Recently hunted in South Africa. Anyone want a recap?

[LopeHunter]

I hunted in Africa for the first time earlier this year. As an old guy who now finds flat lands more enticing than the more exhilerating high mountain adventures.

There are over 10,000 threads on just elk hunting at Hunttalk and less than 1,000 threads on non-American hunting of which Africa is only a portion. That seems to indicate Africa is not a hot button for the next recap most HuntTalkers might read next even as hunting is winding down for 2024.

I could write up a recap in a week or two with pictures, if is of interest.

The short overview: I was in the Limpopo region of South Africa for two weeks and harvested five animals with a crossbow including a Cape buffalo. I also tipped over three more with a rifle including a sable. These were wild animals born in the bush on a ranch larger than most counties in America though there is supplemental feeding in the winter and fences to keep out two-legged and four-legged critters. That is why I use the term "harvesting" while living out a childhood dream rather than any misrepresentation that I needed all of my hunting skills to succeed as I do on public hunts out West with free-ranging game.

There are almost no truly wild hunts left in Africa where you can hunt multiple species in a couple of weeks with no fences while not encountering other people including locals tending herds. I opted for a sure thing. Maybe was like asking the ugliest girl to the prom though I had a heck of a time even if my buddies that are free-range seeking out the pretty girls are smirking.

Is not everyone's cup of tea and for good reason as we are mostly a collection of Western big game hunters typically hunting on public lands.

If anything, I was the weak link on this African adventure as the non-local hunter parachuting into a very professional operation. My experience was thoroughly enjoyable as a traveler to a foreign land surrounded by a myriad of new (to me) plants, animals and behaviors. Including a green mamba at 10 feet. I had a blast.

Any interest?

 

[Hunting Wife]

Yes. Sable pics please. The most intriguing African animal for me personally.

African travel/hunting stories over tariff/election/political threads any day.

 

[WildWill]

I'd love to hear about it. I had some misgivings about hunting in Africa but went in with a open mind. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed myhunt over there. A buff is on the top of my bucket list.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

Interested for sure. Sounds fun! Did you take the crossbow or did they have one to use?

 

[Sask hunter]

Yes always

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

Let er' rip!

 

[kansasdad]

Duh!!

Let’s go @LopeHunter

 

[ashersdad]

Heck yeah we want a recap!

 

[rjthehunter]

Yes please.

Hunt stories make this site!

 

[Birdbander]

The farther away the hunting takes place, the more hearing about it intrigues the imagination.

I'll likely never hunt Africa, or anywhere outside of the US, and its only slightly more possible I'll be vacationing abroad but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in reading, learning or viewing programming from all over the planet.

Please share your Africa hunt!

 

[Trap]

i am definitely interested. I went with my dad 7 years ago, also in the limpopo region. I have hunted western public land my entire life but would say that Africa trip is one of my best memories. 2 things I wish I would have taken are sable and buffalo! post them up!

 

[jpc01101]

We are going to Limpopo and taking the entire extended family in July. I can’t wait, bring on the write-up.

 

[Sytes]

Hunt partner and I returned from a one week hunt trip in S. Africa this past September. Was fantastic!

Send it! Dig the adventures and pics!

 

[Muskeez]

Yes please! As many of us age and change chapters in our lives I think we (me anyway) become more open to the possibility of doing something like this for the adventure, variety and memories it can provide. Thanks in advance !

 

[ploxwithblox]

Please do it. A lot of us will likely never end up doing it, but it's sure a treat to live vicariously through the tales told.

 

[LopeHunter]

The tribe has spoken. Let me get to work on recap. Here are a couple of photographs to get the ball rolling.

First picture: We are dragging a small tree over miles of dirt roads to set the table for looking for fresh Cape buffalo tracks the next morning. The amount of snake trails crossing the road we discovered the next morning was interesting as the pattern allows identification and size of the species so a cobra crossed here, a mamba there, a python over there, etc. One python track looked as if a fire hose had been pulled across the road. There are a lot of species of snakes in Limpopo, South Africa, which can ruin your day though only a half dozen or so are confirmed to have killed people. The rest are also venomous but unlikely to send you home in a crate with your animal skulls and skins.

