Namibia (Caprivi)

Dec 6, 2017 | Hunting News, News

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Namibia (Caprivi): 2014
From Broomsticks to Buffalo
by Roger Wiltz
“Doug, take him!” snapped professional hunter Karel Grunschloss, “and remember the broomstick!” Doug Koupal eyed the approaching bull elephant as it closed the distance between them, and brought his rifle up to the off-hand position. “The broomstick” had been a discussion item during the previous two days of elephant hunting, when numerous elephants had been encountered and discussed. If the elephant is facing you, place an imaginary broom handle across the tops of both eyes. Then put the bullet directly between the eyes and just above the broomstick…
It was the third morning of Doug Koupal’s trophy elephant hunt in the Kwandu Conservancy in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip (now known as the Zambezi Region). It was a hunt he had booked for August of 2014 with Jamy Traut Hunting Safaris. The first two days of the hunt had been spent watching elephants, studying their behavior, and developing a plan.
Karel “Kabous” Grunschloss, Bristow the tracker, and Gift, the government game scout, had set out that morning along the Kwando River. They hunted into a barely perceptible breeze as they stepped cautiously through the stressed Namibian habitat. The elephants had already depleted much of the flora on the Botswana side of the Kwando. The hunting party had gone perhaps three miles when they began to hear squeals and trumpeting ahead, every indication of an elephant quarrel in progress.
As an approaching bull rumbled toward them through the intermittent bush that dotted the floodplain, the elephant didn’t see the partially concealed party of four behind a lone tree. When the bull closed the distance to 15 yards, Doug aimed and fired, sending a 400-grain solid from his .411 caliber bolt-action through the animal’s head. The big tusker’s hind legs folded under him as his trunk rose skyward, indicating a perfect brain shot – the slug had passed through 18 inches of skin, muscle, and bone. Doug scurried to a position behind the elephant and put a second slug between its ears. A final shot went into the spine. 15,000 pounds of bull elephant lay dead on the ground. It was 7:30 a.m.
Within minutes of the rifle shots, meat-craving locals bringing pails, dishpans, and homemade knives, began to assemble at the scene. Karel ordered the growing crowd to wait until the skinners, who hadn’t yet arrived, had done their work. By 8:00 that evening, nothing remained but bone.
By choosing the Kwandu trophy option, Doug’s pair of 60 pound tusks could be legally exported to his South Dakota home. Had he chosen a non-trophy hunt, the ivory would become the property of the conservancy, and the only part of the elephant he could have kept would be its tail. Now, the ivory, along with the elephant’s right ear, a near duplicate outline of the African continent, would someday grace the Koupal trophy room.
Doug had four more days to hunt before they broke elephant camp, so they headed down the Chobe River for Cape Buffalo camp, and hoping to have time to take both a crocodile and a leopard. Though they set leopard baits and checked for feeding activity, leopard sign was all but nonexistent. None of the baits had been hit. Crocodile became the primary quarry, and an aluminum outboard motor boat was now their principal means of transportation.
Karel located “slides,” places where crocodiles had slid down the bank into the water. Pre-measured reeds were placed on the slide areas so crocodile length could be estimated. Blinds were built across from active slides. They tried baiting crocs with elephant trunk and blood. Locals were asked where they had seen big crocs. The closest Doug came to taking a big croc was a shot at a skull and eyes protruding just above the waterline. His shot was high.
They had previously seen a large herd of red lechwe as they rounded a river bend. Doug hadn’t considered one, but Karel told him that he couldn’t believe the size of a ram he had spotted. “You can’t pass this up!” As they approached the herd, the lechwe appeared to run on the water surface with their large splayed hooves! The men exited the boat on the nearside shore and made a stalk through ankle-deep water. From cross-sticks Doug dropped the record-book lechwe with a single shot from his Ruger #1 in .308 Winchester caliber.
