By Dan Hendrickson

Africa calls. Within a few weeks after my fourth safari, I was already dreaming about going back. Because of my success in hunting with Stormberg Elangeni Safaris (SES) in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in 2017, and the wide variety of game there, I decided to return in June 2018. This time, I planned to take my 12-year-old grandson, Austin, for his first safari. His older brothers, Cole and Cade, had both hunted with me in Africa when they were 13 years old.

Now it was Austin’s turn, and he had a wish list. Mine included klipspringer, Cape grysbok, bushpig and caracal. Planning a year in advance, I applied for an oribi tag. SES went out of their way to get me an oribi permit, and just two weeks before I left, I received it. I had also included blue duiker in my list, hoping to add to my collection of the Tiny Ten pygmy antelope in Africa.

We were met at the Port Elizabeth airport by PH Juan Greef and tracker/skinner Silas. Silas, a very jovial fellow, was from the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe.

The SES team had planned our hunt extremely well. We were to begin with the klipspringer hunt in the Cape Fold Mountains referred to as the Karoo area, where there were also some quality springbok, especially the copper variety, and some very good steenbok. We succeeded in just two days, taking a very nice klipspringer, steenbok, and a copper springbok that should be in the top 20!

Day 3. We traveled to the Stormberg Mountains and settled into SES’s quaint, historic Bufflesfontein Lodge owned and operated by Robbie and Angela Stretton. There, in one day Austin took a nice springbok, a huge blesbok with 18½ horns, and a gold medal mountain reedbuck. At another historic lodge about 50 km from Port Alfred we took blue duiker, oribi, caracal, Cape grysbok and a huge 30” waterbuck.

We spent the final three days hunting blue wildebeest, blesbok, impala, warthog, and bushpig in the Kat River Conservancy at the Manzikhanya Lodge, owned and operated by John and Isabel Sparks. Hunting the bushpig was quite a challenge. In 2017 Cade had a shot at a bushpig on the last day there, and missed. Apparently, his nerves got to him as the pigs passed just five yards from him going to the bait. As he was about to shoot, the automatic lights malfunctioned. Juan turned on his flashlight, but Cade shot too fast.

This year, we had two baits out with game cameras at each place. There were different big boars coming into both baits on a fairly regular basis. When they became accustomed to eating the carcasses at the bait site (bushpigs love eating carrion), Juan added the automatic green hog lights that were infrared activated. A hole was dug for their special corn-based pig bait.

Bushpigs don’t have very good eyesight, but their sense of smell and hearing makes them a challenging animal to hunt. They are very wary nocturnal creatures, seldom seen in daylight. Juan half-jokingly referred to the elusive bushpig boars as “the Ghosts of the Darkness” – quite a fitting name!

We planned to take at least one of the huge boars that we had seen on the game cameras. After checking the wind, we marked a trail through the brush to help us navigate in the dark. The bushpigs were hitting the bait after sunset between 6:15 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. After dusk, Juan and I left the vehicle and made our way to the bait, about three-quarters of a mile away. Wearing headlamps, we worked our way through the hills and creek bottoms until we got to the foot of the final hill. The bait was about 100 yards past the top of this hill. We slowly and quietly made it to the top without using any lights, and stood on a large flat boulder at the edge of the slope, and watched a dark clump of brush close to where the bait was.

We stayed until 8 p.m. but nothing ever activated the green lights. We checked the bait and saw the rotten corn was untouched. Juan didn’t think the pigs would be coming that night, so we left. But next morning as we began hunting, Juan received a call from John Sparks to inform him that the pigs had hit the bait at 8:45 p.m. the previous night and stayed there 45 minutes!

It was Day 9. We searched for a trophy blue wildebeest, glassed some nice bulls, but nothing worth pursuing. However, we saw herds of Cape eland, black wildebeest, springbok and blesbok in that wide valley. Juan spotted a huge blesbok ram in a group of at least forty animals and we decided to go after him. We bumped them three times before the big ram stopped at 250 yards with three other sizable rams. As Juan described the location of the ram within the group, I found him in my Leupold V6 scope, but another ram was behind him, making the shot too risky. He moved and then another ram walked in front of him.

