Afternoon of Day 6 - me on the right.
Day 6
Day 6 dawns pretty much like the others. Cold, with a howling wind. Nevertheless, we grab a quick bite and we're on the road at 5, heading for the mountain meadow area. I'm now down to only two stops on the way to our sitting area, so either I'm getting used to the altitude, or I'm getting in better shape. I think the former is more likely. We get to our sitting spot, and within a half hour (about 6 am) our spotters tell us they've seen two bulls and a cow. They are some distance from us downhill, but look like they may be coming uphill towards us.
Unfortunately, the bulls decide to bed down an hour later, before they get to us. So we send one of the trackers to walk around the area and see if they will move. The effort is successful, and they begin to move uphill towards us. There are three possible paths they can take, and only one puts them beyond our reach. This is looking better.
We are seated in a position where the bulls can’t see us as they come up the hill. Unfortunately, this means we can't see them if they choose not to take the trail which is in the open. Suddenly, the game scout starts to point and whisper - he's spotted the two not 100 yards from us coming up the hill in a ravine. There are only two spots where the trail is open enough for a shot, and they've just passed the first. So I get ready to shoot if they come into sight in the second spot, which is about 20 feet of open ground. The safety is off. For the first time on this safari. And they have headed into the thick cover and while we see the trees move as they pass by, we can't see the animals at all. They head up the mountain in the thick cover, setting off a troop of hamadryas baboons which live there. No shot. Again. So close. And so disappointing and frustrating.
We watch for some time, and then head back to camp. Our PH is frustrated and decides to walk, so he can glass as he goes. We drive. We're all frustrated, without a doubt. The last hunter in this area took a Nyala on day 3 of his hunt with a handgun! And we haven't had a single opportunity for a shot since we started, six days ago. Having said that, I can't imagine being so frustrated that I'd give up a drive in a warm vehicle and walk.
As I sit here writing this, after lunch, I know, rationally, that we have about 21 more days to hunt, so there's lots of time for things to change. But the animals seem to have gone to ground, and those we do see, we can't get at. If nothing changes, this will be a painful 21 days. And, apart from a stab at hyena (which was supposed to be a no-brainer), we really can't spend time on the leopard until we get the Nyala down. But we're going to keep at it, mostly because what else can we do?
Then, this afternoon, disaster strikes. We head out to the mountain meadow around 4, and begin our glassing. Jacques at one point tells us to stay where we are, while he goes to another vantage point. An hour and a half later, I'm getting sleepy, the sun is starting to go down, and there's a definite chill in the air. Suddenly, Jacques comes crawling back to us and whispers "hurry, come quick, he's there". I quickly run with him to a place he indicates, a ways up hill. Already, I'm out of breath again. He tells me to sit and quickly arranges the shooting sticks so I can shoot from a sitting position. I suddenly see the grey shape in a meadow some distance away. Jacques sticks his shoulder under my right elbow to steady me and says, "take him."
I have run through this in my head dozens, if not more, times. I get my breathing under control, I steady myself, I get the distance, I try to get the right sight picture, and I take the shot. In my mind. In reality, all of it goes out the window after 7 days of waiting for this moment. I snap off a quick shot, and the Nyala quickly turns and runs into a thicket. I don't see a flinch or a buck, but I was shooting for centre of the body, so I think it should be a decent shot.
We quickly run to where he had been standing - or as quickly as I can because we have to drop down some distance and then go up that and more. We get to the thicket, and I can barely breathe. The gang starts to look for the Nyala in the quickly fading light but makes little headway. Dean looks at the shot on his video, and says he thinks it might be a miss. There appears to be a puff of dust by the Nyala's feet just after the shot. I can't believe I could have been 30 inches low, but candidly, I didn't ask the distance before taking the shot, so anything is possible. I range it now, to where we had taken the shot, and it's about 380 yards, which would be my longest shot ever on an animal. The shot was uphill, although the angle wasn't acute, and there was a valley between where I was and where it was.
After 15 minutes of searching, it's clear that there isn't enough light to do this properly. Jacques returns to where I am, and says the game scout found a drop of blood. To say I'm devastated would be an understatement; a miss is bad enough, but this would be a virtually certain non-fatal wounding. Jacques says we will take up the track in the morning, and it's a somber group which heads back to camp, none more somber than me.
