Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Back from my Zimbabwe safari... Aug-Sept 2015

This where I quit reading. Good curry is like manna from heaven, and about any rank flesh can make a good curry.

OK, I'll forgive this...please continue.

Heck of a good tale Doc thanks for the effort writing it up.

Terrific story Doc, congratulations on your buff.

tag for later reading

I was just thinking out loud while daydreaming looking at the camp photos.....

Hunting with John is like hunting with a mate, which he is now. Great story to enjoy vicariously through the words and pictures.

Doc; awesome write up. Thank you so much for putting in the effort to share with us here on the 'fire.

GRF

Great report. I feel like I was right there with you.
Many thanks for sharing with us. Anxious to read the next entry.

Thank you for posring your story. It has made for an enjoyable read.

I offered Doc

Part 5: Kudu

Now, I know kudu is something like the freakin' Holy Grail to a lot of hunters, but I'm just not one of them. Yes, I think they're handsome animals, but they don't make me drool all over my rifle magazines the way they seem to make a lot of hunters do.

That being said, when I first contemplated this safari, it came down to 3 species: Cape buffalo, with kudu and eland on the back burner. I didn't care much for any of the other plains game, one way or another, and of the two spiral horn antelope available at the BVC, I'd have to say the eland was more of my kind of critter.

But we don't always get our druthers, and in this case I didn't exactly get mine, either. Not that I'm complaining.

On my first hunting day in the BVC, we saw every species of game the place had to offer, including both kudu and eland. We were hunting in the flat bushveld east of Chamalaya camp, for the most part. Heavy mopane bush, lots of waterholes, lots of game, but not much topographic relief.

Kudu and eland cow were present in abundance, but it was past lunchtime when I saw my first kudu bulls, and I have to say that their appearance was startling and gratifying. A pair of immature bulls materialized out of the bush by the side of the road ahead and I was astonished at what large animals they were, and how gracefully they move... next to impala, they are possibly the antelope species that seems to move with the most grace. They are the size of bull elk, too, which was a bit of a surprise to my eye. It's one thing to know a thing in your head, but entirely another to learn it in your eye and your occipital cortex.

In any event, my first sight of live kudu bulls changed my priorities unexpectedly. These two boys were immature males with shallow-curling horns of about 50 inches, narrow bases, and no ivory on the tips.

"We'll let them grow up for another year or two," said my PH. "And then they should be ready for shooting. They may push 60 inches, although the genetics here don't usually go that big."

"Sixty inches, hell," I breathed. "I'll take one of those just as they are right now!"

"Nonononono," John laughed. "We can do better. MUCH better."

Right, thinks I. We shall see, shan't we?

Well, a couple of mornings later we did see. We did see very well indeed. We were north of camp in the Nengo area, which is more hilly and rocky. Ancient eroded volcanic cores called kopjes (pronounced midway between "copy" and "copay", in a southern African accent, just FYI) dot the countryside and provide scenic relief as well as topographic diversity that is very pretty to look at.

Here's a couple of pics of some kopje's:





The second pic shows some kopjes in the distance, and is taken from the top of a kopje as well. I'm no geologist, but I found them damn interesting to look at and to crawl around on. Most of them are in the range of 300 feet higher than the surrounding bushveld, so you can actually see pretty well from on top of them.

Anyways, we came around a corner on the morning in question and moving into the bush to our left was the pair of kudu bulls I described earlier. John immediately stopped the car and we got out to have a go at them. As it happens, stalking kudu is a lot like stalking buffalo, in that you spend most of your time in thick bush that offers you sight ranges of 20 yards or less. It's different than stalking buffalo in that kudu move really fast, and you have to move quickly to catch them.

We trailed this pair up into the saddle between two kopjes, and at about that time the kudu either saw us or winded us and took off. Isaac read the tracks that told the story 10 minutes later, and he said we probably skylined ourselves in the saddle. Here's another pic to show the saddle in the middle background.



As I said previously, John knows the bulls in this particular area can be good sized (57-60 inches), and we saw good mature bulls both that morning and the next afternoon. Kudu are primarily browsers, and as this is late winter, there is little green browsing to be had in the bushveld... except at the bases of the kopjes, which have thick green belts due to the runoff from the domes of rock. We reasoned that since the kudu were hanging around these green belts, it would be smart to hunt them there.

So after the evening we collected my buff, we spent a couple of mornings sitting up on kopjes glassing the bushveld and hoping for kudu or eland to appear. Which they didn't. So we scoured the bushveld, looking for kudu tracks by the roadside and by waterholes, and we put up game cameras at waterholes, and we saw exactly zero kudu bulls.

I should mention that at this point the weather had turned unseasonably hot... our game camera recorded an ambient temp of 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees F) on Day 2 of my safari, and it got hotter every day. The bulls were clearly hiding in the deep bush, and damn if we could find them. But we kept looking, and as John said to me on the afternoon of Day 6, sometimes you just have to take what Africa offers. It might be a kudu, it might be an eland, it might be neither. Would I like a warthog, by chance? Why yes, I would! But Africa wasn't offering any of the above, including warthog.

