Black and White on Izintaba

Jun 5, 2024 | Hunting Stories, Uncategorized

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.’”

A Poor Man’s Leopard Hunt: Bushpig

Jun 5, 2024 | Hunting Stories

By Robert P. Braubach

 

While in Zambia on a sable hunt with PH Strang Middleton in May 2024, I remembered the saying, “Don’t pass on an animal on day one that you would not shoot the last day.” So when I had an opportunity early on in the hunt to take an exceptional sable, I did not hesitate.

 

With more time available for the rest of the hunt, I learned that Strang Middleton’s passion is to pursue the bushpig, Potamochoerus larvatus. The bushpig is a strong, stocky animal with powerful legs and often has red or green hair on its body with upper and lower tusks (lower tusks not usually used). They are mostly nocturnal, with a keen sense of smell and hearing – but don’t underestimate their eyesight, which is also exceptional.

 

With red, sandy soil and good vegetation at the Middleton ranch, there is an abundance of bushpigs. They are normally hunted during the night when they are most active, usually with bait from a blind.

While visiting the property, we came across the strong odor of a dead animal. We walked the area and found a magnificent eland bull that had died of natural causes or disease, close to a termite hill in thick brush. The maggots and flies were consuming this beautiful animal. Bushpig tracks were close by, so we decided this would be a perfect spot, with the bushpig thinking the carcass was his meal.

 

We built a blind approximately 35 yards from the dead animal against a tree to break our silhouettes. We tried to set up a blind with the wind blowing into us, anticipating the direction the bushpigs would come from behind the bait, based on their tracks. The correct wind direction is critical to the bushpig hunt.

 

We then set up a trail camera close to the bait and an overhead light that activates a green light upon movement, in the tree close to the dead eland and returned the next morning to check the SIM card from the camera. The photos confirmed the bushpigs were coming to the carcass with one exceptionally large male in a group of ten.

We went back to the blind that afternoon at 5:00 p.m. The wind was right for us, if the bushpigs approached from the thick forest from behind the eland carcass. We then sat still and quiet as the night approached and listened to the music of the birds and animals in the forest.

 

We remained quiet and motionless for several hours in the darkness, just like in a leopard hunt. The bushpigs appeared quietly around 8:00 p.m. as we could see the green light gradually turn on when one of the large female pigs was feeding under it.

 

The male bushpig rolled around close to the dead eland and was occupied eating the skin, bones, and maggots. He stayed out of the light.

 

The male then joined the female in the other bushpig clan under the green light. I waited until the male was broadside and presented a clear shot. My rifle shot was true, and the massive male, an old and mature animal, ran a short distance and then collapsed and expired. A shot must be well placed on a bushpig, for a wounded pig is dangerous and may charge you. A giant boar is an impressive animal, and hunting one is a true adventure and experience in Zambia.

 

I suggest any hunter interested in hunting leopards in Africa consider doing a bushpig hunt with an experienced hunter like Strang Middleton. The planning and setup are like a leopard hunt. You need to position the blind correctly, in front of a bait and anticipate the approach of the animal and the wind. You will normally need to sit quietly and motionless for three hours or more in the dark to be successful with a bushpig, and then you need to make a successful shot at night. If you do not have the patience and skills to be successful on a bushpig hunt, then you may need to improve your preparation for a successful leopard at night. The bushpig is a poor man’s leopard hunt.

Contact Strang Middleton, PH, in Zambia at strangm76@gmail.com

BIO

Robert P. Braubach is a licensed attorney-at-law in Texas and the Czech Republic and serves as Honorary Consul of Namibia in Texas. He is a hunter and conservationist and has made over 25 trips to South African countries.

One for the Road

May 8, 2024 | Hunting Stories, News

By Terry Wieland

 

The Fiercest Heart

Stuart Cloete — soldier, novelist, elephant hunter

 

In 1994, when I was holed up on a remote farm in the (then) Orange Free State, learning one last time that I am not a novelist, I found myself longing for something to read other than my well-worn copy of Hemingway’s short stories and a stack of ancient Reader’s Digests left over from the previous occupant.

 

On a trip into Newcastle, I went into a book store, browsed the shelves, and enquired of the pony-tailed young man behind the counter if he had anything by Stuart Cloete.  He looked at me blankly.  Stuart who?  Figuring I’d mispronounced the name, I wrote it down.  He stared at it, shrugged, and said he’d never heard of him.  And that was that.

