Got rested up a bit, so here goes. I was in the central part of Namibia, about 90 miles S of Windhoek, a mixture of flat ground and rocky, sandy, with very large hills. I arrived in camp around 1:00pm and was shown to my room to get myself and gear situated. Once accomplished, we customarily headed to the range to check things out.
Rifle: Tikka 695 7mm RM
Ammo: 160 Accubond, 71.5 Retumbo, 3110 fps
Scope: VX6 2-12x42 duplex
Binocs: Cabelas Euro (Meopta) 8x32HD

I was sighted in at home 1" high at 100 yds. Turned out to be perfect and the rifle still grouped 3 shots within 1" off the bench. Then I told him I wanted to fire off the sticks. For some odd reason, and remembering all the advice here I learned about shooting off the sticks, everything seemed to "click" off of the sticks. I did practice quite a bit at home off the standing Bog Pod, and I managed to put 6 into a 3" group. I felt really good about that.

To finish up my arrival day, we road around the ranch looking at game, and a lot of game there was. I was also treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my life that first evening.....

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First hunting day came and I was reminded what I felt like when I was 11 years old, going on my first mule deer hunt with dad...you couldn't wipe the smile off my face, or the excitement. I love that feeling. After a traditional bacon and egg breakfast, we were off. My agenda was to do a cull/management hunt of 10 animals, plus two trophies including a kudu bull and mountain zebra. The landowner and PH felt that one of the more difficult trophies was going to be the mountain zebra, and in my case they couldn't be more right, so we decided to tackle this one first.

We climbed a small hill after sunrise, overlooking a large valley with more hills intermixed. After 30 minutes of glassing, the PH, Matheus (Mathews) found a group of 5 with 4 mares and a nice stallion, so off we went on the 1/2 mile stalk. The altitude was no problem for me, but the sandy, rocky, knee high grass covering those hills was brutal on my arthritic knees. I could've cared less though. To make a long story short, we wound up stalking those zebra for over 4 hours and could never manage to get a shot off. They either stayed in nasty cover, winded us, or just managed to stay out of range during the whole adventure that morning. We broke for lunch at 1:00 pm. Matheus found them again about mid afternoon and we were off again. About 2.5 hours later we had managed to make our way to a point in which we could intercept the small herd and at about 5pm I was staring at the stallion through my VX6, set on 6x, at 130 yards. He made it to an opening and I fired and hit him almost perfectly through the shoulder. He twirled, whirled, and crashed within 60 yards......man was I happy, and wore smooth out all at the same time. This is absolutely one of the most gorgeous creatures I have ever seen.

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There was no carrying this thing out whole. The reinforcements were called in. Skinning and quartering were required. After almost 7 hours of stalking, over 7 miles, I still had that smile on my face!

I, for one, agree with you: you suck!!!!

What a beautiful zebra!!!!

Can't wait for the rest of the story.

Beautiful zebra!

Good start to the report, looking forward to more.

Congrats, Namibia is a great country.

The zebra is gorgeous! Congrats. Now on to the rest of the story......


maddog

The Hartman's are a lot of fun to hunt, mine was a really long stalk, one of my favorites.

^^^^


This��...

What Safari operator did you go with?

I love zebras...I have taken one on every trip that they were available on. And Namibia is my favorite destination...

So, yes you pretty much do suck!

I know a guy in Abilene that can make an awful nice rug out of that. Zebra are one of the most difficult and under rated game animals IMO. Congratulations!

Congrats. Mighty fine zebra.

Since I've been to Namibia twice I'm going to make a prediction of how the story ends.
Namibia is awesome
The people are awesome
The food is awesome
The beer is awesome
The hunting is awesome
Then a picture of a REALLY nice Kudu.
I could be mistaken about this so in a couple of months I'm going back for two and a half more weeks if research.

Beautiful sunset picture, great zebra, and yes you do suck.

That donkey is wearing a mighty spiffy set of pajamas!

Never could understand the allure of zebra hunting, I think I get it now though. That is a fantastic trophy & some excellent pictures.
Congrats to you - looking forward to more!!

At least you know it! Congrats on a great hunt!

The 2nd day we decided to go after springbuck. Now we would look for kudu every day as well, but I figured out you kind of need to be really looking for kudu in kudu country, primarily mountains with thick cover, to be effective. At least that's the way I saw it. Anyways this country was loaded with springbucks so locating some of them was not very tough. Several times during the day the PH's and tracker would climb up to aid in locating animals. Note the hunting "bakke"....a Mahindra turbo diesel......

