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.

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.’”

He’s roaring fear,

You’re stupid if you’re not afraid,

He’s built to destroy,

That’s how he was made.

See the tail flicker,

A single black weave,

See his mane waver,

In that soft breeze.

Hear his call,

It shatters the quiet,

Hear that first note,

Of the bush’s wild riot.

Look at his steps,

Don’t step where he goes,

He owns this wilderness,

As anyone wise knows.

Fight not his anger,

Contain not his power,

Track with the wisdom,

Of a man’s final hour.

Rejoice not when he falls,

But pay the King respect,

Majesty never truly dies,

It is their spirit you can never get.

By Kendal-Ray Kaschula

 

It was around June or July when my first opportunity at a lion hunt came up. I was sixteen, wet behind the ears, and absolutely clueless as to what hunting lion would involve, but when the chance arose, I couldn’t have been quicker in grabbing my rifle.

 

The lion in question was hovering around one of the ranch’s sections, catching cattle and causing mayhem in general and so, with a PAC permit in tow, we hung a few baits in the hope that we could shoot by use of a blind, but wherever it had come from had left it with more intelligence than we could refute and so every bait was left untouched, despite its’ walking withing ten yards of each.

 

My father-who was my long-time hunting partner-and I were discussing maybe using a caller when a call came via the ranch’s radio network that it had killed another cow, and the carcass had been left with more than enough meat for it to return the following night.

 

So, without hesitation and sure that this was our shot, dad and I, along with a few workers from the property, went out at lunch time-with the intent that building a blind in the heat of the day would cause our scent to rise quicker, and hopefully be completely gone by nightfall-and proceeded to build said blind, way, way up in a mopane tree. Due to having only a few hours to erect our tree blind, I can’t say it was the safest, especially after hauling up not just ourselves, but also a large car battery to run the rheostat off of, should it be required. However, we held our ground until the early hours of the night, our ears pricked for any sound of crunching or yanking at the carcass which was sixty to seventy yards away and in full view of my .375 scope.

 

Generally, lions will return to a bait-and especially a kill-that they’ve been feeding on quite early, seeing as of all the cats they tend to be the least shy, but the same skill that prevented our particular lion from eating our baits also kept him away from his kill, but undoubtedly hiding nearby as we discovered the next day, when, after returning to the carcass, we found his large tracks trekking through the sand on top of our car tire marks from the night before. These we followed to about three or four yards off the carcass where he had stood, most likely sniffed around, and then turned and promptly walked back out.

 

With all our attempts so far a fail, we then went and found a clearing at the base of a Gomo (rocky hill) in the area where it was staying and opted for a caller as a large ditch effort.

 

Perched on the back of a cruiser, I held my .375, dad held a spotlight-even though the moon was full there were a few clouds drifting around-and Tracker stood behind me.

 

Unfortunately, the section we were on isn’t full of open spaces, and so even the small clearing we had managed to find only put us sixty yards from the caller and that was with it being backed into duiker berry bushes.

 

It was something to six in the evening when we started playing, going through distress calls and even a few hyena whoops, hoping to create the sounds of a freshly-made kill.

 

We called for nearly an hour, and after about thirty minutes my ears-being the youngest on the cruiser-picked up the sound of crunching leaves to my right.

 

“Dad,” I said, “I can hear it walking next to us.”

 

All three of us searched the brush surrounding us with keen eyes by use of the moonlight, not wanting to flick the spotlight on just yet and perhaps scare away the cat if he was nearby, but despite our best efforts, we couldn’t see a single thing.

 

After a few minutes the walking sounds faded off, and it was nearly seven when I got ready to tell Tracker to run fetch the speaker because we obviously weren’t having any luck, when suddenly, there it was.

 

He strode into the clearing like he didn’t even know the cruiser was there, though there was no way he could have missed it, and just kept walking across.

 

“It’s here,” I whispered, already leaning over the roof of the car and looking through my scope. I picked it up easy enough in the moonlight, so when dad flicked on the spotlight it was a second of silence before my shot rang out.

 

The lion let out a growl, jumping high in the air as it curled over before plummeting into the bush with a crash and a bang that was followed by immediate silence.

 

Now, I couldn’t tell you how I knew the shot wasn’t good, especially since I had put the shot right behind the shoulder, but I just had one of those feelings that a fellow hunter will understand. It wasn’t a good shot, and dad wasn’t keen on any of us tracking it in the dark, so home we came.

 

Luckily, another section of the ranch had a manager who was a fully qualified PH and his friend, another PH, was with him. So, dad gave them a call and early next morning out we go, and in the back of the cruiser is Tracker and my two up and coming hunting dogs-Remy and Charlie.

 

Technically, hounds are leopard dogs, but feline is feline and we needed all the help we could get. We got back to the paddock early morning, and after a bit of walking around the track was picked up by the PH’s trackers.