 

Now this was a presumably literate person of Afrikaner extraction looking at the name of a man who was South Africa’s major novelist, short-story writer, and whispered candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature into the 1960s, and who died as recently as 1976.  Yet his books were not on bookstore shelves, and his name meant nothing to a bookstore employee.

 

This was before the advent of the Internet and its flood of information (and, more commonly, misinformation) and today, fortunately, there is scattered material available about the life and works of Stuart Cloete — a man who deserves to be known and read by anyone interested in Africa, or African hunting.  In the 1960s, his name was uttered in the same breath as Hemingway or Robert Ruark.  In fact, I first encountered it in Ruark’s last novel, The Honey Badger (1965), where he was mentioned as one of the then-current giants of African literature.  This reference caused me to buy Cloete’s 1963 masterwork, Rags of Glory, and I’ve been searching for, and reading, Stuart Cloete ever since.

 

*****

 

Edward Fairly Stuart Graham Cloete was born in Paris in 1897.  His mother was Scottish, his father an Afrikaner, he was born in France, and educated in England:  You can’t get much more cosmopolitan than that.  Although he was barely five years old when the Second Anglo-Boer War ended, it affected his life as it did all Afrikaners of his generation.  Some became bitter anti-British nationalists; others became devoted sons of the British Empire; Cloete was one of the latter.  He was educated at Lancing College and went on to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.  He was commissioned into the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, later transferred to the Coldstream Guards, and was badly wounded in August of 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.

 

After the war, he turned to writing.  His grandfather, Henry Cloete, had been Special Commissioner of Natal, and Stuart drew on some of his records of the Great Trek for his first novel, Turning Wheels.  It was published in 1937, sold more than two million copies, and was banned in South Africa because it not only depicted a mixed-race relationship, it also expressed some unfashionable views of what was, by then, a revered era in Afrikaner history.

 

Being banned invariably increases a book’s public stature, and usually its sales as well, and from that point Cloete was a major force in South African literature.  He became what is called a “man of letters” although that term is usually reserved for writers of an academic bent with no particular specialty.  Cloete became, first and foremost, a novelist, although he was also a highly respected short-story writer, poet, and essayist.

 

As a novelist, his material was the rich history of South Africa.  In 1941, he published Hill of Doves (about the Battle of Majuba in 1881 that ended the First Anglo-Boer War); Rags of Glory (1963) dealt with the Second Anglo-Boer War.  Along with the Great Trek (Turning Wheels) these comprised an historical trilogy.

 

Altogether, Cloete wrote 14 novels, published 12 collections of short stories, and wrote eight major works of non-fiction, from the life of Paul Kruger to the origins and implications of the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya.  His last books were a two-volume autobiography; the first volume, significantly, was entitled A Victorian Son, and that sums up Cloete’s life in many ways.  Like Jan Smuts, he was an Afrikaner who became an Anglophile and loyal subject of the crown, but never lost a sense of his own origins.

 

 

All of the above notwithstanding, my favorite aspect of Cloete’s writing is the hunting, the animals, and the hunters.  They play a major role in many of his books and in some of them — notably The Curve and the Tusk, Gazella, and The Fiercest Heart — elephant hunting is central to the plot.  Cloete knew whereof he wrote, for he was an elephant hunter himself.

 

These are not “big” novels in the block-buster sense, like James Michener’s Hawaii and epics of that ilk.  They more resemble Hemingway’s shorter, more concentrated works like The Sun Also Rises, in which a few characters are examined in depth.  There is no cast of thousands in the usual Cloete novel; more likely it will be a cast of three or four, and the subject will be what William Faulkner referred to as the “eternal truths, the truths of the heart.”

 

*****

 

In 1976, I was in South Africa as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) at the time of the Soweto Riots.  Cloete had died in Cape Town earlier that year, and amid the rising plumes of smoke as the rioting spread in all directions, clearly visible on all sides of Johannesburg from the roof-top bar at the Carlton Hotel, Cloete’s name came up among the correspondents of the world’s newspapers.  In various writings, Cloete had foreseen what we were now seeing for real.

