Processing a bull giraffe

 

Thought I'd post a few images of the field processing of the giraffe bull. I shot him at 7:52am and we were working hard till close to 3:00pm to get him skinned and broken down.  He fell in a pretty handy position with awkward but relatively good access for the vehicles but the skinning was a bit awkward at times.

From here the meat was transported to a wild game abattoir in Musina that specialises in processing hunted big game.  The top cuts stay in camp and a few make there way to restaurants.  The rest of the meat is sorted into two grades which are boned, cleaned and diced and used to make sausages and mince that sells for a few rand a kilogram to locals.  Some properties keep the meat for the people living on the property and in the wild country (outside of South Africa) the locals take home a sackful of meat each from all the game shot on safari.

Enjoy this brief photo essay.

A bull in the salt

I've heard this a lot in the last couple of weeks. One friend even rang me and in the saddest voice asked - "…why would you do a thing like that?"  My sister sent me a text saying, "…every time I go to the zoo and I see the giraffes they make me feel happy and I can’t help smiling..." - guess she’ll be doing a lot of smiling if she visits once we get that shoulder mount in position in the new house.

In an interview with David Schwimmer about the new film Madagascar 3, the actor says “…I think they’re big easy targets in the animal kingdom. They just seem so easy to take down. And what’s their defence? They have no defence mechanism…” It seems odd that so many people see giraffe as singing and dancing New Yorkers.  Something about that seems, well... odd...

Did I hunt giraffe on safari? Yep, sure did. During our safari we hunted the Southern Giraffe - Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa – the same species that we encountered throughout Zimbabwe while looking for an old dagga boy and the species that most westerners will think of when referring to giraffe. This is the subspecies you will encounter in Kruger Park.

At 1,500kg and standing up to 5.2 tall, there’s not too many creatures that will tango with a giraffe.  There are prides of lion that will hunt giraffe and our experience last month showed us the terrible fate that may await a giraffe in lion country.  Nasty business. 

In their younger years, bull giraffe fight for dominance by necking - using their muscled necks to swing their big, heavy heads like a mace, landing heavy blows on their opponent’s body. As the bulls get older, not only will they get darker in colour, but they also develop bony growths on their skulls and a pair of particularly large growths behind their horns that look very much like a second set of horns; he who swings the biggest hammer wins! Once his position is established, a bull can assert his dominance simply by standing tall when he encounters a lesser male.

So when hunting giraffe, what exactly are we looking for? A big old stink bull, black with age, with a thick set of horns and many bony growths on the skull.  A few scars may bear testament to the encounters an old bull may have in the 25 or so years he roams the bush. And then there’s the hunt; getting the wind right, getting within range without being seen and placing a shot into one of these enormous beasts that will bring him down quickly.

Our hunt was centred around two properties – the first a privately owned game reserve that had been issued with quota by Nature Conservation as they had too much game, the second a property that doesn’t generally allow hunting, but has recently started to take off some game following mass deaths during the 2008 drought.

The initial plan was to use the .300 Weatherby Magnum for a shot to the base of the skull.  Now I've seen a lot of giraffe over the years but I guess I never really appreciated how big these creatures were until I was out there hunting a bull last August. Theory quickly went out the window and I decided to lug the .450 when stalking giraffe, the rifle I was carrying for elephant.

We struggled with the wind and couldn't put something together to get ourselves in position for a shot with any of the bulls we encountered - and none of these bulls had really entered the dark colour phase yet.

 

Out in the Land Rover one morning we met Kobus at our usual remote access rendezvous ready for a day hunting the game reserve; we were heading straight for the river to spend the morning stalking.  As we drove through the reserve I spotted a big bull giraffe in the bush off to our right and got the guys to pull up once we were well out of sight.

We stalked back in a tight straight line, moving slowly and quietly towards the old bull.  Hidden in a patch of thorny acacia, we all raised our glass to check out the old boy. My PH Floris and Kobus the Game Warden both agreed that he was a good bull - "black" and big bodied,  with thick horns and plenty of bony growths on his head.  The boss thought he was a great animal and the hide on this bull was everything she was looking for.

Through the Zeiss 10 x 40's I borrowed from my mate Sam, I spotted a big scar on the bulls shoulder.

  "Kobus, what's the scar on his shoulder?"