It was very late in the afternoon on Day 6 when Africa Offered. The sun had dipped down into the haze, and it was perhaps 15 minutes before actual sunset. It was very hot, I'm guessing 120 degrees F. We were all hot and sweaty and dirty and tired. Time to go home, really, that was all any of us had our minds on. The light was getting very dim. Then suddenly the car came to a jerky stop, and John breathed, "Good God, he's a monster!"

I couldn't see a monster of any description, but I got out my side of the car, the side away from the monster, and John exited with me. "Load your rifle," says he in a hoarse whisper. I pulled back the bolt and chambered a round, except it stuck partway out of the magazine (which had never happened before; I attribute it to the omnipresent fine African dust), so I hit it with the ball of my hand and the bolt shot forward with a loud metallic bolt-closing sort of sound. Everyone--John, Isaac, Lovemore, even the game scout--glared at me like I was someone's idiot brother about to spoil everyone's fun.

"Sorry," I whispered, chagrined.

We crept around the back of the vehicle, and I finally saw the monster. Actually, all I saw was one massive curly horn, sticking out of the mopane scrub about 50 yards off the road. I put my rifle on the sticks and looked down my scope, and followed the horn down until I found the head it was attached to, and then piece by piece the rest of the kudu revealed itself to me, standing broadside in the thick brush. There was no heart-lung shot, but it looked like I might exploit a tiny opening in the bush to take a spine-shoulder shot.

"Quickly, quickly!" John whispered hoarsely. It sounded like he was gonna pee himself. I steadied the tip of the post on his shoulder and fired. The kudu disappeared, and I was sure I'd missed him. Isaac shook his head, made a "Zeezeezeeezeeezeee" sound and waved his hand, indicating a ricochet, which is of course what happened to my bullet when it hit one of the branches I was trying to force it between.

"Do you think you hit it?" John asked.

"Not a chance," I said, glumly. I just couldn't see well enough in the fading light.

"The guys all think you missed, too," he said. "But let's go take a look just in case."

So we marched off into the bush. Isaac found the broken branch my bullet had hit, a 3/4-inch stick of mopane, hard as iron. Lovemore found the kudu's hoofprints where he'd jumped at the sound of the shot.

"He's gone," I said, resignedly.

"SSSSSSssssstt!!" Said Isaac, pointing. And there, by God, was the kudu bull, standing broadside again, not 40 yards away.

"I don't believe it," breathed John. "They never stand for a second shot." But he put the sticks up and as I settled my rifle down the kudu bolted again. Again, we went to the spot, and Isaac said "He's not running, he's walking," which puzzled us all. So we followed.

"And he's limping," John said ominously. "The guys think you might have hit him with that ricochet. There's no blood, but he's probably wounded."

My heart sank. A wounded kudu bull, minutes before sunset, in heavily lion-infested bushveld. I knew I would be responsible for the trophy fee on him whether we collected him or not, but more importantly, I felt awful to have possibly crippled an animal and sentenced him to death by lion.

So we followed, and we all felt very bad about this situation. Me especially. Suddenly Lovemore, off to the left, turned and came running back to us, eyes bugging out of his head. "Rhino!" he whispered urgently. We craned our necks, and sure enough, there was a rhino dozing in the mopane, 30 yards ahead. But it was a white rhino, and we all breathed a sigh of relief because white rhino aren't nearly as aggressive as the more common (in the BVC, anyway) endangered black rhino. Also, there were NO trees to climb in that vicinity, which is bad juju if you're close to a rhino.

So we skirted the rhino, well off to the east of the Kudu's tracks, and we had about given up on finding tracks again when Isaac froze and then John put up the sticks again, and there to my front stood the kudu, broadside, 40 yards away. But the light was fading fast, and I couldn't pick him out in the scope from the tangle of grey-brown kudu-colored branches all around him.

"I can't see him!" I whispered miserably.

"What do you mean you can't see him?" John whispered incredulously. "He's right THERE!!!" And he was. I could see him clearly with my open left eye, but the illuminated green aiming point of the Trijicon reticle washed out all the other color in the scope, and I couldn't see where I was aiming to hit him.

The kudu turned and started to walk away.

"Put your rifle on safe," John said, unhappily. And I started to do so when suddenly the dying sun broke through the brush and illuminated the kudu beautifully. I could see him perfectly through the scope, left shoulder and chest and flank in brilliant relief against the mopane.

"I've got him!" I hissed, and I fired.

John and the trackers were taken by surprise. "Why did you shoot?" John asked, wide-eyed.

"I saw him perfectly," I answered. "I had a raking shot, and since he's wounded, I really had to take a chance on it."

John nodded. "I dont' think you hit him," he said. "We didn't hear the bullet hit."

