SOUTH AFRICA: Getting To Africa

[Flipper Dude]

Excellent. Love your passion. I remember my first safari, sitting around the fire after dinner with a policeman’s coffee. Couldn’t believe I was actually in Africa. Nice.

 

[buck wild]

I heard a rather humorous story (or not) about a couple local hunters torching at night and shooting a bush baby from atop a tree. Except when they arrived under the tree, they found a very dead giraffe

 

[Tundra Tiger]

@Rubberhead .... LOVE the birding angle. I am an amateur birder myself, and if I had one tiny element of my hunt to do over I would have expressed this part of me to my PH at the outset of the hunt. Alas, I did not. I would try to remember what I saw, or get hurried photos, and then look them at night in my chalet. It was only the last couple of days that I made more fevered efforts to actually take the time to spot and identify species.

That didn't stop me from looking. I can't tell you how many times we'd be stalking something we saw in the distance. I'd be behind my PH, following his lead as best I could. I'd see a flutter of wings and stop to watch... only to realize he was 40 yards ahead and looking back at me with a bewildered expression. Isn't that right Wik? @GAME 4 AFRICA SAFARIS I am about to close the deal on getting back next year. I'll get it right then. Also, my daughters are going and my oldest is a bigger birder than I am. But I digress. Outstanding write up and photos sir. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Hunt anything]

Great report, I do love the bird reports. Any down time I have on Safari I forgo the mid-day nap and take a walk and try and get pictures of the wonderful bird life.

 

[USN]

Very nicely done Sir!

 

[IronRanger]

I love the pose, exciting hunt!

I'll be going on my first in 3 days, what was the 4 hour delay in ALT?

 

[Rubberhead]

I love the pose, exciting hunt!

I'll be going on my first in 3 days, what was the 4 hour delay in ALT?

The nose wheel steering. As soon as they pulled out of the gate the pilot could tell the steering was not responding properly. He "rebooted" the steering subsystems but it only helped for a minute or two so they pulled back to the gate while maintenance worked through the problem. I think we were about to have to get a new plane when they finally fixed it.

I'm jealous of your upcoming hunt. Enjoy every minute of it and good luck.

 

[gillettehunter]

I am enjoying your report. Although not a birder, I would to know more of them in Africa. I miss the rock dove calls as well as the hornbills. They say "Africa" to me.
Bruce

 

[Rubberhead]

I am enjoying your report. Although not a birder, I would to know more of them in Africa. I miss the rock dove calls as well as the hornbills. They say "Africa" to me.
Bruce

Me too...the Hornbill Hattrick...

Not the greatest pictures but I really love these guys. If I could, I'd kidnap about 100 of each and turn them loose around my house in South Carolina...

The red and yellow-billed hornbills flew in front of the truck, trading off about every 100 yards. I made and kept a promise to myself to look at every one of them. There were about a dozen things in Africa that I wanted to bask myself in and hornbills were one of them.

Southern Red-billed Hornbill

Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill

African Grey Hornbill

 

[JOHN GRENZ]

Congrats on a great trip. Very good story telling too. Africa is an amazing place that will keep calling you back. Looking forward to your next days write up!

 

[mdsalern]

That is an amazing rifle. Thank you for the write up and pictures.

 

[BenKK]

Beautiful photos and I especially like the birds!

 

[Ross Reamy]

Great write-up! Brings back many awesome memories from my first trip.

Being a fellow bird junkie, I catch myself listening for a hornbill's call anytime I'm watching an African hunting show.. haha

 

[Hunt anything]

Great write-up! Brings back many awesome memories from my first trip.

Being a fellow bird junkie, I catch myself listening for a hornbill's call anytime I'm watching an African hunting show.. haha

Me as well, my wife and I even keep a few guinea fowl around the house to listen to their chatter.

 

[Rubberhead]

Day 3 - June 29, 2022
I am sure the habitual breakfast is going to cause problems once I’m back in South Carolina – I just don’t know how. I’m either going to want to eat as soon as I get up, which I almost never do, or my stomach is going to wake me out of a deep, midnight sleep looking for some grub. I’ll worry about that later. Right now, though, my gullet is full and we have some hunting to do.

