That night, after darting the rhino and after dinner, we decided to try spotlighting again. We still had a permit for a cape fox, although we hadn’t seen one in our previous nights spotlighting. So out we went, and the weather had decidedly taken a turn for the cooler. On my first day – only four days before – there had been a warm breeze at night. Now, the breeze was cold and layers had to be added.
We spent about three hours driving around and saw more than a few jackal. I tried shooting at a couple of them, but missed each time. I wasn’t as fast as I usually was, nor was I as accurate as I normally was. I put it down to the cold . . . although it would turn out that there was perhaps another issue . . . which I would discover in the next couple of days.
We finally called it a night, and I decided that being wimpy was OK. I spent the last 20 minutes of the drive back to camp in the truck trying to warm up!
Day 5
Saturday morning, and breakfast at 7 am. I think we were all a little sad to be leaving Karreekloof so soon – the hospitality has been exceptional. John had introduced us to Marie’s homemade ice cream, which she made more than once after being promised fresh fish on his next visit. And Dean had somehow managed to cajole the recipe out of her, which he hoped to put to good use at our next camp!
And so we left the Northern Cape, heading towards Cradock in the Eastern Cape. It was a fairly uneventful drive until . . . I had nodded off and then I woke with a start. Thump. Thump. WTF? We had driven into a swarm of locusts and they were smashing against the truck, and in particular the windshield (or screen, if you prefer). This wasn’t your typical North American insect which splats on the windshield. These were hitting with lots of force – and noise. John was trying to keep his eyes on the road, but the amount of windshield space through which he could see was decreasing by the second. When it was finally over, we pulled over to take a bit of a break and survey the damage. Unbelievable amount of gunk all over the front of the truck, the windshield and the roof rack. Entire locusts wedged against the wipers . . . staring at me malevolently. Disgusting.
John figured he had a large enough spot to see out of that we could make it to a nearby gas station, so off we went again. We didn’t have much choice – trying to rub the stuff off would have made a bigger mess. I didn’t envy the gas jockey who had to clean our windshield, but he didn’t seem at all surprised by it. Likely just another day in a locust plague.
Once we got to Cradock, we filled up the tank and headed to Steers for my favorite South African cheeseburger. The service is as slow as I remember it, and the cheeseburger is almost as good as I remember it. We found as nice a place as we could by the river to eat our lunch, but really, the garbage is everywhere. No one seems to care about these beautiful old towns (or new towns, for that matter). Something about the culture which I can’t understand.
Then it was off to Grootdam Farm, owned by Niel Schoeman, a welcoming and generous host, as well as a true gentleman. I’m not sure how big Niel’s farm is, but it’s plenty big enough to support enormous numbers of game. In addition, the land is located within a valley of sorts – I say valley because they call it that but it’s really (or so it seemed to me) a plateau surrounded by mountains. There is one road in and one road out of the area, controlled by gates which require a passcode to raise. This limits unwelcome visitors and poachers. They could always come in on foot, but the area is huge and they wouldn’t get far. All of the farms within the plateau (as far as I could tell), while farmed separately, constitute one game reserve, with Niel in charge. So if you’re looking for an animal which he doesn’t have but which a neighbor does (see vaal rhebok, below, for example), Niel sets you up at the neighbor’s place.
Niel is the fifth generation of his family to farm this land and his immediate next-door neighbor is his brother. Tens of thousands of hectares between them, I think, and obviously more with all of the others farming in the valley. We stayed in Niel’s home which looks more modern but is mostly original with portions added on over the years. The place is full of family and local history and you could spend hours just looking over the things on the walls and shelves. Truly fascinating.
This is a working (and prize-winning) sheep farm, and there are a lot of low fences to keep the sheep where they belong. Having said that, we saw very few sheep while we were there – hunting takes place on land not occupied by sheep.
As I mentioned, there are low fences through the hunting areas, but most of the animals can easily jump the low fences if the care to, and for those which don’t care to, all internal gates are left open all the time. So the game can move freely. The kudu which are found here, for example, are entirely free range.
There is also a high fenced area on Niel’s property, which is substantial in size (it encompasses at least a couple of mountains). The high fence does keep certain animals in, but it’s really there to keep the buffalo in – Niel has some dozens of buffalo, some of which we saw from time to time (although we saw more evidence of buffalo than we saw actual buffalo – they hide well, and they have lots of places to hide).
You can trophy hunt on Niel’s property but we weren’t here for that. We were here to cull old, female and other non-trophy animals. Many species here reproduce well enough (the jackal and caracal populations are regularly “addressed” to protect the sheep) that animals must be taken off every year to keep grazing and browsing healthy. Niel said he’d had very few hunters the past year and he needed some 500 animals taken off the property. I told him, as politely as I could, that I didn’t think I’d make much of a dent in that number, but I would do my best. He said that was all he could hope for, and he’d arranged for 9 boxes of ammo in case I ran short (I’d brought four boxes with me). Wishful thinking!
I did mention to Niel that the land looked good and we’d seen some healthy-looking populations of game on our way in. He said things were OK after a long drought, but the animals had been stressed and it looked like a dry winter ahead. The dams were at levels far lower than they should be at this time of year. He said he was worried – some animals took to supplemental feed, but others didn’t, and he’d lost a lot of animals in the last drought.
