Day 3:

It was a colder, wet morning with less Nyala spotted. I came to understand that Nyala are more sensitive to weather compared to other animals. They like it clear and dry, ideally. In the Zulu language Nyala translates to "The Shifty One" which is very descriptive of its elusive nature.

As the temperature warmed we were met by a herd of 7 Giraffe including a very young (2 week old?) female.

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We started to see game moving including gray monkeys, crown and crested guinea fowl, red and gray duiker, zebra, 3 blue wildebeest, cape buffalo, impala and a few Nyala that looked like real shooters.

We had several stalks through the acacia and long grass, but did not connect. We spotted several bulls that disappeared as quickly as they were spotted, and females with no bulls. We worked through a nasty section of bush full of "pepper ticks".. each about as big as a grain of pepper. I had about 30-40 on my leg but they brush off easily. I also found a nice dog tick working up the leg.

Late in the day, we spotted a nice Nyala bull behind a cluster of acacia. Murray had a chance to see his head and said he was a nice shooter bull. I could only see a portion of his body between the trees and ground cover, but it was the right area (shoulder area). I took aim and fired. It was a double lung hit (a little high, but good), the bull ran 20-30m, and then collapsed under a spiky acacia.

He was a beautiful old bull, maybe 6-7 years old. His horns were covered in mud and his bases showed lots of ridges, and character. One horn had a nice chip on the side, perhaps from another bull.

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I celebrated with a Castle. smile

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We then got him skinned and salted. It was incredible and humbling to watch the process and how well these animals are skinned. It would have taken me hours!

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That evening we had Hansa beer, which was great and became my go-to, with an excellent potjie (pronounced "poikee") stew, samosas and a pudding cake with custard.