We got back Monday from two weeks in SA. My wife and daughter had never been, I'd been once in 05. This was a graduation present for my daughter and we had a great time. This was her first time doing any serious hunting.

I want to start out by giving a shout out to Gracy Travel. When we went in 05 I didn't know about them and so spent about 4 hours in line in SA trying to get my rifles taken care of. With Gracy, we bought the airline tickets, also travel insurance, and had them do the fire arms paper work and meet us at the airport. If I remember there were about 15 people picking up firearms in the SAPS office. There were two of us guys that the Gracy representative met. This guy, I think his name was Kevin, had our paper work in hand, walked into the office, worked his way up to the guns, grabbed our two cases and handed them to us and told us to open them for the inspector. We did this and were out of the room and on our way inside of fifteen to twenty minutes at the maximum. I would highly recommend that a travel agency such as Gracy be utilized to avoid the potential FUBAR situation that can happen without their services, and the piece of mind is worth it too.

I had GAP build my daughter a 7mm-08 and she shot 140 Barnes Triple Shocks. I shot a 300 RUM with the 180 Barnes DPX Triple Shocks. We took 17 animals, 2 Gemsbuck, 2 Kudu, 3 Zebra, 1 Blue Wildebeest, 1 Bushbuck, 1 Waterbuck, 1 Blesbuck, 5 Impala, 1 Jackal

Both rounds performed very well. We recovered 3 bullets from each rifle and they all opened up like they should. The three bullets on the left are the 180 DPX Barnes from the 300 RUM, the two on the right are the 7MM-08 140 Barnes TSX.





The main animal she wanted to take ever since we started talking about a safari has been a Zebra. He Zebra hunt consisted of a 5'2" woman almost running to keep up with a guy who's about 6'5" through about 400 yards of brush until she got within range. The zebra was standing in a fire break and broadside until she got into position and turned to face directly toward her. She was on her knees with her rifle on the Trigger Sticks breathing like crazy to catch her breath when she made the shot. The Zebra fell straight down and rolled over and never moved. To say we were happy is quite an understatement. She said she could go home right then and be happy, and this was only the second animal she shot.

We recovered the bullet from the Zebra and had a local jewelry maker put this Silver cap and loop on it for her. I think it came out really nice. There probably aren't many women running around with a bullet from one of their kills hanging from their neck.







Here are a few pictures we took

Gemsbuck. He ran a bit on the first shot and stopped when she hit him again. Pretty good bullet placement I'd say.



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Here's my Gemsbuck

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I'll add some more information and pictures this weekend as I get time.

Wow what a lucky lady to have dad take her to Africa. She is a good shot as well. Good on her. Great memories. Thanks for posting.

Some more of the trophies





My daughters Kudu, her rifle had wasn't available when he stepped out so she shot it with my 300 RUM,





This Kudu was shot near Kruger Park about 25-30 years ago. The world record is something like 73 inches and I was told that this bull measures a little over 75 on one side and about 73.5 on the other side. I have no reason to doubt the people telling me about this. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the Kudu to the right of him since I was told he's a 62 if I remember right and he looks small next to this guy.





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A very old Zebra, his top teeth were worn off into the gumline. No one had ever seen a Zebra this old. I hit him in the shoulder and he turned to run so I hit him in the rear end, hence all the blood around the back leg.

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I love to hunt Kudu. I guess I'll hunt them every time I go over.







My daughters Zebra, fell DRT with a shot to the chest in a facing on shot.





We were sitting at a water hole for Warthogs when this guy came in. I got several really good pictures of him.



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This is good stuff!!Keep it coming!
ingwe

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If anyone would like any details about the hunt, accommodations, etc. I'll be happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability.

Terrific hunt and experience from the looks of things. Congrats.

I really like that Bushbuck, especially the wear on his horns. Both Gemsbok and the Waterbuck are also two of my favorites.

What part of the country did you hunt and with whom?

Great pics. What a great hunt the two of you had.

Dink

That is an awesome Water buck! Wide, heavy and long. My number 1 animal next time I go!

Beautiful pics and a great hunt! Congrats to both you and your daughter!

maddog

Tburkes,
WOW, what a very special trip you guys took. Congrats to you and your daughter on a wonderful hunt. It looks like that ranch had very nice Kudus. I agree with you, they are fun to hunt...nice pictures of the Kudu near the watering hole. Great stuff, thanks for sharing...I truly enjoyed your post.