 

In the hotel bookshop, I found a copy of Turning Wheels (no longer banned at that point) and read it on the plane home.  It’s the story of the Voortrekkers who strike off into the interior in 1837, battling Zulus on the one hand and their personal demons on the other.  Like the Trek itself, it is Biblical in its implications, and the villain of the piece is the Old-Testament patriarch, Hendrik van der Berg, who murders his own son in order to steal his betrothed, Sannie van Reenen.  Hardly gets much more Biblical than that.  The hero, for lack of a better word, is a hunter, Swart Piete du Plessis, and his sister, Sara, equally devoted to hunting and a life of freedom, rejecting the Boer orthodoxy that worships farming, disdains wild animals, and regards hunters as ne’er-do-wells.

 

One of the most memorable scenes occurs when Sara, on her own on horseback, encounters a Cape buffalo, wounds it, and is unable to escape.  The buffalo kills her horse and Sara manages to climb a small tree, but is unable to get high enough.  The buffalo licks the flesh from her lower legs down to the bone and she bleeds to death.

 

Fourteen years later, I found myself in the Okavango, hunting buffalo with Tony Henley, the Kenya professional hunter who fought the Mau Mau and knew Stuart Cloete personally.  I asked him about that famous vignette.  He regarded it as unlikely.

 

“A lion, now, a lion might do that,” he told me.  “A lion has a rough tongue, being a cat.  A Cape buffalo?  I doubt it.  But I wouldn’t put anything past them, and Cloete knew his history.  It might well have happened.”

 

Or, the scene might have been Hemingwayesque, wherein the author creates something more real than reality itself.  Whatever the case, the image has stuck with me and, whenever I hunt buffalo, I always note any tree big enough to get out of reach.

 

In many ways, Cloete was an author ahead of his time.  The mixed-race relationship in Turning Wheels is one example; he is also what could be called a “feminist” author.  His three heroines in that book are Sara, Sannie, and a wise old Afrikaner lady named Tante Anna.  Similarly, some of the most admirable characters are their black retainers.  The Fiercest Heart (1955), another novel of the Great Trek, is about a woman who would be admirable in any society, while Gazella (1958) centers on a woman who is less admirable but doubly formidable.

 

It’s a difficult thing for a novelist to live within a society of which he is critical, subject to such oppression as having a novel banned, or worse, yet continue to depict things as he sees them and believes to be right.

 

After 1948, the accession of the National Party, the imposition of apartheid, and a general increase in Afrikaner nationalism and the suppression of pro-British feeling, Stuart Cloete found himself in a situation not unlike that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the USSR in the 1960s.  The South African police were not the KGB, but they were no slouches, and they could be completely color-blind in their imposition of techniques of persuasion involving rubber hoses.

 

Fortunately, like Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak before him, Stuart Cloete had attained a level of international renown as a writer that rendered him, to all intents and purposes, untouchable by the regime.  Any attack on him would result in a monumental public-relations blow at a time when they were trying to smooth relations with other countries.  After his death, events moved quickly in South Africa and by 1994 it was ready to move to full majority rule.

 

Alas for Stuart Cloete, he fell from prominence as a writer.  He was pro-English, so did not appeal to the Afrikaner die-hards; he was white, and he was male, which rendered him unfashionable on several levels.  Today, the only real tribute to him is the annual literary prize awarded by Lancing College, his old school in England, to a student who is a promising writer.

 

But, as Robert Ruark once said, there are “worse monuments to a life than a book or a tusk.”  Stuart Cloete, writer and elephant hunter, would surely have appreciated that.

Bowhunting Africa

May 8, 2024 | Hunting Stories

By McKenzie Sims

 

 

I love bow hunting, but must admit I am no expert. Far from it. I get extremely excited when I close in on animals and because of that; I have even lost a couple of animals in the process. I am not proud of it, but if anyone tells you they have never lost an animal, they probably haven’t hunted enough. I do practice and work hard at trying to better my shooting abilities, but when it comes down to drawing back, it’s like I black out and lose all control of my senses. If that ever happens, I think I should stop hunting!