While Big John drove, Nick and I stood in the bed of his truck watching herds of zebra and wildebeest through a shower of tears as we looked into a very cold wind. It certainly seems that checking a wildebeest and now a zebra off of my list has emboldened the remaining members of their species. I’ll take what nature is willing to offer but I really wanted to work on getting the impala checked off too because they had already kicked our behinds on several, what I thought were, high-probably stalks. Still, though, it is quite unfamiliar to me to hunt anything that comes in herds of so many wary eyes and radar ears. The first order of business, though, was to drop the Big John off at the salt shed and let him skin the zebra I shot yesterday…we didn’t make it very far.

Nick motioned for a stop and I took a few photos of a nice Mountain Reedbuck ram just off of what I would call "a bottom". The Africans in the truck called it "a pan". Either way, I wasn’t hunting mountain reedbuck and he must have gotten the message too. I had no point of reference but they both said it was a nice ram. He actually ran towards the truck and up onto the lip of the pan. This gave me a partially clear shot with my Canon.

The PH and tracker were silently tolerant of their client’s idiosyncrasies but were suddenly cheerful when I said I had grown tired of "shooting" the reedbuck. They both had work to do – Big John needed to deal with yesterday’s zebra and the Nick was responsible for trying to get me on today’s Impala or warthog or duiker or steenbok. Africa was only willing to disappoint the tracker/skinner because long before we got to the skinning, aka salt, shed, we passed a big herd of impala with two nice rams. The entire herd of impala was cautiously following the truck with their eyes and ears but handful of gemsbok on the outskirts of the impala decided on a “Get Out of Dodge” strategy and ran across the road into a thicker block 200 yards ahead of the truck.

With all the attention on us, I really felt this was a very low probability stalk but some hand signal from the PH to Big John created a plan that was whispered to me as, “Seal Team Six.” The truck briefly slowed behind a thick leadwood tree while the PH and I jumped off with rifle and sticks.

The plan was for John to keep going in the truck and take the impala eyes and ears with him. It didn’t really work. The impala kept their focus in our direction. The leadwood tree and the scrub acacia were thick enough that we were able to crawl around for a better shot without totally spooking the herd. We gave the impala time to settle down and start feeding again but they were having none of it and kept their attention on the leadwood. Stealth and patience are a hunter’s greatest virtues so we crawled a bit further into a thicket of some sort of bush I didn’t recognize. Being out of their direct line of vision and buried in thick brush allowed us to study a little more. A ram on the lefthand side of the line was nice and there was an equally nice ram in the middle of the ewes and younger rams. I was ready to take one of these two rams but I was harboring a secret too.

Nick knew of my gun’s quirks and that I had to shoot a 150-grain bullet in the lower barrel and a 180 in the upper. Like most Africans, Nick has a preference for heavier but slower bullets over lighter and faster ones. He reminded me several times to always take the first shot with the heavier bullet but I had no intention of doing that.

I certainly used the heavier bullets on the zebra and wildebeest. However, I was going to use the 150-grain bullets on the smaller animals. It wasn’t up for discussion so I never bothered to tell the PH. Unlike the previous hunts, I left the gun’s selector on the lower barrel.

Very slowly the sticks went up. I purposefully tried to mirror the PH’s deliberate pace but he hurried me into position. I watched through the scope showing courtesy to the impala ewes by not resting the crosshairs on any of them. The lefthand ram finally cleared the group but did not get the same courtesy as the ewes. The crosshairs ran up his left foreleg and rested about a third of the way up his torso. Nick said, “Tell me when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.”

“Shoot when you feel comfortable.”

I was comfortable and began to slowly squeezed the trigger. I felt the jolt of recoil while the crosshairs were still where I wanted them. Impala went in all directions. I love watching impala run. Some sprinted low and fast while others bounded over brush getting punter-like hang times during their purposing leaps. One ram in particular ran differently from the rest of the herd. He made a full speed sprint just before he crashed into a wall of brush like a dishrag missile. I think the poor thing died at WOT – wide-open throttle. He didn’t go 50 yards.

I can’t explain why it happened with the impala but not the zebra or the wildebeest but I had to take several deep breaths to try to control the remnants of a very bad case of “buck fever". I was a complete mess. I can’t really explain it. The horns are different but Impala remind me of whitetail and maybe that was the source of my buck fever. Maybe it was just the way it played out. Either way, Africa turned me into a kid shooting his first deer. That alone made it worth the trip.

Nick and I walked to where the impala laid. The ballistician/PH couldn’t wait to check the body. He found an entry hole right on the left shoulder and an exit nearly perfectly on the opposite shoulder. He seemed a little disappointed that there wasn’t a bullet for him to dig out. I took the opportunity to tell him I shot the impala with a 150-grain bullet. He couldn’t argue with success.

