Out of Africa (warning: NOT 56K friendly...)

svt-40 said:
Which Of Them Tasted The Best?
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I think the concensus in our group was that the eland cutlets we had one evening were the camp favourite. My personal #1 choice was eland stroganoff (had 3 helpings that night!). Although not everyone rated it as highly as I did, I think my #2 dish was warthog stew.

That said, though, absolutely nothing tasted bad. We were very fortunate in that our outfitter's wife, who took care of the cooking, is a trained chef and home economics teacher. Thank goodness there was a lot of hiking involved during the day, as it was certainly a challenge to come back home with the same belt size...
 
Neo said:
Thanks, Martin -- I was hoping nobody knew enough to remind me that little episode came with a $2500 price tag :eek: It was, however, just one of those things. The guide did his level best to figure it out, and the opportunity was clearly starting to dissolve when he made the recommendation. I say clearly, "recommendation" -- because truly, it's the guy with his finger on the trigger who really "makes the call" and has to bear responsibility for what happens. We both knew it was a ram, but beyond that it took educated guesswork (which the guide certainly had) and some luck (which we were a bit shy on). But it really was a situation where it was shoot now or forever hold your peace. And this was the first and only opportunity for lechwe I had on the entire trip.

When I look back on all that happened during that hunting trip, however, I'm simply astounded at how well it went. Other than shooting a smaller than intended lechwe (which still came within about a 1/2" of making SCI Bronze), just about everything else went so well as to defy belief.

No, the lechwe was just a little reminder that humility is never something you're too old to remember.
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Mistakes are expensive over there, when we were there we spent 5 hours literally chasing a herd of Eland around in thick thorns, at the end of it I was whipped, I had got on the sticks three times but a shot never materialized. Finally we decided we would sneak around downwind and send my son for a loud stroll with the wind in the direction they were. Anyway they flushed, if you can call pushing a 2000 lb animal flushing, I was on the sticks as they ran up a little hill directly towards me in single file. The PH said when you see the bull you will know it, I had about 2 seconds of visibility and just has I was about to pull the trigger a much bigger and second bull rounded the corner, I held on the knuckle of his shoulder for asecond and then remembered the comment from the Perfect shot 375 mim for a frontal shot and pulled off the shoulder towards his neck, but not far enough.

After the shot the two bulls trotted in front of me for about 50 feet before disappearing, but I didn't know which one I had shot so I didn't shoot again. We never did find him, he was huge. Cost me $1700, but if I had shot the wrong one it would have been $3400.

Doesn't seem quite right to me that he charged you full price for a cull lechwe though, I can't tell from the angle, but the left horn is far longer than the right...correct.
 
martinbns said:
Mistakes are expensive over there, when we were there we spent 5 hours literally chasing a herd of Eland around in thick thorns, at the end of it I was whipped, I had got on the sticks three times but a shot never materialized. Finally we decided we would sneak around downwind and send my son for a loud stroll with the wind in the direction they were. Anyway they flushed, if you can call pushing a 2000 lb animal flushing, I was on the sticks as they ran up a little hill directly towards me in single file. The PH said when you see the bull you will know it, I had about 2 seconds of visibility and just has I was about to pull the trigger a much bigger and second bull rounded the corner, I held on the knuckle of his shoulder for asecond and then remembered the comment from the Perfect shot 375 mim for a frontal shot and pulled off the shoulder towards his neck, but not far enough.

After the shot the two bulls trotted in front of me for about 50 feet before disappearing, but I didn't know which one I had shot so I didn't shoot again. We never did find him, he was huge. Cost me $1700, but if I had shot the wrong one it would have been $3400.

Doesn't seem quite right to me that he charged you full price for a cull lechwe though, I can't tell from the angle, but the left horn is far longer than the right...correct.
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When we walked up to the lechwe and my guide Pierre realized what had happened, he immediately sat down with me and said we needed to discuss an adjusted price. I told him to hold off until we knew how the overall hunt went. In the end, I paid full pop for the lechwe because I really thought it was my cross to bear, being the shooter. Before the hunt was over, however, Pierre did insist that I shoot a couple animals on the house (including a nice kudu bull). He also replaced the cape that I blew to hell on my stenbuck (note: DO NOT shoot a stenbuck in the shoulder with a .270 Win. NOT EVER! :p). And as icing on the cake, he still wouldn't let it go until I agreed to have $1000 taken off the "proper" lechwe he wants me to shoot on my next trip. No, I was treated very, very well and felt that there was such incredible value in the trip that I simply wasn't comfortable trying to take off a few dollars where a mistake had been made. Had I done that, in fairness I should have insisted that I pay more for all the things that exceeded my expectations -- like the 5 animals that made the record book.

Also, re: the horns. It's mostly the angle of the photo. The lengths are within 1/2" of each other, although there is a bit of difference in their respective curvatures. That's very normal for lechwe, though, which almost never have truly symmetrical horns.

I sure hear you re: the eland though. In fact, it was your story that saved me from making the same mistake. Same basic situation -- we had a fantastic bull (34-1/2" -- yup, just 1/2" shy of the book) facing us more or less head-on at 175 yards or so. We couldn't get a better angle, as he kept tracking us as we tried to stalk around him. Eventually, we ended up with a very, very slight frontal quartering shot. I was shooting a .30/06 with 180 grain Hornady's. Pierre advised to hold between the shoulder and the neck, which I did. But as the crosshairs were settling down, I recalled your story, and then deliberately swung the crosshairs out towards the shoulder. I didn't have enough muscle to get through all that meat, but I figured I did have enough to take out the shoulder.

