SD-8 Cont.
After lunch we needed to find and collect a proper Red Hartebeest bull for Tom. If my experience with them is repeated, collecting one will be much harder than finding one! So we drove the two tracks out to high ground overlooking the grass covered hills and plateaus. We observed many herds containing other planes game, but after a couple stops to glass we were still looking for the Reds.
On one such stop, something interesting came to the attention of Marius and our tracker. The trained their binos on a tall brush covered hillside, perhaps 300 yards tall and 400 yards wide. It was about a half mile away so quickly the spotting scope came out. Both men took terns at the spotting scope and discussing what they saw. Neither Tom nor I spoke the language so we could only stand by.
At a point when the spotting scope was unattended, I took a peak. To my surprise I saw several kudu cows, hidden in the shadows of the far slope. Announcing to Tom, “Kudu cows” drew the attention of Marius who added, “and a Kudu bull. A very nice one.” But he’d need to get a better look at him to be able to decide if he was a proper bull that we should try to sort out. So Marius called Tom and me over for some consultation. This bull, he said, may or may not be what I was looking for. To determine the answer to that, we’d need to get a bit closer for a better look. But given that finding a mature Kudu bull was harder than finding a mature Red, Marius suggested we shift gears and go take a good look at the Kudu. I understood what Marius was saying, but before I could anything, Tom spoke up that he felt we needed to go after the Kudu. And that is what we did.
With the spotting scope & tripod, sticks, and our rifles we took off on foot. Slipping down a fairly steep thorn bush covered slope, side-hilling and moving slightly down grade, we made it to a point that was as far as we could go without climbing ropes. The herd was standing in the shadows of some broken brush, about 420 yards away. From the shadow of a thorn wood tree, the spotting scope revealed the caliber of the bull. Marius and the Tracker had a short conversation. I didn’t need to speak Afrikaans to understand that this was a dandy bull! Marius first put up the tall sticks which put my muzzle behind a tree branch. Abandoning that we moved another 10 feet over to the left where there was a raised flat rock perfectly shaped for my back-side, with an open line of sight across the canyon to the shadows that held the bull.
The short sticks went down, adjusted, and my rifle found the yoke on top. With some directions, I located the bull walking among and behind a curtain of bush. Marius gave me the range and asked if I felt steady enough to make the shot. It was easily the longest range yet on the safari. I was settled in rock solid, have done a lot of shooting well beyond that range, and so my answer was a confident “yes”.
Periodically the tops of his horns would show, then his legs, then his rump. Marius encouraged me to be patient, that he would show.... to stay on him, be ready. As we all hope the bull, a proper bull, stepped out into the sunlight. Quartering toward me, I could see from the tips of his horns to the bottom of his chest. My cross hairs went to the on-side shoulder, the safety made a soft click going off, the crosshairs settled then stuck on the spot. I started applying trigger pressure, a crisp trigger that only needs 2 ¼ lbs to break. Yet before the sear broke, the bull took one step sideways and was swallowed in the brush. The window of opportunity opened and closed in something like 3-4 seconds. Another 1 ½ seconds would have been luxuriously excessive, but I couldn’t seem to buy any once again. The Kudu voodoo continued with another member added to its ranks.
We glassed that slope from multiple angles but couldn’t not locate the bull. Deciding he must have gone over the top, we backed out and returned or attention to a finding proper Red Hartebeest for Tom. Marius and the tracker knew of a waterhole that just might coax some animals out for a drink before dark descended. From elevated ground too far away to make a shot, we saw there were a few head at the water’s edge. Sneaking up on the waterhole was going to be rough and rushed. Marius plotted a course with little nuance. We were to walk, crawl, slither.... what ever it took, in mostly a straight line, to get through the bush that surrounded the pond. From that edge it was a wide-open shot, if animals were still there.
Marius crawled out to the last edge of bush, glassed the animals, and quickly signaled Tom to crawl up beside him. I stayed back in the brush, listening for the welcomed sound of shot and impact. It/they came and I scrambled through the last barrier in time to see Marius and Tom shaking hands, with a herd of Red Hartebeest running across the hillside in the distance. Uphill and 240 yards away was the downed Red!
What a fine day it had been, only falling short in one way. We failed, again, to tip over a mature Kudu by merely seconds or in some cases, fractions of a second. Today made the third mature Kudu bull to have eluded us. One of them had done it three times himself! It had been a fantastic safari and I had no regrets. None the less, I was fully aware we only had 1 ½ days of hunting left (half day needed for the 72 hr Covid test). One and a half days is not much but I told Marius I still felt we had better than a 50% chance of sorting one out.
“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and falls; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” – The Kybalion.