“Aim a little bit back because of the wind,” Juan said. As that one cleared, Juan called the shot. I took a breath, steadied my Remington Model 700 7mm Magnum straight up his front leg to the center of his chest, and squeezed off the shot. I didn’t think that the 160-grain Barnes TSX BT bullet would drift much at that distance and I was right. I hit exactly where I had aimed, and he went right down in his tracks. His 17½” whitish horns were impressive – quite an exceptional trophy.

After lunch, we headed to another property, searching for a warthog or impala for Austin. Juan glassed a valley and found a herd of impala, as well as a very nice mature kudu bull below us. We made a half-mile stalk, located several rams, but Juan decided to look for a better one, and we eased through the valley, working our way behind the acacia trees. We spotted a nice ram about 225 yards and Juan put up the sticks, but Austin said that he wasn’t steady enough to try the shot. Then suddenly a kudu bull appeared in front of us about 250 yards, and we let him get out of sight before Juan and Austin moved forward. Baboons on the hillside barked their alarm as we moved slowly ahead, but eventually, we gave up and we headed to the truck as the sun was sinking. That night, the bushpigs did not visit the bait site.

Day 10. This was our last day to hunt, and we woke up to a light rain. John and Juan said that the cold, damp weather would hinder Austin’s chance of getting a warthog. However, I felt confident that we would have good luck. We drove to a property that was seldom hunted as indicated by the faint tracks, and made our way through the fairly thick acacia trees on the hillside. Within 30 minutes we spotted four nice impala rams to our left, one of them with exceptionally long, thick, black horns. To be honest, I really wanted to take that one, but it would thrill me more if Austin did.

Austin tried to get set up for a shot, but the four rams ran to the right. It was raining softly then, so I remained in the Toyota pickup, while they continued the stalk. They were gone about 30 minutes, when I saw two nice rams running toward me. They stopped about 80 yards away in almost the same place as before. One was the big ram! I grabbed the radio.

“Juan, two of the rams ran back to the same place. One is the big ram.”

“We are stalking them,” Juan answered. I watched as the two rams looked behind them and ran, and eventually Juan, Silas, and Austin arrived. The two impala had joined another group of four, and Austin tried several times to connect with a shot through the dense trees, but couldn’t seal the deal. I could tell that his nerves were getting to him.

Then we found a nice mature ram with a herd of 15 females, and Austin was able to get a shot. We heard a thud and knew that he had connected. We got on the track, Juan and Silas going to the right and Austin and I searching further north. Juan and Silas were 150 yards from us when we heard a shot. When we joined up with them we saw a beautiful ram with thick horns lying on the ground. Austin had shot him too far back, but Juan had put him down for good.

Our shoes and socks were pretty wet by then, and the cold made it uncomfortable, so we headed back to the skinning shed, an old British soldiers’ headquarters during the Boer War. On the way we spotted some warthogs near a dam, and our luck held out, although it was still wet and cold. Juan, Silas and Austin went through some goat pens and worked their way to the dam. Before long, I heard a shot, and it sounded good.

Soon Juan came walking back. “He got him!” he smiled. We drove across to find Austin beaming. He finally got his warthog, and it was a very nice one with two long matching tusks.

After lunch and dry clothes, it was time for bushpig, as the sun was going down.

We approached the area from a different road because of the southwest wind. It was 6 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, from where we were sitting we saw the green glow of the hog light illuminate the hill on the skyline! It was pitch-black with no moon. I told Austin to stay in the vehicle. Juan said to play it safe and use no lights as we began walking pretty fast toward the green glow about three-quarter of a mile away. I focused on Juan’s long pants legs and walked where he did. We trod carefully to avoid disturbing a rock or breaking a stick.

It was very difficult for me, but Juan had no problem. It seemed like an eternity, but we made it. We just needed to get a little closer to make out the dark images below the light. Juan moved to the right and motioned for me to get my rifle in place on the tripod, but I couldn’t see a thing. I reached out, located the apex, and put my rifle in the cradle.

“Shoot the one in the middle, it’s a big one!” said Juan. I saw three shapes in my Leupold V6 scope, and put the illuminated red dot on the largest one’s shoulder, carefully took aim, and squeezed off the shot.

“Did I hit him?”

“I think so. The pigs ran to the right after you fired.”