The plan worked, albeit not as cleanly as I would have liked. What I had failed to take into consideration is that an eland can still be on its feet 15 minutes after a front shoulder has been broken. As it turned out, that's all the little 180 grain pill was able to do before running out of gas. It did go down, though ... eventually ... with 4 more shots through the chest. The feeling afterwards was that I hadn't hunted the eland, but rather had gone to war with it.

It ended well, in that the animal wasn't lost. But the next time I'm hunting eland, I'll be carrying a .375 H&H, no question.
 
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Neo said:
I think the concensus in our group was that the eland cutlets we had one evening were the camp favourite. My personal #1 choice was eland stroganoff (had 3 helpings that night!). Although not everyone rated it as highly as I did, I think my #2 dish was warthog stew.

That said, though, absolutely nothing tasted bad. We were very fortunate in that our outfitter's wife, who took care of the cooking, is a trained chef and home economics teacher. Thank goodness there was a lot of hiking involved during the day, as it was certainly a challenge to come back home with the same belt size...
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We didn't get an eland, but my wife swore warthog was the best meat, wild or domestic, she'd ever eaten. I thought it was pretty good, but couldn't pick a "best", although my personal favorite was the impala they cooked over coals for a full day while we hunted. I got my buff, made a fluky left hand shot on a running warthog with a .375 that was too long for me, and came back to camp to roasted impala, followed by a birthday cake - it was my 51st birthday. Doesn't get any better than that.

We got an e-mail a couple of days ago from a South African fellow who became pretty good friend to us in Tanzania. The Tanzanian hunting fees are in total disarray ( in some cases they have increased 500% since we were there in 2006) and the regulations seem to change in mid-stream (a moratorium was put on lion hunting while guys were in the field hunting them, then several weeks later it was reinstated). While he continues to hold a financial interest in the safari company (our PH used their camps, vehicles and crews) Chris has moved onto other things.

In one of Mark Sullivan's videos, Sullivan states that things are changing in Africa, and anyone wishing a traditional hunting experience had better act quickly. I think he was right, and I'm glad we went when we did.

Neo, I was warned off using an African Taxidermist, but there is nothing wrong with your trophies, providing the tanning was done correctly. After seeing your baboon, I'm almost sorry I passed mine up.
 
Neo said:
When we walked up to the lechwe and my guide Pierre realized what had happened, he immediately sat down with me and said we needed to discuss an adjusted price. I told him to hold off until we knew how the overall hunt went. In the end, I paid full pop for the lechwe because I really thought it was my cross to bear, being the shooter. Before the hunt was over, however, Pierre did insist that I shoot a couple animals on the house (including a nice kudu bull). He also replaced the cape that I blew to hell on my stenbuck (note: DO NOT shoot a stenbuck in the shoulder with a .270 Win. NOT EVER! :p). And as icing on the cake, he still wouldn't let it go until I agreed to have $1000 taken off the "proper" lechwe he wants me to shoot on my next trip. No, I was treated very, very well and felt that there was such incredible value in the trip that I simply wasn't comfortable trying to take off a few dollars where a mistake had been made. Had I done that, in fairness I should have insisted that I pay more for all the things that exceeded my expectations -- like the 5 animals that made the record book.

Also, re: the horns. It's mostly the angle of the photo. The lengths are within 1/2" of each other, although there is a bit of difference in their respective curvatures. That's very normal for lechwe, though, which almost never have truly symmetrical horns.

I sure hear you re: the eland though. In fact, it was your story that saved me from making the same mistake. Same basic situation -- we had a fantastic bull (34-1/2" -- yup, just 1/2" shy of the book) facing us more or less head-on at 175 yards or so. We couldn't get a better angle, as he kept tracking us as we tried to stalk around him. Eventually, we ended up with a very, very slight frontal quartering shot. I was shooting a .30/06 with 180 grain Hornady's. Pierre advised to hold between the shoulder and the neck, which I did. But as the crosshairs were settling down, I recalled your story, and then deliberately swung the crosshairs out towards the shoulder. I didn't have enough muscle to get through all that meat, but I figured I did have enough to take out the shoulder.

The plan worked, albeit not as cleanly as I would have liked. What I had failed to take into consideration is that an eland can still be on its feet 15 minutes after a front shoulder has been broken. As it turned out, that's all the little 180 grain pill was able to do before running out of gas. It did go down, though ... eventually ... with 4 more shots through the chest. The feeling afterwards was that I hadn't hunted the eland, but rather had gone to war with it.

It ended well, in that the animal wasn't lost. But the next time I'm hunting eland, I'll be carrying a .375 H&H, no question.
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That's very cool that my story helped you out...+1 on the 375 for Eland.


BTW my favourite meal was a leg of springbok roast that was marinated in yogurt overnight, it was amazing.

The steenbok story is funny, I was about to shoot a mountai"n reedbuck in the same circumstances and just at the last second he said "Don't shoot him in the shoulder, you will ruin the cape". He was almost head on just a bit quatering away, so I basically shot his ass off with a 300 win mag at about 200 yards. This picture is kind or gruesome, he was trying to wlk away with basically no back end when the tracker jumped on him and stabbed him in the back of the head.

SouthAfricaTrip2007053.jpg
 
You know you're a hunter when you look at that picture and the first thing you think isn't "What a mess!" but rather "What a great set of horns!" :p

That's a heck of a mountain reedbuck -- crowding on 8 inches or so?
 
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