African Safari - 03/25, PT. 2
We got up around 5:30am to get ready for the first day of the hunt. Still buzzed from the night before and still half asleep, I scribbled a few notes into my journal, then headed to the main house to get some breakfast and coffee. I ate some of my leftover dinner, along with the food Christo cooked up for breakfast, which I believe was eggs and toast, along with some sort of sausage. We laughed and joked, then packed up my .375 Weatherby rifle and ammunition, and headed out.
It seemed to take several hours before we stopped, and at some point Christo had given me an energy drink of some kind, which helped immensely to knock the sleepiness out of my brain. While stopped, we brought the rifle out and Christo set up the shooting sticks, and we confirmed zero on my rifle scope. We were satisfied that the rifle was shooting true, so we loaded back up into the truck and headed out to the farm to begin our cape buffalo hunt.
We stalked for a while before setting up sticks as a herd began to walk by. Once the buffalo that I was to shoot was pointed out, I was given the okay to shoot, I lined up the scope’s reticle on the big cow’s shoulder, and began to squeeze the trigger. The herd walked slowly in front of us, and one of the guys made a sound just as the trigger was about to release the firing pin. Typically, this would have caused the animals to pause and make for an easier shot, but in this particular instance the herd spooked and took off at a full run. Unfortunately this caused my shot to hit behind where I had intended, and the buffalo cow took off with the herd. I quickly worked the action of my rifle, ejecting the fired case and chambering a fresh round, but by this point the herd had disappeared into the brush.
After muttering a string of expletives, I put my rifle on safe and we began to track the animal. This endeavor would cost us the remainder of the day, and we walked approximately 20 kilometers (just under 12 and a half miles) through some of the nastiest brush I’ve ever seen. Thick, heavy foliage with needle-sharp thorns snagged clothing, cut skin and hung up our rifle barrels as we traversed the terrain. We encountered a few more herds of buffalo, but my cow was nowhere to be seen. My rifle, a Weatherby Mk V Dangerous Game rifle, outfitted with an extended box magazine, a heavy barrel, and a Leupold 2.5-8x36 riflescope, tipped the scales at around 12 or 13 pounds (just under 6kg) and by the end of the hunt, it was very apparent to me why the trend in hunting rifles is super lightweight models.
We did eventually find the cow, but she had unfortunately gone down into a ravine, and, due to the danger involved with retrieving her, the call was made to leave her there and chalk it up to a loss. Some months later, at the time of this writing, she was eventually recovered, and is at taxidermy, but the whole day I felt absolutely awful about how everything had transpired. Often times, with outdoor writers there is a tendency to make every hunt appear as though everything is perfect, but the reality is that sometimes unfortunate things happen and a hunt may not go as planned. In this instance, what should have stopped the animals ended up spooking them just as I was squeezing my shot off. I’d love to blame everyone else for the results of this hunt, but whether or not that is valid, I am still the one who took the shot, and complaining about it doesn’t change anything. I’d like to take this opportunity to share my appreciation with the guys I was hunting with, especially Christo and Bertie, for literally going the extra mile and recovering that cow for me.
As we had split up to track the buffalo I had shot, Christo and I found ourselves alone in the bush on our hike back to the truck. We walked quite some distance until we came upon an abandoned railroad track, overgrown in some places and blocked by twisted up remains of an old fence in others. We knew this track would take us right back to the farm where Christo’s truck was parked, so we decided to follow it out. We had gone maybe half a kilometer when a herd of cape buffalo stomped out of the brush. The alpha of the herd was absolutely massive, seemingly towering over the both of us. At the same time, both Christo and I jumped and released the safety on our rifles. The bull snorted and stamped his feet, and we both backed away quickly, all the while keeping our rifles pointed in the direction of the bull, who was very clearly not happy about us being in the area. Once we had backed up about a hundred feet or so, the bull and his herd took off running down the railroad track for a short way before peeling off and diving back into the bush. Christo and I looked at each other in disbelief for a moment, before laughing at just how close we had come to being turned into paste under the bull’s hooves. Overhead, the skies began to grow dark with heavy cloud cover.
The rain had began to come down as we trekked through the African bush
The walk back after that was pretty uneventful, although the skies did open up and we were absolutely drenched upon our return, and once we made it back to the truck we had some sandwiches and some Flying Fish while we talked about the hunt. I felt like a fool in front of these professional hunters and the game farm owner(and still do to this day, and probably will forever), as they spoke Afrikaans and laughed and joked. Christo and Bertie would later reassure me that everything was fine, and not to worry about it. Arno and I talked and hung out while the others all spoke to each other.
By the time we made it back to Wild Olive that evening, everything had been totally drenched by the torrential (and ongoing) downpour, coupled with heavy winds, but the rain certainly didn’t dampen our spirits much compared to losing my buffalo cow to the ravine. Christo and I took out my 6.5 Weatherby RPM to check zero after I pointed out some of the scuffs and damage on the rifle case from airline handling. To say that rifle is loud is laughable – the .375 will ring your ears a bit, but overall isn’t too punishing. That 6.5, with it’s 24” barrel and brake, is AWFUL to shoot without ear plugs. I got one round off and it was absolutely painful. I figured that because I was just checking zero, I would be alright with just a round or two, but immediately after that first shot I was digging out my ear plugs. I don’t normally shoot without them anyway, due wanting preserve my already damaged hearing (courtesy of Uncle Sam), and I swore right then and there that I’d never fire another shot through that rifle without some sort of hearing protection.
After I took several shots and confirmed zero, Christo began to cook us some lasagna. Since we had shot in the pouring rain and had been soaked through for a few hours, I decided to hop in the shower to warm up a bit, only to find that no matter what I did, the water was ice cold. Needless to say, it was a very quick shower. Christo let me borrow his phone charger and I was finally able to charge my phone and get on the wifi by this point. Bertie, Arno and I hung out and drank beer and flying fish, and Christo kept trying to get us to play beer pong, but I wanted to turn in early. I was incredibly tired and sore from the day’s hunt, and wanted to pack in early.
Bertie wasn’t thrilled about how the hunt had gone, and said he wanted to make it up to me. That was really cool of him to do, and I very much appreciated it. By the time Christo was ready to actually ready to play his game of beer pong, everyone was so exhausted that beer pong was cancelled – we all ended up wanting to go to bed early. It was then that I realized that I am an old man, as for the first time in my life, going to bed early sounded more exciting that playing drinking games in a foreign country. Just as well, we were getting up around 4am tomorrow for plains game.