We eased our way up to the spot where the pigs had been before the shot, and didn’t see any blood. All of the sour corn was gone, so they wouldn’t have stayed there much longer. We walked slowly and very cautiously to the right along a game trail. Juan had showed me ghastly photos of a man’s thigh, the result of a wounded bushpig attack, so I readied my rifle and listened carefully as we inched forward. We walked about 100 yards to the edge of a small canyon and stopped. Juan decided that we needed to go back to camp and get PH John Sparks with his .375 H&H backup rifle, and his tracking dogs. Good idea! As we were walking back to the pickup, we came across a large animal track in the sandy road. Juan asked me if I knew what it was.

“Leopard?” He nodded, but said it was not very fresh. That was a relief!

John Sparks was waiting outside with his dogs, Jasper, a Belgian Malinois cross, and Zinga a Rhodesian Ridgeback. We didn’t bring Juan’s dog, Chappie, because he was injured. John, Silas, and the two dogs went ahead of us as we made our way back to the bait area. John brought his dogs out on leashes and walked slowly to the right of the bait. Within 15 yards, the dogs put their noses to the ground.

“Blood,” said John. There was one drop of blood there. I knew that I had hit him! They went another 20 feet and did it again. This time there was more blood. He turned the dogs loose. Jasper started quartering ahead, then ran straight for 30 yards and stopped, licking something in the grass.

“They’ve found him!” said John. We were all very excited to see if it was the big boar that John had regularly seen on the game camera. As I walked up to it, I was relieved and shocked to see that it was huge and wild-looking, covered with long white hair – quite a demonic specimen with long, flesh-gnashing tusks and ears ragged from fighting.

Our 10-day safari couldn’t have ended better. Austin and I completed our wish lists, all spectacular trophies. The “Ghost of the Darkness” hunt had added another layer of memories to our magical days on the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The experiences that we shared on this incredible journey will be with us forever!

Once again, the SES team surpassed my expectations. Special thanks go to my PH Juan Greef; tracker/skinner Silas; Robbie and Angela Stretton; John and Isabel Sparks; Murray and Yvette Danckwerts; James and Viv Quin, and the entire SES team.

By John P. Warren

“Either shoot the buffalo today, or shoot me,” my wife Joyce said to me – only slightly jokingly – when PH Jamy Traut, his trackers, the conservation officer, and I came in from the morning hunt on the third day.

It was a hot, dry camp over east of Tsumkwe, Namibia. There were no leaves on the trees. There was no shade. There was no breeze. The ice was gone and the drinking water was warm. You could see between the sticks that were supposed to provide privacy for the bucket shower. The tents heated up in the day as only tents in full sun can. Definitely not a complainer, Joyce just voiced what we were all thinking – that whenever we squared away the buffalo, we could pack up and get out of Bushmanland. Do not get me wrong. I love Bushmanland, have lived right off the western edge of it twice, for months at a time, doing game counts, management plans, and culling, between Grootfontein and Tsumkwe. But I have to admit, this was uncomfortable.

We had seen buffalo almost from the beginning – the very first afternoon we tracked and caught up with a good-sized herd as it moved toward water in the evening. A couple of bulls had offered possible shots, and although they sported impressive “helmets,” none of them would go even 36 inches. That, along with outstanding bosses and strong back curls, was the minimum I had set for myself on this first buffalo hunt since I had lived in Ethiopia and hunted Nile buffalo as a youth when Haile Selassie was still in charge there.

We had lived in Namibia for over a year, and love its people, its game, and its spectacular scenery. We bought a bakkie, and know our way around. It was important to me to get a Cape buffalo in Namibia, so I had turned away from chances in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa. In 2008, we were living and working for three months near Grootfontein, and while having dinner over at Eden with our neighbor Jamy Traut, he told me about a problem buffalo cow in Bushmanland. I was keen to go, but the timing didn’t work out (and I guess she’s still there).

Planning for 2009 with Jamy, I ended up with a permit for Bushmanland. We were living in the area at the time on a private reserve – a wonderful place – strictly a game reserve with no domestic livestock. Most of the staff members considered themselves Bushmen, and we developed wonderful friendships among them. We participated in their delightful, tri-lingual church services in the tractor shed every Sunday morning. I worked almost every day with at least one of the three unbelievably skilled trackers (Simon, Joseph, and Mische), which was always a wonderful experience for an old ex-schoolboy-trapper/skinner and lifelong hunter like me. Joyce helped the two Marias and Monica learn how to prepare and present meals suitable for European and American clients that had already started coming to the beautiful new lodge and bungalows that the owner had just finished.

