First ever guided hunt - South Africa

[npaden]

By now it was getting past lunch and we decide to go ahead and head back to the lodge. Lunch is quick and we head back out to the river property looking for kudu. After we’ve driven around some more after lunch it dawns on us that today we have seen a whopping 1 waterbuck. We have spent more time on the property already today than we did yesterday and yesterday we saw close to 50 waterbuck. Kind of crazy that we are covering the same ground and today we aren’t seeing much of anything. Not sure if it is because we drove around already the day before and they are staying away from the roads today or what the deal is.

We continue to drive around the property and see some more kudu cows and small bulls but none of the bulls that we had seen the day before. One thing I notice is that I had really been enjoying riding around with my wife and son on the bench with me the previous days. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying myself, I was, but we had spent hours and hours riding around together as a family over the past week soaking everything in and now when I saw something neat there wasn’t anyone to share it with. I might mention this again when I try to wrap up my thoughts at the end, but I think if I get a chance to do something like this again I will try to make sure to carve out enough time to be able to hunt together the entire time instead of us needing to split up. I really enjoyed hunting together more than by myself.

Here is a picture of one of the small bulls.

We just aren’t seeing anything and I don’t remember a single stalk that afternoon. We are getting close to dark and Pieter holds up his phone and shows me a picture of Eli with a zebra! He was able to get it done! I can’t wait to hear about it when we see each other at dinner.

Darkness arrives and it is a pretty uneventful end to my hunt. We start heading back to the lodge and I’m starting to get my bearings figured out and know where we are going, but we end up taking a turn on the way there that I know isn’t the right way. I’m thinking maybe we are going to pick up Jewel or maybe he has found the sable! Nope, we pull up to where Eli shot his zebra and they are still working on getting it loaded. The trackers live where the skinning shed is and they end up loading the zebra in their truck and Cathy and Eli join me in our truck and we start heading for the lodge again. We are jabbering back and forth about our day and all the sudden we take a wrong turn again!

One of their traditions is to have the last dinner together out in the bush instead of back at the lodge. We pull up to a nice spread with a fire going and lanterns spread around the tables. The weather is perfect and so is everything else. The dinner is wonderful, we have zebra steak from the zebra I had shot and it is very good. Hard to explain but very tender and almost sweet. Our dinner conversations were always good and we had really become good friends over the last week. We were going to miss each other for sure. The stars at the lodge were great but it was even better out in the bush. Really a perfect end to a near perfect week.



While we had been getting things started, Pieter had to go back to the lodge for something and while he was gone I first asked Cathy and then asked Eloise. Would they be okay if I asked Pieter if we could go back out and try for kudu one more time the next morning? I pretty much knew that Pieter would say yes if I asked but I felt that Eloise would be honest with me if she didn’t think he would want to go. We had been going nonstop for 9 days and for Pieter that was from 5 am every morning to 10 or 11 every night. During one of our dinner conversations earlier in the week Pieter had said something about trying to take Sundays off and tomorrow was Sunday so I felt pretty bad about asking. When he got Eloise was going to ask Pieter what he thought about it but before she could ask him he asked her if she thought I would want to try to go out the next morning for a little while to try one last time for a kudu!

Our flight wasn’t until 9 pm Sunday and it is a 6 hour drive to the airport so to give us the recommended 3 hours before the flight for international flights we would need to leave the lodge around noon. If we set a hard cut off at 9:30 or 10:00 at the latest that would give us a chance to get back to the lodge and get things sorted out and eat and hit the road with time to spare. We decided that we would just skip breakfast and head out at 6:00 and have a brunch at the lodge when we got back.

We enjoy the night sky and stay up a little later than usual but I’m not going to have any problem at all waking up for one last chance at a kudu in the morning.

 

[npaden]

Day 9 – Eli’s hunt.

This was the first day where we were going to be split up the entire day. Cathy hadn’t enjoyed riding around on the roller coaster off road adventures on the river property the day before so she decided to spend the day with Eli hunting zebra on the main property instead.