Mosquitoes here at the ranch rarely carry malaria as would require a strong wind blowing for days from the malarial zones. The ticks, on the other hand, are plentiful and there is a non-zero chance you might develop tick fever which is described as a rough bout with the flu.

Two-legged predators are not prevalent though incidents do happen so precautions are taken on ranches throughout rural South Africa including the fencing, radio check-ins, patrols and carrying personal weapons.

Phillip is standing to the side of the road though he often surfed the truck's front bumper checking for tracks as we drove to a hunting blind. Stian is out of view at the steering wheel which is on the right side of the truck. Charlie the tracking dog is peeking out the back. I, as usual, lack any useful skills to move the needed process along as the guys planned strategy and conducted tactics. I am contributing less than zero to this endeavor. I say less than zero because I took over a week to tip over eight critters while Phillip and Stian likely could have wrapped up things before sunset on the second day if I had instead slept in and swam in the pool.

I had a blast even with my minimal value to the process.

The guys on this ranch understand this is a service industry so they did a great job of having me feel as if I was an interesting person to hang out with for so many days. Was not patronizing but was something they focus upon. I am very quiet on stalks which gained their admiration and I had a lot of practice as a kid slow-hunting autumn woods in the Midwest where dry leaves and twigs are everywhere. No wounded animals required a follow-up shot nor ran into the heavy brush. I am very safety conscious and keep my finger off the trigger until am ready to shoot. No muzzle control issues. The staff seemed to enjoy seeing the pictures I had taken each day.




Next picture: Sunrise through a thorn bush as I paused just before climbing down a short ladder into a partially subterranean concrete blind designed specifically for use by archers. The blind can be buttoned up by keeping the entry door latched and the slider windows closed which was helpful when a green mamba decided to entertain us by playing hide and seek for an hour by using the windows to peer in then disappear for a couple of minutes before showing up at another window.

All hunting on the main property is using bows or crossbows so the blinds being custom-designed is great compared to most ranches that are set up for rifle hunting. Dozens of blinds are installed across the ranch's main property which is larger than many counties in America. Only a few blinds are used each day even when the ranch tops out at their self-imposed maximum number of hunters. The animals are not getting bumped and stirred up by hunters so they might remain deep in the thick brush for weeks at a time, especially if there has been rain which creates hundreds of hidden watering holes.

The big game was bought and let loose decades ago as the ranch converted from cattle to hunting soon after Apartheid began to be dismantled which prompted a gold rush of North American big game hunters. All the animals on the ranch today are several generations removed from those initial few dozen animals of each species. The animals are cautious and spook easily though supplemental feeding and watering takes place seasonally. I never felt like I was shooting a tame milk cow next to a barn.

Okay, the unclaimed fart in the elevator. High fencing. This type of fencing or any other type of fencing is not something you bump into while in the hunting zone. The periphery of the ranch has high fence to keep out two and four-legged predators. I encountered fencing as I passed though the entrance gate on Day 1, another fence surrounds the lodge, another is around the small agricultural zone which raises feed for the big game and food for the ranch, and another fence is around an affiliated family business on a small land parcel which contains sables being bred for auction to game ranches which spend impressive amounts for a sable bull to bolster their herd's genetics. Supposedly these sables are recent descendants of the famed Kalahari herd. I am not into horn porn though the sable bulls being auctioned are impressive.



I will try to wrap up the recap for this weekend. My wife pays me by the words I write now that I am retired so the overall recap will be plenty long enough to fund a new camera lens.

 

[LopeHunter]

Let's get into a proper recap. I have my eye on a new camera lens and have the word count turned on now.

I recently returned from my first hunting adventure in Africa. This trip will also my last time hunting in Africa. Yes, I am boldly stating this declaration which has become a falsehood for so many prior adventurers.

