Okay, I am back. I had some really important stuff to do. Our Archery Antelope season has already been open for 3 days and I haven't even been hunting yet. I went out today to a new ranch and got the tour so tomorrow it will be legwork time and get a blind set up so I can go out next week on my days off and give things a try! Herb the one that came in the last day was a Blue Wildebeest which I don't want to shoot but Vissers have a very nice herd of Black Wildebeest which I had to stay away from for fear of going even more over budget! I saw 2 bulls while we were driving around that were absolutely huge. Bigger than any picture I have ever seen of one!
Marty, are you planning on going back with Gene? Let me know will you. I am going back in 2007 also but I haven't decided exactly when.
Terry, that is an awesome bull you got at Doug's! I am going back this fall to try my bow again. Last year I hit mine in the elbow with my first shot and he just wasn't real cooperative after that. He ended up with an acute case of lead poisoning unfortunately but he still ate mighty fine.
Okay, Day 3 - A little background first. When I arrived in camp the only other hunters were Kipp Kerr, his dad Ken Sr, and son Kenny. They are from Cincinatti (I hope I spelled that right) OH. Kerr construction or Kerr custom homes. They were wonderful people and it was a real pleasure to get to spend some time in camp with them. This was the first time that all 3 generations had been hunting togethor. Anyways, one of the things Kipp was after was a Lepoard and after seeing Dries Jr in action I would have to say if you want spots he is the guy to talk to. When me and Hien got back to the lodge at the end of a very long day 2 ( see previous post) we heard on the radio that Kipp had shot a Lepoard! With a forecast for another day of shifting winds I asked Hien if we could go along the next day to recover the cat, silly me! You ever hear the saying be careful for what you wish for? Kipp and Dries Jr got back about an hour later and we spent almost another hour going over the video frame by frame. The first cat that came in he had shot underneath between it and the branch. This one was real easy to see because of the lighted nock. Not to long after that another one appeared on the branch and Kipp took the shot which resulted in a hit but we were unable to determine exactly where on the cat it was. It turned out what we were seeing on the video was the shadow of the arrow. The bait site was about an hour and a half drive away and when we got there we started looking for sign. Having spent a good deal of time reading about African hunting for several years I had a good idea just how dangerous wounded leapoards could be so I was sutibly armed at this point with a Tikka 30-06. The tracks were confusing for a while because it ended up that there had been 3 different cats at the bait in one night. It also turned out that the first cat that they thought had been missed had been cut across the back of it's forearm buy the first shot. This area was still heavily brushed but there were also taller trees and hardly any thorns. We were in the Waterburg mountains and just about everything was granite. Any soil between boulders supported 2-4 foot high grass. For 4 hours we worked at sorting out the criss crossing lepoard trails with 2 of the 3 bleeding. Eventually we discovered where the male and the female, both of which were bleeding had gone under a fence onto the adjoining property. We needed to contact this landowner and get permission to follow onto their place so while that was being done we returned to the truck to get some more water. I had come to the conclussion in my mind that we were barking up an empty tree and being very tired when we got to the truck I put the rifle I was carrying back into the gun rack. This was one of the days when the temperature rose into the high 80's. Now you should be able to tell from my pictures that I am not very well adapted to heat. My nice comfortable temp for personal comfort is about 50 degrees. Eventually permission was obtained and we went back to the fence crossing. This is were my Army training started coming in handy. Very big guy sqeezes under game proof fence. This was the first indication to me that the game proof fences weren't really so. The 2 lepoards that had been hit by arrows had been travelling togethor up to this point but not very far on the other side of the fence they split up. It was determined from the blood sign that the female only had a minor flesh wound and would be okay but that the male was seriously wounded. Did I say that the trackers were amazing! This is the day that the dogs really amazed me also!! The trail eventually lead to the base of a cliff that was about 60 feet high but we could clearly see blood going up it. The little voice