They headed out about the same time as we did and were on zebra tracks right off. They followed the tracks for about 3 hours that morning and didn’t ever catch up to them. The start driving and see some zebra ahead and quickly pull off the road and park the truck and unload and head out after them. Pieter had always made sure they parked the truck in the shade for Cathy, but Martin hadn’t thought about that (he was so excited that he forgot to even turn the truck off and had to come back and turn it off) so Cathy got off the truck and sat in some shade to wait. She starts hearing noises behind her and the noises turn into what she describes as an entirely different language as some monkeys were coming up behind her. They get closer and closer and louder and louder. She started to think about whether the monkeys were dangerous or not and decides that maybe she should go get in the truck and she stands up and looks behind her. The monkeys all froze except a few stood up and they weren’t monkeys, they were baboons! She turned away and started walking to the truck and after a couple steps turned back to look and they were gone without another sound. Eli and Martin come back empty handed. They got close but of all things a kudu busted them and ran off and spooked the zebra and they ran off as well.

They had lunch at the lodge and headed back out about the time we were headed in for lunch on my kudu hunt. They check some waterholes for tracks and again get on some fresh tracks and head out, this time it wasn’t such a rush and they got Cathy parked in some nice shade were she could watch a waterhole. They are gone for 3 hours and Cathy doesn’t have to worry about the shade because it is dark. She hears someone coming back to the truck and it is Martin’s tracker. He says something about a long walk, but no mention of anything else other than they need to go pick them up. She had heard a shot earlier but thought it was too far away to have been Eli so she isn’t sure what is going on. They drive a bit and she sees our truck driving up as well and somewhere in there realizes that Eli got his zebra! They had already taken pictures before it got dark but both trucks got there at about the same time, it had been a long walk back to the truck for the tracker after the shot!

They had ended up tracking the zebra for 3 hours and finally caught up to them. Eli ended up with a hard quartering to shot and make a near perfect shot at about 100 yards. The zebra ran for a little over 100 yards and fell over dead.

Here are the field photos they took of Eli's zebra. The blood on the side of it's head is where it ended up with it's head lying in blood, there was just the one shot that killed it.

 

[npaden]

Day 10 – Last ditch effort.

I didn’t sleep very well that night with anticipation. Kind of odd because I had slept fine the night before and I had thought that was going to be my last day, but for some reason I was too amped up to sleep well last night.

The original plan had been to just hang around the lodge that morning and fly my drone around and check out the lions. I had only flown my drone one time in a follow type mode as we drove the truck out one morning. Again, we had been going hard the entire time and just hadn’t had time to do pretty much anything else. Cathy and Eli were going to just hang out at the lodge and although I would have enjoyed flying my drone and checking out the lions, I was more than willing to give that up for one more chance at a kudu.

We are on the truck headed out around 6:00. We get over to the river property and start driving around, and around and around. We see a few kudu cows and small bulls but again the bigger bulls seem to have just vanished. We’ve been driving around for a while now and time is ticking away.

We move back over to the other side of the property on the other side of the potato farm where we had seen the big bull in the thick brush the day before and a worker is out walking and they tell Pieter that they saw 4 bulls earlier that morning. We start driving around looking for them and driving around and driving around. This part of the property has roads closer together than anywhere else but the brush is thick. We spend probably an hour and never see a single kudu, male or female.

The clock is ticking close to the cut off and Pieter decides to make one more last ditch effort back to the other side of the property where we had seen the bulls 2 days before. We drive over there and see some bulls over on the other side of the river moving out away from us. Instead of going directly at them, we move down the river some more and cross in the truck, drive about halfway to where they were and start after them on foot. The wind is okay but we have to make a pretty quick stalk to have any chance to catch them and we are also on the clock for the cutoff time. We head on what we think is an intercept course, but we find the track and we are behind them, the wind ends up turning bad for the direction they ended up going and it looks like my hunt is over. We are past the 9:30 early cutoff time but it isn’t quite 10:00 yet. We have some issues getting our location communicated to get picked up and I thought we were going to head straight to the lodge but Pieter goes back around to the very back of the property. We had been through this spot at least a half dozen times and never seen anything. This time the bulls that we had been tracking are there feeding and a big one is bedded in the shade! We back up and unload and have Tefferi drive off the other direction and start a very slow stalk after them. It is painstakingly slow, but we have 2 smaller bulls dead to rights but can’t get a look at the bigger one that was bedded in the shade. Pieter takes one more step to see around some brush and it is over, 5 kudu bulls blow out and are gone. 2 were really nice bulls.

