African Safari - 03/25, PT. 3

Around 4:25am, I made my way to the main house for breakfast and coffee. It was this morning that I’d been off by an entire day the whole time I had been in South Africa, and needed to amend my notebook before I got confused and totally screwed up my journal. We decided to wait to see if the rain would clear before we headed out. Bertie told me that today I had a good chance of getting on some animals that were “for the books”. By about 6:20am, the skies were gray at Wild Olive, but the rain had stopped. However, at the farm, it was still coming down pretty heavily. Arno had decided he wasn’t going with us today, due to his back giving him grief.

An early morning. Christo and Arno having coffee before breakfast.

It was around 8:30am by the time we got out to Meadowfields farm that morning, and we started with ostrich. We ended up going out with Christo’s pump-action 12 gauge shotgun in place of my rifle, and Christo had given me explicit instructions to go for a head shot if possible. The rain had mostly let up, but the wind was absolutely howling at what I would estimate maybe 40-45 mph (~64-72 kph). The shotgun was loaded up with no. 5 shot, and after taking a shot I could see the wind blowing my shot pattern off course. I didn’t land a single pellet, despite being within about 30 yards. I began to worry that the shot wouldn’t do the job effectively, but with Christo’s reassurance, we followed the ostrich along a fence line and continued the hunt. It was a struggle to get him within a range that I deemed acceptable, and I almost talked Christo into letting me go get my rifle to use instead, but we soon crested a hill and spotted my ostrich. I was told to stay put, and Christo took off to come around the other side of the ostrich, and how he wasn’t spotted was a mystery. I ducked down behind some foliage, using it as a natural blind, and Christo had done the same about two hundred yards away in his attempt to get on the other side of the bird.

Somehow managing to pull off getting the ostrich to come my way, I could just barely hear Christo shouting over the wind to take the shot. I stood up from behind my natural concealment to see the ostrich coming my way at a full run. The fence was about 20-30 yards away from me where I stood behind the foliage, and the ostrich was more or less splitting the distance between me and the fence. I brought the shotgun to my shoulder, and falling back on years of wing-shooting experience, took the shot. Memories of previous duck hunts briefly flashed through my mind and I watched as the giant bird dropped in his tracks. I cautiously came up around the side of him, and gave him one more shell to finish him off, and that was the end of it.

The ostrich, taken with Christo’s shotgun.

Bertie had driven his truck up to load up the ostrich, then drop him off at the farm’s processing area, before taking us out farther for blesbok and impala. It was about 10:30 by the time we got into the field, and we bounced between stalking both species. My Weatherby Mk V in 6.5 RPM was about half the weight of the .375 Weatherby, and I was extremely thankful for the reduction in weight, but the animals made us really work for them. Christo told me on the way out that he’d get me to within about a hundred yards to take the shot. Neither of us had thought to bring a rangefinder, but I felt confident in both of our abilities to judge distance that we could come up with a close estimate, and off we went.

We followed for several hours, and each time we’d even start to get close to either species, they would spook and run off. The wind, which was still blowing at a steady 30-40 mph (~64-72kph), which made aiming difficult, as well as trying to walk through it while navigating the hilly terrain (not to mention stay out of the animal’s noses). Finally, after coming up around a stand of trees, we spotted a couple impala rams that were separate from the rest of the herd on a hillside a fair ways away from us.

Christo put out the shooting sticks, and told me which ram to aim for, and I set the reticle on the top of the shoulder. Ordinarily I would have tried to aim a touch lower, but something in my gut told me to go for the higher shot. I steadied the rifle on the sticks, and squeezed the trigger – the rifle jumped and I lost my sight through the scope from the rifle’s recoil, so I poked my head up to watch the hill just in time to watch my ram run about 20 yards or so before dropping down behind a patch of thick shrubbery while the rest of the herd took off in the opposite direction. As we start walking toward where we saw the animal go down, Bertie and Christo congratulated me on a good shot. I asked then, “How far was that? It seems like that was a bit longer than a hundred yards.”

Bertie scoffs, and says, “Nah man, that was closer to 300.” I stared at him, not quite believing him. There was no way it was THAT far, right? As we come up on the animal, Christo looks at the shot placement and says it was a “perfect heart shot, right through the gearbox.” I told them where I had been aiming, and comparing the point of aim to the point of impact with what I remembered of my drop chart for that load data confirmed that it was, indeed, about a 280-300 yard shot. The impressive part for me, and what really made me a believer in the 6.5 RPM was just how little wind drift was present, despite the heavy cross winds. The shot was only an inch or so forward of where I was shooting (left side, broadside) with the wind from the right. The bullet, a 140 grain Nosler Accubond, was loaded to reach about 3050 ft/second (mind you, while this is published velocity for Weatherby’s factory load with the same bullet, the test barrel for that velocity was 26” while mine is 24”, and admittedly my handloads were a bit on the warm side.) and drilled a hole straight in and straight out. We took our pictures of the animal, then Christo and I proceeded to go immediately back to hunting while Bertie picked up the animal.

My first impala, taken at close to 300 yds with 6.5 Weatherby RPM

Around 11:45, we were on the trail of a big, cocky blesbok ram. We stalked him for quite a ways while we stalked the impala, and Christo asked if I wanted a break. We hadn’t eaten since we got up, and I agreed that it would be a good idea. We headed back to the truck and met Bertie there. Christo had brought some boerewors, and proceeded to make sandwiches with it along with what he called ‘relish’, which seemed to me to be more along the lines of a goulash. Regardless of what it actually was, it was delicious.

After our break, we began looking for the blesbok ram again. It didn’t take long at all before Christo and Bertie spotted him down below in a small valley, and the hunt began again. We stalked him down, then back up the other side, and see him stopped. Christo gets the sticks out, and I put the scope’s reticle on him, and he’s looking at us. Just as I’m about to squeeze the trigger, he takes off running. We follow him down then back up the other side of another depression, and he’s stopped and watching us again. He moves from full broadside to quartering towards us. Christo puts the shooting sticks down again, and I put my reticle on the ram again. Christo tells me to hit him in the shoulder, and I do – the blesbok drops in his track as if he was struck by lightning. I was ecstatic! The big ram was only about 130 yards or so from were we shooting from, and the bullet was found to have punched through the shoulder and chest cavity before stopping on the underside of the hide on the far side. Bertie comes up to us, and tells us that it was a great shot, but that it was the wrong animal. What?! I look at Bertie, then at Christo, then the two of them start laughing. Turns out, the man has jokes. (For what it’s worth, I laughed too once I realized it was a joke.)

Taken appx. 130 yds, 6.5 Weatherby RPM

Around 4pm or we went back out for a second impala (Bertie’s way of making up the first day’s hunt), and after a long while of searching, I got another shot on a nice impala ram. However, the wind was blowing so hard by this point that I wasn’t able to keep the rifle steady even when on a rest. The wind was catching the bell of the rifle scope and torquing it over as I tried to aim. I took my shot, and it was a clean miss. We decided then that it was time to wrap it up for the day. Around 5:30pm we were heading back to Wild Olive, and a duiker ran out in front of the truck and into the field next to us. We hadn’t left the Meadowfields property yet, and Christo tells me to quickly get my rifle.

After jumping out of the truck, we quickly follow the duiker ram for a few hundred yards. The duiker ran to a point maybe 80 yards or so from me then bedded down, and Christo put the sticks down. With my face in the wind, almost as soon as the scope settled on the duiker ram, I squeezed the trigger and he rolled over where he lay, never to get up again. It was a great note to end the day on.

Duiker ram, taken appx 80 yds with 6.5 Weatherby RPM