed out to see if the zebra returned to the scene of the shot.  We were also keeping an eye out for impala.
We checked one field for impala as light was fading - nothing.  We moved on to the clearing where the zebra shot took place.  We watched as light was fading but nothing was moving.  We decided to take one last look before dark in the first field.  As we were moving back there thru brush, we bumped into zebras at 30 yards.  Three ran across and a trailing fourth one had blood on its shoulder.  Eric went to shoot and the scope was on 9x.  By the time it was adjusted, a rushed off-hand shot missed.

Back to the lodge to sit around this awesome firepit and have a beer.
Sable backstrap for dinner.
15,929 steps with 105 flights of stairs climbed (a lot of them on the wildebeest).
I will probably have two more posts on this trip.

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Wednesday, August 14, 2024

South Africa Hunt 2024 - Part 2 - Waterbuck and Lechwe

Day Two - Thursday July 11

Picking up the thread after the cape buffalo, we woke up the next morning with the objective to get Eric some shot opportunities.  Eric's desires were a little different than mine for this trip.  I decided what trophies I wanted and would deal with what to do with them at a later date.  Eric planned ahead and made the rational decision to try to take animals that would fit in his space available for trophy display.  Most of his target species were readily available at our second stop in the Eastern Cape.  But we convinced him that a blue wildebeest European mount would be very space efficient.

Koosie spotted a group of blue WB and we put on a stalk in fairly open country. 

We bumped them and followed up again.  We got into position but they were nervous.  Eric got on the sticks but they moved before a shot could be fired.
We moved on to another area and passed rhinos.
Most of them had their horns removed to thwart poachers.  Some were due for a trim.
We crossed a river and went up to a high spot to glass.  We spotted a lone wildebeest bull but also a very good waterbuck.  They weren't very approachable but as we glassed the opposite ridge, there was another good waterbuck working down the ridge.
Waterbuck was too big a mount for Eric but it was on my list.  I'd already shot two animals and Eric hadn't shot yet.  At the risk of flak from Joan for being greedy, I decided to go for it.  Arnold determined that it was best to drive down off the ridge that we were on, swing around the end of the ridge that the waterbuck was on, and approach him from low on the backside with more favorable wind.
We drove around to the other side and then started to walk in on the ridge where we spotted the waterbuck.  We walked into 150 yards directly below him and could see that he was bedded on the skyline.  His rack stood out above the brush.
Arnold got me set up on the sticks while kneeling and looking steeply uphill.  He asked if I was ready and then gave a yell to make the buck stand up.  I shot as soon as he stood up and he disappeared off the other side of the ridge. Video of the Shot

I should mention here that we are all taught in hunter safety not to take a skyline shot like this.  I would not take it in other circumstances but we were on a 35,000 acre high fenced property.  There were no residences or structures for miles in any direction.  We were the only hunters out that day.  The area behind the shot was the high ridge where we had just been glassing. I was comfortable taking that shot.
Koosie and Ricardo went up to the place where he stood and we returned to the truck to drive back around and get as close as we could. It wasn't long before Koosie confirmed that he was down - he didn't go far.  Finally, a one shot kill.  We hiked up to find him less than 75 yards from where he was shot. Walking in on him
I sat down on a rock right beside him and caught my breath.  Koosie called the recovery team on the radio.  A waterbuck is an elk sized animal and he was halfway up a mountainside. We waited close to an hour for the recovery team to get out to us.  The shot was a good one.  He stood quartering to me and it was right on his shoulder.
They used a tarp with poles to move him - brute manpower.
They took him down to a selected spot and unloaded him.
And set him up for the photo-op.
Which Arnold always does a professional job on.
Photo-op in process.
Then the recovery team loaded him up again and carried him down to the truck and away to the skinning shed.  We had lunch, returned to our original high glassing spot and took up the search for a wildebeest for Eric.  We actually bumped a lone bull but he didn't really meet Arnold's critical requirements.
We got back in the truck and drove back across the river.  We saw roan, sable and rhino.

We came around a bend in the road and there was a herd of wildebeest.  We backed up, got out, put on a stalk thru a drainage but they busted us and took off running with some hartebeest along for the ride.

We continued driving looking for wildebeest.  We came out into a big flat grassland and spotted lechwe.  Once again, a lechwe mount was too big for Eric's criteria but it was on my list.  Now I'm really going to be in trouble if I take four animals and Eric hasn't had a shot.

There's no cover and a big open grassland.  We drove to the right side of the wind and snuck into 180 yards.  I got set up on the sticks and shot over the back of it.  Arnold made the observation that my head is coming up out of the scope right at the shot.  The rifle butt drops into my armpit and the rifle rotates back on the stabile-sticks and the muzzle goes up. I'm just so anxious to see, I'm popping up like a prairie dog out of his burrow.  

Anyway, the missed lechwe has moved off and we take off on foot to try to get a follow up.  It's flat open country and he doesn't let us get close.  We cover a lot of ground.  At one point, we get to about 300 yards and I send another one over his back. Not pretty.

Eventually, we get back to the truck.  I'm kicking myself for these rookie mistakes.  I need to just keep my damn head in the scope.  We drive out of the flatland and start up a hill.  There stands another lechwe - a good one.

We pile out of the truck and start a stalk. I get set up on the sticks at 150 yards and take the shot. We can see he's hit but he moves off and out of sight.  We hike uphill to the impact spot and there's good blood. we follow it and eventually push him.  He gives me a look back and I shoot him in the right ham angled for his left shoulder.  We track him and find him down, unable to move but his head still up.  Stossel is on the case.
Arnold asks me if I still have any solids but I took them out of my belt after the buffalo hunt.  Arnold doesn't want a finishing shot and he ends it with his trusty Leatherman.
We get the photo-op in before losing light and are able to load him ourselves into the truck.
We drive him over to the skinning shed and Ricardo goes to work on him.
Meanwhile, back in the cooler are the previous carcasses.
While Ricardo is working on the lechwe, some of the recovery crew shows up with a domestic sheep that they had purchased live from a farmer.  They harvest it and butcher for a weekend BBQ.
While Ricardo works, Arnold gets his truck washed.
The recovery crew keeps a record of the harvest including weights and measures of each trophy.  Weights are kg after removal of head, hide, guts and hoofs.  Basically a meat and bone weight.  Horn measures are inches.

In the course of skinning the lechwe out, Ricardo recovers my second shot which entered ham and ended under the skin on the shoulder.  That looks like 100% weight retention after going the length of the animal.
We left Ricardo to his work and headed back to the lodge for dinner.  The watch gave me 19,667 steps and elevation changes equal to 105 flights of stairs.
I will pick this up in Part 3.

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