This time we ended up bailing out so fast Pieter didn’t even have a radio to call to get picked up. We start heading back to where the truck went and Pieter whistles and calls for Tefferi and he hears us and comes and picks us up. It’s now well after our 10:00 late cut off time and we load up and head back to the lodge.

On our way back I’m super proud of myself for spotting a small bull bedded down all by itself about 75 yards away in the brush. I’m pretty proud of myself for being the first one to spot it, maybe after 9.5 days I’m finally starting to get the hang of this. We confirm that it is by itself and continue on. About half mile later we stop and I’m trying to figure out why we stopped when a small kudu bull runs off from where it had been standing in the brush maybe 30 yards away. So much for having the hang of this.

As we head back, Pieter can’t resist one more look at the place by the river where we had seen those big bulls 2 days before. We drive in and there are 2 small bulls on the other side of the river. Then Pieter says there at least one big one with them. We drive on past and make a mad dash to where we could see across the river. We end up in nearly the same exact spot that we had been when Eli was on the sticks 2 days earlier. We are looking and I see a good bull on the other side of the river and it looks like he is moving away. I tell Pieter I see a good bull and I think for the first time the entire trip I hear him say “I can’t see him!” That had been mine and Eli’s line all week but it was the first time I had heard Pieter use it. It just shows how thick the stuff was that we were hunting in because with Pieter just a few feet from me, with the angle he had through the brush he really couldn’t see him.

I get setup and actually have a tree that I can use to rest the rifle instead of the sticks. The trouble is that now the bull has moved and I can barely see him anymore because he is behind so much brush. Pieter moves over about 20 yards and sets up his sticks and says he can see him from that angle. I move over and I have a clear shot… of it’s nose. That is all that is visible from behind the brush where he is standing. Ahead of him is a pretty good opening and Pieter says we have time to wait on him. It actually doesn’t take long this time and he starts moving into the opening but he is at a severe quartering away angle. The opening in the brush is just a few feet and he is going to be through it in seconds. Pieter says to take him and although it isn’t the best angle I go ahead and pull the trigger. Immediately you can hear the hit but I feel like I’ve pulled the shot. Pieter says you got him but I’m not happy with the way the shot felt. We start after him and Pieter encourages me and says that he could see him stumbling forward after the shot and is pretty sure that he is down. We send Tefferi to get the truck and drive it across the river and we go after the kudu. We cross the dry river bed and are working up the other side and see the bull, he looks unsteady on his feet but he is standing and starts walking directly away from us. Pieter says to shoot him again and there is only one option, a Texas heart shot. I take aim and fire and he drops. We get closer and he is still alive and holding his head up and Pieter says to go ahead and shoot him one more time and we get a better angle and put one in behind his shoulder and it is finally over. 9.5 days into a 7 day hunt and my kudu is on the ground!!

The timestamp on the first picture of him is 10:47 am so we ended up going a little past the original 10:00 cut off time that we had. VERY thankful that we didn’t end up having to track him or have a difficult recovery especially since we had pushed the envelope and then some on the cutoff time.

We take some quick field photos and again Pieter does an excellent job and we get him loaded up and we are headed back to the lodge, a little late but feeling beyond cloud 9.

An as it laid picture. The curls were big which is good. I’m not a good judge of any of these animals but Pieter said it was a big one so that means it is good in my book.


Field photo. Pieter does an awesome job with the field photos.


One more shot of him. It was a long time coming and felt very rewarding.

 

[npaden]

Remainder of day 10 – wrapping up

We get back to the lodge fairly quickly and have a lot to get done before we leave. Cathy and Eli have had a nice relaxing morning but I wouldn’t trade a week of relaxing for the morning that I had just had!

