2002 Hunt in South Africa with
by Eric Ching
| Overview and Introduction | Shots on Game | Reflections After the Hunt |
| To 1997 Bush Africa Safaris Hunt | To Bush Africa Safaris Web Site | To Eric Ching's Directory |
Shots on Game
My Nyala (Tragelaphus angasii)
A nyala is about the size of an average whitetail deer. We hunted them on Zuka Ranch in Zululand and spent the first day observing as many as we could. In what was to become a familiar pattern, Greg shot his nyala within half an hour of our leaving camp the next morning. Two hours later, as we drove along a straight section of dirt road, Schalk suddenly looked left, braked to a halt, and quietly said, "Take him." I followed his gaze and saw the nyala ram in dappled sunlight under the trees about ten degrees behind me and 12 yards off the road. He was facing left and quartered away with his head craned around looking at us.
I took a seated snap shot, hitting it just above the elbow, and it collapsed where it stood. The bullet exited the far side at the base of the neck and left small entrance and exit holes that did not bleed. The shot had taken out the arteries at the top of the heart and perforated both lungs, leaving a wound path between two and three inches in diameter, indicating that the bullet had expanded.
Greg and his Kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros)
When we arrived at the home ranch of Bush Africa Safaris after hunting nyala in Zululand, Schalk organized a "game viewing drive" for the late afternoon. It was more than that, of course, given that we were to bring our rifles and have our chambers loaded. Schalk announced that if we saw kudu or eland, Greg got first shot, and I was to shoot if we ran across a bushbuck. A half-hour into the run we came across a nice kudu bull, which is about the size of an elk, not 12 yards off the road. Greg had a bad mount and just saw blackness in his scope; when he tried again, all he could see in his 4X scope was gray hair due to the kudu being so close. Before he could find the shoulder the kudu took off, so we circled around and he got a second chance, this time at 80 yards. The PHs both heard a solid hit, but when we got out to track we could find only tiny and widely-spaced drops of blood. Unfortunately the setting sun won the race and we had to resume the search in the morning.
Greg and Dirk headed out at first light, and Schalk and I followed about half an hour later. As luck would have it, we had driven less than five minutes out of camp when our tracker spotted the kudu under some trees on the left side of the road. Schalk drove past, then turned around and came back slowly, telling me to get ready. I leaned over the lowered windscreen in an improvised sitting position, pointing the rifle across the hood to our right. Sure enough, the kudu was facing us from about 30 yards away. Schalk braked gently to a halt and I got my sights on the chest at the base of the neck, but had to wait a couple of seconds for the truck to stop rocking. In that interval the kudu turned around and started moving straight away.
I took the only shot I had and fired at the base of his tail to anchor him. He tumbled to the ground immediately at the shot. We climbed out of the truck and approached him from behind. He was sitting up and I was prepared to shoot from behind, angling the shot downward into his chest cavity, but Schalk told me to circle around and take him broadside through the chest. At the shot he fell over and died. I had put the bullet through the front lobes of his lungs. The tail shot had bled profusely, but the chest shot left neat entrance and exit holes with almost no bleeding. We recovered the 300-grain Woodleigh SP Protected Point bullet from the spine shot, which was nicely mushroomed and had retained 77% of its weight despite having punched through bone.
My Waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus)
Both Schalk and Dirk consider the waterbuck to be one of the tougher antelope. They are elk-sized, stocky and solidly built, and carry themselves with a regal bearing. Schalk and I had stalked bushbuck all afternoon on First Hope Farm on the Limpopo River without success and came to the edge of a large meadow as the sun dropped behind the trees. Schalk immediately spotted something among the trees and bushes dotting the meadow. He led me in a fast crouched walk at an oblique angle to whatever he had seen in order to keep us downwind, stopping occasionally to glass it.