As an aside, late in that 2009 trip, but before we went with Jamy to Bushmanland, I was presented with the opportunity to hunt a problem leopard. My good Namibian friend, Heiko, had done me a huge favor when he procured my 2009 hunting permits, and had gotten for me one of the extremely few last available leopard permits, since Namibia had declared a temporary halt on leopard hunting due to some questionable tactics allegedly having been brought in by some foreign PHs. I had taken two leopards years before, in Ethiopia, with my old sporterized 1903 Springfield, and had been in on others, but I had no idea I would ever hunt one in Namibia.

We had several leopards on the property, but this big old tom had been feasting not only on eland calves on our “home” reserve, but had periodically gone outside the high fence – presumably through warthog holes – and had feasted on some of the neighbor’s young cattle. One neighbor threatened to put out poison, which would have indiscriminately killed all kinds of carnivores in the area if we did not stop this big old cat, and I was asked to take care of the problem with our wonderful tracking crew. After two weeks of baiting with warthogs without a hit, we got lucky with an unseasonable pre-dawn rain and a very fresh track of the old tom. We took up that track, and in three hours we found him near a fresh eland calf he had killed and partly consumed. I had an easy shot, and we had the beautiful old cat.

Jamy had sent a camp crew ahead to set everything up. We got to the hot camp just after noon, had a light lunch, and settled in. It was very hot. Joyce suggested setting up a fly under which she could sit and read while the rest of us were hunting. Then, seeing how unbearably hot it was in our un-shaded sleeping tent, we put another tarp over it to provide a bit of shade. Joyce had brought a little plastic pump-spray bottle, and we kept it full of water and periodically sprayed ourselves with it, hoping for a cooling breeze which almost never materialized. Nobody had been assigned the ice detail, and we had none from the outset, because what little there was had been dumped in the cooler with beer and soft drinks, and was already melted. Each time we opened it to get something to drink the temperature went up a degree or two. By the second day, everything in camp was about the same temperature.

The first evening, Joyce went with us on a scouting trip. That was when we caught up with the first herd of buffalo and looked them over. Joyce had been sitting reading under the fly, and decided at the last minute to join us, forgetting that she already had taken off her walking shoes and put on house slippers. When we saw fresh tracks and then with our glasses saw that there were buffalo, several of us (including Joyce) got off the hunting car and began a stalk. After a few hundred yards through the sand and thorns, I looked back, and there was Joyce, in her house slippers, gingerly but stoically following along!

We left Joyce in camp on the second morning and walked maybe 12 miles, following the tracks of first one group of bulls, then another. By mid-morning we were hot and tired, but each of us had a bottle of water, and we kept on. At one time the Bushmanland conservation officer was walking in front of me, when “wham!” Something heavy hit the sand right in front of me. It was his .416 Rigby rifle. A beautiful, genuine Rigby – and he had dropped it!

We tracked one group of four bulls very carefully, right up to where they joined a herd of cows in thick bush, complicating everything. We were very close – about 30 yards. I could see parts of several cows but was never sure of a bull. One of Jamy’s trackers went up a tree, but that did not help much, either. Finally, the light breeze swirled, they got our scent and went rumbling off. We followed them for a mile or two, but they either heard us or got our scent again and we gave it up.

Back to that third day and Joyce’s ultimatum… In the afternoon we hunted hard. We drove to cover vast areas, looking to cut a fresh bull track. We walked and walked. We checked several waterholes. We saw a lot of buffalo sign. We followed several bull tracks until some fickle breeze ruined it for us. Just before dark, we were heading back to camp when one of the trackers saw just a wisp of dust. We stopped, and all of us focused our glasses on that small cloud of dust a mile away across Bushmanland.