We look at the video in camp on a computer, with the two game scouts . In slow motion it's still not clear where exactly the shot went. There is a puff of dust, but it could have been caused by the bullet passing through the nyala very low - likely in the leg. Immediately after the shot, the nyala appears to have four sound legs but as he makes a second turn, he seems to be favouring his right front leg. The consensus of the game scouts is that with the blood, it's a hit. On top of that, I think it's a hit. I ask Dean and Jacques for their honest opinions. They hum and haw a bit, but tell me they think it's a hit too. We could argue it with the scouts, but I tell Jacques to let them know we accept their verdict. Now, this is my nyala, and we have to try to find it.
But first, I have to find out what went wrong. I can believe I could blow a shot - it's certainly happened before - and I was rushed in this case. But to miss by the distance I did seems almost unbelievable to me, and it's dealt my confidence a blow. So I ask Jacques if I can shoot the rifle again in the morning in camp to make sure it's on. He says absolutely, and we agree to sleep in until 6 am, and get this out of the way before we head out to try to find the nyala.
Day 7
I get up, reluctantly, having had a terrible night's sleep, thinking about everything I did wrong with the shot, and trying to figure out how I could possible have blown it as I clearly did. This is not a good feeling, especially on an animal such as this - my prime reason for being in Ethiopia.
As well, if I thought it couldn't get any colder - and I did - I was wrong. This night was freezing, and I woke up at midnight with feet so cold I had to sit on them to warm them up so I might have a chance at getting back to sleep. There is actually frost on the ground, and standing water has a frozen layer on it. If we had the right clothing, or a place to get warm, this might not be so bad, but as it is, we take our showers outside in the wind at these temperatures, and sit on mountainsides for hours.
Again, no hyena calls this night, although Jacques did have a run-in with one that came to see what he was doing in his (open) bathroom. These things are brazen.
After a quick and quiet breakfast, we set up a box with a target at what I range to be 110 yards. I shoot prone, and put two shots within an inch of each other touching the bull. Jacques takes a shot and does the same. We look at each other. How is this possible? We had made sure the scope was two inches high at 100 yards, so that I would be zero at 200 or a bit past (based on the tables I have). Now I'm zero at 100 yards. The box of 180 grain Barnes TTX says that for a zero at 200, the drop at 400 is twenty inches. If I'm zero at 100, the drop is closer to 32 inches. And that would explain the miss. I would have had to have held above his back to make the shot, not on the midpoint of his body, as I did. I am simultaneously relieved it wasn't me, and dumbfounded as to what might have happened to the scope.
At this point I should perhaps admit that while I carried my own rifle on the first two days, it quickly became apparent that my difficulty with the altitude and my lack of sufficient sure-footedness was creating a potentially hazardous situation for me. Jacques had initially offered to carry the rifle, but I declined, believing as I do that a hunter should carry his own rifle. I got over that on day three, when I had to admit I was at some risk of falling off one of the mountain paths, with potentially serious consequences. The (federal) game scout had offered in a language I could not understand but which I could comprehend, that he was more than happy to become my gun bearer, so I agreed. He also, by the way, has been teaching me the manual of arms, with some difficulty. However, this means that for the last four days, I haven't been carrying my rifle when we're walking on the mountain paths, so I'm not sure if it got bumped or not. But something clearly happened. At this point we'll leave it the way it is, but I want to test it again before we settle in for leopard.
With that issue somewhat settled, we head out to the mountain meadow, and eventually arrive at the place where the bull was shot. After some tracking, it appears he's headed up over a mountain (not a good sign) and I would be more of a liability than an asset. So Dean and I wait out the morning in the lovely and peaceful meadow, and then walk the hour or so back to camp for lunch.
We hear from Jacques during the afternoon. They have found more blood, but not much more, and the tracking is proceeding very slowly. Eventually, it's decided he's headed back down the valley, so there's a chance we can find him as he comes to water. A slim chance, but at least a chance.
I have a lot of time to think about this since the shot. I've analyzed it in a bunch of different ways, and here's where I come out. I have come to Ethiopia to hunt Mountain Nyala. I've hunted Mountain Nyala, and hunted hard, for a solid week. I've hunted harder than I've ever hunted before (except perhaps the bongo), and under circumstances equal to the Cameroon rainforest for difficulty and sheer uncomfortableness. As a result of that hard work, I got a shot at the nyala, but because of a mechanical malfunction, I didn't get him. Have I hunted nyala any less than someone who brings home a head? I think not. You may say that this is rationalizing, and of course it might be, but I've always said the experience is what matters (and in fact I think one of our members says in his signature that we don't hunt to kill, but we kill to say we have hunted, or something similar). As I have gotten older, and, I hope, wiser, I've come to see the value of that perspective, and believe I can go home happy with or without a set of nyala horns.
As disappointed as I am? Maybe.
John