I said we’d do what we could.
We got settled into our very comfortable quarters, and then went to check the rifle again on the range, right in front of the house. Two or three shots in the same place, and good to go.
Now is probably the best time to point out what I would soon discover was a problem. So far, all of the shots I’d taken with my new .275 Rigby had been ones where I could take my time and place the shot. Except for the first shot on the wildcat and the shots at jackals. And those had all been misses. Even my practicing back home (such as I could do with lockdowns) had been in controlled conditions. I was to discover in a few minutes that in fact I had a problem with my rifle.
So we headed out and it wasn't long before John spotted a tired springbok standing a couple hundred yards away on a mountainside. We quickly got out of the truck, he put up the sticks, and I took a quick shot and missed by quite a bit. Well, that was not good, I thought. Should have been an easy shot, even if it was a quick one.
We got back on the truck, and continued. Soon, we saw a nice (in a not nice trophy way) female fallow deer, and again, got off the truck, sticks up fast and shoulder the gun, shoot and miss. Again, by a fair bit it seemed. Now I’m not happy with myself and wondering what the problem was. It would be along couple of weeks if I kept shooting like this.
So back up on the truck, and looking to try again. We stopped at one point and decided to stretch our legs and see if there was anything over a bit of a hill a few hundred yards away. After climbing the hill, me out of breath, John immediately spotted a fallow deer on the far downhill side. He put up the sticks, I got the rifle on, took the shot and he said “miss.” Sh*t. Again? He then said to the right – another one – try for that. Shot. Sounded good but now too many fallow deer running. Another miss he says. Try the one on the left. Shot. Sounded good I said and looked good. No, another miss. This is too much. Now I’m embarrassed. “Try the female just to the left”. Shot. I see it drop . . . John says “miss.” There’s another one. At this point I say stop. Enough. Punctuated by some bad language. Four misses on top of two misses on the way over here.
John looks at me, and then breaks out into a grin. Just kidding – "there’s four dead fallow deer down there. You're four for four." If he thought my language was bad before . . . it was worse now. Taking the unprintable words out, I said “Seriously? You think making fun of my shooting is helpful? You’ll know when it’s time to make fun of my shooting, because you’ll have seen the ad I’ll place in the Jo’burg newspapers saying “time to make fun of Hank’s shooting.” Not before then. Understood?”
I’m giving him the evil eye and he’s trying really hard not to laugh, but he can’t help himself, so he just starts to sputter. And then I start to laugh too. Ridiculous. But . . . no making fun of my shooting!!
Dean and I went down the hill with Rocket and Mendeli, our trackers, to collect the deer while John went to get the truck and bring it around. While we were waiting for him, Dean asked me to show him how I mounted the rifle and what I could see through the scope. So I showed him. I should add that Dean works at FTW Ranch in Texas in African summer and knows more than a little about shooting. He said he’d noticed the problem – the scope was too high for me to get a decent cheek weld and see properly (no black in the scope) at the same time. I’d noticed the issue once or twice before but as I said, most of the shots I’d taken were those where I’d had plenty of time and I could adjust to the problem. But on quick shots, it wasn’t working well.
Well, now that we’ve identified a problem, what was to be done about it? Not much, from here in the bush. What I needed was a gunsmith to lower the scope a bit – possible because the scope had been put on detachable mounts, and frankly, no one needs detachable mounts on a .275. But it was likely that the stock would still be a bit low (if you lowered the scope too much it would interfere with the bolt travel), so a cheekpiece might be necessary. The stock design was for the original Rigby Highland Stalker, and well, that just didn’t fit me as well as other guns I had.
But knowing that I had a problem, and what it was, meant that I could at least try to compensate for it, and that was half the battle. The long-term fix would wait until I got home.
So the deer were loaded up, and we returned to the farm for a hot shower and dinner. But on the way back, John saw a lonely looking springbok pretty close to where I missed the first one. Might even have been the same one, thinking he had nothing to fear from the guy who can’t shoot. But this time, knowing the issue, I took a bit more time, lined up the shot properly and killed him dead where he stood. That felt good.
Let me add a word here about pictures. I took pictures of most of the animals I shot, but very few, if any, were properly posed or cleaned up. These simply weren’t trophy pictures and we didn’t treat them like that. I will show some, but not all (might get kind of repetitive). I'll try to minimize the blood on those I do show, but remember, these were taken quickly before the guys either gutted the animal in the field (heavy ones) or threw the carcass into the back of the truck (light ones). I am mindful that gory pictures don’t help our cause as hunters, but I have very few bloodless pictures. Apologies in advance and happy to hear dissenting views, if any.
Dinners at Niel’s are always wonderful. He has a built-in braai in his bar and just before dinner they start a fire there. Once it’s good and hot, Niel roasts the “meat of the day” over the fire and once that’s done, we sit down to our appetizer while the meat rests. Tonight, it was filet of impala, and it was the best, most tender, impala that I’ve ever had. Niel told us he hangs the meat in his cool room for a couple of weeks at least. Niel had a wonderful Afrikaner woman and her husband as cooks, along with some very competent local help, and every meal was something you’d be pleased to get in a first-class restaurant.
Tally for the day: 4 fallow deer; one springbok. Total: 5 animals.