SD-9
By design, this day was going to be a bit fragmented. We were to hunt hard during the morning hours. Then before lunch we would drive into East London to get our pre-flight Covid test (AKA Brain Swab). Following that test, our reward would be a KMG tradition; a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich, with fries, chased by a made to order milkshake. I happen to be married to a foodie who is also a gourmet cook. Based on my years of experience and decades of field research, I’d say the only way to improve that sandwich and fries is to double the order! And I’d take that milkshake all by itself any day of the week. I enjoyed the retro milk bottle it is comes in.
That morning, at first light we again hit the bush to glass. The focus was 110% on Kudu. We saw many, yet none “finished” and certainly not one of the two bulls who had given us the slip three times over the past few days. It seemed like the Bull Kudu Faucet had been shut off after Tom tipped his over on the very first morning. But Marius had a plan. The ground we hunted the day before was on our direct path back home from East London. We should be able to locate the bull I nearly shot the day before. A quick call to the landowner confirmed we were welcome back. And so we planned to grab a quick lunch and stop off on the way home to glass for the herd with last night’s bull. With as many cows as he had collected, Marius hoped he wouldn’t go far from where we last saw him.
After lunch we anxiously headed back. Marius confirmed our ETA with Stephans our host, who ended up meeting us on the hillside we were on the night before. Binos carved up the high ground (more thorn bush) above the last sighting, and confirmed that rascal had fled us uphill the night before....he was still on the same slope with his herd of nearly two dozen head. They were picking their way through the brush, grazing up hill. Our instinct was to suit up and go! But I’d learned that Marius is successful because he is well thought out, methodical and relentless. The basic elements of our stalk would involve rapidly crossing the lower portion of the tall hillside, staying down wind and out of sight from the herd. Then we would travel mostly straight up the slope through the wicked bush, until we were slightly above the herd. At which point we’d slowly sneak in on them, breeze in our faces, watching for the bull, trying to elude all the other eyes. Crawling, slithering, burrowing.... whatever it took.
We thought it was a fine plan but Marius was not optimistic. Before starting out he confided that we only had about a 10% chance of pulling it off. Ten percent isn’t zero and I figured we had the better part of two hours for one of us to find some magic pixy dust. (by the way, have I mentioned none of my friends call me Lucky? NOBODY!) Just as unfortunately, no one read the fine print in the script - There was no pixy dust.
The stalk went as planned, around and through some of the thickest thorn tree patches yet. All the way to the top, where we turned west and headed side-hill as quickly as possible for about 100 yards. Then Marius suddenly crouched and held his hand out to for us to get down. Tom and I dropped into the thigh high grass that grew amid the large rocks. Immediately below us was an impenetrable wall of thorns and bush. To our left, a shelf of rock. Slowly Marius raised himself in the grass to a crouch and looked through his binos. Then slowly he eased back down. Turning to us he whispered that the herd just stepped out into this opening about 200 yards ahead. No bull yet. We’ll wait here and watch.
About 5 minutes later he eased up taller in the grass and glassed ahead, and back down again. He took his sticks and slowly raised them to an upright position. A couple minutes later he asked for my rifle, which he raised straight up from the grass and hung the sling off the yoke. Then we waited again. He rose up slightly and glassed through the grass again, then back down. The bull had stepped out, but his cows were alert that something was wrong but hadn’t figure it out yet. So we waited. Then the tap on my arm came and the words “slowly, get behind your rifle.”
I don’t get nervous about shots. Haven’t for many many years. I am a spiritual person. In the few seconds I took me to get my stiff legs under me and start up, I heard a voice inside me say “don’t screw THIS shot up.” And as clearly as I heard that first voice, I heard a calmer, deeper, more confident voice reply, “you’re gonna do this.”
Then suddenly Marius’ grabbed my arm and pulled me down, but not before I caught a glimpse of the field of fire before me. I saw some cow Kudu and some large black blobs. Though I had a hunch as to the answer, I whispered “what are those black things 40 yards out?”
“Buffalo”, was the answer.
I turned over my right shoulder and whispered to Tom, “Buffalo ahead!“ He nodded and mouthed “That’s cool!” We both grinned. To use Tom’s words, we were living the dream.
There we were, stuck in the tall grass. I was on all fours perched on a large rock, Marius was hunkered in front and Tom behind. I was uncomfortable as hell on that rock and Marius could tell. Go ahead, get off that rock and hunker down beside it like me. I told him these knees don’t hunker anymore. (genetics and too many years of contact sport left me with bad arthritis under my knee caps. Hunkering is worse than kneeling... barely.) So I slid onto a hip, and got a bit more comfortable. We would be there a while. And that was about to become a real problem.
