Day 1:
The game plan for the first day was to find a wildebeest. It was Wik’s suggestion and I was good with that. I should mention here that two things I really grabbed onto in preparing for this hunt, based on the advice of others was 1) practice shooting off sticks and 2) listen to what your PH says. I did practice off sticks, or a tripod rather. Based on photos I’d seen of what Game 4 Africa uses, I bought and used a Bog Pod tripod. Also, my mantra – and I’m sure Wik got tired of me joking about it – was “Whatever Wik Says”. So… for first day… wildebeest it was.
The property we hunted had some of the densest, nastiest, most tangled stuff I’ve ever seen. I had read that everything has thorns in Africa. Wow, what an understatement! In fact, that led to my biggest mistake. At mid-day on day one, because it was so much hotter than I was expecting, I unzipped the legs the legs of my pants and converted them to shorts. I would live to regret that decision, and did not convert to shorts the rest of the trip.
We found a group of 5 bulls almost immediately, but the wind was in the wrong direction. We made a long circle to get it right and managed to get within a bit less than 200 yards. Wik got me set up on what he thought was a really good one, and at 170 yards… I had a clean miss.
Side note: I made a conscious, good-faith effort to practice from my tripod, and did over many range sessions. I felt like I was making progress. But on my first shot at game, and with two people watching, I’ll admit I was nervous. Thus, the miss. Needless to say, the miss didn’t do a whole lot for my confidence. But Wik was very supportive, the entire time.
We made the decision to stay on those five bulls. We got close a few times, only to have it fall apart. Finally, after many miles and a lot of hours, that afternoon we got close again, on the same bull. This time, from 150 yards, I put a bullet in the chest. I felt like it was a solid hit, but maybe a bit far back – it was a quartering away angle. Unfortunately, the shot happened near a steep drop from a really thickly covered bluff. You can guess where he went after the shot.
We managed to push him closer to the bottom, and then circled and came up from below, to attempt to finish him. It was thick enough that getting close was very difficult – and my legs were really racking up the cuts in the process. When we did get close, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room. Wik stepped aside so I could shoot. The distance was maybe six or seven feet. The bull had been bedded and came to his feet quickly and started downhill – right at me! In hindsight, I think maybe he was just going downhill because that was the easiest, but at the time it felt and looked like a charge. I attempted to get back; Wik grabbed me and pulled me. Those horns looked mighty large. The best guess is he missed/passed by me at not much more than a foot, literally. After he passed us, he stumbled and I got in a killing shot. My first African animal was down.
By the time he was loaded and a light lunch consumed, there was just a couple of hours of light left. Wik asked if I wanted to hunt or head back and rest. I told him let’s hunt.
We went back to grass covered area with intermittent vegetation, where we’d seen a crap-ton of blesbok earlier in the day. We began a downhill stalk, with most blesbok running away as we did. Eventually we found a single bull that hung around a bit too long. From a seated position and the shorter tripod, Wik gave me a range of 220 yards. I was still nervous from the miss on the wildebeest and – wait for it – managed to do the exact same thing. I missed the first shot, hit him in the chest on the second, and then had to put a finishing shot in him from close range. Animal number two was down, though I was a still a bit rattled.
Fortunately, it all changed for the rest of the trip. My comfort level with shooting from a tripod steadily went up, and my other eight animals were all one shot kills. More on those hunts in subsequent posts.
View attachment 404559View attachment 404560View attachment 404561View attachment 404562View attachment 404563View attachment 404564View attachment 404565View attachment 404566View attachment 404567View attachment 404568