  "Dagga that old bull was attacked by a pride of lions last summer. He was mauled very badly and had a huge piece of skin hanging off that shoulder.  We didn't think he was going to make it as he had a terrible infection, we were going to shoot him.  He has deep scratches down the other side from the lion's claws. We haven't seen him for months but it looks like he's come through the worst of it now. He's a good trophy Dagga, got a good story to go with it and he's very old, not much time left for him now. Taking this old boy will give the younger bulls an opportunity with the cows."

Floris nodded in agreement as Kobus spoke, "…he's a great bull Dagga, we won't find better." I looked back at the boss and she was clearly in agreement.

  "Let's go get him guys."  We moved back down the slope, out of the bush and onto a game trail.  The soft sand masked our approach and unlike our previous attempts, the wind held for this hunt. Without looking, I checked the power selector on the 1.5-5x was turned to it's lowest setting and I pushed one of the fat .450's into the chamber, bolt up.  We rounded a small spur and came out into the open with the bull ahead of us, slightly up the slope in a small wash-away.

  "The wind is good Dagga," whispered Floris, "we just walk straight at him slowly, he should watch us, you remember the heart is a lot higher?"

I closed the bolt and raised the old Brno for a frontal shot just as the bull turned his back on us and moved farther up the hill; he stopped and turned back, quartering towards us. A few steps to my right had me in the clear and I raised the rifle and quickly squeezed of a shot at the bull.

The 500 grain Woodleigh hit the bull hard and he reared up on his back legs as the solid punched through the very top of the heart, perforating the atriums and the aorta.  He galloped off to the left as I cycled the bolt and raised the rifle a second time. I swung the rifle along his midline and sent another bullet his way; the bullet cut through a 12" Marula Tree before breaking the giraffe's shoulder and sending him toppling to the ground as he covered his last 30 yards. It was done - by the time we walked up to the bull he had expired.

We were in awe and the scale of this magnificent creature; he was massive, bigger than I could have imagined.  His head was as big as my torso and each hoof as big as both of my hands. With the small crew we had on hand repositioning the bull was totally out of the question so we took a few photos on the side of the hill where he fell amongst the rocks and naked trees.

Skinning the bull was a six hour marathon, a huge task! I couldn't believe how thick the skin was, Reckson was using a carpet knife to cut through the hide.  Siegfried and I dug out the bullets while we worked on getting the cape off the bull. My first shot had penetrated the full width of the bull's chest and stopped under the skin on the of side, the second shot broke the shoulder and stopped inside the chest cavity - that shoulder is made of  the heaviest bone I have ever seen.

The recovered Woodleigh slugs performed brilliantly.  They did a great job on the giraffe and were in great condition given that they had just been launched at 2,380fps from fairly close range. I was amazed that neither shot had exited; the bull soaked the full force of both projectiles - the second no doubt much slower having passed through the Marula!

Floris, Seigfried, Eddie, Kobus, Reckson and I heaved each part of the bull as we broke down the carcass into limbs and split the reminder of the carcass. We used the winch on Eddie's Toyota to load up the meat, cape and back skin along with the skull.  The winch saved a lot of bad backs that day!

I spent a bit of time with the boss looking over the major organs; the liver was as big as a bathmat, each kidney was a big handful, and the heart was a big two handed lift, both atrium perforate and the blood vessels ruptured by the 500 grain Woodleight. Reckson packed the heart, lungs, liver and tripe into a sac and threw it in the back of the bakkie.

Back at camp, Reckson cut panels from the flesh side of the skin to bring it down to a reasonable thickness that the salt would penetrate. Once the skin was "shaved down" we dropped the cape and back skin into a brine - strong with salt and disinfectant. The next day we pulled the hide out of the brine and rubbed in 500 kilos - half a metric tonne of salt into the old bull giraffe.

We had our bull. In the salt.

Hunting the hyena: Part I

Over the past few years we've had a few encounters with hyena while traveling through the southern African countries and after our very first visit, I decided to put together a plan and fit in some hyena hunting the very next time we made plans to visit the Dark Continent. We've encountered Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta) in South Africa on a number of occasions, always in the Limpopo Province, both on private property and in a few areas within Kruger Park. In Botswana we came into contact with Spotted hyena along the Chobe River and in Moremi and Savuti Game Reserves. 

Cruising along the Chobe River in Botswana made for quite regular encounters with Spotted Hyena.