He hailed Big John on the radio. I asked him to get Big John to bring my camera. Our driver parked the truck on the nearest road and walked through the brush carrying my camera. As he handed me my camera our tracker thanked me for, again, not leaving him with a tracking job. “Yet,” I responded. They laughed. I didn’t.

Impala are small enough that they can be dragged or carried so there was no need to take the truck off road like there was with the larger animals but we still had to take the customary photos. There was a clearing perfect for pictures under a tree less than 100 yards away. I gave my camera back to Big John and asked him to take some photos while I dragged the impala to the opening. Nick and John both immediately objected. It was unthinkable for them to let a client drag his own kill. We went back and forth a time or two. I finally said, “This is very important to me.” They relented and even argued a little amongst themselves on who should be the one to take the pictures. I dragged the impala while Nick and Big John took turns taking photos with my camera. As they were positioning the impala for the staged photos, I reviewed the pictures using the screen on the back of my camera. I asked them what their company owners would think if pictures of a client of theirs dragging his own impala made it to the internet. It caught them off guard and Nick, especially, started stammering defensively.

Now that I had his attention, I mentioned that I simply needed something to bargain with at the ingxoxo. Big John belly laughed, “I did not see that coming.” As an FYI, Nick and I both shared our pictures with each at the end of the safari – no ingxoxo required.

After photos and loading the impala, we headed to check a trail camera at a waterhole blind. It was a beautiful spot full of Gray Louries. Gray Louries are the large, slate gray bird with a slight crest and black bill known as the “Go-Away” bird. Science has recently changed their common name to the “Gray Go-Away Bird” for their wide set of vocalizations which include a fairly well enunciated “Go-Away” with a slightly comical accent. I still call them Louries, though. It just seems more poetic. I still call the American long-tailed duck an oldsquaw too.

Anyway, there was a Lourie at the top of an acacia tree that I was trying to photograph when I heard Big John and Nick chattering about something. It turns out that an animal had ripped the trail cam off its tree and dumped the batteries on the ground. In the US, the immediate suspect would have been a bear but the initial suspects on this side of the Equator were baboons and hyenas. Without any apologies to the local baboon community, they reluctantly crossed the primates off of the suspect list and focused on hyena tracks leaving the scene. They followed tracks and found the strap with the buckle chewed off but never found the SD card or camera body. Leave it to Africa to turn a trip to the skinning shed into an impala hunt and hyena tracking job.

We finally made it to the skinning shed. I actually liked going there because, for whatever reason, it was a heaven for a wide variety of birds. As we were pulling up, a group of Green Wood Hoopoes were gleaning maggots off of a giraffe skull that was left to dry in the sun. They only gave me a few seconds but I got a photo or two. A Brown Hooded Kingfisher was on the wire fence. Unlike my familiar kingfisher species that dive into water for fish, this little guy dives into thick grass for insects. And, finally, I got a good photo of an African Gray Hornbill to complete my Hornbill Hattrick. While I was doing that Nick dug the heart out of the impala.

It was split much like the zebra’s but not quite right down the center. I got Nick to pose with it and got a neat picture – I wish I had done the same with the zebra. It’s a little morbid but I really needed to document this unusual spell of good shooting.

The skinning shed was part of a larger piece of property that included the home of the property manager, an Afrikaans man. Nick also spoke Afrikaans but they would politely slip into English when I or Big John were around. The man’s young son, about 6 years old, came over to see what I was doing. I showed him a picture of a gray hornbill on my camera screen. He rattled off some Afrikaans words before I realized he couldn’t speak a word of English. There I was, that self-centered American in a foreign country, surprised that everyone else hadn’t adopted my language, my way of life and my way of thinking. I probably should take back that last part because these folks, the ones I met anyway, were very much outdoorsmen like most of us. The shared way of thinking, of course, was the reason I was in their country in the first place.

The boy realized the communication gap too so he started giving me the Afrikaans name of the birds and animals as I scrolled through them on my camera. I tried to pronounce a few of them but it would only draw a chuckle from my new friend. My western tongue just couldn’t get some of those sounds right. Nick finished his conversation with the Afrikaans man. We left Big John to his work that now included an impala then headed back to camp.