**********
Meanwhile, six months earlier, Doug and I had booked our Namibian hunt with Jamy Traut Safaris during the 2014 Safari Club International Expo in Las Vegas. Although we wanted to travel to and from Africa and spend some camp time together, our hunts would be different – partly because of cost, and partly because my debilitating tremor made dangerous-game hunting prohibitive.
Other than wanting a good springbok as well as upgrading the red hartebeest I had taken on a 2007 Namibia hunt, I had tiger fish in the back of my mind. Jamy said my hunt could be kept affordable by hunting camp meat and non-trophy animals, and my friend Jim Paulson of Mitchell, SD joined us for plains game.
Jamy met us Windhoek’s Hosea Kutako International Airport, and we spent the night at House on Olaf Palme, a very comfortable B&B – also the Traut’s home. In the morning Doug flew to Katima Mulilo for his elephant, and Jamy drove Jim and me to his Panorama camp where he would guide me for the next seven days. Jim’s PH was Donnie Botha, a talented hunter and gentleman who was great fun to be around.
The Panorama Ranch lay in a game paradise 90 minutes’ drive southwest of Windhoek. Bleak and desolate mountain ranges separated the broad expanses of red sand dunes, camel thorn trees, scrub brush, native grasses, and rocky outcrops. Springbok, unhampered by high fences, bounced across the trail at every turn. The desert was alive! The winter night-time temperatures hovered around freezing, while day time temps reached the eighties.
Jim, my eighty-year-old partner, shot well – a red hartebeest, blesbok, kudu, waterbuck, springbok, gemsbok, Burchell’s zebra, and blue wildebeest. If my hunt was stressful for Jamy Traut, it didn’t show. Apropos my tremor, I had explained to Jamy prior to the hunt that I was the only one who knew whether or not I should touch the set trigger on my bolt-action Steyr-Mannlicher .30-06 carbine. I would need a rock-solid rest such as a tree limb, and if I never fired a shot during my hunt, I could go home happy.
On my first morning, Jamy and I headed into the wind in an area of thigh-high grass and numerous trees, moving as quietly as possible with Jamy using hand signals to communicate. Perhaps a half-mile later, Jamy held up two fingers. He mouthed “springbok” and pointed to a tree in front of me that had a chest-high branch parallel to the ground.
Minutes later two springbok rams moved into view. Jamy flashed a thumbs-up! With my rifle snuggled into the fork of the branch, I dropped the larger ram. Jamy pointed at the second one and wiggled his trigger finger. The second “camp meat” ram was down. In the end I took five animals, including a gold-medal springbok. None were lost, and each was taken after a fair-chase stalk on foot and hands and knees.
On Day 8, we flew to Katima Mulilo, Namibia’s most northeastern point and the east end of the Caprivi Strip and were met by Doug and his PH, Karel “Kabous” Grunschloss. After a fine lunch, Karel drove us to Camp Chobe, a comfortable tourist lodge on the bank of the Chobe River. From the open-air restaurant deck that evening, we saw herds of elephant across the Chobe, and later heard the deep guttural sounds of a lion. The next morning we would cruise down the Chobe for Cape Buffalo Camp and a crack at tiger fish.
It was a highlight, with different waterfowl, mile-long herds of Burchell’s zebra, and impala herds dotting the banks. As the river widened, we began to see hippo, elephant, and Cape buffalo. Crocodiles skittered from the banks as we cruised past.
We pulled up to a tented camp on the sandy bank of a Chobe inlet, home for the next three days.
As Karel and Doug prepared to embark on their buffalo quest, Jim and I were met by our fishing guide, JG Gericke. Jim and I had two-piece spinning rods in our gun cases, and lures and reels in our luggage bags. From JG’s boat we spent most of our fishing time trolling brightly-colored lures up and down the numerous channels for tiger. Strikes were vicious, and 90% of the time the tigers threw the lure on their first jump. While our Chobe tigers averaged one to four pounds, we sometimes had bigger fish.
Doug’s Cape buffalo hunt nearly ended in tragedy. The party included Karel and Chris – the required government game scout, Cassius the tracker, and Doug. They were hunting in open expanses of knee-deep water that concealed much deeper water through the main channels. Tall reeds blocked the horizon in all directions. The area was also home to elephants, crocodiles, and domestic cattle.