“Hunkering down”, low in the grass, the black blobs got larger to the point I could see them quite clearly through the grass. They were grazing away from the Kudu, and directly at us. With the wind in our faces, they would be on us before catching our scent. Marius got our attention and mouthed the words, “if they come, head into the thorn bush and run as fast as you can.” The two bulls in my sight continued to graze straight at us. Closer and closer they grazed, until they were by my measure just over 10 yards out. There we were .... our heads to their heads. We were frozen. The buffalo grazed so close we could hear them tear the grass and chew.
Suddenly the closest bull stopped chewing, his eyes looking into mine/ours. (seemed like mine!) His big black head jerked up, and snot blew out both nostrils. He looked like a nice bull. The second bull blew. The first waved his wide nicely curled horns menacingly back and forth. We were frozen. The front bull snorted one more time, then spun left and crashed down the mountain, taking the buffalo and Kudu with him. I looked back at Tom and knew his thoughts matched mine, “Holy shit that was awesome!”
I learned later that just after Marius gave me the signal to get on the sticks, he saw the lead buffalo stepped in front of the Kudu bull, making it necessary for my shot, if taken, to pass just over the buffalo's horns. Good call, Marius - Discretion is always the better part of valor!
Marius was definitely taking my Kudu voodoo luck personally. I did not and I told him so. If the hunt ended right there, I was an ecstatic client. But there was still some light in the sky, Kudu was the top of my list, and besides that the Kudu didn’t know what spooked them. Maybe we could find them, and I just might get a shot. So, we hauled ass (a technical hunting term used on all continents) cross slope to to gain a vantage point down a long downhill opening, taking a quick look before descending quickly via the clearing. After taking that quick look, Marius hauled ass down as far as the clearing went, while I picked my way down hill through the large rocks and bush as quickly as I could. I don’t know how far we descended, but suddenly up ahead I noted Marius had the sticks up and he was gesturing to me to in effect “please haul ass!”. The bull and herd were there at the bottom. Discarding nearly any caution, I somehow found another gear.
The sun had slipped below the mountain tops and daylight was nearly gone. I got on the sticks and Marius pointed and said “he’s right there, 210 yards!”. I couldn’t see any Kudu through my scope so I looked above the rifle. Nothing! Marius said, “Not there!” Then pushed up on my rifle’s butt stock, lowering the barrel significantly, and said “LOWER!” In our necessary haste, the sticks were high and I therefore was looking way too high, well above the herd. Quickly I adjusted the sticks and my position. The bull and his herd were suddenly obvious in my scope. Marius half growled the whisper, “shoot him, hurry!” The cross hairs found their spot just behind the front shoulder, the 300 RUM fired, I saw muzzle-flash in the scope, (Kaa.....wok) and 210 yards away a Kudu bull went down. I cycled the bolt for a follow-up, but he was done... or so we thought.
Marius, Tom and I hurried down to the valley floor. As we approached I heard Marius holler back for me to hurry, the bull needed a finishing shot. I couldn’t believe the big bull was not ready to give up, but it was the truth! He was not dead. Thrashing after the shot, he had slid down into a shallow but steep brush choked ravine. Apparently in my rushed to locate the Kudo, aim and squeeze the trigger before he bolted, my shot struck high in the shoulder, fatally wounding, and taking him off his feet – yes, but he definitely wasn’t done yet.
Later, I felt pretty bad about my poor shot on the bull, thinking I had rushed it too much and got really lucky. I gained some comfort in learning that Stephans had been watching the whole thing unfold from a distant hillside. He told me that he was startled to see the bull drop, because he had already decided by the bull’s body language that it was going to bolt and get away before I could get a shot off.
I caught up to Marius and the bull at the edge of the ravine. I could see he was hit quite high through the lungs. Blood was flowing from his nose, but he needed a finisher. Marius carries a 9mm Sig that he prefers for coup de gras finishes. He handed me his Sig and directed me to slip down the ravine bank and place a round low in the frontal chest. It’s a simple and clean finisher, sparing the animal prolonged suffering, and saving the cape from more damage from a rife wound. With the sig in hand I slid on my butt down the steep bank, putting me about 10 ft from the bull.
For several years I have shot competitive defensive pistol (IDPA and IPSCC), with various weapons. Yet it was immediately surprising how comfortable Marius’ Sig was in my hand. (probably an expensive discovery on my part!) As I scooted into firing position, the dogs, Flexy and Rigby, were doing their job – keeping the massive bull occupied by their nips at his flank and cacophony of barks. Then with two hands, the pistol came up, sights aligned, and a round was sent into the low front chest of the bull. This is when all hell broke loose!
