Hunting - Day 6
Hunting South Africa
Milt and Steve
April 30-May 11, 2012
We had another nice breakfast, then drove back to the valley we hunted the day before, parking the truck at the top of the hill. The plan was if there was a huge warthog, then Steve would shoot it, if not, then I would take the shot. When we got down to the valley, there were warthogs both to our left and to the right, but the wind was blowing from the left and took our scent to the hogs on the right. They spooked, so we started out toward the ones to our right. I was getting set to shoot when Chiki, one of Hennie's hunting dogs, moved and spooked the hogs. Hennie gave him a harsh scolding and popped him on the snout. Chiki was good the rest of the day, and a little bit scared of Hennie. <grin>
We went back several hundred yards and spotted more warthogs. They moved off out of sight, but Hennie said, "They'll be back." So we waited and sure enough after about 20 minutes, the warthogs came back. I couldn't see them from my position, but Hennie could, and he set the sticks up for a sitting shot. When I got into position, I could see the hogs about 150 yards away. I took a deep breath, let it out about 3/4 of the way and squeezed off a shot that hit the animal in the right front shoulder and penetrated his lungs. The hog ran off and dove down a gulley, but the dogs quickly found him and our tracker looked and said, "He's dead."
My best shot of the trip - lung shot through the right shoulder
Back to Kubusi where we skinned the hog, had lunch, rested and let the warthogs settle down for Steve's next chance to get a large one. We started back to what we now called "warthog valley" around 2:30.
After parking the pickup at the top of the hill, we all walked down and there was a good sized herd of hogs with a large male. Steve and the PH started went after them, while the tracker and I kept the dogs and waited. We watched them until they went behind the bush, then turned our attention toward the hogs. After about 30 minutes, we heard a shot ring out, saw the hogs take off, and Hennie and Steve trotted over toward where the hogs had been. Another shot and the tracker told me he was going back up for the pickup, and would pick me and the dogs up and go get the warthog.
When we got to Steve and Hennie we could see that this was one big hog. Hennie said it was the largest warthog he had taken this year! Check it out below.
Steve with his BIG warthog