A lunch of wildebeest and cherry tomato pizza hit the spot. On the first day in camp, I apologized to the chef for not finishing a massive plate of very tasty spaghetti by assuring him that it wasn’t his cooking but that I just don’t eat huge meals. I noticed that the PH had one more slice of pizza than I did. Mine was the perfect amount, though. Chef Trust, like everyone else at camp, made all efforts to keep things just right.

The camp was situated in a spine of geologically inexplicable, rocky hills that run the length of the property. Up until now, though, all of our hunting was done in the flats but with three-and-a-half days left to check off the warthog. I prodded Nick about taking an afternoon hike with the camera up and along the spine. I was thinking the bird life would be different. He liked the idea because of the possibility of a bush buck.

Bush buck are the smallest spiral-horned antelope and, in most cases, the hardest to hunt so I loved the idea of making it a dual-purpose trip. We went up the hill, Nick with his shooting sticks and me with a camera over my left shoulder and rifle over my right. We bumped a steenbok ram, one of my by-chance targets, so I left my camera on the rocky trail and we started a steep stalk. It wasn’t long before we admitted that we were outclassed by the 25-pound antelope. We ran into a few new birds like swallow-tailed bee-eaters, black-backed puffback and long-billed crombec then a small herd of waterbuck. I think that’s when I fell in love with these bulky, stinky antelope. They were as at home on this steep, rocky face as they were in the acacia flats. I briefly considered hunting the bull in the group. Nick didn’t totally discourage it but mentioned the difficulties of getting his 600 lb carcass off the mountain since the truck wasn’t getting up here. I hadn’t thought of that.

For the second time today, we ran into mountain reedbuck, this time they were where they were supposed to be. A 70-pound reedbuck ram would be fairly easy to get off the mountain but these were both ewes. Once we crossed the ridge, things flattened out but got very thick. There was buffalo sign everywhere.

Nick didn’t have his gun but wasn’t too worried about running into a problem with “Black Death”. Like a lot of things, the legend and the reality share little resemblance to one another. Conflicts with “Black Death” are almost always started by humans and neither of us intended to start a fight with Cape Buffalo on our afternoon walk. We reached a flat with road access where Nick radioed Big John who showed up in the truck after a while. We jumped in the back and Nick directed him to a seldom used “road” to get us back to camp.

It was a rough ride out in the evening cold and we had to stop several times to cut trees out of the road or remove overhanging branches. “We aren’t that different”, I told Nick, “This is exactly what we do in South Carolina too.” But, before I could get that out of my mouth good, Nick says, "Buffalo". Africa proved her point, she is different. The three bulls were really shy so I only got a couple of marginal photos before they, somehow, vanished.

A buffalo hunter and one of the safari company’s owners acting as his PH, are due in camp tomorrow evening so Nick made a mental note where we were. If it was going to be a problem getting a 600lb waterbuck off this hill, I can only imagine the operation it would take to retrieve a 2,000-pound buffalo.

Nearer dark, an amazingly tolerant giraffe bull hosting a handful red-billed oxpeckers allowed me to photograph it. Just like woodpeckers in the US, these oxpeckers moved to the other side of their giraffe “tree” once I showed them some attention. Getting a photograph of oxpeckers on a big mammal: check.

After dinner I got Nick to turn off the lights around camp so I could photograph the Southern Cross, a star constellation that’s never visible anywhere above of the tropical north latitudes. I didn’t have a tripod but the handheld motion blur actually made the individual stars more visible. Just one more thing I was able to check off on my Africa “to-do list”.

A Mountain Reedbuck - this is the best picture to see the unique shape of reedbuck horns.

This is why it was so tough to slip in on impala.
The ram I killed is on the very left.

A closer crop showing both rams.

The "money" shot.

Entry side of the shoulder - the exit wound wasn't much bigger.

Probably my favorite shot.

I got to get a truck rigged like this...

Gray Lourie - aka Go-Away Bird

Green Wood Hoopoe - I can't wait to put this picture on e-bird...

Wildebeest Pizza

Amazingly shy "duggaboys"

Oxpeckers hiding...little brats.

The Southern Cross

 

[Jörg Krüger]

Great Pics. Just amazing.

 

[Rubberhead]

June 30, 2022
There have been hyenas “whooping” near camp every night. They usually start after dinner when we’re sitting by the fire. Then continue through the night until the morning sky turns an inky blue. The Africans tell me it’s a contact call. It’s not the laughing call I’ve heard on TV.