The sun was low, but we picked up four Cape buffalo on the move – all bulls. After carefully studying these bulls through his spotting scope, Jamy said that the two in the middle were good ones. They were quite far away and unaware of us, so we planned a strategy. We immediately started off on foot through the thorn bush to intercept their path, making a wide half-circle to come up with the breeze if they kept to their current direction. There was not much cover. Everyone but Jamy and me stayed way back. After maybe half an hour, Jamy told me to sit down behind a very small and flimsy bush and to be ready with the .458 loaded with a 500-grain Hornady soft point in the barrel, followed by solids.

Within maybe three minutes the first bull came, crossing from left to right in front of me at 20 yards. He stopped for a heartbeat, looked briefly at us, and moved on. He looked HUGE to me, and threatening. We were motionless. Then, the second bull came. He looked at me and did not like what he saw. He immediately jumped a half-step to his left and at the same moment, Jamy whispered, “Take him – take that one.” I found the perfect spot on my scope, set at 2x, and fired. I was having trouble loading my second shot for just a moment when I heard the guys behind saying “He’s down! He’s dead.” It was a raking heart-lung shot. He was dead after running 40 yards, and we heard his somehow hauntingly sad death bellow.

I did not want a wounded buffalo at dark, so I was delighted that we had him. Ecstatic. He was a beautiful bull, dead from one shot, and here I was, in Bushmanland, in Namibia, with MY buffalo! He had the perfect head that I had dreamed of, with massive 14-inch hard bosses, great dips and curl-back tips. His width was not tremendous at 38-39 inches, but he was very handsome, and earned a silver medal from NAPHA. As I type these words he is above my shoulder on the log wall in my 1840 log cabin office here at Deer Lodge Farm in Virginia, between the biggest gemsbok I ever saw and a wonderful gerenuk from Ethiopia.

We worked hard till dark to get photos and then to load him in the back of the hunting car. It was a half-hour to camp. I enjoyed every moment of the trip, riding in back under the night sky, with my .458 and the Bushmanland buffalo. Arriving at camp, we were all cognizant of Joyce’s earlier ultimatum regarding me shooting either her or a buffalo that day, and although we did not take it that seriously, we decided to give her a bit of a hard time when we got in. We acted a bit dejected, and started talking about needing the rest of the week to find a bull. But then, in the flickering fire-light, she saw the head of the huge buffalo hanging out of the back of the Land Cruiser truck. We spent a good time looking over the bull, and then sat down to sundowners around the fire, gazing up at Namibia’s billions of stars, and waiting for our tents to cool down a degree or two. It was all good.

Today I had shot the buffalo in Bushmanland.

By Ken Bailey

Kudu were not on my “want” list. But they invariably become part of conversation whenever you’re in kudu country, for these regal spiral-horned antelope have a way of capturing the imagination like few others. And so it was, that Aru Game Lodge’s PH Stephan Joubert and I talked kudu as we sat high on a hill glassing the vast bushveld below, while searching the thorn bush for eland!

The truth is that I had no intention of shooting a kudu. Having taken a respectable bull on a hunt years earlier in South Africa, on this Namibian hunt I was focused on the kudu’s big brother, the eland. (Also high on my list were springbok, steenbok and caracal – the ubiquitous lynx-like cat found across much of Africa, although given how few caracals I’ve seen over several safaris, I am not convinced that they’re as widely distributed as the range maps suggest.)

The icons of hunting writing that popularized kudu wrote about their experiences in East Africa, largely in what is now Tanzania. Perhaps it was Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa that jump-started the kudu mystique, or maybe it was Jack O’Connor’s assertion that the kudu was the Dark Continent’s top trophy, and his coining of the term “the grey ghost” that inspired all those who followed in his footsteps. At that time, kudu were decidedly uncommon, undoubtedly contributing to their reputation as a trophy in high demand. Today, however, kudu are thriving, particularly in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

From our hilltop vista, Stephan and I carefully and methodically identified a great diversity and abundance of game. A mixed herd of zebra and blue wildebeest, two separate groups of gemsbok, clusters of red hartebeest, numerous springbok and a sprinkling of warthogs, ostriches, waterbuck and steenbok. But – no eland. So, we settled back more firmly against the rocks and began to sweep the landscape all over again.

Ten minutes later, in the typically understated manner of all African PHs, Stephan leaned over and said, casually, “There’s a pretty decent kudu bull down there. He only has a horn and a half, but the intact side looks pretty good. Maybe 55 inches. Are you interested?”