Brown Hyena (Parahyaena brunnea) on the other hand have proved to be much more elusive.  At Cape Cross on Namibia's Skeleton Coast we found spoor along the beach, weaving in and out of the Cape Fur Seal colony that litter the beach.  While the Black-Backed Jackal is content to traverse the beach front in broad day light looking for the sick and dead seals that make up the bulk of their diet in these parts, the ever cautious Brown Hyena maintains its mostly nocturnal and shy disposition and evaded our waiting Canon DSLR on our visit. 

Black-Backed Jackal (above) frequent the Cape Fur Seal colony at Cape cross along with the Brown Hyena looking for an easy meal - sick, injured or dead seals.

 The unpleasant smell at Cape Cross, a combination of dead seals and excrement are brought to shore by the strong and icy winds of the South Atlantic Ocean. For those of you that are keen on experiencing the natural wonders of the world, the Cape Fur Seal colony and the accompanying stench is one of those sights (and smells) you must see to believe! 

Now that is a lot of seals!!

Most hunters that visit Africa shoot hyena opportunistically. We put aside time specifically for the purpose of hunting them and our professional hunters are generally not impressed! On this trip, the hyena were our priority species and everyone involved knew that we had quite a task ahead of us...

Spotted Hyena skulk along the roads in Kruger National Park; this photo was taken near Orpen Gate.

In 2009 we spent 10 days hunting both hyena species along the Matlabas Riverin the Limpopo Province. We were dragging and hanging baits and building blinds in areaswhere we'd found recent sign of hyena, a rotten old nyala ewe that had died onthe property and an impala I'd shot. We had baits in three locations and itseemed that regardless of where we sat on any given night, the hyena would hitone of the other baits.  We had one excellent sighting of a lone spottedhyena on the way to the one of the bait sites but I wasn't in a position toshoot in the 1/2 second he gave us! 

Spotted Hyena spoor alongside the .300 Weatherby.

Stefan and Fanwell wire up the gut from a blesbok to run our drags to the bait site.

Stefan and Fanwell hanging the old nyala ewe carcass where we found fresh spoor.

We didn't see a brown hyena at all. We hadan animal come in to the bait a couple of times but nothing close to a shotopportunity! I think it was the ninth night out that we were calling, it was asteenbok in distress call, a sound not unlike the tin whistle we use forrabbits, when we heard the distant cackle of a couple of hyena.  My hairwas standing on end.  It was pitch black as I cocked the .300 and pointedthe rifle over the bow in the direction of the approaching hyena. The calls gotcloser and soon we could hear them grinding the course sand under their paws.They were close. 

My PH Stefan grabbed my shoulder in the darkness -
   "Dagga, I'll hit the light on three. Okay?" 

   "Yep. no problem," my heart was racing, I love a bit of buck fever!

When the light came on the reticle was a metre off its mark; a quick adjustment as I squeezed the trigger caught the dog broadside, alongthe centerline of the foreleg, about half way up the body. He dropped and Ifired again, hitting him through the spine. I roared; after nine long days andnights of strategising and tracking and sitting and driving. I was excited andexhausted after what had been a great hunt.

Fast forward three years, to three short weeks ago when Ifound myself in a game reserve, again in the Limpopo Province about 90kmoutside of Hoedspruit.  Like many reserves, the game is well managed andthere is a tendency for the wildlife populations to increase at a rate muchhigher than losses due to old age or predation, so as part of theirmanagement strategy, in the last two years they have started bringing in trophyhunters before the choppers come in to cull animals at the end of the season,before the rains start. They had a fairly limited quota but there were ahandful of species that I was quite keen to hunt, Spotted Hyena being one ofthem.

We met the Game Warden, Kobus, at a remote side gate with our PH Floris de Meyer. Weneeded to stay clear of the game viewing vehicles as this was purely aphotographic safari operation with a luxury lodge attached.  Funny isn'tit? I asked Kobus about how he felt about our team coming to the reserve tohunt and kill the big game that he is charged with preserving:

"The idea is growing on me," he replied -"we have tourists here and they pay good money to stay at the lodge,however to keep those tourists coming on photographic safaris we had to buildthe lodges and now we need to maintain them. We have a huge team of staff. Wehave to provide meals and there are lots of costly logistics associated withthat out here. We have to provide large volumes of clean water and then dealwith similar volumes of waste water and sewerage in this pristine environment. You guys come in and leave nothing behind except your cash - that goesstraight to the bottom line. The lodge itself has yet to make a profit in 14years of operation! If our game viewers don't see big cats they are oftendisappointed, if you guys only see impala and warthog you think it's been agreat day out because you've seen some game!" The missus and I liked Kobus; this fellow had a think man's head on his shoulders. 