 

I have traveled to Africa with my bow on three occasions, though have only been on two bow safaris, once to the Limpopo Province in South Africa and the other in the Northern Cape. The third trip was to Zambia where I hoped to try for a hippo on dry land with my bow, and a Cape buffalo. That didn’t happen, but I did get lucky and got a few other different species. On my two bow-only safaris the weather was never ideal for bowhunting, and I got the timing wrong on both.

 

In July 2013, I traveled to the Limpopo Province of South Africa to hunt a few plains-game species with my bow. I wasn’t with an outfitter because the property I was on wasn’t a hunting property. There were not many different game species, but the game they had was primary for feeding the predators that were there for rehab and for breeding. There were numerous lions, even white lions; there were cheetahs, hyenas, and even a monster of a leopard that had been raised when he was found abandoned as a cub. So, everything I was to hunt would be food for these animals.

 

July is meant to be a good time for bowhunting as it’s mid-winter when everything has dried up. The water sources are getting lower, and the food has lost a lot of its nutritional value, so the wildlife comes frequently to water and food sources. I have spent a lot of time in Africa throughout the winter months over the years, but this time was different. Our winters in Southwest Wyoming can be brutal; we measure snow not in inches but in feet, and during the winter it is very common to see days and even weeks where we are below zero Fahrenheit. It’s not uncommon to have several days that hit negative thirty-five F with the windchill. The wind is brutal even during our summer days when we sometimes get thirty, forty, and even fifty-mile-an-hour winds, so I’m used to the wind.

 

But I have never experienced wind in Africa like I did during that week of July. The wind was howling, making it much colder by African standards. And the wind didn’t help in many ways. One, it was colder, so the game didn’t move as much; to move in the howling winds would affect all the senses that keep the animals alive. And shooting a bow and arrow in the wind is difficult to hold steady and your arrow drifts much more. So, from the beginning, we knew we had our work cut out for us, and over the seven days I was only able to get three shot opportunities. One was on the first day from a pop-up blind over a water source where I got a baboon. The next was Day 3 from of an elevated tree blind machan where I took an impala.

 

Then on Day 5 out of the same blind I arrowed a blue wildebeest that we spent the next two days tracking without finding it. My shot was just a bit high and clipped one lung, and if you know blue wildebeest you know they are very tough animals. They did find it a few days after I left. They figured the wildebeest had died that same day, but with little blood to follow and with so many tracks around, his were lost in the mix. The good thing was the meat was still salvageable for feeding predators, so it was not considered a waste.

 

My key lesson from this safari was, no matter how much planning you do and how perfect the timing is, Mother Nature can always throw a wrench in your plans, so be prepared for that and take it as it comes. Remember, a bad day on a safari is better than a good day at work, unless that good day at work adds to your safari fund!

 

My second bow safari was in the Northern Cape in November of 2021, and this is where I say I was a bit late or extremely early for prime archery conditions. November can be great for bowhunting as it’s getting warmer, and the rains have yet to really start to bring back the new growth and much-needed water. However, my timing was a little off. I arrived on 5 November, but the week prior to my arrival they had had a few really good early rainstorms, so the bush was beginning to come to life, making the food source be more abundant – the animals did not have to rely on feed. They still needed water, but rain filled up natural water sources so it was harder to pinpoint where the game would be. My second mistake was making this safari only five days – too short in most cases, but even shorter for the bowhunting conditions we were about to face.

 

The first morning we sat in a hide at ground level. This is a cool system that’s very popular in Southern African bowhunting camps, where the ground is dug out and a solid structure blind placed in the hole – these blinds looked like massive rocks. While we sat in the blind and watched Africa come to life that morning with the sun painting a picture across the African landscape, Danie and I talked about how difficult it was going to be with all this fresh green grass sprouting up.

 

Nothing came to water or feed that morning so after a while we got picked up from the blind and went about trying the spot and stalk technique. This proved to be the way forward. We first stalked a monster of a white springbok but, as I mentioned at the beginning of the story, I melt when I draw back my bow and that’s what happened. I drew back and sent a 650-grain Grizzly Stik arrow into a buffalo thorn acacia. But I did redeem myself on this same big white springbok just two days later.

This trip was quick, and 650-gr packed with zero luck out of the blinds was not for lack of trying, so we had to do everything by spot and stalk. We managed to end the safari with a few very fine antelope species in the salt, but not all we were after.