On their first full morning of hunting, the men spotted a grazing herd of 20-25 buffalo a mile away. They left the boat and began a two-mile trek that would circumvent the buffalo and put the light breeze in their favor. All went well until they came to a channel too deep to wade and too foolhardy to swim. Luck was with them as they spotted a mokoro (a dugout canoe) tucked into the tall reeds. One at a time the men were deftly poled across the 60-foot expanse by Cassius.
Cautiously they continued for a half-mile until Karel signaled a halt. The herd was grazing peacefully 65 yards out, and a bull with a very impressive boss was broadside and isolated from the rest. Karel whispered to Doug, “Take that one!” as he set up the sticks and stepped aside.
When he was comfortable, Doug squeezed off a shot that delivered a crashing blow to the buff’s left shoulder with his .411 caliber Winchester .458 wildcat. The buff reeled to his right, staggered, and headed straight away toward the reeds. Doug sent a second shot directly up the bull’s rear end, hearing the telltale whumpf as the tall reeds enveloped the buff. Doug felt the shots were good.
The herd, mostly cows, had gone to the left at the first shot. Now they were 150 yards out and looking back. Karel put his hat over the end of his rifle barrel and raised it into the air as he yelled and whistled, and the herd retreated into the high reeds.
Karel called for a 20-minute break before trailing the wounded bull. He hoped they would hear a death moan or bellow, a sure sign that old nyati was dead. But nothing. They would have to follow the old buff into his own lair where he would wait in ambush… if he were still alive.
The men lined up – first PH Karel, then Doug, Cassius, and Chris. Ankle-deep water had swallowed any possible tracks. The men came to a chunk of lung tissue floating on the water – surely a good sign. They continued with new confidence. Karel strained to peer into the reeds ahead, and threw up his rifle and fired at a fading black silhouette of hind quarters and testicles he had glimpsed for a millisecond. The sound of a large animal or animals running, splashing ahead, gradually faded after the rifle shot. They continued.
Suddenly, without warning, an adult cow buffalo, head down, charged PH Karel from his immediate left! She might have been eight feet away when her head and horns appeared. He fired into the back of her lowered head, breaking her neck and severing the cortex. The buff piled up against his legs. “Let’s get the hell outa’ here!” cried Karel.
They returned the following days to salvage the cow meat and look for the bull, but found nothing. They hoped to see vultures, but vultures need to see their prey. We left the Caprivi without Doug’s buffalo. Jamy Traut offered a significant reward for the bull in an area ravaged by poverty, and weeks later Doug received an email with a photo of his Cape buffalo skull.
On our last day and a half we hunted in the desert. Doug took a record-book sable, and book quality blue and black wildebeests. Jim added an ostrich to his collection. I hunted sand grouse near a waterhole, but cooler, damp weather affected the flight paths.
Doug’s elephant trophy, buffalo skull, and lechwe were quarantined in a Katima Mulilo locker for almost two years for alleged foot and mouth disease, till released to his Namibian taxidermist. It was in August 2016 that he finally received his Caprivi trophies.
Born in 1942, Roger spent his working years in South Dakota public schools as teacher, coach, administrator, and guidance counselor. He and his wife of 52 years have three married daughters and six grandchildren. An avid hunter-fisherman from his earliest years, Roger has penned an outdoor column, Rog’s Rod & Nimrod, for the past 45 years. Hunting trips have brought Roger to Africa, Alaska, Alberta, the Arctic, Argentina, British Columbia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland, often with Betsy and friends. They have endeavored, notably in Africa, to see the country rather than limit their adventures to round trips to hunting camps.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”12665,12664,12663,12662,12661,12660″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Buffalo in Bushmanland