Decision time. I’d arrived with little interest in taking a kudu, but 55-inch bulls don’t grow on trees, especially in this part of Namibia where kudu, especially the bulls, had been hit hard by an epizootic outbreak of rabies, and the population was only then beginning to rebound. However, this was a one-horned kudu, irrespective of the length. Not generally a trophy animal.

“Let me give it some thought,” and we both settled back to continue glassing.

The whole notion of what constitutes a trophy has been undergoing a metamorphosis in recent years. In an effort to ensure that hunters are targeting only the oldest animals as a means to help ensure the health and sustainability of populations, there have been numerous biological and social initiatives aimed at educating hunters and the professional hunting community alike. In 2006, sponsored in part by Conservation Force and the Dallas Safari Club, a paper on ageing lions was released describing how various traits, including facial pigmentation, could be used to select older, post-breeding animals. A few years ago, and championed by noted veterinarian, author and PH Kevin Robertson, the importance of selecting past-their-prime Cape buffalo bulls was reinforced. Hunters were encouraged to choose the oldest and ugliest bulls. Today, what should count is age, not size.

I considered this as I continued to scan the Namibian veld, returning repeatedly to scrutinize the lone kudu bull browsing in the camel thorn. He was alone, not a herd bull, as one might expect of a breeding-aged animal. Given the length of his one intact horn, he had some years on his hooves. He definitely appeared old.

I pondered my own hunting ethics together with where the hunting community is headed in defining trophy quality.

“Let’s do it.” Without another word the two of us, along with our two trackers and Stephan’s constant companion, a friendly Rhodesian Ridgeback, made our way down the little mountain.

Height is a strategic advantage in pinpointing game. By the time we’d made it down and onto the flat veld, we found our perspective had disappeared with the altitude. We were now staring at a sea of thorn bush and although we’d identified a landmark or two, it was difficult to know exactly where the bull had wandered out of our sight.

Stephan sent one of the trackers up a fortuitously positioned windmill to see if he could spot the bull. Five minutes after scaling the rickety structure the tracker signaled that he’d spied our kudu. After scrambling down he excitedly relayed its location – only a few hundred yards distant among the scrub. A quick confab between the three of us to discuss tactics, and we were on the hunt.

From the direction we knew the bull to be heading, Stephan guessed that it was feeding towards a watering hole, so we set out on a trajectory that would intercept the bull along his path. Keeping the wind in our faces, we hunched over and began quickly duck-walking, always wary of the needle-sharp spines of the camel thorn and black thorn trees along the path. Eventually Stephan and the trackers got right down into a catcher’s-stance waddle. Too many years of basketball has left me with knees that have all the flexibility of rebar, so I was on my hands and knees, scurrying along behind as best as I could.

A hand raised is the universal sign that game has been spotted – at Stephan’s signal we all froze. Staring intently to where he pointed, I eventually made out the bull moving slowly through the dense cover, feeding as he went. He was headed toward a clearing, and I got into position to be ready for when he stepped out.

Breaking into the open, the bull did as he was hard-wired to do – stopping to check that the coast was clear. That hesitation was all I needed, and at the shot he was down in his tracks.

It’s always a bittersweet moment when you first approach a downed animal, and that feeling was only amplified when we realized what an ancient warrior this kudu truly was. In many places his hair was abnormally thin or worn away, and he had obvious cataracts in both eyes. His “good” horn was broken, battered and splintered, and stretched the tape to just shy of 54 inches. The wear on the stub side made it obvious he’d been handicapped for quite some time, likely from having performed double duty, given that the other horn was little more than an 18-inch remnant.

Stephan estimated the bull to be 13 years old, well past his prime and considerably older than the eight- and nine-year-old bulls that are typically taken. With his poor overall health and impairments, it was unlikely he’d have lived another season – more probably destined to become dinner for one of the local leopards.

Despite folks having asked several times why I’d willingly shoot a kudu with only one horn, when I look back on this hunt, it’s without a smidgen of hunter’s remorse. In fact, it is just the opposite. Among the many animals I’ve been fortunate to take over the years, this bull is among those I’m most proud of.

Rather than only evaluating physical attributes, age should be an important consideration when defining what constitutes a trophy. My one-horned kudu more than meets trophy standards by any measurement.