BUM and Back40Sniper Take Africa!!! (56k Beware!!!)

X2 on the wait for the pics on dial-up! It was worth it. Nice job fella's, my hats off to you. I can also appreciate the saving-up for years for a big trip. :) Thanks for sharing.
 
African hunting will never be cheaper than right now. We have a 90% dollar now which effectively means that safari prices (for Canadians) are about half of what they were just a few years ago. If the US greenback continues to wilt, the prices will change to reflect that.
 
Bring me your deposits...popcan can renovate to his little heart's content after he sees Constantia's facilities.

And I won't even bother around your daughters either!
 
Rained out so thought I would try to put up a few more pics, might get more interest in a CGN. hunt!
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, another one I hope of what you will see
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Will stop there and see if it works as my comp skills suck.
 
Story time......

The wildebeest was my first African animal. We hadn't been hunting for very long on the first morning when we came across a mixed herd of animals. There were several black and blue wildebeest milling around at the far side of a pan. I had been hoping silently that we would happen upon something that Back40 wanted first to take the pressure of shooting the first animal off me. Well, no such luck. Les and I bailed out of the truck as I had told them early on that when possible I wanted to shoot from the sticks and not off the back of the truck. We walked a short distance and set up the sticks. I'm sure that the noise from my heart pounding in my chest is what started the animals departing the area. Les pointed out my bull and I waited while a couple of animals cleared from in front and behind him. It's a good thing they moved when they did because I think that I was about 30 seconds from having the big one. Buck fever is bad, but wildebeest fever is downright dangerous! I made my shot and heard the bullet smack home. The bull ran about 100 yards and lay down. We stalked closer and when we got within 100 yards of the bull Les turns to me and says "If he charges you have to stop him because I don't have a gun". Gotta love those PHs and their ability to keep you calm! We set up the sticks and up stands the bull. I hit him again and he went down for good. We later found that I had pulled my first shot back and hit him in the liver area. The second shot went through his shoulder and got lungs and heart. Definitely not enough practice with shooting sticks before I went over. As we walked up to the bull I had a real lump in my throat as this hunt was the result of a year on planning and was supposed to be a trip with my dad who was unable to come due to some health problems. My mother ended up coming in his place which is why I now have about 900 digital photos of the hunt. The funny part of the whole thing was during the pictures. I'd look up just long enough for them to snap a few pictures but then I was looking back down at my bull. Just like a kid on Christmas.

The Blesbok was a bit of a comedy routine. The animals all vacated a pan as we drove up. Except one blesbok bull. He just laid there watching us. Gerrit, the owner and one of the PHs asked who was for blesbok. Charlie (Back40Sniper) was looking through his scope at the blesbok so I thought he was after one for sure. After about 30 seconds I looked at Charlie and said "Are you going to take him?" He looked at me a bit surprised and said "Geez, no. I'm not looking for a blesbok." Well then it was a real Chinese fire drill. Charlie bailed from the truck and I pushed past Big Doug who was in the middle of the seat and passed my rifle down. Les met me with the sticks and we walked towards him. We stopped about 100 yards away and set up the sticks. The blesbok just lay there. We picked up the sticks and moved forward about 10 yards. Up with the sticks again but he still laid there, rather unconcerned. Les stepped to the right to glass him a bit so I picked up th esticks in my left hand and kept my rifle in the notch of the sticks and walked forward another 10 yards. I settled the sticks down again thinking that eventually the goofy bugger would stand up but no dice. Les asked if I could shoot him lying down. I told him that I could but that I didn't really want to since it's hard to tell where things are when an animal is lying down. So I picked up the sticks again and walked forward. I was about 75 yards away when he finally decided that this was enough fooling around and stood up broadside to me. I got the sticks settled and held right on his shoulder. It seemed like there was a lot of time but it must have been fast because Les barely had "Take Him" out of his mouth when my rifle barked and over went the blesbok. I hit him a tad higher than I wanted to, probably didn't account for how damned close I ended up but it hit him right at the neck/spine junction and he went down without so much as a quiver. I was quite happy with how dark a body and how white an underside and face he had. For a minute I thought I might have shot a Bontebok (aside from the price I'm still not sure of the difference!). Another beautiful animal, either way.