Dec 3, 2017 | Hunting News, News

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Buffalo in Bushmanland
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.

John Warren, a native Texan, has a Ph.D. in economics. He worked three decades as a natural resources economist and project manager in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Africa. Recently, besides consulting in the Caribbean, Ethiopia, and Panama, he has made six trips (totaling 13 months) to Namibia. He and his wife Joyce live on a farm in Virginia. Their two daughters and 14 grandchildren (four adopted from Ethiopia) live in Canada and Spain.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”12678,12679,12681,12682,12683,12684″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Thoughts from a Namibian Hunt

Dec 1, 2017 | Hunting News, News

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Thoughts from a Namibian Hunt
By Pottie de Bruyn
As the dust settled from the departing herd, we slowly started walking to where I shot the eland bull of my dreams, and found him lying a mere 20 metres further on. Emotions and trembling hands followed. It was the culmination of six years and five trips to Eldoret Hunting in the north-east of Namibia. Although there had been close calls every year, all the previous trips resulted in either eland cows, kudu or gemsbok – but not “The Bull”.
Now that the bull was down, I concluded that I do not need to shoot another really big trophy of any animal. The hunting experience was what I was actually after. Here on Eldoret there is no such thing as spotting and stalking. You drive fencelines until the San tracker sees a spoor worth tracking, or you just start walking. This is how the hunt starts – full of expectation and questions. When you start on a spoor, you don’t know how big the animal is, what condition it is in, or how big the horns are.
I had found myself losing focus for long periods while trundling along a spoor. Yet a San tracker is able to maintain concentration for hours on end. My San tracker at Eldoret, Sem !Ugab, is an artist in what he does. His skills were honed from his cultural background, though the latest generation is losing this skill completely. Sem loves to hunt, but he has no desire to do the shooting, and I have to admit, some of my best hunting days have been where no shot was fired. I have now decided to incorporate a new element into my own hunting – tracking. The success of this venture can only be judged in the long term!
While on Eldoret I had a lot of time to think. Six years of questions and conflicts in my mind had preceded the run-up to this successful hunt. These thoughts ranged between queries about the right caliber, the direction that civilization is moving in, the value of friendships, and morality in general. Initial excursions to Eldoret were with a .30-06, loaded with 200-grain bonded bullets. It worked. But then I started thinking… Was it the right tool for the job? After two hunts from switching to a .375 Ruger with 300-grain bonded bullets, the answer was that the Ruger was an infinitely better choice.
I had turned down many other opportunities for an eland bull on other properties, so I wondered why I insisted on going back to the same place year after year. Likely, a combination of reasons. Nico and Vasti (the owners of Eldoret) are the kind of people you only meet once or twice in a lifetime. They want you to succeed. They want you to grow fond of their home. And they do not compromise on their way of hunting. These two points are probably what made me go back again and again.
As Nico and I stared into the night-sky unpolluted by light, we talked about how difficult it was to market a hunting destination to trophy hunters in such a way that there is a perfect fit between his vision and the expectation of the hunter. Often, the overseas hunter has to save money for his trip and to achieve his goal of a trophy. The way that hunting is conducted on Eldoret cannot absolutely guarantee a trophy, but it can guarantee a hunt! How far are other outfitters prepared to go to guarantee a trophy? Is this not where the practice of put-and-take or canned hunting comes from – to satisfy the expectation of the hunter, the “hunt” being made more memorable by the facilities and the temperature of the Jacuzzi?
Over the six years my hunt for this bull took a total of about 150km of walking in 17 days. How many visiting hunters are prepared to hunt for this long for a single animal? Or how many can afford it if they are not locally based? Is the guarantee of a trophy more important than the total hunting experience?
On this trip, the delight in my success from friends brought a realization that hunting is not a competition. It is an activity with no winners and losers! So why do we as hunters care so much about our trophy sizes? Recent media coverage on hunting activities also made me think about what most hunters refer to as their “sport”. For me, it is no such thing – it is my culture. Culture cannot be ranked. Can culture (and by implication hunting culture), change? I would say, yes, but perhaps not always with positive results. If you are after a record trophy, it is your sport. I get the impression we have the “A-Team” – those that are fortunate enough and rich enough to hunt in exclusive wilderness areas. Then we have the rest, in varying forms of acceptability, including the pick-up hunters, the ambush hunters, and hunting with dogs.
In many instances there is an ignorance of facts. Take the sugar industry that is facing the anti-sugar movement. Many products contain sugar, and consuming too much of this will make you fat. Stop blaming the company, blame yourself. Read the labels! Few educated people actually read and understand the ingredients label on food packaging. And this puts the anti-hunting brigade in perspective for me. They are educated, but they don’t “read the labels” and they blame the hunter instead of the real cause of declining wilderness, which is one of a range of possible things depending on the area you are referring to!
As I sat alone over the huge eland bull waiting for the recovery vehicle, the obvious questions arose about what to do with the trophy. I could have a skull-mount made, but as yet I have no place to put it. In hindsight, the real trophy is the fact that I have more photos and memories of the hunt than of the dead animal. My favorite “trophy” photo is of me with a kudu cow shot on my first trip to Eldoret. This was my first animal hunted on foot. Since then, I have shot three Roland Ward qualifying trophies on the property, purely because they were the ones that offered a shot. For this bull, I have photos of a tree that was marked with his horns, a day-old cheetah track, and a fresh kudu spoor. All these made my hunt that much more memorable.
For the first time I was able to smell the mop of a mature eland bull. It is not the stuff of French perfume, but it smelled of primal instinct and millions of years of evolution, and as such is one of the most memorable smells I have ever had. Real hunting takes sweat and labor. But, sadly, many modern trophy hunters select their venues simply on a guarantee of the biggest reward (trophy) for the least cost and effort.
In hindsight, this bull is not my biggest trophy. Memories of eland cows and young gemsbok came flooding back with similar feelings, but only because of the way I hunted.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”12688,12689,12690,12691,12692,12693,12694″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Horns and Stripes

