nhunter84

This was a game capture we got to participate in. I was in charge of giving extra sedative IV in an ear vein after the sable were darted. This particular ranch was for a breeding population of sable with very good genetics. This bull sable was a monster that they were selling to a place up in the Limpopo. My wife with one of the sable calfs that we had sedated. The next day we were off to hunt zebra. The wind was blowing hard so we started looking in any areas that were protected out of the wind. After about half a day of looking we crept up to the edge of a bluff and down below we spotted a herd. I found one that looked like it had good shadow stripes and layed over the bluff to take the shot. After about 10 minutes of waiting for it to move out of the brush I had my zebra. Shot was 215 yards.

Day 4 started off heading to a large wildlife ranch that was going to capture some sable to move up to the Limpopo province. Since I am a veterinarian I thought it would be cool to go and watch/help the vet do the game capture and give all the medications and sedatives that they use to transport sable. The vet flew in the chopper and darted about 14 sable while my wife and I helped with the ground crew and giving extra sedative and antibiotics as they became sedate. Was a pretty neat experience. Ill try and post some pictures of the helicopter and sable later. That afternoon we headed back to the high country to continue to look for a vaalrhebok. We had seen a decent one on day 2 so we headed back into that area. We glassed to the head of the canyon and saw a blesbok that the vaalrhebok had been running with 2 days prior. We could not pickup the vaalrhebok in the binoculars though. These critters have amazing eyesight and are very wild, so I decided to sneak into the head of the basin where the vaalrhebok had managed to escape through on the second day and get setup while I had the skinners start walking on the ridge at the bottom of the canyon. My hope was that the vaalrhebok would see the skinners coming and try to exit the area the same way he had 2 days prior. As the skinners worked their way up the ridge I heard my wife on the radio say that the blesbok started moving my way and that 2 vaalrhebok had joined him. She couldn't tell whether there was a male in the group though. So I laid patiently in the shade and picked them up as they dropped over the ridge into the basin I was laying in. I could tell one was the male we had seen prior, but the distance was 440 yards with a stiff breeze. I decided to wait and see how close they would get. Eventually the blesbok started to move again and the vaalrhebok followed. When they stopped to look back to see if the skinners were still coming their direction I ranged them at 390 and decided to attempt the shot. The recoil knocked me off target and I heard my wife come over the radio saying he went down. She stayed as a spotter to talk me in to the spot it dropped as these guys are very small and the grass was quite long. We found him in short order and the skinners/trackers could not have been happier that it was a one shot drop on this animal.

The next day was spent looking for black wildebees or vaal rhebok. We saw numerous vaal rhebok but none good enough to consider making a stalk on. We did manage to find a good sized herd of the blackwildebees in a basin and my wife and I made a stalk. We climbed up one canyon and came over the ridge and were looking down onto the herd at about 300 yards. I spotted a good bull on the far side of the herd and got my wife to where she could see him. At this point the wind started to shift and next thing we know the whole herd was running. We never could get close enough after that. The rest of the day we looked over all types of plains game and saw some awesome blesbok but decided we didn't want to try for one of them as I had already shot one when I was younger. No animals on day 2 but a great day. Day 3 we spotted a group of black wildebees at the top of a basin about a mile and a half from the closest road, My wife and I loaded our packs and made a plan. The wind was blowing very hard this morning. After a long hike up the mountain we popped around a knob and saw the herd. It was a bachelor group of bulls and we saw a very old heavy horned bull on the left side of the group at 370 yards. We laid down and got steady. We guessed on what the wind would do to the 7mm mag and took a shot. The bullet connected just a touch back and after 3 quick follow ups we had him down.

It just increases the risk of him developing testicular cancers or having one of the testicles become torsed or twisted. That would be an emergency if that happened. Both of these problems are still relatively unlikely but if he were my dog I would go in and remove them. Like I said earlier he probably would not be able to site young as the sperm cannot develop appropriately at too high a temperature (in the abdomen). Probably won't cause any ill effects to his health in the short term.

Most likely he will not be able to reproduce if his testicles are in his abdomen (undropped). You should not want to breed a dog that is cryptorchid (abdominal testicles) anyways as it is a genetic defect that increases risks of cancers and torsions. I would highly recommend no matter how good the bloodline that you do not breed that dog, even though it is probably mute point with Jake.

