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Made it out a couple days ago after work. I like to start my shed season checking fence lines, I usually scoop up a few a year that way. Lucked into a good one to start, 76.5” four point. Lots of miles in my future looking for the match.

If a person goes guided do they not need to be in great shape to get to said big bulls? Jimmy Johns

Limpopo Province, on the Limpopo River, May 2019 I received a couple of questions regarding my avatar so I thought I would post a little bit of information about the hunt for anyone planning a hunt in South Africa. I think it is important to mention that the majority of hunting in South Africa is conducted behind what is termed high fences here. The size of the high fenced areas varies greatly from small 4 foot fences to stop cattle and sheep movement to large scale “big 5” fences. This fencing also serves to protect outfitters and land owners from poaching and therefore their viability. You will struggle to find a property in South Africa or Namibia with no fences somewhere along the line, be it a park border, a high fence on a neighboring property, or a barrier to public roads. The land areas are generally very large so you may not even see a fence at all during your visit apart from entering or leaving the area, and the low fences do not hamper animal movements much. There are also a number of different ways in which you can hunt in South Africa - but all of mine has been traditional “Track and walk”. You would typically wake up and have a coffee and small breakfast at the camp before being driven to another part of the property known for the type of animal you are looking for and walk from there. For this hunt, I was at Maswiri safaris’s Beskow camp, a 5,000 hectare parcel of land in the far north of South Africa along the Limpopo river and I was after a nice bull kudu as my wife wanted some “decorative horns” to place on the coffee table. Similar to the Coues deer - a kudu is also referred to as the “Grey Ghost” and can sometimes be a nightmare to find despite their size. My friends knew about my target and as such bought me a couple of books (Peter Flack - Hunting the Spiral Horns) and magazines in attempts to assist. We walked for miles and miles, glassed for hours on the top of “koppies” (small rocky hills) without too much luck for about a week. We didn't even see cows. After another unsuccessful morning we made our way back to camp for a breakfast where I discussed going straight back out in the heat of the day and focussing along water points. We drove to a likely area and were dropped off with our backpacks, professional hunter and a tracker and slowly walked our way along. It wasn't too far from the drop off point (I’d say less than 2 miles) that the tracker started getting excited as he had seen a good bull. The path towards him was pretty open so we backtracked and went around another koppie, inching our way around to spot him again. And there he was with his head deep into a bush and perhaps a 100 shot with his shoulder exposed. We set up the shooting sticks, set up the rifle and turned off the safety. I slowly squeezed the trigger and down he went - my first kudu bull. It was only later when we looked at him that we realized just how great a bull he was - old as the hills, with ground down teeth and beautiful ivory tips. Of course - we now started to find kudu’s everywhere we looked for the remainder of the trip. For those of you interested, horn length for a Kudu measured in it's simplest form is taking the measurement of the longest horn from the base along the spiral ridge to the tip only and can be extremely difficult to judge in the field - factors such as how deep the curls are influence the final score greatly. According to a post on Africahunting.com titled judging Greater Kudu: “In terms of trophy size when it comes to mature Greater Kudu bulls, the holy grail is taking the elusive monster 60 inch plus (152.4 cm) Greater Kudu which is something that does happen to a lucky few, however it is the result of the hunting gods smiling down upon you. I would say that horns above 55 inches (139.7 cm) make for an amazing trophy, horns above 50 inches (127 cm) make for a great trophy, horns above 45 inches (114.3 cm) make for a good trophy and horns below 45 inches (114.3 cm) make for a beautiful trophy and great memories!” Mine doesn't have exceptionally deep curls, but measured 53 inches. Regardless of the measurement - my wife didn't get her decorative horns for the table - but he does sit proudly on my wall.

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Was out chasing mule deer this January and came across this shed! I spent a couple hours looking for the match but no luck.

Fished it Saturday. The ramp is high and dry, and the gravel retention mesh is piled up at the end. You can launch off to the side,but it’s shallow launching, you’ll be getting your feet wet putting a boat back on the trailer. We put a 14’ in and out no problem. Water is a brisk 46-47 degrees. Watched a kayak fisherman take a cold bath trying to take a piss. Fortunately for him he was in shallow water when he did it.

Great idea! Very interested to hear how it was!

2 new excited hunters. Thanks guys!

Send me a pic of that buck that got killed. I’m 95% sure I have trail camera photos of him in 2017

JAFR

How much for ALL of them! (don't answer that) So darn cute, gotta love labs!

Ya i am in. i made call to the lady right before five so they will charge me for it tomorrow. Looks like i am going Gould's turkey hunting!

Can't even draw the poverty tags! Glad we could in the past. My kids have no hope of getting tags which is really unfortunate.

So the OTC deer quotas aren't met and the season is open in January... Ed F

Hitting Hawley tuesday?? Cant wait for them big browns

Still shedding the lbs, had a small hiccup on vacation few weeks back, but down to 195. My goal is to hit 179.9 by June 1st. Went out with the kids shooting coyotes and wow what a awesome feeling, gonna need to buy new Camo, old stuff is not fitting well 😊

I’ve missed two in the fall and those pack outs wouldn’t of been any easier than the spring hunts.