The short wheel base Land Rover Defender bounced along therough roads south of the river that cut through the reserve from east to west. The game viewing vehicles would stay north of the river today.  Wekept a sharp eye out for giraffe at all times and stalked the tangled edges ofdry river beds hoping to bump warthog or catch a hyena napping in the shade. Wewalked seven kilometres that first day, mostly in sand. It was 34°C and there wasn't a hintof a breeze, the sun beat down on our heads and the hot sand cooking us in our boots.So hot! 

We stalked the dry riverbeds looking for hyena camped in the shadows in the heat of the day.

We were heading towards the gate at last light - day one was over. At 5:08 pm I caught the flick of a big round ear in thick bush to ourleft; I recognised what it was straight away but didn't want to create anycommotion so I let the vehicle roll on.  A couple of hundred yards downthe road I tapped the roof of the Rover and Eddie pulled up.  I hoppeddown as I hissed "Hyena!".

Floris and I tip toed back with the rifle good to go; Florisextended the sticks as we walked, both doubled over... both secretly willing the hyena to keep his head down as we moved in. It was almost dark when we gotinto position in the thick bush; slowly, we stood upright and I raised my rifle ontothe sticks that Floris had set up in just the right place. On cue the hyena raisedhis head on that muscular neck and looked straight at us. I had the reticle on him, he was still lying on his side as he worked us out, looking back over his shoulder, the bolton the .300 Weatherby was closed.   

"He'll stand in a sec Dagga.  Take him when hedoes, you won't have much time."  

The big dog got to his feet and reeled backslightly on his stumpy hind legs. As he started to turn I sent a bullet intohis shoulder; he was quartering towards us at that instant and the bullet exited ahead of thehind leg on the off side. He ran 20 yards and collapsed. Floris and I looked at each other in disbelief - I was ecstatic atsuch an outcome on day one - and on foot, in broad daylight (well almost), without baiting or the aid of a light.

We heard the Rover humming down the track shortly after the shot.  The boss was pleased as punch and Kobus the Game Warden and Eddie our driver for the day (also a PH) were both impressed with the sighting, the stalk and the perfectly placed shot. This would prove to be the only "easy shot" we would have for the remainder of the safari.  Reckson was pleased that he had something to carry to the skinning shed.  And a couple of the crew back at camp are particularly partial to hyena, so this fellow was not going to waste.

Floris our PH, Reckson out tracker and skinner, Kobus the Game Warden and The Boss stand over the fallen Spotted Hyena in a Game Reserve outside of Hoedspruit.

Reckson carefully loads the hyena into the back of the Land Rover.

 Its great being out in the bush on a hot day, when the sun is setting red in the harsh African sky, the smell of the bush and the wafting dust fill your sense, and our first skin in the salt and many days of hunting ahead of us...

No elephant!

Having just enjoyed two weeks on safari in South Africa, I thought I might assemble a few posts detailing our adventures and how it all panned out. Best to start with the elephant as that was very much the impetus for the safari...

Our elephant hunting plans changed at the last minute, 48 hours before our flight out of Sydney when Nature Conservation decided it was suspicious that a foreigner would want to hunt elephant and not take the trophy home. They couldn't or wouldn't understand that Australians cannot import elephant and refused to issue the non-export permit I had applied for.

We're back!

Hello hunters. Just back home from our South African safari on Monday night. Our plan was to primarily hunt three species on this safari - elephant, spotted hyena and brown hyena - and chase a few others time permitting. 

I was lucky enough to get onto a spotted hyena on our first day out hunting (it took 8 days in 2009) and very fortunate to drop an old brown hyena after some very tough hunting on the fifteenth day! 

In the end I opted not to shoot an elephant as despite our best efforts, the bull I was looking for eluded us . We had access to two game reserves, one south of Musina where they had a couple of bulls earmarked for culling and the other adjoining Kruger Park where the permits stipulated that bulls must be less than 30lbs per side. In both instances this meant bulls around the 25 year / 4,000kg mark. This really wasn't what I was looking for, so I decided to put it off for another trip down the track; perhaps Botswana, Zimbabwe or Tanzania? One day...

