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!
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!
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