Hunting for Gemsbok and Zebra on the “Sacred Mountain” In Limpopo Province, South Africa
By Glenn W. Geelhoed
“Taba” means “mountain” in the Nguni tongue spread through the Southern African empire of Shaka Zulu, and “Izin” refers to the holy places certified as sacred by the “sangoma” or healer-priests-medicine man. I was not about to take off my shoes, since the ground upon which I stood was holy, because it was also quite rocky and studded with thorn scrub—but I was trekking across the desert-savanna of the mountain top of “Izintaba”—the holy mountain, in pursuit of gemsbok, or oryx as they might be called in sites of their desert habitat beyond South Africa.
I was on Izintaba with my PHs, Charl Watts and his son-in-law Franco and our bushman tracker Abrahm, stalking a pair of bull gemsbok that were rumored to have been sighted earlier by scouting from Rehobot, the hunting lodge used as our base in Limpopo Province of South Africa. Sure enough, here it was Day One of our hunt, and we spotted them as a distant, rapidly moving blur in the sparse desert bush, giving us the slip, as they had seemed familiar with the drill. They wanted no part of the sight, sound or smell of all things human and somehow disappeared into thin cover.
None of the human predators was a novice at this African bush stalking. The PHs had a half century of combined experience, and even more with doubling that of the trackers and skinners. The hunters included the author, enjoying an anniversary of well over half a century of African safaris, many involving medical missions in remote sites, and John McLaurin, incoming SCI President and fellow guest of the PHASA meetings we would be attending in conjunction with our hunts. Though we were each frequent visitors to the African bush, the gemsbok had the home turf advantage, since they had the terrain familiarity of those who survive and thrive in this apparently inhospitable environment. We hunted them carefully, but hardly “fish in a barrel,” as they used the vast habitat of Izintaba more skillfully than we had to disappear for a week.
We were enjoying far closer encounters with inquisitive giraffes, whole herds of wildebeest and sable that seemed to ignore us. We were even closing in on groups of female oryx and got well within range of a number of them as we glassed for the elusive bulls. At one point, we even came within a hundred meters of a smaller but respectable bull gemsbok that might have satisfied our quest, but for the earlier glimpse of the pair of trophy buddies seen on the first day. Charl had said, “The first of them is the best with long and symmetric thick horns—and old bull with a lot of character.” We would hold out and keep on searching for him, until the chance instances that make up the art of hunting might fall in our favor at least once.
We regrouped at Rehobot. “You remember the prime zebra you were asking about earlier?” Charl asked. One of those we spotted in the herd that we had skirted around to avoid the buffalo, was a particularly good one.
“Let’s go for it,” I heard myself say, substituting the target image of the long-horned antelope for the striped equine as we set out on what would be the Labor Day holiday back in the USA. I figured if we went zebra hunting with the intent of closing in on the specimen that Charl had remarked as the singular one we would target, we might stumble upon the gemsbok in passing.
Somehow, the zebra had got the memo. They turned out to be as elusive as the gemsbok and were principally spotted as a dust cloud in the distance. At one point, we decided to have the Hilux circle out of sight as we stalked upwind on foot in the direction that the zebra had disappeared. Our strategy worked so well, that we found ourselves threading dangerously close between Dagga Boys that had not spotted us until we passed through them, and they whirled around to orient to our scent pattern.
The habit we had adopted of stalking through the bush at close quarters with the .375 Sako loaded with a solid-nose 300-grain bullet in the chamber and the safety off—with my thumb under the raised bolt to be ready to drop in an instant to engage the Mauser action—became a careful caution.
The wind changed, and we stopped. It was at this moment that the herd of zebras had made their way in single file to advance within range crossing left to right. “Third from the leader on the right,” whispered Charl. It did not take a split second to drop the bolt with my thumb, and with the crosshairs on the small triangle pattern made by the zebra stripes on the forequarter, the roar of the rifle sent the zebra herd into a panic stampede, minus the third from the right that had collapsed without even a residual kick after the audible heavy hit.
The black and white zigzag pattern of the fleeing zebra herd gave a disorienting disturbance in depth perception, no doubt used to good effect over millennia of lion charges, as we advanced to where the prime zebra specimen lay. We admired the distinctive pattern of black on white, as individualistic as fingerprints, as we loaded the zebra on the ramp to winch up onto the back of the pickup. We brought the zebra down the steep switchbacks of the descent from Izintaba to carry it to the skinning shed as we went on to Rehobot for lunch at the lodge and strategize our next move for the afternoon. “Let’s go back for one more try at that other black and white ghost that has kept slipping away into shadows on Izintaba,” said Franco to Charl as we completed lunch and set out to climb the same switchbacks we had descended earlier from Izintaba.
The overhead sun was high above us as what sounded like a drone crossed overhead. It was a swarm of bees, followed later by the honeyguide bird. A pair of giraffes flanked us looking like symmetrical bookends. We rounded a large rock. “There he is!” Franco yelped from the driver’s seat on the right side. “Are sure? It looks to me like the smaller of the two bulls,” said Charl. We glassed the gemsbok as it stood, transfixed in a stare, before slowly ambling off.
As big as it was and as close as it appeared, the black and white of its distinctive markings seemed so obvious as it stood, and yet it vanished within plain sight as it entered the shadows of the bush.
We drove on as a discussion ensued. “I think that was the big bull,” Franco said. “I remember the distinctive horns,” replied Charl. John added: “The bigger bull we had seen was a trophy of a lifetime.”
“Let’s make a long circle and then come back and approach slowly,” was the consensus.
We were gazing intently ahead when we came around a curve and stopped as the tracker made the definitive ID: “It’s him!” No doubt this time. The rifle was ready and so was I. The solid bullet hit the lower third of the chest just behind the extended left forequarter. And the big gemsbok bull simply stood there as if confused about what to do next. As the sound of the rechambering round seemed to awaken it, it moved right to left behind thick scrub bush, but not before the second 300-grain bullet hit a thumb’s breadth from the first entry wound. The black and white pattern vanished in the bush. As we moved around the heavy cover from the left, we found two straight spear-like horns standing four feet straight up. Its head was resting on a rock, its big body still not visible, the black and white pattern blending with the striped shadows.
I looked over at the black and white masked pattern below those long horns, and admired its remarkable adaptation to the desert habitat where it does not simply survive—but thrives. It has a unique adaptation in its nasopharynx such that inhaled air goes through the mucosal turbinates to be
humidified on the way to the lungs, but that inhaled vapor-saturated air passes over the same anatomical features where almost all of the moisture is reabsorbed on exhalation. The gemsbok is uniquely adapted to its desert environment by this water-conservation in ventilation such that it can get almost all of its fluid requirements from the vegetation it browses, allowing it to go many days to weeks without having to drink from any surface water which may be a long distance between accessibility.
As I was admiring this remarkable physiology beneath the black and white muzzle markings and Franco was measuring the 48½ inch horns with my tape measure, I heard John McLaurin repeat something he had said earlier: “What was that?” I asked. “I was right,” John said; “this is really a ‘trophy of a lifetime.’”
