The Golden Gemsbok of Ukujabula, in Pursuit of South African Gold

By Glenn W. Geelhoed

We were prospecting for gold in Limpopo Province.  It has been done before, but we were on a mission with the target being the golden gemsbok. The goal was a “Crystallized Memory” in honor of the gemsbok, with paired pedestal mount trophies highlighting the two major color phases of the Oryx gazela.

We had resolved to make our move in an hour-and-a-half drive from Re a Lora near Bela Bela in Limpopo, across vast U.S. Midwestern prairie-type megafarms to reach Loskop.  We had arranged to visit a game ranch known to my long-time friend and PH Charl Watts, with the intriguing name “Ukujabula.”  In the Piri language, a Bushman tongue spoken by our long-term tracker Abrahm, Ukujabula means “Place of Happiness.”  We had gilded hopes that it might just live up to its promise, as we were “panning for gold.”

Charl, Abrahm and I had been stalking gold in several South African locations, most notably as, three years earlier, we were on the spoor of a whole herd of golden gemsbok in the Great Karoo.  We had superb hunts in a vast desert ranch named Kareekloof, in which the three of us came close to closing the deal on the elusive oryx, using sparse desert bush and favorable winds to come up to within two hundred meters of several good bulls. In one instance, after a satisfying approach using all the bush skills of a collective century of African hunting experience among the trio, Charl had set up the sticks under a scrubby blackthorn tree, as Abrahm crouched down, and I looked in wonder at a lone gemsbok bull which had turned to sniff the wind that may have swirled in from our direction.  It was at that moment we saw that its right horn was a long straight rapier, but its left was broken off a third of the distance from the skull.  This “unicorn” status must have conferred on him a considerable advantage as a deadly lancer, and we had scratched him from our list as the trophy we were after, and backed away, shooting photos as we went.

On another occasion, Charl and I managed to close upon a herd, the majority of which had bred true with the blonde recessive gene, but we realized that the trophy bull we had focused on was the breeding bull of this herd, and again we chose to back away.

Oryx gazela is an intriguing species and comes in two main color phases.  It is magnificent in its black-and-white standard dress, and we had succeeded in scoring a superb bull at Izintaba (“Sacred Mountain” in Zulu) in a site not far removed from where we were headed on this brisk bright morning in the southern African early winter.  “At some future point,” I had said, admiring that magnificent trophy gemsbok in standard issue livery, “I might hope to see, and perhaps collect a matching golden gemsbok variant of the same species to put side-by-side on a pedestal mount to admire as the Gemsbok Slam.”  Charl picked up on these musings and made them his mission—and we were off and running.

“There’s Gold in them thar Hills!”

Voortrekkers had preceded us by many generations on this expedition northward and found that gold could be grown in sweeping grain. Farms were productive thanks to borehole irrigation from the precious water that was relatively scarce elsewhere, but found here in sufficient quantity for fertile crops, game and cattle ranches.  Many place names indicate the great significance of water as locations are often designated “—–fontein” referring to the springs yielding that essential for life. Therefore, ‘plains game’ by definition, could survive there.

I harbor a fascination for gemsbok and their survival skills.  They are adapted to not simply survive, but to thrive in environments that seem to be forbidding deserts for other species. The gemsbok draws air in rapidly via its nose, cooling the air molecules down in the process.  Capillaries in the nose of the antelope then send this air-cooled blood to the brain. They waste no precious moisture by sweating. I had watched on a cold “see my breath” early morning as a gemsbok herd within close range was emitting no mist of breath whatsoever.   Gemsbok were masters of recycling before humans caught on to how cool a trick that could be!

They can sport different color patterns even within the same species. Game breeders can turn loose known carriers of the recessive gene that makes for golden color variants which can even breed true when two golden gemsbok are mated.  And we were on the track of one such post-breeding bull, which would also help support the further propagation of this beautiful beast.

seemed to be constantly on the run.  At one point I got my binoculars focused on the first group of golden gemsbok mixed with a few black-and-white classic coloration gemsbok, and I spotted ear tags in each. 

No slam dunk here!  We pushed on, and an hour later identified three blue wildebeest.  Although wary, they did not flush wildly away from us but moved restlessly around.  We kept our distance, but something else was moving behind them, almost in a synchronized ballet, and it was definitely lighter in color than the brindled wildebeest.  It was, as it turned out, a golden, all right, but a golden wildebeest.

We moved on, and spotted kudu, and a few more wildebeest, this time a larger herd and, among them, milling around in the middle of the group were two that were distinctive—king wildebeest!  I had been searching for several days back at Re a Lora, and had scanned many wildebeest, but this was my first view this trip of the king variant.  The kings were more like princes, since they were young, and not within a decade of the post-mature bull we were still in search of, but it was encouraging to see that the genes were being shown in the herd.

We made repeat swings around the same terrain to see if whatever had vanished on our first approach might materialize. After another hour as it was getting toward noon, we spotted the same three blue wildebeest we thought we had seen earlier.  On closer inspection, there was a fourth animal behind them. Of course, we had previously spotted the golden wildebeest that had seemed to be taking cover behind them.  Through the binoculars, however, this blonde big body had tall upright horns. Another good trick—masquerade!  The four animals broke and ran, and through the binoculars none of us could spot an ear tag on the gemsbok, fraudulently posing as a blonde wildebeest.  But they outran us, and we could not be sure, so we backed away, hoping they would settle.

In a broader arc from a new direction, we saw a group of gemsbok, several of them blonde.  We stopped to look them over, and the first two had ear tags, and as we watched them milling around before they broke and ran, every one of them was tagged as in a breeding herd.  We did not give chase, but waited, and circled with the wind to enter the area into which the trio of wildebeest had run with the big golden gemsbok that none of us had seen if it had been tagged.  We came upon the three blue wildebeest, which, by now, were standing like statues before they broke and ran. As they did so, out of the tan-colored tall grass in which he had seemed invisible, the big golden gemsbok also jumped into the middle of the fleeing wildebeest, and they all ran out of sight.

We waited and then cautiously slipped forward, being on the lookout for our sentinel wildebeest. They were standing to the right of a low line of acacia trees. One of the trees had a forked trunk that split about a meter and a half off the ground and about a meter above the beige dry grassland in front of it.  This time I looked carefully through that grass because the golden gemsbok had blended into it when we had last encountered him.

We drove the Toyota Hilux in a loop around the row of trees and approached the oryx. This experience was the opposite of “ground shrinkage” as he seemed to be getting bigger as we covered the rest of the 120 meters to find the spot-on red splash dot looking like the bullseye target at which the only prior shot had been fired at paper four days earlier.  The golden color actually shimmered in the sunlight and it is hard to understand how the animal had managed to hide in that bright fur coat.  There was a midline “cowlick” on the haunch of its rump which Kobus called a “Kroenke.”  Every one of us admired this specimen of an old bull that had had no breeding role in the gemsbok herd for the past few years, having been ousted by one of the young bulls. Perhaps one of those we had spotted with the ear tags, while this old warrior had a few scars as the combat medals from those encounters.  Abrahm’s opinion is best expressed in his exultant pose with the “golden one.”

The hunt was a good one and the quarry well worthy of the pursuit.  The Golden Gemsbok will be mounted on a pedestal in a place of honor alongside its B&W blood relative, in a celebration of the Splendor of the Oryx.