Lovemore said he thought I'd hit it in the hind leg. Not good, thinks I. My stomach sank.

But then Isaac called out loudly, "He's down! He's down!" and we all looked, and by God he was down, lying behind another bush 30 yards away, on his right side, his massive horns swaying as the bull tried to keep his head upright. We circled around him and saw the blood on his left flank where the raking shot had taken him, high on the flank, and I could see the angle of him in my mind's eye, and knew the bullet had plowed through him, all the way through his upper belly, above his paunch, perhaps clipping his aorta as it tore into his chest and lungs. He had blood on his muzzle, and he couldn't keep his head up; but his eyes were clear as he looked at us, and he didn't seem at all disturbed or afraid. We were 15 feet from him, John and I, and he looked at us with complete calm.

I raised my rifle and put a finishing shot into his chest. He erupted to his feet and crashed out of the brush into an open place, and the last light of the setting sun glinted on his horns for a moment as he swayed on his feet. Then his eyes rolled back and he fell, kicked once, twice, and then again, and then subsided and lay still.

Once he was down, we looked him over to see if I'd hit him with that first shot, to see if I'd crippled him initially, but there was no bullet wound except the raking shot in his left flank and the finishing shot in his left shoulder. Both bullets were found under the skin later.






Over drinks at the fire later, John and I tried to puzzle it out. We couldn't understand why this kudu stood for me to shoot him; not just one, not twice, but three times, when kudu normally take off into the next county at the sound of a rifle being clicked off-safe,and I'd been slamming my bolt and stumbling over my unlaced boots and generally bumbling like a half-drunk lunatic. And why had he been limping, if he wasn't wounded? The problems with light in the Trijicon scope in the low light were understandable, but why was I the only one to see the kudu suddenly flare into vivid color as he turned? All the trackers confirmed John's assessment, that the kudu was invisible to everyone when I shot him. Invisible to everyone but me.

"Well, that's Africa, James," John finally said, simply. "I can't understand it, but there he is, in the skinning shed. You took what was offered. It wasn't classic, but you took what was offered, and you have a helluva bull."

"Not classic?" said I. "Hell it was downright ugly!" But I couldn't argue the fact that he was down, all 52 inches of heavy old deep-curling horn. And despite the less than classic circumstances, I couldn't stop seeing how his left side had suddenly flared into bright color and relief as he turned, and the vision of him at that moment in my mind's eye, the moment when I saw him perfectly clearly and the shot broke crisply and cleanly, the vision at that moment had been and still was indescribably and hauntingly beautiful. And I couldn't shake the sense that the old bull had given himself to me; or someone had given him to me, anyway.

It was spooky, in its own way, and I'm still puzzled by it today as I write this down. But I guess they don't call the kudu bull the Grey Ghost for nothing, now, do they?

Outstanding Doc!!!

Doc: Ive done kudu a number of times.

They are ALWAYS interesting......


Anytime somebody is late for meals, or doesn't come back till long after dark, or is glum in a place where everyone smiles...theres kudu involved....

What kind of rifles were the game scouts carrying? They look like Galils.

well done, and well told, Doc.

Great story Doc! Regarding the Trijicon and the "washout" I learned that lesson too, but it can be fixed by merely tuning the covering shroud over the tritium bands all the way down as the dusk approaches. Worked great for me. Very nice WIDE horns!

Absolutely! My thoughts exactly.

I'm somewhat addicted to hunting kudu bulls. I'm betting you'll come around! Way to go Doc...great bull there, and one I'm sure you'll remember forever.

260... I don't know what those rifles were. John told me, but I'm a complete doofus when it comes to military rifles other than the Stoner and the FN, so I've forgotten the name. I believe he called them a P-something... I want to say P90X, but that's ridiculous, of course...

I do know that they are mil-surp rifles purchased from the South African government. Full auto, and 5.56 NATO, I believe. But don't quote me.

Absolutely, Jorge, right you are. I foolishly took the Trijicon off my rifle the next day and put the little Nikon backup scope I'd brought because I didn't trust the Trijicon to fade out on me again if I got a shot at eland in the brush, whereas I should have just turned the shroud around, which of course turns the post reticle with an illuminated point into a simple post reticle.

There's no doubt in my mind that the illuminated point on the Trijicon was key to nailing my buffalo as I did. It was past sundown. The buffalo was black as the ace of spades, and my riflescope reticle post was the same color. Precise shot placement would have been much more difficult if I hadn't had the green triangle to place my shot precisely where I knew his heart was.

Doc,

Interesting that you caught “kudu fever” even after thinking you weren’t susceptible. But that happens with many African animals, some when we least expect it. I never expected to be affected by my first sight of a gemsbok, but I was, and deeply—and getting one required another safari.

A PH I’ve hunted with a couple of times, late in the evening after a few beers, looked at me very seriously and said, “Some African animals you may hunt and never want another, but you’ll always hunt kudu.”