Love my Tacoma. 4 door 4x4 Gen 2. Can take 3 buddies, plus throw all the gear and animals in the back. I've taken it anywhere a jeep will go.

Not the new Broncos There like the prius of the off-road world .give it to ford for putting a skirt on a explorer and calling it a bronco .only the early Broncos were bad a$$ the ones from the late 60s and 70s.

Continuing with some South African hunting stories - here is one from the Kalahari, this time from a Erin Game Ranch. Erin was a 6,000 hectare farm awarded to the Komani San community in 1999 and is managed purely as a hunting farm employing the local San community members. It is a stunningly beautiful example of rolling sand dunes typical of the Kalahari. This is an amazing place to visit with friends and is my group of hunter’s favorite destination for kalahari hunting. The Kalahari is a desert, and winter hunting whilst generally beautifully mild during the day is staggeringly cold at night. It is not uncommon for bottles of water, or the kettle to completely freeze overnight. There is accommodation at Erin in the form of permanent tents erected over a wooden base - but do not think that these are a warm haven at night - a cold temperature rated sleeping bag and thermals are a necessity. Evenings round the fire will see you well bundled up and huddled perhaps closer than you should be to the fire. Track and walk hunting here is somewhat different to the bushveld of Limpopo and generally involves sneaking quietly up a sand dune until you can see what's in the “street” between you and the next dune. Once you have a decent vantage point - time is spent glassing all areas of the street before crossing to the next dune and repeating the process. It's amazing just how much you can miss - and how the more beady eye’d and wary game has spotted you from a good few dunes away. Red hartebeest generally have a look out on a dune and may be 1 or two dunes away at first - after crossing a street they can be quite a lot more than that despite your stealthy approach. Shots in the Kalahari are, in my experience, generally a bit longer than in the bushveld (between 200 and 300 yards - and occasionally more). I had travelled to the Kalahari the previous year and not managed to successfully get a gemsbok, so I was rather determined this time. I was on my own with a tracker and we crossed many a street without luck. Eventually we found a lone bull, which makes judging size incredibly difficult. He was bedded near to a blue wildebeest at first - who spotted us while we were still far away and galloped off. The gemsbok noticed this and made his way over the next dune. We crossed the street and stealthily made our way to the top where we found him again bedded. After making sure he was a decent old bull we set up a prone shot over my backpack and took a shot which thankfully counted. Approaching a “downed” gemsbok can be a bit nerve wracking as a swipe of those horns will make you reconsider your life choices rather swiftly. Thankfully he was down for the count - and my first gemsbok bull was in the salt, and he was a perfect choice, nice and old with worn down teeth. I wasn't actually planning on taking another gemsbok, but with space in the freezer at home, I set out to try again. This time we came upon a large herd beautifully bedded in the middle of a street. We were able to leisurely glass the entire herd and identify a beautiful old cow with wide spread sweeping horns as our target. Unfortunately, on moving to a shooting position, a springbok we hadn't seen, bedded only some 50 paces away, saw us, whistled and sprinted away which got the gemsbok herd to their feet. They however only walked away and when the cow we had identified offered a clear shot - I took it. She showed no reaction to the shot other than sprinting off with the rest of the herd, but thankfully tumbled in a cloud of red dust only a few paces away. For those of you who appreciate trophy size, the simplest method of measuring Gemsbok horns is the measurement of the longest horn from the base along the front of the horn to the tip only. Quoting from Africahunting.com, from a post titled Judging Gemsbok / Oryx: “Anything over 40 inches (101.6 cm - one meter) for a Gemsbok / Oryx bull is exceptional. In terms of trophy size, when it comes to mature Gemsbok / Oryx bulls, I would say that horns above 35.5 inches (90cm) make for an amazing trophy, horns above 31.5 inches (80cm) make for a great trophy, horns above 27.6 inches (70cm) make for a good trophy and horns below 27.6 inches (70cm) make for a beautiful trophy and great memories! Females Gemsbok / Oryx will usually have thinner horns all the way from the base to the top. Female horns have a tendency to get a bit wavy towards the top. They are hunted very seldom and usually only if their horns are exceptionally long.” One of my hunting colleagues managed to obtain a magnificent Gemsbok bull measuring 43 inches. My bull is not in that league, he measures 32.5 and my female measures 37.5. Here are the completed mounts alongside some springboks:

Oh it will be very noticeable - a South African one always is! 😂

It's really cool you took that pic down the spiral. Little know fact is that if you look down the spiral you can see the eye. A kudu can see up the center and not have a blind spot caused by the horn from ambush above. Zoom in on your pic and you can see the eyeball!

I went with a skull or euro mount - he hangs pretty close to the front door of our home:

The fire missed me by about 1000 yards. If the wind shifts I might still be f'ed, but so far I'm good. I'm under evacuation orders but won't leave untill I absolutely have too. The fire swept through 200-500 homes. How many are still standing, no one knows at this point. I've heard sheriff's and summit fire were working on someone trapped in a burning home. Absolute worst case scenario.