The bull flung itself backwards at my shot, falling atop the dogs in the tangle of the ravine bottom. One or both dogs let out cries of distress, probably making onlookers wonder which animal I had shot. The bull quickly responded to the dogs’ aggression on his flank, righting himself, pointing back downhill toward me. I will probably never forget that long moment when he looked me in the eye, his nostrils flaring and passing more blood from nose and mouth. Then he flung himself back down the ravine, past me, fleeing both the dogs and me. It took only a second. Instinctively as he passed 6 feet away, I put two rounds, a double-tap, low into his chest, right on the crease behind the front leg. He collapsed and was finally done. The dogs piled on and had to be pulled off – what warriors! Clearly getting rolled on by a proper Kudu bull really pisses off a Jack!
At this point of my life as a hunter, I have taken an unknown number of big game animals. Yet, witnessing the strength and will of African animals amazes me. The look I shared, point blank into the eyes of that Kudu bull, has been repeated over and over throughout all time. It was a primal and spiritual experience for me. My memory forever.
The crew, 6 of us, tried in vain to carry that big bull up out of the ravine, but the banks were too steep and too slippery. We called in reinforcements – young reinforcements! Eventually some 8+ sets of backs/arms/legs were brought in and the beast was heaved up to the top of the bank. It was dark by then. And in the struggle the bull got in his own lick before going to the salt. In one of the hoists out of the ravine the horns got flung to the side, stabbing Stephans in the side of his head, barely missing the inner ear canal. It bled pretty well, flushing the wound and further proving the toughness of South Africans! That was another close call. It could have been much worse!
By the time we got the bull out of the ravine and set up for photos it was fully night. We had to get creative in getting pictures taken. Thankfully, the full moon had just risen above the ridgeline, and it made for a truly fantastic magical photo.
I call it Kudu in the Moonlight. A rather appropriate photo and title, don't you think?
A tractor was called in with a front-end loader and a large rear hydraulic platform. After some discussion and effort, the bull was loaded onto the rear deck and we all headed to the skinning building.
It is amazing to see the size of these animals in comparison to objects we see every day. The picture below is of Lloyd, starting to skin the bull. Lloyd is over 6’ tall and a good-sized man!
For both Tom’s and my bulls, the rut was still full on! Their necks were ridiculously swollen.
SD-10
On our tenth day we rested, reflected and rode along to set up and servicing trail cams. This took us down into the tightest, darkest bottom land I can recall. It would have been a great setting for the film The Ghost and the Darkness.
We were all tired and very happy. The Kudu voodoo curse had been broken! Our hunt was epic and would be difficult for me to top. For both Tom and me it was life changing as so many said it would be.
Prior to departing the next morning for the East London airport, Marius and Lloyd arranged for us to pose for one more photo. The traditional image of the full set of trophies taken. As we glanced at each set of heads, horns, tusks, and tooth the memories came back.
We were truly fortunate and want to thank all who helped make this, our first safari such a wonderful experience and a success.
Thanks to our PH, Marius Goosen (KMG Safaris) who was the single greatest reason for our success with every single trophy. Ro Nick Neuper, a PH with KMG for lending a hand .. and eyes with binos added to that success. Nick’s help, skills and personality are always appreciated.
Our hosts at Outspan Lodge were Debbie, Andrew, daughter Laura, tracker T-Man, and Porsche in cooking/housekeeping. They each were great help and company whether in the field or at the Lodge. Accommodations and their company exceeded our expectations. The dining was worthy of the trip itself. Tasty and cooked to perfection we were afforded a different local game dish each and every night, usually cooked over a bed of wood embers in the fire pit while we looked on and discussed the hunting events of the day, accompanied by an hors devours tray and “a wee dram” (or more) of our favorite beverage.
Outspan Lodge itself and the guest quarters have stunning architecture placed in a breath taking setting.
I was very sad to part company! The good news is that I plan to be back, and promised my bride I’d bring her.
Thanks to Jennifer Ginn at Travel Express. She and the folks at Travel Express helped to make the difficult process of international travel with firearms during Covid times more of a turnkey than we could have done alone. (Stay strong Jenn and all team mates)
Similarly, the folks at Africa Sky made our logistics much much simpler and so enjoyable there in Jo’burg during our overnight stays, both in and outbound. Gilbert – I want you on my team no matter what challenge I’m facing off with. We had a bit of a snafu when we arrived and another when we were trying to depart Johannesburg. Gilbert sorted it out with the authorities, pronto! The dining was very fine, and the attractive and quiet spaces at Africa Air are a flashback to times past. I will visit again!
Lastly, thanks to AH, the finest hunting forum on the Internet. You’ve all been a big help and great company! There is not a better group of users anywhere. Your openness, kindness, humility, and generosity are unsurpassed and so very appreciated. Keep it up!!