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Getting close to them was a little tough, but within a couple of hours we managed to do so, and I knocked this one down, quartering toward me, with one shot.

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We hunted the rest of the day without taking another springbuck, even though several stalks were attempted. At the end of the day I just couldn't help but stare at the beautiful sunsets.....

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For dinner we had what I would call chicken fried steak with pop (like grits), gravy, potatoes, and an ice cold Tafel....dang those things are good! BTW, the meat was oryx steaks. I have not tasted eland, but the oryx is still the finest piece of meat I have ever eaten in my entire life, of any variety or species. I cannot describe how flavorful and tender it is.

I'm having a bit of trouble downloading some pics, so I'll have to do this hunt report in stages. I also have some bullet info for those interested that I'll post up at the end.

Backtracking a bit to the zebra hunt......

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After being in the salt a few days......

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The skinning shed, cold storage, and salting facilities...

[img:left][/img]

you suck�.

no Chui, he TURBO SUCKS! Gorgeous trophy sir!

Next to Kudu, zebra make the most interesting hunt�


Now he's gotta get a big shadow-lined Burchells Stallion!

Kinda like Ingwewifes�.

Glad you had a great trip JG

4 weeks left for my wife and I

What kind of binocular apparatus is that you are wearing? I like it.

Very cool report. Congrats!!

Very cool, thanks for posting. I never understood the appeal of hunting zebra until I did it on my only trip to date in 2009. Hartmans are an amazing hunting experience.

Good luck with the search for kudu.

JG,

Unfortunately, I can no longer read and enjoy your posts. This type of behavior of posting photos and reports of your Namibian safari, is just unacceptable!

So until, you repent for your sins, I will only say, "YOU SUCK!"






On a serious note, glad you had a great time! When you going back?

Thanks for sharing!!!!

Awesome report so far. Thank you for sharing. Kevin

Wonderful JG!

Tell us more!

JG, Great hunt. You'll be back, for sure :-)

Can't wait to read more! One day, lord willing, that will be me.

Oh my, JG, you DO suck!
Can't wait to read the rest of it.

Ha! Thanks for the support guys! Sometimes I'm glad to suck......and this is one of them! Anyway I'm gonna throw something at you guys, and you mega experienced guys please check this out......

One day we're after a blue wildebeest, and the usual spot from the truck, plan the stalk, make the mile long stalk drill applies here as well. However, as you guys know there is lots of stopping along the way to monitor animal position, behavior, attentiveness, etc, and that's what we were doing. We hear this funny scratching sound in the short brush we were in and it got our attention. Shortly this prehistoric creature appears about 15 feet away.....

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I had not the first clue what this creature was, but it kept creeping closer, closer, and closer, until finally it was literally at my feet, sniffing of my pants legs, boots, and snatching the little bugs off of me, and then he moved very slightly and did the same thing to the PH (green pants guy).......

[img:left][/img]

Turns out it was a pangolin....the owner had only seen 3 of them in 24 years of owning the property. What a cool deal it was to get so up close and personal. He stuck around about 3-4 minutes then just slowly walked away.

Anyway, we finished the stalk on this wildebeest and once again I was able to anchor him with one shot, quartering to. He whirled and fell over within 75 yards and was stone cold dead when we walked up to him.

[img:left][/img]

That afternoon we were able to complete another successful stalk on another blue wildebeest. We had about an hour and a half to try to find a big kudu bull but had no luck.

HEY INGWE........I remember last year giving you a ration of crap over your comments on how delicious zebra steaks were (according to you). Lo and behold, for dinner that night we were served up this..........some absolutely outstandingly delicious zebra filets, washed down with cold WH lagers of course! Once again....the Poobah spoke, and was 100% correct.

[img:left][/img]

Thanks for sharing the photos and the experience, I've been watching for your next post and it keeps getting better!

Great write up!!! Super glad you are enjoying it. One of the good guys around here and having a great hunt!

I still can't get warmed up to hunting Africa, though I guess I'd like to see it once. But I"m glad that a lot of y'all seem to have a great time over there!

Do love seeing the pictures. Keep that up if you can.

Jeff

And I've never seen an African Armadillo until now. Thats way cool.