That is common on any safari. You will have a key species list and you most likely won’t get them all, but you probably will add a few animals of opportunity along the way that you didn’t have on your initial list.

 

Sometimes timing of trips isn’t always the most opportune, but you just have to make the most of it and use what conditions you are given. You’re in Africa on safari. Smile. Life is good!

In May 2018 I packed a bow with me on a safari to Zambia where the primary focus was a leopard, and after that the Cape buffalo and a dry-land hippo. Though this was not specifically a bowhunting safari, and I was using a rifle for the cat, it took a lot of our time and quota away with a rifle. We did get the cat early and that gave us time with the bow. However, May in Zambia is the very start of the season. The bush is thick and green, so getting shots on the smaller plains game was tough in thick vegetation.

For the primary focus of buffalo, we either could find the right bull but not close the distance with the number of eyes, or we could get close, almost too close in the very thick bush but never be able to pick out a mature bull, so my quest for a bow buff continues. But on that trip I did manage with a bow to take a monster puku that ranks high in the SCI record book, and I took an old warrior of an olive baboon.

 

The takeaway from this trip is that it’s very hard to be successful with a bow when you go on a safari with the bow just as a second option. You almost need to have it be a bow-only trip. You need to be OK about leaving without a lot of the desired animals you had on your list. With the leopard being the main reason for the safari, May was a great time, and I could have used a bow for this cat, and maybe I should have, but that gives me good reason for another safari. If I had wanted to do a bow-focused safari in this part of Zambia and a leopard wasn’t my number one animal, I would have planned it for later in the year, July to October, when it’s much dryer. The bush isn’t as thick and the game seems to congregate more, giving options for sitting water and stalking.

 

 

In conclusion, when planning a bowhunting safari, it’s key to make a plan with the outfitter for the dates he thinks work best. That doesn’t always line up with our busy schedules and I have mentioned a few of my hunts that didn’t happen during ideal archery time. That’s OK. Different times of the year are better for different species and for different methods. Earlier is better for spot and stalk; the ground is fresh and quieter on your feet, but it’s also very thick and can make getting a shot difficult. Later is good for sitting at feed and water, but the caveat is the ground is very crunchy with all the leaf litter.

 

Pick your top key species and make a plan with your chosen outfitter. Focus on the main species you want, and if others offer opportunities and you can afford to take them, do so.  Hunting is hunting and nothing always works out 100% perfectly. That’s part of the fun in it – the challenges had, and the experiences earned.

Biography

 

Residing in Southwest Wyoming, 28-year-old McKenzie Sims grew up as an outdoors kid, playing sports as a youngster, shed hunting, riding bikes, playing with his dogs.

 

He has visited six continents and hunted 17 different countries within them. He has hunted and explored much of the Western United States, and a few other states in the South and East.

 

His greatest hunting accomplishments have been finishing his North American Grand Slam of wild sheep, completing his Dangerous 7 of Africa, finishing his SCI African 29, and hunting the majestic bongo and mountain nyala of Africa.

 

He still has many dreams and aspirations for his hunting career and hopes many will follow along with him.

 

https://www.simssafaris.com 

http://www.youtube.com/@mckenziesimexperience 

https://www.instagram.com/mckenzie__sims/ 

https://www.facebook.com/mckenzie.sims.5

Age Doesn’t Matter

May 8, 2024 | Hunting Stories

By Hal Banasch

 

Our flight from Calgary via Amsterdam to Johannesburg arrived at OR Tambo Airport close to midnight, and we were transported to Afton Safari Lodge for our first-class overnight stay. With Richard Lendrum’s assistance we were able to book the 10-day safari in September 2023 with Eland Safaris. When I sent Alex Thomson our personal information, he said that we would be the oldest clients that they had ever had at their lodge, and they did a great job looking after all our needs and providing us with an adventurous trip.

 

I had started planning for this safari many months beforehand. In Canada it is very difficult to secure travel insurance for our age group, especially with pre-existing health issues.  Initially I couldn’t find anyone to accompany me, and finally thought of a couple of longtime friends that I hoped might be interested. To my surprise and relief, they both agreed to come, and were enthusiastic about going to Africa. They did not intend to hunt but wanted to experience the adventure of a sight-seeing safari.