Luckily, it’s been in the upper 30’s so the space heater in my tent drowns out the sounds of the night and I sleep very well. That being said, there are occasions, when the thermostat is satisfied, that the heater shuts off allowing the “whoops” and grunts to wake me. I’m sure I’d get used to it if I stayed here long enough. It’s still new, though, so I can’t help but to, almost subconsciously, plot direction and distance between me and the semi-predators. I think it’s my primal stem, that left-over cluster of gray matter buried deep in my brain that enabled my species to make it this far. But, maybe it’s the newer parts of my brain, those outer layers usually inundated by Starbucks and digital media that are simply unfamiliar with sleeping in the presence of such animals. Either way, though, I’ve learned that there’s a switch on the heater that keeps the fan running even when the heater part isn’t. I sleep very well.

The plans made over breakfast were to perform a blind stalk or two starting with the area where we saw an exceptional steenbok yesterday morning then sit over a waterhole across the midday heat. The waterhole thing was my idea because my Africa Dreams have always included killing a warthog coming into a waterhole.

We weren’t far out of camp on the morning drive, though, when both of the Africans on the trucks saw a duiker. As far as I’m concerned, the duiker and steenbok are interchangeable, so Big John carried us down the road about a hundred or so yards and left us off.

When I was ready on the sticks, Nick started on the predator call hoping to call a duiker ram out of the roadside brush. The duiker didn’t respond but the acacia behind me starting to fill up with “tweety” birds agitated by the call. My PH was getting flustered as I took my attention off the opening where he expected the duiker appear and tried to get a few glimpses at the birds. “You’ve got to be ready. Duiker rams will only give you a second or two.”

A flash of blue over my shoulder forced me to steal another look. “Blue waxbills,” I thought. This was a bird that I really wanted to get but hadn’t seen yet. Conflicted, I tried to keep my focus on the duiker spot. After a few minutes, though, the PH either gave up on me or the duiker. He relented and let me turn around with the binoculars. I got a few looks at blue waxbills buried in the thorny tree before they cleared out. It was an unsatisfactory view and I didn’t even have the camera to get the customary bad photo. With the birds gone, Nick keyed the radio calling for Big John.

This isn’t the first time getting a new bird might have cost me a hunting opportunity. Once, I left a gobbling turkey in the Francis Marion National Forest to get a look at my first worm-eating warbler. I’ve seen a lot of worm-eating warblers since then but have only killed a couple of turkeys. Maybe I made the wrong decision.

Big John picked us up and drove to the steenbok location. We took a long walk. In addition to the gun, I slipped the camera over my should this time. We set-up exactly where the little antelope was sunning yesterday then Nick started the calling routine. No luck with the tiny ungulate but I did get some good bird photos including blue waxbills, finally, and green-winged pytilia.

We drove to a spot where Nick had seen some warthogs then started another long stalk. About halfway through the block, we came out of a gut with a blue wildebeest bull more than 200 yards away. It was too late to be stealthy because he’d already seen us. He didn’t spook but he blew. Immediately, the biggest pig I’d seen so far shot out of the block and across the distant road. Nick was visibly flustered and even (jokingly) asked for my gun so he could shoot the offending gnu who continued to just stand there and watch us. He whispered that big pigs are usually solitary so the chances of finding another shooter warthog were about nil. Even with that depressing news, we continued but neither of us was fully committed to the exercise. That changed when the sharp-eyed PH noticed a steenbok feeding in a slight draw. It wasn’t much of a ditch, but it did a good job of swallowing up the little deer-like antelope.

We froze, caught in the open sun for a long time, while the steenbok fed around in the thick cover. It took a while before the guy I was starting see of as a young version of Crocodile Dundee could convince himself that it was a ewe. I was almost glad for the relief…my heart was beating up into my throat. Like with the impala, I can’t explain the case of Buck Fever.

We tried to get to cover without bumping her but she darted up the draw. Unlike the larger herd animals we had been hunting, steenbok and duiker are solitary. To make up for not having a lot of friends, nature has given both of them eyes that are twice the size, relative to their heads, as the herd animals. Solitary steenbok, have proven impossible to stalk so far. If they did come in herds, I would think, they would be close to unkillable.

Since we already spooked her there was no harm in taking the short-cut out of the block. It was definitely her home range. Her tiny, thumb-sized, hoofprints were all over the ground and going in all directions. There were also surprisingly big piles of tiny little poops. These are middens and could indicate a male is in the area too. I made a mental note.