If you pick up the pangolin, it rolls itself into a ball to protect itself. Also, the local lore is that touching a pangolin is suppose to bring good luck!

Really cool, as you saw a critter most don't see. And to have it come up to you and eat bugs off your pants, awesome!

JG,
Looks like a great trip! Thanks for sharing the story and pics...

And was there ever any doubt?


And odd that you mentioned the pangolin. One of the dogs in my program showed an enormous talent for scent work so I contacted friends at Working Dogs for Conservation, they snapped him up and he is training in anti-poaching efforts in Zambia. Getting trained on ivory, rhino horn, spotted cat hides, and�..pangolin. Seems the little fellows are in trouble cause the chinese like to grind them up for 'medicine'...

Didn't Capstick say that his favorite African meat was young bull giraffe and zebra was a close second?

The next few days were filled with trying to find a big kudu bull, shooting another springbuck, a really nice oryx bull

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...a couple of nice red hartebeest like this one

[img:left][/img]

...and a few jackals. I was also able to kill a couple of broken horned impala rams that he wanted to cull out of the herd. Those impala are one sleek animal and really fun to hunt. I do not, for some unknown reason, have any impala pics. The tracker was taking the pics so I'll blame it on him.

We went over to the neighbor's place one day to try and find another oryx to cull. Most of you know that oryx are not jumpers, they choose to go under the fences instead. There were quite a few oryx on this place, and I found it quite odd that the landowner had built numerous "alleyways" into his slick wire fences to allow the oryx and hartebeest an easier time getting through(under actually) the fence.....

[img:left][/img]

Thanks for taking us along on your hunt and success!!

Great pics and animals.

May there be many more!!

God Bless,
David B.

Congrats on a great hunt.I still cannot believe you killed all that stuff with a 7mag

Ha! Ain't that the truth?

Great stuff JG. Looks like you had a fantastic hunt. Outstanding trophies for a cull hunt! Many underestimate the mountain zebra. Extremely fun and underrated trophy animal. Like to hear your feed back on the 160 Accubonds. Thanks for sharing. 163bc

Simply awesome!

Thanks again, very cool about the pangolin!!

Yep, Zebra is by far my favorite!

JGR: Both your oryx and you hartebeest are exceptional!

Gracias Ingwe! I'll go ahead and finish this deal up and quit boring you fine fellas since I got more pics loaded..

It was down to the final two days, and I still hadn't found the kudu I was after. It was decided that we would go to the neighbors 40,000 acre low fenced place that had more mountains to try to locate one. Luckily we could drive within 1/4 mile of the top of a mountain to start our glassing. It was app 3pm. Quickly spotted was a small herd of kudu which contained one bull about 48", too small. I about schitt my pants when I glassed that beautiful bull and couldn't shoot! We walked to another vantage point and the PH then informed me that he had spotted a much larger bull that was making his way down the hill. He felt he was heading for a water hole about 3/4 of a mile away. We were about 1/2 mile from the bull so we started off in a manner as to intercept him somewhere in the flats as he made his way. The PH was correct....he knew exactly where the bull was going and we had a great plan. It took about 45 minutes to an hour to catch up to the bull, but the entire time we were stalking I refused to even look at the bull again because I was getting very jacked up (OK, I admit it, I was getting freaking buck fever) at the possibility of getting a shot. The PH got me to within 125 yards of this beautiful 55" kudu bull. He didn't run 20 yards after the 160 accubond crashed through his right front shoulder.

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Beautiful animal!!

Congrats!!

God Bless,
David B.

Great thread JG!

JGR: Thats an excellent Kudu! Ive killed four of them and none made 55"

That one needs to go on the wall��.

Seeing this is just making me more excited

It looks like you couldn't have done any better

Good job JG,

Congratulations on a great hunting trip .

Beautiful animals.

Thanks for sharing,
Ted

I finished up the trip tallying 2 each of oryx, wildebeest, hartebeest, impala, springbuck, several jackals, a kudu bull, and the mountain zebra. I had one heckuva great time, learned a whole lot, got in lots of shooting, and just fell in love with Namibia.