The next day we were out cruising and came on some zebra. I don't feel like going into an immense amount of detail but I will try to make an excuse...the damned things are spooky. They bolt right now when they see the bakkie or a hunter on foot. A good stallion was standing clear and I rushed the shot. I hit him low through the muscles of the front legs and missed all the bone and major blood vessels. Man, you want to talk about a sick feeling. We spent several hours until sunset tracking and following him around without getting another shot at him. We went back to the camp with a big dark cloud hanging over my head.

Charlie came by my room later and told me that he would help me look for the zebra and that he was with me until we got him. That's a hell of a nice thing for a guy to say when he's paying $200 a day for hunting on the trip of a lifetime. I'll hunt with him again any time. I can't say enough good things about him.

The next day the guys set out on horseback and began a search while we set back out in the truck. A whole day of tracking led to nothing. We actually jumped the zebra the next day and he bolted...not badly injured wither. We found a blood trail and Koos (African tracker) and I tracked the zebra all day until we lost the trail in a rain storm. And let me tell you...those trees don't give you much shelter from a downpour.

We decided to let the zebra settle down and hunt another camp for a couple of days. We headed to a second safari camp whose name I didn't catch. We christened it "Death Valley" because it was the hottest place I have ever been in my life. We headed out and cruised the ranch a bit. Not seeing any game we headed in for lunch. Kudu burgers hit the spot followed by a dip in the pool. What a way to hunt! After lunch we set out again at around 3PM. Shortly after we had left I caught sight of a colossal kudu bull in the bush along a donga. Les and I abandoned ship and started to stalk the bull. We were in and out of the trees on the donga and then the bull crossed the trail and headed straight into the sun. Sneaky bastard! The sun was starting to get low on the horizon and was straight in our eyes. We caught sight of a cow kudu and the sticks were readied. I got on the target and waited. Four cows crossed in succession but the bull had given us the slip. We followed his tracks, which were huge in comparison, and caught a glimpse of him once before he disappeared for good. We were soaked through our shirts and the sun was droping below the horizon. We enjoyed the onset of the cool evening air and decided that rather than call for the truck to pick us up that we would walk back to the camp ourselves. Dark comes fast in Africa and within a few minutes Les and I stopped and he asked me if I could still see through my scope. I gave it a look and told him that I could. "Good, because there are rhinos on the property." Oh, really then. Just let me turn the power down to 1.5x on this baby, just in case. Last thing I wanted was to blunder onto one of those big blind boogers in the dark. Makes the 416 feel awfully damned small. We walked through the dark countryside and had a great yak about hunting, guiding in South Africa, and my dream hunt...buffalo. A great young fellow Les it and I'm sure that I've made a friend for life.

The next day we set off at around 8AM for another drive around the ranch. I was envigorated by my kudu sighting and was hungry to get another chance at him. We set off towards the donga where we had seen the kudu the night before. Then there were impala all over the countryside. So Les and I set off again on foot. We went from thornbush to pant-leg-grabbing thornbush and then there they were. I got set on the sticks as the ram looked straight at me at about 150 yards. I squeezed the trigger...or so I thought. Yank is probably a better verb. Clean miss and off the Impala went, disappearing into the bush. We wandered back to the truck, me quite cranky at myself for missing what I thought should have been a dead simple shot. We drove a bit further and there were the Impala again. I got set off the rest on the top of the truck and the ram stepped out and stopped broadside. This time I held up my end of the deal and hit the ram and inch or so behind where the dark and light colours met on the shoulder. He took a few steps and dropped. It was 8:00 in the morning as we gathered ourselves around to take the photos. If you look closely at the photos of me with the Impala you can see the sweat on my forehead. I have never been hotter in my life, and certainly not while hunting. I was just about drenched!

We loaded the impala up and headed back to camp to get him dropped off for skinning. I don't imagine that it would take long for the meat to spoil in that kind of heat!

We hunted the rest of the morning looking for an Impala for Charlie or a Kudu for either of us. With no more game seen we headed over to pick up Doug and Etienne for lunch. Another dip in the pool and a few pop and I was good as new. A fellow by the name of Johann Krös, a friend of Gerrit's, had stopped by for lunch. Gerrit informed us that we would split up after lunch with Charlie and Brian going with Les and Etienne to hunt this ranch while Doug and I would go with Gerrit and Johann to Johann's ranch, Kossan Safaris, for Warthog and possibly Kudu.