Nov 30, 2017 | Hunting News, News

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Horns and Stripes
By Jeremy Cotton

This day finds me running at top speed down a two-track road in the middle of northern Namibia with no idea why. My legs fly to keep up with my PH and tracker. All of the commentary to this point has been in whispered Afrikaans, and, not knowing that language, I am in the dark. A couple of hundred metres pass and we careen to the right into the thick bush, still cruising at top speed. I have little experience with this hunting technique and find it unique to say the least. The thorn bushes tear at my arms and legs as I whizz past. Those cuts are going to sting in the shower tonight. Then we stop dead. The soft grey form of a kudu cow appears…

Maybe I should rewind this a little and explain a few things?

I am on my first African safari with my parents, Gary and Sandee Cotton, and my wife Cathy. So far we have been having the time of our lives, and several animals have been taken by my parents, including a super 94cm gemsbok and old warthog. Cathy has been trying to get a zebra, but so far they have eluded her. Most of my time has been spent trying to entice a leopard to my baits, but that is another story. I did manage an old 96cm gemsbok on Day 3, and a Damara dik-dik on Day Five. So, I have not been out of the game entirely. However, we are not cutting into my trophy fee budget very quickly and it is now Day Seven.

We are hunting at Westfalen Hunting Safaris in northern Namibia near the town of Outjo. John and Juliana Van der Westhuizen run the operation with their children, Hain, Juretha, three dachshunds and an undetermined number of cats. The camp is called Elephant Camp and is situated in an area where the desert elephant roams, hence the name. Camp, if you can call it that, is comfortable, and well-appointed with hot showers, and great accommodations. You become part of the family immediately, and want for nothing. A truly exceptional operation.

Since I have opted to try for leopard, my PH is Anton Esterhuizen, a long-time Namibian big-game PH. He guides the leopard hunters when one is in the Westfalen camp. If you get the chance to hunt with him, you’ll not be disappointed. He is very knowledgeable, and just fun to be around.

After six days of hard hunting, my parents have declared a day of rest. Since they are staying in for the morning, it frees up John to check the leopard baits then take my folks to see a local Himba village this afternoon. Since Cathy has not yet connected on her primary animal, Hain will take her out after the crafty zebra. They have dubbed themselves “team zebra”.
This gives me a day to concentrate on plains game. Specifically, we will try to find a kudu. Of course, you never know what a day may bring.

The day begins: After a great breakfast of eggs and bacon, Anton and I head north to an area where my folks had seen two big kudu bulls the previous day. Dad and Hain had stalked one, and got to within 30 metres, but the thick brush prevented a shot. We were hoping for a similar encounter with a different ending.

An hour later, we had picked up our tracker July, and Anton and I were still hunting through a hilly area looking for kudu and hartebeest. We are angling toward a large kopje to climb and glass the surrounding area. From the top we see a small band of kudu cows getting a bite to eat, but there are no bulls in sight. We move on, and after a couple hours of moving and glassing, we end up at a waterhole. A quick radio call, and July comes to pick us up.

We drive further into the mountains, and basically repeat the same walk. This time we come up with a klipspringer ewe and two giraffe. By now it is lunch time, so we head to a large waterhole nearby to eat lunch and see what visits.

On our drive to the waterhole, a good steenbok bolts from cover in front of the truck. I hastily snatch up my 9.3X64 Brenneke Mauser and bail out of the truck, circling around the back to get on the steenbok’s side of the road. Anton follows me then takes the lead as we sneak toward the last position of the steenbok ram. He pops his head up 30 metres in front of us under a large thorn bush, but otherwise remains still. The sticks appear in front of me and I snick off the safety as the Mauser is deployed onto them. A second later I squeeze off the shot and the steenbok ram evaporates in a cloud of dust. We advance and find blood, but no ram.

