African Safari - 03/25, PT. 4

It was about 3am when I woke up, and I was unable to go back to sleep. I ended up getting up and taking a shower (the folks who run Wild Olive had come by and fixed the hot water issue, so I did end up getting to take warm showers by this point) before brushing my teeth and getting dressed for the day. I took notes, studied my drop charts (definitely confirmed that the impala ram I shot yesterday was indeed at close to 300 yards), wrote in my journal, and before I knew it, it was almost 5am. Christo stopped by with some hot coffee and told me it was impala again today, followed by a baboon hunt, and that breakfast would be ready in about 38 minutes.

Around 7am, we were heading out for baboon first thing. My earplugs were nowhere to be found, having been lost the day prior when I shot the duiker. As we are driving down the hill, a big kudu bull jumps out in front of the truck. It ran in front of, then along side of us, for nearly a quarter mile before peeling off and jumping over the fence that lined the road.

Kudu bull

At 7:37am, we made it to another old farm, I believe owned by the same guy who ran Meadowfield, and hiked several miles through the brush to a hillside clearing overlooking a massive ravine. Christo says that this is where we will shoot the baboon.

A picture doesn’t do it justice. The ravine was much deeper and steeper than it appears here.

After waiting a little over two hours, we headed back – the baboons were a no-show. Once we got back to the truck, we were sprayed down with some kind of gnarly tick repellent that made my skin tingle, and I was told it was the most effective stuff that Christo had ever used. In my mind, I doubted anything I could get stateside would be that effective, as I’ve never used anything that was so potent as to make my skin tingle. Around 10:20am, as we are driving down the highway, Bertie stops the truck and runs over to the road to pick something up – turns out he had rescued a small tortoise from being run over on the highway. Bertie hands the tortoise to me, then drives down the road for a short while before pulling over again. Here, we set the tortoise down in the grass away from the road, and continued on our journey.

The lucky tortoise, saved by Bertie from the road.

Around 11am, we got out to Aasvoelvlei farm, and the hunt began for a springbok ram. We ended up stalking a small group of springbok rams that were separate from the main herd. The weather was bright and clear and warming up very quickly as we moved through the wide-open, hilly terrain. About noon, we had made it to a little cluster of trees and stood in the shade while Bertie worked to push a group towards our position. The springboks ran across a ridge and down into a long but narrow depression in front of us, and Christ had me sight in on a ram about 150 yards out. As soon as I had a clear shot and Bertie was back on the far side of hill and out of sight, I took the shot. The ram dropped in his tracks. Afterwards, we went to the farmer’s house to have the springbok processed and put in the salt. We were invited into his house. The owner was very nice and a gracious host.

Springbok ram, taken with 6.5 Weatherby RPM

Around 6pm is when I got my second impala. We had traveled back to Meadowfield and immediately spotted a group of 5 or 6 big rams, then stalked them for what seemed like miles. We crawled through the brush, trudged up and down hills and valleys, and through rock gardens trying to get a line on one those rams. Finally, Christo puts down the sticks, and as soon as I’m about to shoot, a herd of blesbok spooked the rams and ran them off. From there, we stalked up this high ridge to come down from above them. We finally get another line of sight on the impala, but they stopped cooperating and moved into the brush after we had identified the impala that I was to shoot. At this point it is starting to get late in the day and the sun is setting, casting everything in a warm, golden light.

We begin to head back to the truck in defeat, when suddenly, Christo stops me and puts out the sticks, telling me to shoot the one lowest on the hill and wait until he stops moving. I look where he’s pointing, and sure enough, there are a handful of big impala rams just below the top of a far ridgline, maybe 150 yards out. He’s facing to our right, slightly quartering towards us, and as soon as the ram stops, I sent a 6.5mm, 140 grain Nosler Accubond his way and hear the thump as the bullet made impact. I was confident in my shot, and even saw the dust from the exit on the hillside behind the animal, but Christo shakes his head and tells me the shot was too far back. I watch as the impala all run off over the other side of the ridge to our left, then disappear. I sigh, and accept that it was a bad shot, and more or less hang my head in shame. I had been doing quite well up to that point, I told myself, and it was bound to happen that I would make a mistake. We began walking down the hill and back up over the ridge when we hear Bertie and Arno in the truck shouting at us. He’s down, they say, and point us to a stand of tall grass and shrubs where they had seen the impala drop. As we get up to where the ram lay on the ground, Christo begins to laugh, and when I asked why, he tells me that what he thought was the entrance wound was actually the exit, and had momentarily forgotten that it had turned and ran the opposite direction than he was facing originally. It turned out to be an excellent shot that blew up the heart and lungs, and separated the front shoulder joint on the impact side. The impala was dead as soon as the bullet made impact, and he just didn’t realize it. From what they told me, the guys in the truck had watched the whole thing. He had made it about a hundred yards from where he was shot and dropped, then never got back up. This ram was a big, big animal, with the horns being just shy of record-breaking.

Second impala ram. He really made us put in work to get him. Taken with 6.5 Weatherby RPM

Around 6:30pm, we are back at the Aasvoelvlei farm house. I had initially offered to make American style burgers for everyone, but we had been invited for dinner at the farm house by the owner. The impala was put in the salt, and we all hung out inside with the air conditioning, but not before shooting a few pigeons in the barn with Christo’s shotgun. When we came inside for dinner, the farmer had the braai (a traditional South African style of grilling meat over wood coals) fired up; zebra kebabs, sheep liver and sheep chops, pork chops, and what amounted to scalloped potatoes, as well as bread and butter.

Pest control.

Sunset at Aasvoelvlei.

The back yard of the farmhouse.

Supper cooking on the braai.

That evening, we hopped in the bed of Bertie’s truck, riding through the fields with an ancient featherweight, single-shot shotgun and spotlight, and a pocket full of shotgun shells. The shotgun not only had to be manually loaded for each shot, but the hammer cocked every time as well, and let me tell you, I got quick at reloading that thing. “Give it some love!” became the rallying cry every time we saw the eyes of the springhare glowing in the spotlight’s beam. We all got the shit beat out of us riding in the bed like that, holding on to the truck’s cage for dear life and trying to not put our feet through the rusted out holes in the bed’s sheet metal. The fields we drove through were absolutely destroyed due to the springhare digging burrows, and on one particularly rough landing (yes, we caught air a time or two), Bertie ended up completely separating one of the ball joints in his front end and breaking one of his upper control arms. As we headed back to Wild Olive just after 1am, the truck was all over the road and Bertie was struggling to keep it between the ditches. Once we had arrived back at Wild Olive, I took a quick shower and was out as soon as my head touched the pillow.