Tails tucked, we deployed the waterhole idea. I carried both the gun and the camera. Nick carried his gun and radioed for lunch to be brought to us. He left me in the blind, alone, with instructions to shoot a big pig if I had the chance. He slipped out and walked to the head of the road to get the lunch being dropped of for us. If anyone wants to see the birds and other animals of Africa, there’s no easier way than sitting over a waterhole. I photographed probably a dozen different bird species including blacksmith plovers, arrow-marked babblers, and a tiny raptor called a shikra. Big animals started showing up around noon. A really big sable bull with an oxpecker jockey let me get a couple of photos but knew something was up. A very timid bushbuck ewe came in and got a few nervous drinks then bolted back to cover. Then the warthog show started.

They came from just about every direction – At first, every group was a sow with young ones of various ages. Nick quizzed me on each little pig – whether it was a male or female. Basically, females only have two facial warts and males have four but they’re small when the pigs are small. Something I never knew was that young warthogs have a line of white whiskers that, at a distance, look like tusks. It’s nature’s way of making them look more capable of defending themselves than they really are. With the distraction of birds and baby warthogs, I forgot that I was hunting…until Nick said, “big pig…get your gun.”

I was caught totally flat footed. I felt like an offensive tackle getting hit in the helmet by a pass while blocking for a run play. I really can’t remember what I did with the camera or how I got to the gun. The pig was coming from a really thick patch almost directly across the waterhole from where we were. He walked around the rim of the waterhole to my right giving me a broadside shot. He'd stop every few steps and look around. “That’s a shooter if you want to take him,” Nick coached.

My conscious mind knew there are certainly better pigs around but I wasn’t unhappy with this one. Besides, I was ready to move my focus to the next animal on the list. I lined up and shot.

He wheeled around and took off in the direction he had come at a full warthog sprint, which isn't slow, but didn't act like he’d been hit. He covered the 40 or so yards of open, red dirt before he reached that insane thicket.

I don’t know if he paused at the edge of the brush or if it was one of those human things where time just seems to stop. With him facing almost directly away from me, I put my second shot in his left ham aiming across his body to the opposite front shoulder.

There wasn’t any real conscious thought other than to slow him down and hope the first shot was lethal. I saw a reaction to the second shot in the instant before he disappeared in the thicket.

Nick’s face told a story that I didn’t want to hear. “Why’d you rush that shot? You didn’t need to rush your shot…”

Struggling to answer his question, “I don’t know,” was all I could get out. “Did I hit him with the first shot?”

“You pulled your shot. You hit him back.”

Nick’s words made it sound like he suspected a gut shot but I just didn’t believe that. I had a clear mental picture of where the crosshairs were when the gun went off. I don’t know why but I had actually aimed my shot in the ribs rather than straight up the center of the front leg like my previous three African heart shots. I know I didn’t jerk the shot but I clearly remembered picking a spot on his ribs…why did I do that? Maybe my shooting problem has been mental rather than mechanical all along. The more immediate problem, though, was a wounded warthog.

I saw 10 different emotions run through Nicks face over about 2 seconds before he leaned back in the flimsy chair saying that we needed to wait for a while. Almost instantly, he fidgeted himself back to vertical and said, “nope, we’ve got to go now.”

It was clear that the mess I just created clearly didn’t lend itself to an obvious next step. I put two fresh shells in my gun but left it broke open. Nick grabbed his .375 H&H. My instinct was to head straight to where we saw the hog go into the brush. Nick said, “Nope. We start back here”, as he headed to where the pig was when I first shot. There was some dark red blood. I hadn’t missed but it didn’t look like lung blood either. Nick smelled it saying something to the effect that it didn’t smell like a gut shot. Nick followed each hoof print leaving a scrape with the toe of his boot each time he found blood. The scrapes were getting further and further apart then we reached the wall of brush. Once again, he drug his finger through the blood in the dirt and checked it. This time he said, “Stomach contents.”

It was my turn to run through a full set of emotions. The only thing to do was to turn the entire situation over to this kid, who is actually younger than my own son. He was the PH. Regardless of age or any other factors. He was in charge. “Okay, what do we do?” I asked.