Congratulations on a great trip! Glad your daughter is going hunting with you.

My daughters say they want to go to Africa with me. If and when I get to go, I will try to take them.

Congrats for that great experience you shared with you daughter.

Impressive collection, so why did you marked the thread with the thumb down ???

Thank you everyone. If you want to take your kids do it as soon as you can, they grow up way too fast.

Pintoguy, we hunted in the Limpopo province around the Thabazimbi area.

Here are some more pictures for some Sunday morning viewing.



A three week old Giraffe.



We did some hunting on this guys property. He also raises White Rhino and Cape Buffalo for breeders. We were on foot about 20 yards from these guys and got some pretty cool video and pictures. Those things are so big and can move so fast I was glad to get back into the truck after seeing them.











We spent one day in Pilanseburg Park. You just drive where you want to and stop when you feel like it. We had a great time here and saw lots of different animals.

Dead elephant

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We saw this big guy walking about 800 yards away toward a group of trees.

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This looked like a good way to set up my spotting scope and try to take some pictures of the elephant through it.

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Thanks for the pix!

Ingwe

Very cool! Thanks for the additional photos.

When we hunted there, in 2008, we were about an hr. out of Thambazimbi[sp]. Who did you hunt with?

maddog

We hunted with these guys.

http://www.riaan-ras-south-african-safari.com/

They were recommended to me by a friend who's family has hunted with them for over 20 years. I can't complain about anything during our whole trip, From picking us up at the airport, to delivering us back again, it was a great time.

Our PH even arranged for my wife and daughter to go to Pretoria with his wife one day for some shopping and set up a spa day in Thabazimbi on another day too. They had a great time at both places.

excellent! we had the same kind of service from the outfitter we went with in 2008.

www.cruisersafaris.com/

maddog

tburkes, thanks for sharing! This has to be one of the better posts of Africa I have ever seen on this site!

Looks like all had a great time. Thanks, for sharing!

Hey thanks a lot everyone for taking the time to comment on the trip. If you've ever wanted to take your kids hunting tomorrow may be too late. Don't get caught up in the day to day rat race planing on taking them when things get better, cause it never does. It's kind of like waiting to have kids until you can afford them. If that was the case very few of us would have any kids. You just have to jump in and figure it out. One day they're in first grade then in about two years they're leaving home. Even when you've done lots of stuff with them growing up you still wish you'd done more.

Thank you Keith, I'm not sure what makes this post so much better than some other great one's I've seen here, other than it was with my wife and daughter and you don't see a lot of that usually.

We didn't go worrying about animals we really wanted, other than the Zebra for my daughter, and I wanted a Kudu and a Zebra. We didn't worry about horn length, only having a great time and good hunting, which we had a lot of. I would also recommend anyone going to spend as many days as possible as you can. We were there two weeks and it was so laid back and easy going. I think that's one of the reasons that made it so nice too. We weren't rushed to try to get the game, and the girls even had two days in there where they went shopping and to the spa. When they did that the PH and I went out hunting and got one of the Zebras and the Bushbuck. We also went to the nature park too, and I'd really recommend that to anyone going, it's a great time to see so many animals in their natural surroundings too.

We even went a couple of days hunting where we didn't actually put any animals on the ground and I could tell our PH was getting nervous and stressed out a bit. I asked him what was worrying him, was it the fact that we were paying quite a bit in day fees and we weren't killing any animals? He admitted that yes he was feeling the pressure to perform and going two days with no animals was stressing him out. I told him to relax and enjoy himself, we were having a great time, and killing wasn't the only thing we were there to do. He was very entertaining as was his wife and daughter who is four years old, who reminded us so much of our daughter they could be sisters.

We've been back over a week and my wife is still floating around on her African high from the whole trip. She can't wait to go back either and all of her friends couldn't believe she was going in the first place since she's a germ freak.

Good hunting to you all.

Excellant post and pic's. Sounds like the whole family "has the disease" now and will have to return for "booster shots" of the African Virus.

I wonder what your Daughter's friends will say when she tells them about her summer vacation and shows then the recovered bullet pendent. Looks like you all had a great time.

Jeff

Good on you and thanks for sharing. Next summer I am going over for my third trip and have convinced my bride to come along. We'll hunt with a wonderful Afrikaner couple whom I now consider friends. We too will make it a slow, easy trip. We plan to spend a couple of days on the Skeleton coast, a couple of days at Etosha Park, and a couple in Windhoek with hunting between.