July joins us and takes the lead in finding my ram. As the search begins, we hear rustling behind us. I turn to see that the ram is up and trying to get moving. The rifle swings and fires as if on its own, finishing the tiny antelope. My first shot was a little low. The second passed through end to end. Luckily, the 250gr Nosler Accubonds didn’t do much damage to the cape and a full mount will be possible. Big calibers are hard on these little creatures. Steenbok are a delightful little antelope. Though their horns are simple, they are quite striking up close, with soft, long rust-brown fur and subtle facial markings. As fine a trophy as anyone could want.

After the photos are taken we pack up and continue on to the waterhole. The layout is a large earth berm running east to west parallel to a dry riverbed. The berm finally tapers, and the river enters the pan where the waterhole is. The waterhole extends along the other side of the earth berm from the riverbed. This is an area that holds water most of the year, so there is a lot of vegetation, and some fairly large trees line the river.

We drive up the riverbed to the earth berm, grab our lunches, my rifle, and make our way to the top of the berm. At the top, two chairs greet us behind a thorn bush blind under a large shady tree. In front of us is a pan of maybe 20 acres. There are 10 acres of water in the pan surrounded by dry mud bank that gives way to scrub mopane and thorn bush. A large group of gemsbok and springbok are in residence on the other side of the water.

I’m busy trying to get a good photo of the gemsbok when I hear July start to drive off, taking the steenbok ram to the skinner while we enjoy lunch. A second or two later, the vehicle abruptly stops with the engine off. Odd. A moment later, the heavy footfalls of someone running grow in our ears. July appears at the bottom of the berm and has a short frantic conversation with Anton. Anton turns to me. “Bring your rifle.” I have no clue what they have discussed as it was all in Afrikaans.

I follow them to the truck at a fast jog. Once at the truck, more conversation in Afrikaans ensues as they come up with a plan. I load the rifle, still unsure what has sparked this tense moment. Now we get serious and bolt down the road at a run. I unsling my rifle to turn it around to point behind us. Running with a loaded rifle doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

And so I am running at top speed down a two-track road in the middle of northern Namibia with no idea why.
A further 150 metres, and we cut to the left into the brush for 50 metres more. Finally July freezes. I can just see a kudu cow off to our left about 75 metres away in a small opening. She is oblivious to our presence and keeps walking. More kudu file past the opening, but they are all cows and calves. I count 13 of them.

We back out slowly and cut back toward the road. Slightly further, and we get back up to speed. The scenario is finally starting to sink into my brain. When July started to leave he ran smack into the kudu herd as they were coming in to water. They bolted, but apparently not too far. Anton and July figure that the kudu aren’t spooked and we are trying get in front of them. Trouble is, they walk fast. Much faster than I walk, and if we don’t run to outpace them we’ll never cut them off.

We swing wide and scurry another 300 metres before slowing to a walk and turning left again toward where the kudu should be. Then 20 metres further, and July halts. Anton throws up the sticks.
“Shoot quick,” he whispers. I do as I am bid and throw the rifle to my shoulder and onto the sticks. A bull kudu fills the scope quartering hard away, head twisted looking back at us. My crosshair passes the shoulder, settles at the back of the ribs, and I send a 250gr Nosler Accubond on its way. The impact is audible, and the bull lunges forward vanishing into the bush. We bolt forward at a dead run to where he once stood.

We find him standing under a big mopane tree. The sticks are up and I have the rifle trained on him, though he is clearly done for. A second later, he topples. He is still, and I feel the nerves finally catching up with me. We stand there for several minutes catching our breath and staring at the kudu bull. No words are spoken, no handshakes. Just silence and calm for probably a good minute. Anton finally breaks the peace and asks me if I understand what I have just taken. It takes me a second to comprehend his question.

Anton is referring to Namibia undergoing several rabies outbreaks in the last 10 years. Those outbreaks seem to be particularly hard on the old bulls. No one knows why, but those seem to be the animals most often found dead from an outbreak. My bull is quite old and we judge him at 10 years. That means he has survived at least two outbreaks. Quite a feat when nature can be a cruel host. To take a bull this old, given the history, is something a bit more special.

