Hunting - Day 5
Hunting South Africa
Milt and Steve
April 30-May 11, 2012
After breakfast, we drove back to Mervin's land, gave him the impala meat, and came up with a plan to get a blesbuck. We waited in an area somewhat hidden by some trees and waited while Mervin drove around to the other side of a herd of blesbuck. They came fairly close, maybe 200 yards, and I got a shot at a nice male. Don't know why I seemed to favor the legs, but my shot hit this animal in the right front leg and just about broke his leg off at the knee. He ran away with the herd, trailing by about 25 - 30 yards. Mervin again moved to where they were, headed them back in our direction, and I got another shot. This one hit him in the left shoulder and he dropped like a rock.
I should mention that during this stalking process, we had to go around some water. There was pretty high grass and it was difficult walking along the edge of the water. I didn't see this hole, and stepped off into it, sinking up to mid-thigh. Mervin was watching all this from the top of a hill about a half mile away. He said all of a sudden one guy got real short. <grin> Yep that was me all right.
First shot in right knee, second entered left
shoulder, with exit wound in lower chest
Then we drove to a place Hennie thought we could get a nice warthog. He stopped the vehicle at the side of the rough hunting road we were on, at the top of a hill overlooking a nice valley. He said we would find the warthogs in that valley and asked if I wanted to wait in the vehicle and save my legs. This suited me just fine.
After about 45 minutes, I heard a shot, then about a minute or so later, another shot. About 15 minutes later, the tracker, Thimbihile came walking up the road to retrieve the pickup. We drove down and came to Hennie and Steve with his warthog. Steve said the second shot was putting the warthog out of his misery and he asked Hennie to do that because the dogs were all over the warthog. Steve didn't want to kill one of the PH's hunting dogs.
Steve with his first warthog