We also had the opportunity to successfully hunt Southern Greater Kudu (a monster!), Limpopo Bushbuck (a present for my mate JD), Klipspringer (frustrating little bastards!), Red Hartebeest (Dirk and Floris, I expect you've learnt a good lesson from this hunt!) and Giraffe. For the record a giraffe is a big animal!  Very big. Skinning a bull and breaking down the carcass to recover the meat in difficult terrain is quite a task (about 6 hours with a team of men, a Toyota, a winch and some very fancy use of a couple of harnesses - great work Eddie!).

During our hunt we had four separate encounters with lion and three of the most amazing wildlife experiences we've ever had in Africa - a leopard on a fresh kill at 30 yards, a cheetah that had just had a bellyful of meat at 10 yards and a brown hyena in full view at 90 yards, gnawing on one of our baits for about 20 minutes!
 

Africa has to be the most awesome hunting destination on the planet; thanks to Dalerwa Ventures for Wildlife, owners Siegfried and Elize Osmers and our PH Floris de Meyer for looking after us and putting in the yards to make it happen.

Lots of photos to come and some tall tales to go with them. Hope you enjoy reading about our latest adventure; very much looking forward to sharing with you another adventure from a very ordinary bloke!

  

On Safari: good to go

Many months of preparation have brought us to the last days in the run up to our flights on the 18th of August. While I'm having trouble sleeping tonight, one week from now there won't be a chance of any rest...

For the Aussies out there who are familiar with the procedures at Australian Customs, you can appreciate that there's a fair bit of documentation to get the tools of the trade out and back into the country. Once it was all sorted, the hard part of organising an overseas safari was largely over. I think there's a separate post in the whole traveling with firearms procedure.

Elephants and sustainable utilisation

So while you may not agree with a hunter's reasoning as to why he might want to hunt jumbo, now you know! 

My desire to hunt and the resultant conservation benefits are not mutually exclusive; they are actually inextricably linked. The net conservation benefit has nothing to do with why I hunt, however these benefits are very positive by-products of my hunting, a convenient truth. There will be some greater good because of my quest to hunt the world's largest land animal. 

So what could lead to a need to kill elephant and how could such action possibly have a positive outcome?  Well there are a few things, and while we can list them out for discussion, in reality they are intertwined in such a way that each is a contributing factor to the other:

• Increasing populations;
• Boundaries in the modern world;
• Carrying capacity.

 

So why hunt elephant?

A bull elephant along the Chobe River, Botswana.

My quest to hunt the world's largest land animal has been met with a very mixed response.  The protectionists in my life hate it. My colleagues at work - well the girls aren't so impressed, but most of the lads are okay with it. 


Some of the hunters I know who long to hunt dangerous game are excited, but most hunters I know are giving me the "...I only hunt to save the koalas..." speech; are they serious?  


My wife's not totally convinced, but she's coming 'cause she wants to hunt giraffe! My four-year-old daughter wants to come along but understands it's just mummy and daddy this time - "...but I can come with you to hunt elephant next time daddy..." she tells me.  She sure can. And my two-year-old doesn't get it, she reckons it's "...a little bit scary!"


So why hunt elephant? Why not?

The hunt for ndlovu

Around Christmas, I was sitting in my office late one night when my wife rang to see where I was and whether I was ever planning on coming home. I had to confess to her that I'd been day dreaming about going to Africa again which was met with a rather stony silence on the other end of the line - "...just you and me, maybe two weeks, we'll hunt elephant and leave all the drama at home for a while..." A bit more silence, and she agreed...

An outdoorsman on the Dark Continent

So I was thinking, surely it's time to get a bit more of the Dark Continent on here?
This wretched habit of mine has gotten much worse since I first set foot on that terrible place...

I sometimes like to think of myself as an outdoorsman, albeit chained to a desk, flying in and out of meetings, dealing with performance reviews and foreign exchange, and all the other extraneous interruptions in a modern man's life.

Are you an outdoorsman? Take a minute and think about it, what does being an outdoorsman really mean to you? Take that minute, reflect on the experiences that you've shared with others or those special solo efforts with just your gun, a dayback and your sense of adventure. Hunting and the activities that often accompany our chosen sport are a window to see things that you don’t often see in everyday life. They give you the opportunity to experience nature in a different setting; an opportunity to open your eyes to a whole new world.

So if an outdoorsman is what I am,in the contemporary culture of our inner city lives, there are three things that just don't sit well with this outdoorsman - noise, hurry and crowds. And so it began...