in my mind is saying " there is no way this cat would be going up this cliff if it was seriously wounded" and I silently congratulated my self for having the foresight to leave the rifle back in the truck instead of dragging it along on this folly. More Army training comes in handy now, Repelling and Mountainerring School, as we go up the cliff. Jack Russells can jump really high but we had to hand them up the cliff to each other as we climbed to get them up to the top. We got to the top of the cliff and the ground opened up a little bit and we picked up the blood trail and the dogs set off. We had been going for about 5 1/2 hours at this point. We crested the ridge and the trail turned to the left. We were going along the ridge when we reached the end of it and it started dropping off. As tthe hill dropped off the grass suddenly got thicker and there was a large patch of brush just downhill to our left. We had 3 Jack Russells with us to start. At this point one had run ahead out of sight, one was with us, and the other one was being taken to a waterhole to get cooled off. Kenzo(the dog) suddenly went on point and started growling. Not being ones to ignore a sign we stopped for a rest and water replenishment. The other dogs were taken for a dunk in the waterhole and we all drank a bunch of water. 30 minutes later when we had refocused ourselves and the dogs indicated that it was safe we proceeded forward. 25 yards from where Kenzo warned us we found where the cat had bedded and there was a lot of fresh, bright red, liquid blood. We were close! At this point the thought crossed my mind, why am I out here in grass 3 feet tall looking for a wounded lepoard without a gun? Oh ya, because I asked to be here and I left the gun in the truck 2 1/2 hours ago. Occasionally I have been accussed of not thinking things all of the way through, go figure. I almost forgot to mention, as soon as we found the fresh blood after the dog's alert the PH's told me and Kipp to close up and we recieved our instructions incase of a close kitty encounter. EVERYONE jump on the cat if it gets ahold of somebody! A lepoard can kill one person that is alone but it can't kill 4 people. I new there was some reason why I had bought that Medical Emergency/Evacuation insurance! Oh well, on we pressed and crossed a road after which the grass and brush opened up alot. We also heard a barking fit from the one dog that had run ahead. Ever since we had jumped the cat from his bed he had been bleeding good. Dries Jr and Hien, the PH's with the Guns were in front. I was 10 yards behind them, and Kipp was 10 yards behind me. I was really dragging at this time. We had been going for almost 7 hours and close to a mile from the bait tree with several emotional highs and lows and me being just a wee little bit out of shape. 150 yards after we crossed the road the dogs went on point again and Dries and Hien froze and up came the guns. I kept walking towards them wanting to see what they were seeing when I see this gold dappled streak come up off the ground 15 yards in front of them and turn away. It was gunfight at the O.K. corral for about 3 seconds, barking, growling dogs, and lots of Adrenolin!!!
All of this happened in an instant and then there was a lot of celebrating because anytime a wounded lepoard is succecssfully delt with and no one is injured it is a good day! Kipp's shot hit mid body just behind the diaphram. Dries Jr. said it was 3" to far back. Close but almost not close enough. It took me close to an hour to calm down. I hadn't been this wound up since I was in that garden spot, southern Iraq, getting shot at in 1991. Big party back at the lodge that night and a suprise when the skinners started on the cat. He didn't have full range of motion in his right elbow and there was a large lump there. When the skin was removed we could see the back of a broadhead so out came the saw. It turned out to be a Shkote Broadhead with the tip rolled over and one edge sheared off. It was encased it bone that had grown around it. It was put there the previous year by another of Dries Jr's hunters who was trying to get a lepoard. You can see the shot on the video, Africa's Best Bowhunts Vol. 3. It is the very last shot before the end of the video and even though the guy was using a 95# bow and a sturdy BH it didn't make it through the elbow. It hadn't slowed down the cat very much either because the original bait that drew this cat in was a good sized Hartebeest, about 350#, that it had killed. Dries Jr. found it and moved it to a tree where they could get a shot at it. This concludes my adventure. If you have any questions feel free to ask either here or privately and I will answer them to the best of my ability and thanks for reading along. Joseph
Topic: I'm Back!!! (Story and Pictures added) (Read 11793 times)
