well i will try to relieve some of the suspense. if you read the Hope & Faith tread you know that i killed a nice kudu on day 3 with Hope. it was awesome. i don't want to spoil Jon's thunder, but since he is out of town he ask for me to post for him.
i need to back up a little and Jon will need to fill in any details when he gets back. i hope i have my days right, since Jon also has all the hunting notes i'm going from memory. now that's real trouble, i think i lost my mind years ago. well here goes. on the afternoon of day 2 Jon was hunting with PH Francois (sp) at a hide named Long Trough and with light fading a nice bull Kudu came in to water with a whole herd. i can't remember how many bulls were in the bunch, but Jon did say there were multiple bulls that came in.
Jon's PH gave him the thumbs up on this certain bull and told Jon that he would go 52". remember that we don't see the animals on a daily basis like the PH's do so when they say it's a shooter you shoot which is exactly what Jon did. upon reviewing the video the hit was less than perfect but not by much. in any event it was decided to give him the night and pick up the track at first light.
i can't speak for Jon, but i know myself when i have to suck it up and wait over night to give an animal time to die i might as well sit up and stare at the wall cause i know there won't be any sleep.
back at camp we enjoyed yet another wonderful meal prepared by our OK chef Clemons. OK was the letters on his chefs apron by the way and not how good the food was. the food was, well let's just say i need to go out and buy some new clothes because the stuff i have is way to small. i must have gained 10-15 pounds. after dinner we sat around the table and told so many lies it wasn't funny. no actually i think we all told truths just added a little flare to them. desert and some penalty shots ( i will explain later about these) and it was time to hit the hay.
a knock at the door came about the time my eyelids decided to close. i just couldn't get to sleep this night for some reason and hadn't even shot an animal. if you think theres no pressure being the camera man think again. when a shot was eminent i would get the racing heart beat and sweaty palms just as if i was the one pulling back the string.
it's really bad when you don't get the footage to. i'm still catching grief for messing up some footage of Ed's eland. any way the nights sleep was very little and now it was time to go track Jon's kudu. we replayed the tape several times trying to determine which bull was the one Jon shot as they bolted from the scene. as they ran off camera to the left it was impossible to determine which animal we needed to be watching so the trackers went to work the old fashioned way and they tracked.
there were at least 5 kudu in the bunch and the trackers started with the first and followed it for hundreds of yards until they were certain that these tracks were made from an animal that was not wounded. this is really hard to explain in written form. to really appreciate what these guys can do you need to see it in person. i will try to do them justice here if that's possible.
imagine if you will a coral full of cows ready for branding. they are running every which way and of course leaving zillions of tracks. well add to that coral the pigs and sheep and horses and any other farm animals you can think of and then picture what the ground must look like with all those tracks. the soil is sandy to a powdered dust which in my opinion leaves hard to read tracks.
hope you are getting the picture here of what the ground must look like. any way these guys would follow a specific animal for as long as they needed to make sure it was either the right or wrong animal. the two trackers followed if i remember right 5 different animals on this track until they were certain they had the right animal.
i just had to ask for some clarification so i stopped one of the trackers and ask how he knew they were following the right animal. i left a small part out, there was no blood since we didn't have an exit hole. these animals are big with big chest cavities and if you hit a little high you get zero blood which was the case on this animal.
any way they showed me how this animals hooves were not normal when he walked, they would flare out a little. oh, OK if you say so. what the heck are they looking at. i sure had no clue and if i was amazed before i ask the question i felt like a complete knucklehead afterwards because i still couldn't have told you the difference from one to the other.
i have tracked a lot of whitetails over the years and even some really tough trails but this was crazy. so crazy that i just had to open my mouth and ask "are you sure we are on the right track". minutes later i was shown my short comings as a small spot of blood was pointed out.
here we had been following this set of tracks for probably 300-500 yards and these guys (the trackers) pointed out a spec of blood the size of a green pea. wonder if one of these guys would like to some live in the states. bet they could make a fortune tracking stuff.
after making a huge semicircle around the blind they located Jon's Kudu bull. he was a fine animal, not quite 52" though. Francois had made a slight error in inches on this bull and we all got a good laugh although his boss Piet was a little miffed at him for telling a client to shoot a small bull. Jon being the great guy that he is, said the bull was perfect and he was glad he had shot him. i'm with Jon on this one what's a few inches when you are looking at such an awesome animal.
Francois inherited the nick name after that 52" and we all had a good laugh at his expense. when i send him a letter or Christmas card i will address it to PH 52. we loaded the bull and made our way back to camp just in time for one of Clemons small meals he had whipped up for brunch. i think brunch was responsible for about 5 of those 15 pounds that i gained. you know the plate they put the thanksgiving turkey on, well that's about how big a plate you needed to fit all the food he would prepare for you. what a bunch of pigs we are.
after brunch we headed back out to the bush. what i really wanted to do was take a serious nap. after no sleep the night before and this huge meal i was ready to crash. but since time was short and Africa is a long ways away i figured i could catch up on sleep when i returned home. what was i thinking, my honey do list turned into a spiral notebook full of chores. o' and they need to get done before the first saturday in october or i will be in the dog house and not up in my tree stand waiting on a whitetail.
that brings me to the afternoon of day 3... it's Jon, Piet, our PH and myself sitting in what would ultimately be the hot hide of the trip. as we sat there in afternoon heat i was asking Piet a lot of questions about his operation there at Afrika Jag Safaris. about how much land they had and the kinds of animals and on and on.
the afternoon moved a long a quick pace with visits from an assortment of birds. then out of no where in comes a huge oryx sometimes called a gemsbok. it was a cow which most of the time have the longer horns. the males usually are shorter but have more mass. this was a fine oryx and Piet gave the thumbs up but i could hear a little hesitation in voice so i ask if he was sure.
in the mean time Jon was tell me if i wasn't going to shoot then he was. after a closer inspection we determined that this cow looked as though she might be carrying a calf in her belly so we decided to pass her up and just enjoy the moment. as she walked away and disappeared into the bush i for a fleeting moment had to question my decision to pass up a chip shot at this beautiful animal. especially since it was the one animal that i had really wanted to take on this trip.
i didn't get to think about it to long however. just moments after she was out of sight in comes a huge warthog boar. now if you know Jon, when he saw this pig coming in he went into DT's. Jon is a true connoisseur of the swine and when he saw this fine specimen making his way in he locked in on him like a fighter pilot a Russian Mig.
as Jon locked in on him with his bow i was doing the same with my camera except this warthog had different ideas of his own. this guy raced back and forth just yards in front of the blind. he would cross in front of me and then disappear off camera to one side or the other. this went on for what seemed like 10 to 15 minutes. i could tell Jon was getting impatient but i was coaching him to wait as i wanted this shot on camera.
back and forth he paced and i thought to myself somethings got to give and then he finally settled down and walked right up to the water. i whispered to Jon that i was on him and to shoot when ever he was ready. the word ready had barely escaped my lips when i heard the twang of his bowstring and then everything went up in a cloud of dust.
this should hold you for a little bit, my fingers are cramping.... i will take up where i left off sometime tomorrow....
Topic: >>--Red Arrow Crew--> is back from Namibia (Read 11456 times)