Finally he turned to me and said, "There is an unusually-marked waterbuck behind those three trees close together. Do you want to take it?" Through my binoculars I could see a gray mass behind the trees 150 yards away, but could not make out more details. Then the waterbuck turned around and stepped out to the right of the trees, exposing its head, neck, and shoulders, quartered toward us. I could see that he had very prominent white markings on his muzzle and above his eyes, and a large white patch on his throat. They almost glowed in the dimming light. "I have a shot now," I told Schalk, "and I will take him."
Schalk was carrying a shooting stick cut from a tree branch with a small "V" at its top. I grabbed the "V" with three fingers and used my index finger and thumb in the shape of an "L" to form a post rest support. The heavy Scout Scope reticle wobbled for a few seconds, then steadied on the point of the shoulder and the shot broke. The bull reared up and ran off, and we found him down and dead about 80 yards from where I had hit him. There was no blood trail. As with the nyala, the entrance hole in its chest just inside the shoulder was small and not bleeding. The bullet perforated the top of the heart and did not exit, but instead skidded along the inside of the rib cage on the far side, coming to rest in the abdomen somewhere. We lost it in the gut pile.
My Eland (Taurotragus oryx)
The eland is the largest antelope in Africa. Greg took one that was over 1900 pounds the day before on another ranch, but mine was more typical at around 1400 pounds, roughly equivalent to a moose in size and weight. The crew had built a blind set back about 65 yards from a feeding spot that is primarily used to bring animals in close enough for bowhunters. We had been in place for just under an hour when Schalk whispered, "They are coming," and pointed over his right shoulder. I could hear the snapping of small branches as the eland approached.
First out of the brush was a cow. She entered the right side of the shooting lane about 50 yards in front of us, angling away to the left, followed by a second cow. The bull was next in line. "There he is," Schalk said, "Take him when you can." Bringing up the rear was a third cow. They milled around in a small clump of trees at the left side of the shooting lane, then gradually made their way to the right side. The bull was obscured by the cows and trees at first, but finally walked clear of them. He was facing right, quartering slightly away. Resting my forearm on a horizontal branch at the front of the blind, I put the crosshairs just above and inside his elbow and fired. The cows scattered at the shot, and the bull reared up and bounded off into the brush.
We waited a couple of minutes to listen for any movement. All was silent, so we walked quietly toward the spot where he had been hit. When we arrived he was readily visible 20 yards away, lying on his side and already dead. As with the previous animals, the entrance wound was a nice circular hole that had no blood coming out of it. The 300-grain Woodleigh SP Protected Point bullet had passed through the near shoulder and the top of the heart and grazed the shoulder blade on the far side before coming to rest under the skin, retaining fully 96% of its weight.
My Bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus)
I was on my fifth day of bushbuck hunting along the Limpopo on First Hope Farm, across the river from the famous Tuli Block of Botswana. Schalk had tried everything he could think of, from "trolling" along the roads in the hunting truck, to stalking, to posting from the tops of large anthills while the trackers pushed the blocks, to still hunting, to sitting in hunting seats on high tripods, to driving around at night with a spotlight. All we got were a lot of throaty bushbuck barks and rustlings in the thick riverine brush as they made their escapes. That was the situation on our side of the river; on the Botswana side we saw several very nice bushbuck rams and ewes feeding along the banks without a care in the world.
On this day we had already spent the late morning setting up the tripod seats, driven along the roads in the early afternoon, and sat in the hot sun on the tripod seats in the late afternoon until dark with no results. Schalk had planned a second spotlight hunt for the evening, and if that failed we would spend the night and be back in the tripod seats at dawn. Until now he had always gotten a bushbuck here in one day, two at the most, and he was determined to end our streak of bad luck.
After hunting for over an hour, I started to get a sinking feeling that the bushbuck would elude me on this trip. Then Schalk called for the truck to stop and peered into the brush about 80 yards from the road. He glassed, had the truck back up a bit, and glassed some more. He told the driver to turn off the road and drive a little closer to what I presumed was a bushbuck. Next he and Dirk got out of the truck with a hand-held spotlight and tried to illuminate it from a different angle. They changed positions two or three times, glassing repeatedly. I was still in the truck and could not see what they were looking at.