Everyone has already eaten brunch but they pull some back out and we eat quickly. We haven’t done any paperwork on the hunt yet and Pieter gets busy on that while I take a quick shower and get changed and ready to go. Cathy has gotten everything else ready so that part doesn’t take long at all.

The driver has been there to take us to the airport since about 10:30 so no waiting on him. At the end of each hunt they typically take pictures of the weeks worth of trophies all together. I’d seen a few of them posted on their website where people had driven out to the big baobab tree for a backdrop for the photo. As BrentD mentioned earlier, just getting to see that big baobab tree is a trophy all by itself. Needless to say with us missing the cutoff for the morning hunt by a full hour, we weren’t going to have time to go out to the baobab tree for a photo so we quickly lined everything up there at the lodge. Of course my kudu isn’t in the picture because it was still lying in the back of the truck about to head to the skinning shed.


We got the pictures taken, got the paperwork finalized and headed out at 12:50. Not too far behind the original plan and still on track to get to the airport in plenty of time!

We were all very tired so the conversation on the drive back to the airport wasn’t as good as it was on the drive out, but it was good to see everything in the daylight. There were a few sets of mountains that were pretty impressive and there was a national holiday on Monday and Tuesday so everyone was out and about for a long holiday weekend. There were a couple soccer games setup and being played that looked pretty competitive with a decent number of spectators in what seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere.

Things are going well and I remembered something when I checked in for the flight about needing to drop our bags at Terminal B even though our flight would be departing out of Terminal A and ask our driver Mark about that and he hasn’t heard about that before. All international flights leave out of Terminal A. I start checking around on my phone and notice that our flight doesn’t leave at 9:10, that was when we were still booked on the Swiss Air flight! Our flight leaves at 8:00! Nothing like getting the old adrenaline pumping again when there is nothing you can do about it. We do the math and Mark pulls up goggle maps on his phone to get an ETA and it shows we should be getting to the airport at 6:10. Not the 3 hours that they say you should be there before your flight but still hopefully enough time to make it work.

The toll road we are on gives out automatic tickets based on average speed traveled from spot to spot and Mark is not one to go over the speed limit no matter the circumstances so the clock ticks on. I ask again about dropping us off at Terminal A vs. Terminal B and Mark is pretty sure that we need to get dropped off at Terminal A, not Terminal B. We make up a little time and he drops us off at straight up 6:00. No reason to worry, 2 hours is plenty of time!

We go into Terminal A and right off find out that since we are flying United we need to take our bags to Terminal B to get them checked. Okay, an extra 15 minutes to get over there but not a problem. We hustle over and take a wrong turn and backtrack to the baggage check in and there are about 50 people in line ahead of us! And there are not many people working the check in line. This might be a problem! About 20 of the people in line in front of us are with some type of study abroad program and thankfully they seem to have their stuff in order. The line doesn’t go fast but it doesn’t go too slow and we finally have our bags checked in right around 7:00. Now to get to Terminal A and through security and to the gate. Thankfully this part goes extra smoothly and we are through security and to the gate as they are starting the boarding process. Hopefully our bags are going to make it as well but even if they don’t we are headed home and will be fine without them for a while.

Everything else goes smoothly and uneventful. The bags make it home with us and although we are sad to be leaving we are all happy to be home and ready to sleep in our own bed.

This has been an absolutely amazing experience and in so many ways was completely over the top. It has been almost a week since we’ve been home and it still hasn’t completely sunken in. I wanted to get this all typed up as quickly as possible so I didn’t miss too many details and finally think I’ve at least got the rough draft finished. I’m going to go back and read through everything and may end up adding in some clarification points or making some minor corrections here and there. We have been talking about it quite a bit since we have been home and I want to come back and type up some closing thoughts as well before too long.

I have a few pictures as well that I took that I missed getting put in where they go in the narrative and I want to post a few more of those as well.

Thanks for reading along on this. I enjoy sharing it but I really am doing this selfishly to help me be able to keep this written down permanently so occasionally I can go back and read it or if I am trying to remember something I can come back to this and it will spark the memory.

