A shot of a tsessebe

Last Friday afternoon I was archiving (read: deleting) files that have accumulated on my office computer and I came across a very special photo I wanted to share...

A couple of safaris ago we spent a bit of time hunting the bush along the Matlabas River in Limpopo Province. We had set aside 10 days to hunt hyena - both the spotted and the brown - and were successful with a big Spotted Hyena in the salt on day nine.  The problem with hunting hyena is that you need to be up most of the night and you spend quite a bit of the day checking baits, making drags, building blinds, hypothesising and strategising. And of course, you're on safari, so you want to have a bit of a hunt by day as well. It wears you out.

On our final full day on safari, with our most special animal in the salt, we decided it would be an easy hunting day. There were some white blesbok getting about at the back of the place we were hunting, however on the way out there we bumped into a herd of the very rarely hunted tsessebe. We had no intention of hunting these unique and once endangered antelope as part of our safari; populations of tsessebe - Damaliscus lunatus, the fastest antelope on earth - have come back so well in southern Africa that they have been completely removed from the CITES appendices, a wonderful thing for both the game and hunters.

I was with the missus on this safari, six months pregnant at the time. Our daughter (who was 16 months old) was along for the ride, as was a good friend of ours from Sydney who was playing nanny on safari. The whole lot of us were in the bakkie while our PH Stephan rode up front with Fanwell - tracker and skinner. 

Tsessebe - Damaliscus lunatus

We all looked at the tsessebe in the distance. I looked at the boss. The boss looked at me. We both looked at Stephan... We sat there bending spoons in our mind and without saying a word agreed to have a closer look at the herd "just in case" there was a good bull amongst them.  Stephan and I headed off with the sticks and my .300 Weatherby Magnum. We chased the wind and the tsessebe and almost two hours later found ourselves some 170 yards out from the herd. There were two very mature bulls worth looking at and it came down to taste really - long but thinner horns, or a thick set of horns with heavy bases,  shorter tips from the wear that comes with age.

"The short one" I whispered to Stephan as I got myself comfortable over a mound of dirt. Stephan grinned and nodded.

The 180gr Woodleigh PP bullets were being launched out of my Weatherby at a very modest 2,950fps and sighted for a 300 yard zero. We ranged the bull at 170 yards and watched him feed casually until he had turned broadside facing to the left.

"When your ready Dan," came the instruction from my PH.

I sighted up the foreleg to edge of the dark patch at the shoulder joint, then followed it up and back to the withers of the animal. I used the reticle to quarter the scapula, made a small adjustment as my shot would be almost 4" high at his range, and squeezed the trigger till it broke. The bullet smashed the bull's spine and all four legs folded at the same time sending him crashing to the ground with a thud. 

DaggaBoy and the little one with our tracker and skinner Fanwell (centre) and Professional Hunter Stephan Olivier on the right.

After a quiet moment alone with the bull, our team walked over for a close look.  We took a few photos for the safari album before the taxidermist in me came out and I was snapping away at every detail in readiness for the work ahead of me in the studio. 

Stephan happened to be admiring my rifle in the background, shouldering it the way that shooters do when they get their hands on a new gun.  And that's when I was busy looking at the vestigial nictitating membrane, preorbital gland, eyelids, folds and wrinkles...