Finally, Dirk walked back to the truck and gestured for me to follow him. We scurried back to where Schalk was crouched, and he whispered, "There is a bushbuck ram out there, but I can see only one horn. Do you want to take a risk and shoot him?" We all knew from the landowner that a one-horned ram lived on the property. I looked at the two eyes glowing in the spotlight beam through my scope and could also see one ear above them, but I couldn't make out any horns. Before I could decide, Schalk said, "Follow me," and crawled forward on his hands and knees. I went after him in a duck walk. The eyes were still there, about 50 yards away.
Schalk glassed again and finally said, "I can see the other horn. Can you shoot him between the eyes?" "I can try," I said, and got into a kneeling position, using the shooting stick and a post rest grip to support the rifle. I lined up between the eyes and fired. The eyes were still there. I probably shot over his head and between the horns.
I bolt-flicked to reload, but the new cartridge hung up on the feed ramp. I lowered the rifle from my shoulder, slammed on the bolt handle to eject the cartridge, and chambered a new round. Amazingly, when I got back in shooting position, the bushbuck was still there, though I could see only one eye now. Suddenly two eyes appeared, then only one eye, then two eyes again. I could now get an impression of the neck below them, so I centered the vertical crosshair between the eyes and held the horizontal one below them on the neck and pressed off the shot.
"You got him!" said Schalk, and we jogged quickly over to it. We found the bushbuck lying down where it had been hit. The bullet had entered and exited just right of the mid-line of its neck, breaking its spine and dropping it in its tracks.
My Buffalo (Syncerus caffer)
Due to complications with the person Schalk had contracted with for a buffalo months earlier, we ended up hunting on a neighboring ranch. As it turned out, other than the short time we had, we were lucky to be able to hunt there. We had at most two days to hunt buffalo on Boston Ranch, which bordered the Klaserie Reserve section of Kruger National Park. Frank and Louis Vos were our hosts, and they specialized in buffalo hunting on their ranch. You may hunt other game, but only after your buffalo is taken. Around the fire the evening we arrived, Frank told us about a prince from Qatar who took a 50" and 45" buffalo on the same day.
The weather the next morning was overcast, chilly, and windy, but the rain that had threatened did not materialize. We hit the road at 7am. The crew had dragged the roads the night before so that any tracks we saw were guaranteed to be fresh. Within 20 minutes of leaving camp, we spotted a bachelor herd of four bulls crossing the road about 90 yards in front of us from right to left. Driving slowly up to where they crossed, we could still see them about 15 yards off the road in the brush, downwind from us. Schalk said to me, "The best one is on the left." I could see the top of its head and one of its horns sticking out from a bush, but I did not have a clear shot at its vitals. I did not want to chance a wounded buffalo, so I held my fire, hoping it would walk clear. Instead, after about 10 seconds the four bulls turned and trotted off into the block.
Frank and Schalk decided that we should drive to the downwind side of the block and stalk our way upwind, hoping to ambush the bulls from in front. Schalk and I followed a local tracker through the block, but we emerged from the other end where the truck was waiting without seeing the buffalo. We drove to the downwind side again and stalked upwind through a different section of the block, but still had no success.
After a quick conference, Frank and Schalk thought our best bet was to go back to where the bulls crossed the road into the block and follow their tracks, even though we would be moving downwind. Frank, Schalk, and three trackers would fan out in front of me when they lost the track, and when one of them found it again, he gave a low whistle and we all coverged behind him. After a half hour of following the spoor, with the droppings getting wetter and softer, I spotted some buffalo about 50 yards to our right, trotting in the opposite direction. I tapped Schalk on the shoulder and pointed them out, and we went into a fast crouching walk after them. We got close a couple of times, but then the buffalo got mixed in with some blue wildebeest. We spooked the wildebeest and they spooked the buffalo in turn, though they didn't run off very fast.