Not sure I will ever be able to top this one on the adventure scale.

Nathan

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

That's cool you finally got a kudu! Talk about cutting it close.

 

[kansasdad]

I appreciate your efforts to tell the story of your grand family adventure.

Thanks to you and your stories my dreams have had a distinct African flair to them the last couple of nights.

My kansadad family of five plus three spouses are eyeing post graduate school completion in 2024 and heading to East Africa for a non touristy trip (no package deals, no drivers/guides required). My familiarity with the countries coupled with the internet search capabilities make such a trip possible DIY.

 

[EYJONAS!]

Unfuckinreal. That is one hell of an adventure thank you for sharing the way you did congrats to you and your son. That is so cool. Congrats again.

 

[marksjeep]

Outstanding! Congrats and thanks for taking the time to write it up in detail! Awesome read.

 

[crock239]

Awesome, awesome adventure. What an incredible way to spend family time together. Congratulations and thanks for sharing everything so well here.

 

[fishing4sanity]

Fantastic report! Really brought back a lot of memories of some of the highs and lows I experienced in Africa myself. I'm sure your family is going to enjoy reliving this adventure for years to come.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Thanks for sharing the memories. Glad you finally bagged your kudu and it is a dandy. I also shot my first one at the eleventh hour, just before dusk on my last day. Not near as nice as yours though. Second one was much better but not good enough. They supposedly have a fifty plus incher located and waiting for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any locater tags for my luggage. Everyone is sold out. Very concerned about taking my rifle. But I just don't want to go without it. Sigh!

 

[OntarioHunter]

I can now appreciate the terrain in the East Cape where I will again be hunting. The rolling hills and mountains provide more viewing for game. Last trip I also hunted up north near Kimberly. I remember looking out the plane window as we approached the city and saying to myself "Now THAT country will have lots of game." Flatter with much less farming (as in plowed up stuff up) and roads. Very thick endless bush. And there was indeed lots more game ... but lots harder to hunt! Mostly get up close and personal to get a shot. Getting up close to kudu and buffalo is not easy!

Are you planning your next trip yet?

 

[Salmonchaser]

Outstanding last minute or any minute Kudu.

 

[RobertD]

A great read. Thanks for taking the time to share all the photos and details.

Highlight to me is your son staying persistent for his zebra and finally sealing the deal.

 

[BrentD]

Thanks for the stories. You tell them well. Clearly, you had a life-changing experience and even managed to make catching the flight home exciting. Nothing like squeezing the last drop out of that bottle of adventure.

 

[CouesKelly]

Awesome family adventure! Congrats on you and your son's success. You may owe your wife some sort of vacation where you two sit in the truck and watch her do something

Thanks for taking us along. I enjoyed reading your write up.

 

[npaden]

Thanks for the comments. I enjoyed sharing it and know that down the road I’m going to be happy to have chronicled it in such detail.

Pieter ended up putting a tape measure to Eli’s gemsbok and my kudu. His gemsbok was 39” and 39.5”. Not quite 40” but Eli says 39.5” rounds up to 40” so he is going to still say it was a 40”er.

My kudu measured 56” on one horn and 54” on the other. I guess I will average that and say it was 55”+. Pieter has a reproduction of the largest kudu taken on the property mounted in the lodge and he said at the time it was taken around 10 years ago that it was the #20 kudu in the world. Looking at it everyday didn’t help expectations and I wasn’t super impressed with Eli and my kudu when we shot them. Doing a little more looking around and sorting out a good kudu vs a big kudu vs a giant, I realize that both of our kudu are actually very good and mine is close to exceptional.

Out of all the animals taken we plan to have Eli’s gemsbok and my kudu done as shoulder mounts and the rest European style.

In his Boy Scout troop they debrief after each campout and ask each person what their rose, pearl and thorn were. Rose is your favorite thing from trip, pearl is pearl of wisdom and most important thing you learned and thorn is pretty obvious, the worst part of the trip. You can only choose one for each.