 

After a bit of grabbing guns and counting bullets, and, of course, one of the Professional Hunters having to convince my dad that he should let me join the tracking party because how else was I going to learn? We were off.

 

To begin with we left the hounds on the car with one guy, and the rest of us went in, detecting very quickly that the lion was wounded and bleeding out both sides.

 

We’d been tracking for about an hour, maybe more, through thick scrub, when Tracker pulled up the other trackers and pointed ahead, but whatever he saw was long gone. What he saw? My wounded lion. However, since they hadn’t seen it as well, the others were quick to tell him that it was nothing but a jackal and so we carried on, unaware that my wounded cat was up and moving just in front.

 

We followed it for a good three hours, the sun climbing higher, and despite the PH’s wishes for it to charge by us pushing it from behind, we either weren’t tracking fast enough to catch up, or it chose to just keep going, probably because it was a younger male and not confident enough to launch its own attack.

 

Eventually, it’s explained to them that if they want the hounds, then the hounds must be used because it was getting too hot for them to be able to work. Hounds struggle to work in the heat, and even though it was late winter, it was the Lowveld, and that was still far too hot, even at barely ten am.

 

A discussion arose at this statement, as some of the group were unsure about the dogs’ capabilities, and if it would therefore be worth the effort.

 

“They’ll catch,” I said, speaking up, “they’re my dogs and I trained them, and I know them. Remy will catch it one time.”

 

And so, it was decided.

 

We sent the trackers-my own among them-to fetch the dogs, while the rest of us waited under a tree. At that point we had lost the lion’s track which was part of the incentive of bringing in the hounds, but while we were waiting one of the Hunters had to answer a call of nature, and, as luck would have it, his bush of choice was right beside a fresh spot of blood. The lion had doubled back.

 

When the hounds got in, they were, as always, chomping at the bit-or yanking at the leashes, so to say-and no sooner did I lead Remy to the blood than her whole demeanor changed as she slipped into ‘tracking mode’ her nose clearly picking up the scent.

 

“Go track Remy,” I told her, unclipping the leash, and off she went, but she’d barely gone out before she came trotting back, hair up and nervous. She’d never hunted a lion before, but instincts told her that it wasn’t to be trifled with. Now, as crazy as this sounds, me and the hounds have an understanding and so, I spoke to her, dropping to my haunches and taking her face in my hands, petting her all over. “It’s okay Remy….go out. Go track.” And off she went, only to come back again, drawing some very interesting looks from the PH’s, but I did the same thing, sending her off once more, and that time, she never looked back.

 

The trackers started to track with her, but having to work around people always throws her out. “Can we hang back please?” I asked, “She needs space.”

 

In hardly any time at all she was well and truly off, blowing the life out of the track which is when Charlie was released, and not fifteen minutes later, they started singing.

 

They were baying the lion.

 

We all took off, me hugging the side of one PH, the other far in front, and my dad bringing up the back. “To protect our tail,” he said.

 

We could hear the lion grunting, the sound changing as it moved. The dogs were holding, then losing, then holding it, but they only moved twice, finally keeping it trapped on the top of an anthill.

 

I hugged the side of the PH who was in the middle of the chase, the other far ahead, and we were almost caught up when a shot rang out, splitting the ongoing sound of the dogs’ booing.

 

A minute later we pulled up beside the PH in front in time to find the lion swiping at the hounds, but the dogs were no fools and stayed far out of reach. The PH handed me his rifle and I fired again, though by then the cat was pretty much done, and down it went in a heap.

 

For a second there was only that beautiful silence that comes in the first few moments of a Dangerous Game Hunt when you all stand and evaluate with astonishment that no one has been hurt and the animal is down, and then, as though in sync, you all erupt into cheers and whoops and smiles which are coupled with handshakes and hugs, and you know-in that place deep inside where all the best memories live-that you will never forget this moment.

 

I ran to the hounds, elated at their success, while trackers swarmed, and the hunt, hounds-everything really-was celebrated as pictures were taken, a feat in their own right when it came to pulling in the dogs and trying to get them to keep still.

 

Eventually, we loaded up the lion-a younger male with a tank of a body-and adding the dogs and ourselves to the back of one of the cruisers, set off for home.

 

It was in a quiet moment, when it was just the two of us, that Tracker gave me another reason to laugh. He told me that when he had gone back to fetch the dogs with the other trackers, they had voiced their doubts to him-in no uncertain terms-about whether or not the hounds could even catch the lion.

 

“Please,” he’d scoffed, “they do it all the time.”

 

Only, me and him both knew they’d hardly done leopards by then.

 

“And what were you going to say if we failed?” I asked, choking on my laughter at his expression of defiance that anyone could have dared to pass something remotely like a criticism about our beloved hounds.

 

“We don’t think of that,” I was informed, that look still firmly in place despite my own laughter, “we just don’t think of that.”