My confidence in a one and done experience is not the result of my trip going sideways or being a bust. Not at all. I experienced everything which I anticipated and much, much more which I had no way to foresee.

I did plenty of shooting and a bit of hunting. My adrenaline surged to maximum volume a time or two. Day after day, I was waking up in a foreign place to wonderful new food experiences, amazing vistas, a myriad of intriguing plants and animals, and in-depth enlightening responses to my questions from a top-notch, patient staff.

After tipping over a Cape buffalo bull, even normally reserved me posed for a couple of photographs while reincarnating a wide-grinning, bearded Ernest Hemingway kneeling next to the vanquished beast which Robert Ruark described “looks at you like you owe him money.”



Photograph: Stian behind me as I unleash my Hemingway grin while we move to a different blind.

The grin was not from having accomplished some impossible task, which was not the reality of the circumstances as I pulled the trigger, but rather was my enthusiasm bubbling over for having lived the moment I had dreamed of this for so many years. I had read stories. I had watch videos. Now I was really in the moment. I was finally in Africa and a couple of animals were now “in the salt.” I was not changing Africa though Africa was changing me.

I soaked up so much from Africa. At every turn there was something interesting, if not captivating. Was life-affirming. Best of all, like my Western hunting experiences, my favorite memories of Africa are typically moments which did not involve tipping over an animal.

 

[LopeHunter]

Getting to Africa was a glacially slow process for me. Fifty-two years trickled out of my life’s hourglass from the autumn of 5th grade when I vowed to hunt in Africa until I watched my first sunrise rising over the ranch the day before my odometer rolled over to 63 years.

Don’t be me. Go sooner. Your relatively young body will appreciate your promptness. Africa will wait patiently for you as it did for me though our options recede as the African continent’s population expands, social tensions ebb and flow, and restrictions further limit how and what you can hunt then ship back home.

We are all different though physically my very best week in the past year seems about how I felt during an average week a decade ago. Older acquaintances knowing smile so I suspect this year will soon enough be the good old days!

A bittersweet aspect of waiting into my sixties to experience Africa is I have now outlived some of my closest childhood buddies and all my aunts, uncles, in-laws, father and grandparents. I can’t share the details and photographs of this hunt with them. The emotions of slowly pulling the crossbow’s trigger to unleash the bolt flying on a $10,000+ shot which becomes a line item on your tab with the spilling of the first drop of the Cape buffalo bull’s blood.

My favorite uncle would have spent hours asking me questions. He traveled near and far for geological projects including to Africa during the 1960s and 70s. This was when a rolled up wad of American currency representing a few month’s wages for a Customs official could be passed in a discrete handshake which then would quickly resolve bothersome issues such as having a few hundred pounds of self-collected minerals placed in the America-bound airplane’s cargo hold. Things were different then.



Photograph: My fave Uncle Ivan in his 80s, perhaps without a roll of currency at the ready.

 

[LopeHunter]

Things were different when I was a kid, too. I grew up in a family comfortable with firearms. A shotgun was a tool in the same way as a chainsaw or a sharp knife. You handle these tools with care or risk unintended but foreseeable harm.

I shot my first highly lethal weapon at age 6 when, with my great-grandfather’s assistance, I balanced a WWI-era single-shot 12-gauge shotgun across the arms of a metal chair just after finishing supper on a visit to his farm. I lined up the bead onto the empty Folger’s coffee can perched on a corner fence hedge wood post at twenty paces and with a pull of the trigger unleashed an armada of double-ought buckshot from a paper shell casing housed in a brass base.

I recall excitedly running then climbing through the three-strand barbed wire to retrieve that now-mangled coffee can. The evening light streaming through the holes was mesmerizing. I collected the spent shell casing which now had a split brass base and inhaled the faint sulfuric fumes.



Photograph: Coffee can assassin

A couple of years following my monumental harvest of a coffee can, my two older brothers and I collectively obtained a Savage 1911 rifle which was chambered for only .22 Short ammunition.

