Hunting South Africa
Milt and Steve
April 30-May 11, 2012

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Next day, we had breakfast and started off for kudu again. We saw several, and chased around, up and down the hills again, nearly wearing this old man out, but never got a shot.

Finally, we went back to the camp for lunch and met the PH we were supposed to have from the start. His name was Hennie, and he was about 6 foot two, weighed around 235 and may have had one ounce of hidden fat. He wore nothing but shorts and gators that came just above his ankles. The thorns and cactus did not seem to bother him at all. He had a tracker named Thimbihile who had worked with him for about 13 years.

Hennie also had two small dogs, Chiki and Bullet (Jack Russell terriers).

I told Hennie about the problem we had with the 270 and he said X was a new PH with only a year's experience, but that he should have let us zero the weapon. He provided us with a 30.06 and guaranteed it would shoot right where we aimed.

Hennie said he had talked to X and told him that he wanted to hunt the kudu with us and that is why X had switched over to the blesbuck the previous day.

We left the camp looking for kudu at about 2:30 and Hennie had one spotted by around 5 PM. But he could not see the horns to see if the animal was one he wanted us to take. After about 25 minutes, the kudu moved so that his horns were visible and Hennie motioned for me to take the shot. I sighted the animal in through the scope (resting on sticks), but could not see horns. I told Hennie I could see no horns, but he said he has nice horns, shoot him. The kudu was facing us head on, so I tried to aim for his chest, and squeezed off a shot. The recoil caused me to lose sight of the animal, but I thought I heard the sound of the bullet striking and Hennie said the kudu crumpled in the front. It was getting close to dark, and Hennie and the tracker decided it would be best to wait until morning and then put the dogs on the blood trail from where the kudu was shot. They did not want the dogs to cause the animal to run off where we might lose him.

Back to the camp where we were excited about the first afternoon with our new PH. We had dinner, talked about the day's activity and had a couple of beers and some brandy and coke, then went to the cabin for sleep.

These birds were at a large, nearby pond.

Sable - Magnificent animals, $14,000 a head to shoot!