Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Most challenging African hunt/stalk that you've had so far.....

I've only been there once (this past summer)....most challenging for me (so far) was my kudu; the terrain (mountainous), high winds, and long range(250 yard shot), and getting the head/carcass of the top of the mountain, made it quite an experience to remember.

What was your toughest African game to take to date? What made it so tough/difficult (difficulty getting close, weather related issues, nature of the animal..i.e. spooky, great eyesight in an open enviroment, etc,?

Enquiring minds would like to know................

Trying to "help" carry my wife's mountain reedbuck up to the truck. When it was my ram, I let the young legs and lungs do it. Flatlanders should not try to be mountain men, especially within a week of beginning jet lag recovery. (The hunts were fun, too.)

Shooting my first kudu up on a mountain and then having to go look for him let me know pretty quickly I was over matched. Between age, weight, and condition when walking in the sand got to me pretty quickly.

Vaal Rhebuck and Cape Grysbuck.

Vaal Rhebuck because of their incredible eyesight and Cape Grysbuck simply spotting a male before they run. Seeing the horns on them is incredibly difficult since their horns sits right in front of their ears. On the ears in line with the horns, there is a black edge on the ears often misleading inexperienced PH's to shoot a female, tricking them to "seeing" horns.

Kudu are always interesting. As are zebra. When I hunted buffalo the area wasn't the best. Buffalo were scarce and heavily hunted, that was my most difficult�.

Zebra are smart and cagey. Lots of frustration as they gave us the slip repeatedly. The longest but also the most fun was a buffalo. Cut the tracks of a herd in the Selous that was feeding downwind. We would bump the tracks of the edge of the herd then go cross wind and do a semi circle back until we bumped the tracks again. After a mile or two they started feeding cross wind and we picked up the pace and stayed on the tracks. After another mile or so the herd started upwind and we could really move. When we finally caught up with the herd we had buff on 3 sides of us and were on the sticks several times until we found the right bull.

I've hunted Africa 3 different times. I hunted from 10-12 days with a dozen or more critters on the hit list. Each time a different animal have me the most trouble. First trip it was the Red Hartebeest, second trip was Eland with a bow and on my last trip into South Africa's Limpopo province it could be any one of the number of critters that escaped me, although I took a dozen or more species in that multi species rich environment. I'll go back there soon for round 2.

In just 3 weeks I'll undertake my first DG hunt as I go after Cape buffalo, and during the last 2 weeks of October I'll hunt leopard for the first time.

Can't wait to see what happens with these hunts!

I've taken some hard to get critters like Vaal rhebok and blue duiker, but it took me three safaris before I got a zebra or bushbuck.

My most challenging has been spot and stalk baboon in an area where they got shot at anytime they were seen.

Sharp critters.

Another vote for Vaal Rhebok and then Bongo in the Rainforest.

Bushbuck and warthog.

Mine was a Blesbok. We had to low crawl for almost 600 yds in the open, and there were hundreds of eyes all around us. I took the shot at roughtly 180 yds from the shoulder of my PH. It was a great stalk too.

I found this to be the case on my recent trip in SA. I missed 2 shots at a very wary mature male that was well aware of my presence with my bow, but I connected with 3 on the same day with the rifle.

They are much fun to hunt!

WS Bush buck in the Eastern Cape - by far the hardest hunt I've done - mind you the kudu around Stytlerville are no gimme either!

Throw in a back wildebeest on high plains - you got your hands full there as well!

I stalked an impala buck for 2 hours to get from 450 yards to 200 yards and then wound up shooting with a 20 mph crosswind with my 375 H&H. I loved every second of it.

I found my eland hunt to be great. Multiple attempts to track them in heavy bush - sometimes getting within 20 yards without seeing them, only to hear them bust us.

Zimbabwe hunting eland, four long days working around herds of zebra and impala without spooking them, trying to get close enough in the brush with a clear shot. Eland don't stand still much and when you spook them, that long stride of their's takes them many miles away very quickly. By far, the toughest hunt for me to date.

Zambezi Valley: Three hours into the first day of hunting, we encountered four bull elephants. We waited a couple of hours for the wind to stop shifting and then walked down hill toward them. They had moved but we found them. Eventually the PH told me to shoot at the point of the shoulder of one. Problem: I wasn't quite sure where that was and there was deep shade, so one .458 solid hit a bit too far back and another fired as a Texas heart shot and the bull was gone.

A few hours later (I was nearly dead with fatigue), the bull charged out of the mopane at us, but had his angle wrong. All I could see was trackers jumping around so I shouted at the PH to shoot. He missed the entire elephant with two shots.

Day 2: We tracked the bull to where (we thought) it joined three others and spent all day climbing up and down the Zambezi Escarpment. Finally came up with them but it was the wrong bull.

Day 3: We got on the right tracks but the bull went into the Chete Safari Area. We had to drive two hours to the main post (fort?) to get a permit and a (worthless) game scout. Back on the trail. A visitor to our camp was flying a small plane back to Harare and offered to try to spot the bull. After a long and exhaustive walk on our part, he radioed the bull's position, which was only 300 yards ahead of us on the trail. It had been dead since the first day.

Western Roan in Cameroon. There had been a brush fire and we didn't have a lot of brush to use on the stalk. It took quite a bit of time to get close enough for a stalk.



Second hardest was a Vaal Rhebok. Long shot on a very small antelope. He broke a horn on a rock rolling down the hill.