Nick’s entire demeanor changed. He turned his pack around, dug out papers and tobacco, rolled and lit a cigarette. He bumped the rim of his hat with the back of his hand until he looked more like Robert Ruark than Mick Dundee. I don’t know if his transformation was a premeditated act or a legitimate result of the seriousness of the situation. He cycled the bolt on his .375 showing me he had a bullet going in the chamber then pushed the bolt closed. The sun was blistering hot. “Stick close. If we see this pig, I’m shooting it,” he said. I closed my gun too. He smoked about half of the cigarette then put it out in the red dirt and stepped into the brush. I stayed right behind him.

Somehow, he and I had become characters right out of a dozen safari stories I have read. Worse, I was playing the role of the schmuck client who wounded an animal and he was the PH charged with sorting things out. Surreal, again. It was so ethereal that I had to coach myself into taking it as both very real and very serious. I needed to stay alert and aware.

Nick’s tracking job through the waist-high brush looking for Schrödinger's warthog was painfully slow. He followed every quarter-step the pig had taken without taking his eyes off the brush directly ahead of us. I expected the bush on either side of us to erupt with angry warthog at any moment. It was hot. I wanted to wipe my eyes with my sleeve but was afraid to. I regretted not guzzling that bottle of water I left in the blind. One slow step after another.

It was less than 5 minutes and it wasn’t far, maybe 30 yards, before Nick straightened up. He notched his chin up in the air and stepped around behind me. I was confused. “There’s your pig.” It was only about 10 feet in front of me laying on his left side but it still took a moment to finally make out his righthand tusk sticking up in the brush. He reminded me of how we’d throw our bikes in the long grass at the fishing hole when we were kids with only the handlebar sticking up out of the grass.

He wasn’t struggling but was still breathing with shallow, labored breaths. I stopped that with one more shot. Nick couldn’t wait to drag him out into the open and examine his wounds.

The first shot was a passthrough but, as we both suspected, pretty far back. It either got the back of his lungs or his liver, maybe it split his diaphragm. The second shot broke his femur and tore through his stomach then, if it made it that far, into his chest cavity. It wasn’t pretty. It took two shots plus a finishing shot but I had my warthog. The only consolation was that I didn't lose him and that the PH didn't need to finish the job. These are very real risks to anyone who plops down his money and jumps on a plane to Africa. I knew the risks. They almost became a reality.

I don’t know if some poetic term like “foreshadowing” or “self-fulfilling prophesy” can be applied to my early predictions about my shooting. Maybe it was a wise self-evaluation of my own shortcomings or a childish defense mechanism. Regardless of all that, the real takeaway is that I am 100% responsible for the result of every bullet I shoot and, even at 58-years-of-age, I still have room for improvement.

Nick cleaned the blood off of the pig using handfuls of dirt and we ran through the trophy photo process. I got some photos of a tawny eagle before we bumped into one of the company owners and his buffalo client on the road coming into camp. The buffalo hunter, a rather quiet AH member, was from Canada and a nice fellow.

It was getting very dark by the time we were on the road back to camp but Africa made one more offer. A duiker ram busted from cover along the road and stopped in a shootable opening. Big John stopped the truck and I took a couple of grainy photos. Nick felt sure that the ram would hold still for a shot if I wanted to get off the truck and on the sticks. It wasn’t a huge ram and the trophy photos, the biggest reason I came to Africa, would have to be under artificial light. I declined several attempts by the PH to give it a try. One more cliché comes to mind, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” At least, this time, I couldn’t blame the birds but maybe the warthog was to blame. Either way, I stayed on the truck and we headed back to camp. The duiker could use another year to grow anyway.

The additional company around the fire was welcome. We all sampled Impala Mountain Oysters and had a dinner that started with snails (that were very good, by the way), followed by country-fried zebra and potatoes, salad, then carrot cake. The owner asked the chef a very specific question about the sourcing of the snails. It might have been a communication gap but the chef's answer seemed a little vague to me…

Blacksmith Plover at the waterhole

Far from the biggest tusks but his teeth were pretty worn.

Regardless of the hack job on the warthog, this is one of my favorite photos.

I like this one too.

Tawny Eagle

Country-fried Zebra Steaks

 

[Trogon]

Great story! I really like that you took the time to photograph all of the small wildlife, especially the birds. Also great that your PH was interested as well, my last trip with my PH, we kept the field guide handy. Look forward to reading the rest of your hunt report!

 

[WyoBull]

A very well written story on successful hunt. Congratulations to you!

 

[shootist~]

Good pig. Fantastic story.