A word about my gear. I was very, very satisfied with everything I brought. The 7mag performed flawlessly, the VX6 is one helluva fine hunting scope, the 8x32 euros...well, they are even better than I already knew they were. They have a huge depth of field. I hardly had to focus them at all, all week long due to this. They are tack sharp as well.
I was also very pleased with my shooting. Every animal was a one shot kill except for the terrible shot I made on one of the oryx. I drilled him through the neck, hitting no bone, but he was bleeding pretty a little, at times. I did get to see these African trackers do their thing though, as they tracked this thing over a mile where I was able to put a finisher in him. Often times the tracking was over and through grassy, sandy, rocky, and a combo of all three. Amazing to say the least.

Here's the bullets and data for those who care:

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These were the only 5 bullets recovered. The rest were passthroughs. The 160's were sizzling along pretty good at 3100+ at the muzzle. Combine that with impact at 100-140 yards, smashing through shoulders, etc. I was still a bit surprised that the bullet recovered from the zebra lost so much weight. Didn't really matter though, because the animals only ran from 0-65 yards are so before falling over.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading this adventure, and thanks again to all who answered my many questions, and offered top shelf advice. I appreciate it immensely.

Great report JG -

Looks like a great time. Did you bring a Tikka in 7 RM?

Thanks for the write-up and the pictures. I enjoyed it a great deal.

Congratulations on your hunt!

Yes I did GregW, my Tikka 695.

Son of a *****! Now I want to go! The story of the Kudu in the mountains did it.

Chitt eatin' grin



Horse's ass.

Or do I have the captions switched?

Nice kudu, great report, great shooting!

Thx for sharing!

JG,

Please let me add my thanks for sharing what had to be a wonderful hunt and the experience of a lifetime! The story, the detail, the pictures just couldn't have been any better.

I'm within 90 days of heading to RSA and man, have you got me jacked up!

Congrats once again.

Congrats on what must be a wonderful adventure. Great hunt and report. Those animals look outstanding.

Congrats JG. great photos and story.

Damn thats awesome! Those 160 Accubonds look damn sexy!

Outstanding JG. Your Kudu is a awesome trophy. Looks like those Accubonds performed exactly as intended. Congrats on a great hunt. 163bc

Great job nice trophies and photos,Congrats!

Excellent JGR! superb trophies, the Oryx and Kudu are magnificent! Also, thanks very much for the bullet report, just the ticket for all us rifle kooks!

WOW! Just Wow!

What a great adventure, not to mention the terrific report.

Thanks for sharing.

My wife and I are scheduled to go back in 2015 and this stuff is the reason why.

donsm70

Congratulations on your pangolin encounter. I consider them to be the coolest critter in all of Africa...

We had a couple of briefings on local critters before my first trip to what was then Zaire, a few years back. Not being any particular threat, the pangolin was never mentioned. We saw 2 in three weeks.

On subsequent trips that included forays into Zambia, Angola, and SWA, we never encountered another. But we looked!!!

I have never had the bug to hunt Africa, but threads like this one do hold my interest, and do somewhat tempt me...

Awesome Hunt!!!
Excellent thread!!!

yep they are damn near extinct across much of Asia cause of the damn Chinese so they are starting to go after them in Africa just like they did with the asian rhinos......very cool critter.....as much as i want to go to Africa to hunt being able to check out all the critters on the side like the pangolin you ran across interests me almost as much.....

Yep, the "extra" critter sightings are way cool to me as well. Forgot to mention the kori bustard, the largest flying bird in the world. We saw probably 10 of these birds, and when they take off they sound like a piper cub.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Bustard

Never heard of such. Very cool.

Ah, the scaly anteater. Heard of that, but never have seen one. Great story.

Just think if you'd have run TTSX instead of the accubonds... you wouldn't have caught a bullet to report on. Grins.

Thanks for the write up and pics. I hope to suck in one month!

Great report and damn fine kudu. They make a beautiful pedestal mount.

Beautiful animals. Great story. Thanks

Very cool thanks for posting

JG,

I know you're a Loony and study stuff thoroughly.

Give us your thinking on your choice of caliber and NAB's.

DF

Congratulations!
Can't beat Zebra steaks!
Can't wait to get back again to Namibia,
hopefully me and my son next year!

Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm a very simple minded guy! I've had that Tikka 695 for 14 years and have handled/shot/hunted it quite a lot. I am very familiar with it. I had shot enough aoudad (a pretty tough animal) with it to know that the caliber choice should be fine. I've also shot enough aoudad with partitions and accubonds to know that they're pretty tough and reliable. The accubonds are slightly more accurate in this rifle than the partitions so I decided to just run with those. Now here's the controversial part for many, I'm sure......I had been told by some anonymous sources with mucho experience in Africa that African plains game are given this "extremely tough and hard to kill" stereotype, but in fact it is probably a slight exaggeration. My one and only trip to Africa last year, armed with the PH's 30-06 and 180 partitions confirmed that when put in the correct spot, African plains game will go down without much fuss. When hit incorrectly, they will not go down and are likely to carry the mail for a long time. I made one terrible shot on an oryx, pulling the shot into the neck and no bone was hit. The animal was bleeding some (the African trackers are absolutely unbelievable) and I was able to put a finisher in him 1.5 miles later thanks to the trackers. Anyway, I felt confident enough in my rifle, which is proven to be very accurate with the 160AB/Retumbo load, that I had no doubt at all if I could put one on the money there would be no problems. I was fortunate enough to do that on the other 11 animals and the farthest one ran was about 70 yards before falling over. I was very impressed with the .284 AB's to say the least. I think they behave basically like a "tipped partition" for the most part, which is high praise because I consider the partition to be the finest, most dependable hunting bullet ever invented to this day. Was that long winded enough for you?????

That was perfect, exactly the reasoning I was looking for.

Thanks and congratulation on a super hunt. You did a great job with your photos snd narrative. I thoroughly enjoyed every word and picture.

DF

Nice. Did you find the hunting a challenge?

And to add to EdM's question, what about physical conditioning? Did you work on that or are you enough of a "Hoss" for that to not have been an issue...

DF

I found the hunt to be very challenging in several ways. I only had one instance on one of the wildebeests, in which the stalk was under 1/2-1mile. That one only required a roughly 1/4 mile stalk because we happened to find a lone, old, bull that had apparently been kicked out of the herd. Obviously sneaking up on a lone set of eyes is easier than the alternative, which leads into one of the more challenging aspects of, at least, my limited experiences in Africa. There always seems to be 10-40 pairs of eyes watching. An 800 yards stalk can easily turn into an hour or more. Several of my stalks took 1-2 hours due to the number of eyes and the fact that the animals always seemed to be moving around, doing whatever the do. The mtn zebra stalk lasted a total of app. 7 hours and many miles. We were in range 3 times during that time frame but had no shot due to brush being in the way. A combination of arthritic knees and the up and down the sandy and rocky terrain made it most difficult for me. The grass was also knee high and it helped hide the rocks, so footing was very, very tricky as well. As far as actual physical conditioning, I'd say it helped that I have now weighed 225lbs instead of the previous 250lbs for about a year. Navigating the flat, somewhat sandy ground, accompanied by the fact that it was a slow process, really never bothered me much. You do have to be on your feet for sometimes several hours though.

To sum it up: Mtn Zebra was very tough for me, kudu moderately so, rest of plains game taken was not easy, not exceptionally tough physically, but very time consuming and mentally I had to stay in the game at all times. You never knew, during the stalk, what you'd stumble into, besides the fact that every bush out there would rip your skin to shreds, so you had to pay attention to that as well.

The whole package was a truly unforgettable combination.

JG,

Thanks for taking the time to write the story of your adventure, and especially for posting the pics.

Also enjoyed that you took the time to mention that you were satisfied with your gear.

Thank you JG!
I don't come to this forum much at all but your title sucked me in...

Last week I was flying to Anchorage and there was a fellow that had just returned from a 40 day hunt in Namibia!!!! 40 days!
Last year he went for 30ish....

What a fortunate guy!

Dave

You do suck, but I really enjoyed your report and pictures.

Congrats JG, a fine trip and I enjoyed the story.

Awesome hunt!

JG,
Congrats on a looks to be great hunt. Who did you end up hunting with? As to our previous conversations, we hunted with Kowas. Our PH was named Mathews. I only have seen one picture of your PH this far, but I think it is him. They also used the same Mahindra trucks that you are hunting out of?

Toby Joe

YOU SUCK ZEBRA BALL'S!
Didn't even know you were going.

Great thread.

someday..........

Yes Sir, A hunting trip done right.

Congratulation, I'm happy to see you had a great trip.

Looks like loads of fun.

Not just a chit eating grin but a world class chit eating grin. Congrats on a great hunt and write up.

Best

Man that was amazing. I really appreciate your story, pictures and thoughts. Looks to have been an amazing trip for you. Congratulations.

+1



DF