Schalk and Frank decided the best thing to do was to walk back to the truck and try to drive around in front of them, or at least find where they crossed the road. As we came around the upwind side of the block we saw the bulls about 30 yards off the road in the brush on the left hand side of the road. Frank slowed the truck down and Schalk said, "Get ready to shoot." "Which one?" I asked. "Far right," he replied. As we came abreast of them we could see them through an opening in the brush between some trees. Almost immediately the three bulls to the left turned to their right and walked off into the brush, but the one we wanted stood next to a tree facing straight on to us, looking at us with the classic nose-up buffalo stare. I lined up for a frontal shot, but as I did so he decided to follow his buddies and turned and walked to his right, exposing his left side. I tracked my sights to just behind his shoulder and pressed off the shot as his head was just about to pass behind the tree to the left of the opening.
Unfortunately I forgot to curl my finger around the front trigger, and on recoil it slipped to the rear trigger, sending the solid in the left barrel high over the buffalo. Both Schalk and Frank saw it jump with the hit. As I reloaded, Schalk asked whether I doubled. "Yeah," I said, and Frank commented wryly that he had never seen someone follow up with a second shot that quickly before. We all had a chuckle over it. It was a couple of minutes before 10am, almost exactly three hours since we had left camp. Frank pointed out one of the other bulls, who had stopped and turned around and was watching us from about 70 yards away. "Watch out for that one," he warned.
Less than two minutes into the traditional "one cigarette" wait we heard the death bellow, which sounded quite close. Shortly thereafter the sentinel bull turned and walked off, and Schalk and I got out of the truck to find my buffalo. Walking back along the road behind the truck we quickly and easily spotted one of his horns sticking up from the grass. We approached him from behind and stopped briefly when we saw him move his rear leg slightly. Schalk sneaked up on him carefully and prodded him with his rifle. He was down and dead between 50 and 60 yards from where I had hit him.
The bullet had entered behind and below his left shoulder joint, breaking his upper leg bone, punching through a rib, perforating the top of his heart, and embedding itself in a rib on the other side. Amazingly, I could find no damage to his lungs. The 500-grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claw had retained 91% of its initial weight.
Our Trophies "In the Salt"
Because I have limited display space, I will have European mounts (skulls and horns on plaques) made of the animals. The distinctively-marked hides of the nyala and bushbuck will be made up as flat skins with the hair intact. I want to have the buffalo and eland hides tanned into leather, though I don't know what I'll make of them just yet (shoes? gun cases? hunting vest? briefcase?)
Schalk and I agreed that the unusual markings on the waterbuck deserved better than a flat skin. Therefore, I gave the hide to Schalk, who will have it made into a pedestal mount for display at Bush Africa Safaris, using the horns from another yet-to-be-hunted waterbuck. He will have that animal's hide made into a flat skin and send it to me, plus take a nice picture of my waterbuck after he is mounted and in place at BAS.
The most exciting trophy, of course, is Greg's new SCI number one bushbuck. While the coat and markings are not particularly outstanding, the horns are unusually heavy and approach 21 inches in length. You can get an idea of how unusually large his trophy is from the picture above. My bushbuck is second from the left, just to the right of the kudu. It is above average with approximately 14" horns. His bushbuck is just to the right of mine behind the vertical post in the front row. Quite a difference!
Greg's Monster Bushbuck
Greg has the same problem of space that I do, and Schalk refused to allow him to make a European mount and flat skin of that animal. I agreed that it deserved a full body mount, and eventually Greg came around. Schalk will take it to Trans-African Taxidermy, a top-quality outfit in Johannesburg, for mounting and it will be done in time for the SCI Convention in Reno in January 2003.
| Overview and Introduction | Shots on Game | Reflections After the Hunt |
| To 1997 Bush Africa Safaris Hunt | To Bush Africa Safaris Web Site | To Eric Ching's Directory |