Eli’s rose was getting all the animals on his list. It took work but he closed the deal with zebra on the last day. His pearl was learning not to fly United airlines, and his thorn was not having our bags for most of the time we were there.

Cathy’s rose was getting to actually see and be a part of Eli getting his kudu. Her pearl was learning to pack better with a good carryon bag with necessities for an international trip and her thorn was that with her Parkinson’s she wasn’t able to go out with us into the bush on our stalks.

All of us mentioned that it was very difficult to narrow it down to just one rose and could have listed out several. I had several as well but if I had to pick one it was Pieter and Eloise’s unbelievable hospitality. They made you feel so welcome they even if we had come home nearly empty handed I think we would have had a great trip. My pearl was that these animals are unbelievably wary and hard to kill. I didn’t think it would be like checking off a list at the grocery store, but I sure didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it was. My thorn was wounding the sable and not recovering it. Jewel was still on the track Sunday when we left but it seemed to be getting stronger and stronger instead of weaker and weaker. Good for the sable, bad for me ever having a chance to recover it. Pieter said that they would easily be able to identify it and if another hunter shoots it sometime in the future that they will give me back most of my trophy fee or if they find it dead they will send me the skull and horns. They hadn’t completely given up looking for it last I talked to them but were no longer actively tracking it.

When I read some of the Africa threads posted I’ve PM’d some people asking questions and pricing and if anyone wants to PM me that is fine. I didn’t book with the cheapest or the most expensive place, but in my grand experience of one I think I ended up booking with the right place for us.

The total cost for the three of us for airfare, hunting, trophy fees and everything was right about the same price I’ve seen for a guided Yukon moose hunt of the same duration. Getting to experience this as a family was truly priceless.

Still have a few more pictures to share, I’ll add some over the next few days.

Nathan

 

[kansasdad]

@npaden ....I recall that you had the lions in their enclosure near the main camp. I'm guessing that some of their diet comes from hunted/harvested game? And then perhaps a lion hunt will occur if the hunter desires such a venture?

Did you see/hear hyenas and vultures? It doesn't seem like there are gut piles being left strewn about the hunting area.

Is the fencing of such a nature that smaller predators such as jackals, serval or caracal are more free range instead of confined?

 

[npaden]

@npaden ....I recall that you had the lions in their enclosure near the main camp. I'm guessing that some of their diet comes from hunted/harvested game? And then perhaps a lion hunt will occur if the hunter desires such a venture?

Did you see/hear hyenas and vultures? It doesn't seem like there are gut piles being left strewn about the hunting area.

Is the fencing of such a nature that smaller predators such as jackals, serval or caracal are more free range instead of confined?

They have a freezer box car and there is for sure a process at the skinning shed to utilize 100% of the animals processed. Any animals that are not fit for human consumption for some reason or the other are fed to the lions.

One evening we did hear some hyenas and we saw hyena tracks in addition to the leopard tracks while we were there. We heard jackals every night and there was no doubt their we plenty of those around. I forgot to mention seeing some bat eared foxes a couple times at the river property. I didn’t get the idea that the gaps in the fences were intentional, but I saw more than one animal duck through holes under the fences during the week. Warthogs for sure seemed to go right through them and I saw a duiker go through it one time as well.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Kudu are pretty much free roaming. They can jump an eight foot fence. Waterbuck bulls are hard on fences. They tear them up with their horns to get through. Warthogs are terrible hard on fences, digging underneath. One property owner told me if I saw a warthog and didn't shoot it, I wasn't hunting his property again. Gemsbuck cannot jump even a four wire fence but they will simply slam into them and knock them over to get through. My gemsbuck was an escapee. I took her out because she was doing no good where she was. Just eating up sheep range. She was too old to be making calves anyway. Two inches of compression rings at the base of her horns. Leopards look for warthog holes to get through. Giraffe can also knock over fences if they feel like it.

Vultures were almost exterminated from South Africa. Poisoning for jackals and caracal took them out. The property where I took my last buffalo is working on rehabilitation of vultures for reintroduction. Alec was quite proud of his flock.