Kossan was only about 20 minutes from Death Valley. We arrived and met Johann's son Gustav and clambered aboard their olive bakkie. The purpose of the trip was really to get Doug a warthog as he had been twice before and not gotten one. Doug said to me as we left that we were about to see some really impressive work on Gerrit's part. Doug really bragged up Gerrit's trophy judging ability so I was feeling pumped. We were hardly gone from where we had left the van parked under the trees when we came upon a herd of forty or 50 gemsbok. The bakkie had no roof or rear cab wall so we were able to call Gustav to a halt quickly. Gerrit glassed the herd and quickly told me to take the animal that was the second from the right in an opening. I settled in behind the rifle and drew down on the animal I thought he was speaking of, then noticed that I was one animal too far left. I got on the gemsbok in question and concentrated on a perfect sight picture and squeezing the trigger just right. Bang ... Whack...ouch. I guess I should have concentrated on snugging the big Ruger into my shoulder a bit tighter. Charlie would later be quoted as saying "You don't hear the words 'free recoil' and '416 Rigby' in the same sentence". No, indeed! I put a nice little crease on the bridge of my nose with the bottom of the eyepiece bell on my Leupold. I soaked up the blood as we walked up on my gemsbok which had dropped almost instantly. The animal lay on it's left side facing away with it's head looking back and horns back against it's right hip. Gerrit tossed a stone and bounced it off the animal to be sure it was dead. Not even a twitch. I looked at the animal as Gerrit walked back to the truck (why I'm not sure). It was the most beautiful sight the way it was lying. I wish I'd taken a picture of it as it lay. When Gerrit came back with everyone else he said that he thought this was a pretty impressive bull. We rolled the Gemsbok around and discovered it to be a cow. The bases were very think to the point that you would be forgiven for thinking it was a bull. Gerrit told me that he thought she was about 10 years old. He got quite excited as we were moving it to a good spot for photos. As we set her head up Gerrit said "I don't like to do this but I just have to" and dug a small tape out of his little bag of tricks. I honestly didn't care what it measured as she was such a beauty. Nevertheless I held the tape to the horn as he stretched it out. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't thrilled to learn that she taped 40 3/4" and 40 1/2". Gemsbok and Kudu were my two favourite animals and the two that I most wanted to get so I was thrilled that I had not only gotten my gemsbok, but that she was not only a beautiful old animal but had the measurements to put her in Rowland Ward as well. I'm not a tape measure hunter at all, but there was some pride to having such an beauty on the ground and having made a very nice shot to bring her down.

We loaded her with me being careful to not skewer anyone with the horns while Doug, Gustav, Johan and Gerrit did the heavy lifting. What an impressive animal when you get up close to them. We headed back to the Kossan lodge and unloaded the gemsbok in their modest butcher shed. Kossan mostly caters to eco-tourists as Gustav, who is really the guy that is most involved, has had bad hunting experiences with animals not dying as fast as we all would like. Still they prepped the animals and had them hung right quick.

We struck back out with it getting late in the day. Mom was riding shotgun with Gustav and saw something out of the corner of her eye. She pointed it out to Gustav who hit the brakes. PIG! Doug brought his 416 to bear and unleashed a 30 grain X Bullet. He hit the pig solidly and it flopped to the ground. It was a nice pig, but not huge. Still, 4 years and 3 safaris later, Doug had his warthog.

We loaded the warthog and drove a very short distance when we came upon a springbok standing along in a clearing. Gerrit glassed him through his Leicas and announced that he was a shooter. I held tight on the little animal who was quartering on towards me. Gerrit told me to hold on the ram's nose and he turned his head to the right a bit. I held right on the tip of his nose and remember thinking how much of the ram was covered by the heavy duplex reticle, almost wishing that I had opted for the normal duplex. I squeezed the trigger and was rewarded by hearing the smack of the bullet and seeing the ram fall down, get to his feet and fall again for good. I was flying high and Gerrit announced that the shot had been 257 meters. So much for the 416 being a close range only proposition. So much for the 416 being a close range only proposition. We took photos as the sun set gloriously on another day of hunting in Africa.
 
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