 

My wife Lois and I had already experienced a wonderful hunting and sight-seeing safari in Namibia in 2016 with Etosha Heights Game Safaris where I took a Hartmann’s mountain zebra, a black-faced impala, a red hartebeest, a gemsbok and a magnificent kudu. We were within short driving distance of Etosha National Park, so we made a one-day trip to the park. It was well worthwhile seeing the world-famous Etosha salt pan which is larger than the Great Salt Flats in Utah. This 160,000-acre magnificent property is now an eco-tourist location filled with abundant wildlife that includes both the white and the black rhino.

 

The three of us on this trip have been for close to forty years. The oldest member of our group, Wayne (Cinch) Arthur was 86 years old, having had quintuple bypass heart surgery and carotid artery surgery. He was once a horse trainer, rodeo announcer, cowboy, a great public speaker, a singer (Richard had a guitar for him so that he could sing for us at the lodge), a songwriter and all-round raconteur.

 

Our youngest member, Darrel Riemer, a retired judge, was about two months short of his 79th birthday. He is one of the Canadian directors for Samaritan’s Purse Canada and the member of our group that gives us emotional stability as both Cinch and I have a tendency to become a bit excitable at times. I am 81 years old and, except for having had both of my hips replaced (about ten years ago), I am in reasonably good health with no mobility issues. I managed an insurance office, and my son and I own a wholesale flyfishing supply company. For many years we hunted Spring black bear on the Peace River in Northern Alberta, Canada and we called our hunting party “The Boys of the River” and, as time passed, we changed the name to, “The Old Men of the River.” We have also hunted in Southern Alberta (where I live) for deer, antelope, elk and upland birds (mostly pheasants). We love hunting pheasants with Kona, my German Wire-haired Pointer, and have hunted with many other dogs that I have owned over the years.

After a good night’s rest at Afton, we had a five-hour drive to Eland Safaris.  I always enjoy driving in Africa and seeing its diversity and beauty, and Eland was like an oasis with great amenities. The next day our PH Johnny Thomson (part owner) and our tracker Petrus showed us around the thousands of acres of bushveld, looking for sable and nyala, which were the two animals that I was hoping to shoot, and deciding on others as the opportunities arose. We were surprised at the variety and numbers of animals, and saw nyala, but we did not see any sable although they were there.

 

That evening Johnny had an email from the owner of the neighboring hunting property saying that he had a trail camera picture of a very good sable bull. We hunted that property the next day but did not find the sable. I was told that they are very smart. We did find a very large impala ram which Johnny said I should take if the opportunity presented itself. It was very cautious, and we had to wait quite a while until I finally got the chance to shoot. I was successful, and it was a beautiful animal.

 

We hunted every day without finding a sable bull. Then one day Johnny told us about a good one on a hunting property that consisted of thousands of acres of bushveld that was about one and a half hours from the lodge. We decided to leave early in the morning, and when we arrived, we picked up the tracker who was familiar with the property and had seen this sable bull before. We hunted hard the whole day and saw plenty of game, studied many tracks, but could not find the sable that we were after.

 

The following day we decided to take the day off from hunting so that the three of us could enjoy a sightseeing safari. Johnny told us about the Palala Lodge and game reserve a little over an hour from Eland. We went and had a great time seeing animals that you don’t normally see hunting because of time constraints and the elusiveness of the animals. We saw lions, sable, leopard, wild dogs, cheetahs, snakes, crocodiles, hippo, and various other antelope.

 

We spent three afternoons in a blind waiting for a warthog that we saw on a trail camera, but he never showed up – that is why it is called, “hunting not shooting.” One day we decided to concentrate on a nyala bull that we had previously seen. We got ourselves hidden away and waited until he appeared out of the bush. Johnny told me where I should place the shot, and then gave me the OK to shoot when it was broadside. I shot, and it ran off into the bush. We waited a bit and slowly followed the blood trail and found him lying down, and I was able to put in a final shot. When I got close, I could not get over the beauty of this animal. I was thrilled.

 

The following day Johnny suggested we go back to the property that we had previously hunted and see if we could find the sable bull that had eluded us previously. We again picked up the local tracker and hunted hard for many hours, spotting much game, checking tracks – but no sable. Our whole group was very quiet and subdued. After lunch as we were hunting, the tracker whispered to Johnny and asked us to back up slightly. We did, and he pointed to some heavy brush, and there, mostly obscured, stood a sable bull looking at us at about 100 yards. Johnny asked if I could see any part of his shoulder, and I whispered back that I had only had a very small window, but he encouraged me to take that shot as there were no other options.