We lived in town and used money earned from mowing neighbors’ lawns to fund our target practice ammunition. We took turns shooting through targets pinned on an ancient mattress containing cotton batting and wood shavings which we leaned against a salvaged solid oak door in our home’s musty concrete basement. The mustiness was due to the city’s overwhelmed sewer lines creating a small fountain into our basement for an hour or so following heavy rains.

Target practice continued. I became a reliable shooter who had experienced the sting of lead fragments which occasionally reached us. The ricochets were our clue to stuff additional phonebooks behind the mattress. I have no idea why my parents approved this haphazard indoor shooting gallery though child protective services were not a thing in our backwater town. Neighbors never complained, either, perhaps because we were a reliable mowing crew that worked on the cheap. Was a different time.

We were eventually given permission to use the Savage to plink at rabbits which seasonally invaded our small vegetable garden which took up a chunk of our unfenced back yard. In town, obviously. The .22 Short was a huge improvement in range and terminal velocity over our pump Marksman BB rifle which had mostly annoyed the rabbits. Rabbits became few and far between before the sweet corn tasseled in late June.

 

[LopeHunter]

By the start of 5th Grade, in 1972, I had been gifted a pristine Ithaca 20-gauge side-by-side and, when I could wrangle up a pocket full of shells, I was eventually harvesting squirrels, rabbits, doves, ducks and geese on the outskirts of town.

My woodsmanship was improving, too, from hunting wood lots at the edge of town and rural property we owned on the bluffs above the other side of the Missouri River.

Around Thanksgiving week that year, I pedaled my bicycle uptown to get a crew cut which was a non-negotiable task my father assigned to his sons every three weeks. My father had served in the Army during the Korean War so appreciated a crisp haircut.

This was during the back half of the Vietnam War and, unlike some places around America, there were no protest marches taking place in my hometown. Our school day still began with the Pledge of Allegiance. There was no option to not participate. Conformity with the old ways was expected. Spare the rod, spoil the child was the mantra of my youth.

Roy “the barber” was a WW2 Navy veteran and the only barber in our farm town who tolerated antsy young boys. Roy did not accept appointments. On this visit there were several men and boys ahead of me so I had time to pass as sat quietly. Boys were to be seen and not heard at the barbershop while the men would “shoot the breeze” with each other and Roy.

Seating at the barbershop was not a random arrangement. Men sat on the left side as you entered from the shop’s stairs which ended below street level. Boys only sat to the right. This age-segregated seating allowed the church-going men in our Bible Belt town to discretely access and peruse a pile of scandalous “girlie” magazines which Roy stored inside the coffee table’s drawer.

So, as was typical while waiting at Roy’s as a boy, I sat and fidgeted with the other lads facing a pile of tattered comic books scattered on an old rectangular dining table which Roy had sawed away some of each leg so was transformed into a make-shift, oversized coffee table decorated with coffee mug rings and cigarette burns.

I began sifting through the tattered comic books. I unexpectedly found a nearly pristine Outdoor Life magazine published a few years prior which was buried beneath the comic books. The magazine cover featured a charging lion. Well, well, what do we have here?



Photograph: Gateway to a dream

Jack O’Connor was the author of the cover story. I thumbed through to the article. Dangerous beasts much larger than my harvested rabbits and ducks. Mysterious Africa which I only knew from watching old black and white Tarzan movies. O’Connor roped me in paragraph by paragraph. Eventually Roy called my name. I knew something by that moment. I was going to Africa, by golly.

Sure, I had shot exactly zero big game animals. I had not set foot outside of Missouri more than briefly for a few occasions and never ventured beyond the Lower 48. No matter. I would someday stare down these magnificent beasts and aim true.

Alas, this Africa thing had a few hurdles to clear as Roy’s electric clippers made short work of resurrecting my crew cut. First hurdle was I was a pre-teen. Also, I did not know anyone who had been to Africa carrying a rifle except a couple of Church members who had battled Axis troops while my father was still in junior high school. No matter. I would solve things when I was a grown-up which I then presumed with be soon after graduating high school.