His long horns are thick and worn from time. The tips have been polished to the color of fine ivory. The curl is wide, and he just makes two turns. The horns are covered in mud and I peel it off to get a better look at their astonishing beauty. Both of my hands won’t go all the way around the horn bases. The ridges up the horns are well defined, and have chips in them from years of fighting for the right to breed.

I feel a small sense of sadness that I had slain such and old warrior; a fighter that survived the worst. I also feel the elation of success. For a few minutes, I try to soak in every detail of the face, ears, hooves, tail, and stripes. I count seven stripes on one side, eight on the other. I am surprised at how short the hair is, and how sparse it is. His neck is still swollen from the rut. It is simply massive, as are the ears.

I’ll only get one first kudu. So, I take my time and hope that maybe future years will not dull the memory. Maybe I can make the memory last in sharp detail forever.

Photos are taken, and we load him up for the journey to the skinner. July has picked up our lunch from where we left it at the waterhole. It is now about 2.30 p.m. and time to head to the main house to drop off my kudu and steenbok. And finally eat some lunch.

After lunch, it is about mid-afternoon. Time to get in one more hunt before night time settles and ruins our fun. We head to a flat plains area where there are a lot of springbok and hartebeest. On the way we glimpse a cheetah in the tall grass. Very neat. However, that also means that the springbok will be scattered and not in their usual haunts. Cheetah are hard on the springbok. Some warthog appear under a tree. A good boar has love on his mind with a smallish sow. We are intruding on their plans, and they scurry off into the grass. We try to make a stalk, but the long grass shelters them from our sight. Back to the truck, and we are off.

A short drive further on we pull up to the base of a large kopje. We climb to an outcrop on the side to glass the flats beyond. Small groups of hartebeest cows and two groups of springbok are grazing. Then a single hartebeest steps out in front of us. He is something special. We admire him for several minutes, but can’t come up with a good way to stalk him. No matter, he isn’t that far out. We judge it at 250 metres and I am confident at that range. July bails off the rocks to retrieve my rifle. I really like that guy!

Rested on my hat over a rock, I take my time to ensure a clean kill. The bull is slightly quartering away and feeding to the right. I aim at the top third of his body, just behind the shoulder. Anton whispers, “Wait for him to raise his head. It would be a shame to put a bullet through his horn.” The bull turns a little more broadside, and I have my opportunity. The shot rings in our ears, and a fraction of a second later we hear the impact. It is solid. The bull takes two unsteady steps forward, and tips over. His tail is the only thing that moves, then he is still. A later check with my rangefinder puts the range at 239 metres.

He is a magnificent bull. Old and heavy. The bases are polished smooth from his many years. The tips sweep back parallel to each other and are very long. I wanted a hartebeest, but had put him lower on my priority list. I now see that was a mistake. He has a beauty that is made more unique by his ungainly appearance. The long face blends into the horn bases. And the body color is like no other animal that I have seen. A truly magnificent trophy, and I can already see him as a pedestal mount in my living room. I make a note to see if my wife agrees with that idea.

We drop off my hartebeest with the skinner and head back to Elephant Camp.

Cathy is waiting for us along the drive. She holds up a spent cartridge from her 7X57 Mauser, and parades it back and forth in front of our vehicle. She had connected with her zebra. She recounts the tale, and I can see that she had a wonderful hunt. She is very excited.

I hold out my hand to give her something and drop three spent cartridges into her hand.

“You got your kudu?”
“Yes.”
She looks puzzled. “It took three shots?”
“No.”
“You got three animals?” she asks, this time with an edge of excitement.
“Yes.”

But we really had four animals, my three, and Cathy’s zebra – apart from those of the previous days. We may not have a day blessed with such success again. A day ripe with hope that ended in triumph and above all, memories. And one that turned out to be quite an expensive day!

Jeremy Cotton was born and raised in Montana, USA and is 37 years of age. His family has held up the tradition of hunting for several generations and passed it to him at a young age. Jeremy has hunted much of the USA from eastern turkey to western elk and deer. He currently resides in Indiana and works as an engineer in the steel industry. His wife Cathy graciously allows him to maintain his hunting habit and occasionally comes along to oversee the activities. This trip was their first to Africa, and will not be their last. The friendships made will be renewed in the future.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”12697,12698,12699,12700,12701,12702″][/vc_column][/vc_row]