 

I was quite nervous, but knew it was now or never. I had a very solid rest and held my breath as I slowly squeezed the trigger. We could hear that the shot was a hit, at which point the bull jerked and ran off and out of sight. Johnny said that we needed to wait about 15 minutes for him to die, otherwise we might pressure him, and we could lose him. I knew this was the right thing to do but I was nervous the whole time, and time moves very slowly in those situations. Finally, we walked in the direction that the sable had run, with the little Jack Russel dog in the lead. We were still walking when the dog barked, and Johnny said that it had found the sable! I was so overcome, I actually threw my arms up and thanked God! Such an amazing and beautiful animal, and even more beautiful up close. I had seen one in Namibia in 2016 and thought that they were one of the most beautiful and unique plains-game animals. We took some pictures, and I thanked Johnny and the trackers for their assistance – without them this would have never happened.

 

On our last hunting day Johnny encouraged me to try to take a blue wildebeest bull if we could find an old one. We hunted and saw a lot of hogs, and Cinch and I were looking for the warthog that had eluded us thus far. While we were looking at the hogs (but not my warthog) Johnny said, “There he is.” I could not see what he was looking at and finally Johnny said, “Look where my finger is pointing.” Then I saw a blue wildebeest bull standing facing us at about 100 yards. Because he was facing us Johnny told me to shoot him dead center at his chest. I do not like frontal shots as they often end up wounding the animal if you are not in the proper kill area. I had a good solid rest and I aimed, but my shot was a little off and hit him through the chest a little left toward the shoulder.

At the shot he was off on a dead run. Johnny, Petrus and I followed him, while Cinch stayed in the vehicle. I was carrying the gun, and as we were running Johnny told me to stay close to him as there were buffalo in the area. Now I had two things to worry about: the buffalo and the possibility of losing this wildebeest. I had read many articles about the tracking skills of the native trackers, and I saw this firsthand. I watched Petrus as he pointed out some small specks of blood that I had to practically get down on my hands and knees to see. The blood trail ended, and I don’t know how he was able to track this animal, but he did. Occasionally, we would get a glimpse of the wildebeest in heavy brush but moving along very quickly. After some time, Petrus and Johnny made a plan for Petrus to pressure the bull out of the heavy brush to cross a two-track. Johnny told me to put the gun on the trigger stick and watch the two-track, and if the bull ran across, I was to shoot. If it was going to happen, it would happen fast.

 

I waited. Then suddenly the bull, going at full speed, crossed the two-track. I shot, but I missed. I was dejected and thought that it was probably my last and only chance to get the bull. “Everybody misses, and those that say they don’t, are just liars,” said Johnny. He told me to follow him and Petrus, and by this time my arms were getting chewed up by the infamous African bushveld. It was a warm day, so I was perspiring and getting rid of some of my excess fat. Finally, Petrus found the bull again and I was able to shoot and put him down for good. This whole adventure took us about an hour, but what an adventure and memory. I thanked Johnny and Petrus again for their patience and helping me to get my last trophy on my African safari. I should mention the gun that I was using was supplied by Eland Safaris, a Tikka .308 with a Leupold 3 X 9 Scope. It was a beautiful gun that performed flawlessly.

 

On my return to Canada I decided that this experience in beautiful Africa was worthy of a repeat visit. We had a wonderful time, made more special for being able to share it with my great friends. My advice to those of you that are thinking about Africa and a safari, don’t let the ages discourage you for they are only numbers. If you have reasonable health, a few bucks, and some great friends (hunters or non-hunters) then go to Africa for a trip of a lifetime. Compared to what it costs in Alaska or in the Yukon in Canada for moose, elk, Cariboo or sheep, Africa is a bargain. The lodges will cater a hunt based upon your physical condition or any mobility issues you may have.

 

 I like to look out of the windshield and not spend too much time looking in the rear-view mirror. For me personally, I would like to think that I can make one more African trip in my lifetime, but only the good Lord knows that, and I am at peace with that fact.

 

Remember, life is not a rehearsal.

 

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