My wife and I went on Safari in South Africa with Chappie Scott and Jeff Ford. I had the privilege of working at Chappies place when I was in high school for a summer. So when my wife said she wanted to go to Africa I set it up with Chappie and told him I wanted to hunt caracal over hounds and actually get to go with the dogs. A few months later my wife and I were on our way. Afte r 17 hours on the plane from DC to Joberg we finally made it. The next morning we flew into Port Elizabeth and headed straight to Addo Elephant Park to help get my wife an idea of what we would be hunting. Addo is the second largest national park in south Africa and as you can imagine loaded with game that is not at all afraid of vehicles or people. We spent a couple of hours looking around and then headed to the mountains to their family ranch. We hunted on large tracts of ranch land that were all low fence cattle ranches where the game is free to move about as it pleases. First day hunting we woke up very early and drove about 40 miles to an area where a good mature kudu bull had been spotted. We glassed for an hour or two right at first light but did not find what we were looking for. At this point my wife and I decided to hike into a canyon that was about 1.5 miles off the road up a fairly large mountain/hill. Once we were looking into this steep canyon I pulled out the 15s and got to glassing we saw numerous kudu cows but no bull. We headed up the ridge to the next glassing spot and I picked out a herd of kudu with a nice bull in it. We stalked in to about 280 yards but could not get a clear shot through all of the brush. After several hours of watching him bedded I decided to try and have our skinner push him up the hill. Of course this did not work and the kudu headed straight for the bottom of the canyon with my wife and I sprinting down our side trying to find a clearing to get a shot. Luckily we managed to catch the bull going through a clearing and made a good shot on the run at about 100 yards. This is a cape kudu they are smaller and much darker/more vivid coloration than greater kudu. More to come tomorrow and next week.

That's a female. Let her walk. You wouldn't want to brag about shooting a baby coues or doe coues so why shoot a female lion. Go hunt for a mature tom

Thought I would share a picture of a lion that my brother caught the other day with some of our dogs. Thought it was a cool picture. She was a wild one that bailed tree a couple of times on him.

This is the other Barbary we killed on this hunt. This is a friends sheep from Missouri who came out to hunt this year. This ram is 27". We saw a few better sheep but he liked the stalk we put on this guy and couldn't pass him up. We spotted him about 2 miles out and made a plan and popped up 125 yards from where he was bedded up. One perfect shot and we had him down. Loaded up the 14 year old boy with 70 pounds of meat and cape and a couple mile trek back to the truck.

I had a friend and his kid come out from Missouri this year to hunt sheep with me. The 14 year old son ended up taking this ram after a two mile stalk that involved some running to get there before dark. The sheep was 31" long with 13 1/2' bases. The pictures don't do this old ram justice.

Jagdterriers and Hagd pups are in some of the photos

Let this beautiful female walk to keep those deer nice and wild. Nathan

Ive been trying to break them off that habit but getting a Jagdterrier to do something other than what it wants to do can be a frustrating endeavor. I always thought that my male Jagd would get killed if I ever bluffed a lion up, but he's bayed a bunch of them on bluffs in the last several years and seems to have gotten smart enough to finally stay out of reach.

111, I let lions go all the time! A lion deserves every bit as much respect as any deer or elk. Your ignorant comment is like saying because you don't want to shoot a spike you should have somebody along that does. IMO no dog guy should just take somebody along to kill a lion, they should only take somebody along who wants to experience the hunt and hunt hard enough to take a nice mature lion. I get plenty of hunters that always tell me, "if you need somebody to come along and shoot a lion give me a call." Tell me why in the heck would I call anyone that says that? That would be stupid. I would rather let any lion go then take somebody along who only wants to go if they are pulling the trigger. JMO And yes, the lions in those pics have spots and are immature lions. Anyone who says different has not seen very many lions. Nathan

Here is a NM Mt. Lion that my Brother was lucky enough to take over our dogs this weekend. The dogs trailed this tom 3 miles through some rough country with a bunch of boulders and bluffs before we finally ended up at a bayup on the side of a cliff. No live photos on this one since I didn't want to risk getting my Jagds killed. The photos were taken after we hauled the cat out and got down to our vehicle to get the camera.

Muleskinner, That is a southeast NM cat.

Just had a litter of pups hit the ground out of a very nice bluetick female and Jagdterrier male. These should make some very nice lion and bear dogs. If anybody is interested in a pup give me a call at 575-418-7985. Would like to see them go to somebody who is going to use them.

Caught this female today. Dogs had a good run on her went about 4 miles to the tree. Let her walk to raise some kittens

got that walker dog from a buddy out of WY. She has made a nice dog and she is the right size in my opinion about 32 pounds. The general area is CO

Nice work! Thats a cool mount. That customer should be very happy.

Yeah, I ordered them a few days before I posted that. I have tested them side by side with my other collars here at the house and they seem to last a lot longer. I am taking the dogs out this weekend so will let you know how they work in the field but so far they seem to be working good.

Hey have any of you other hound guys tried the longer life replacement batteries in your garmin tracking collars http://www.collarworks.com/ ? I just ordered a few for my collars so will let you know how they work. Ive had dogs out a time or two overnight this year and it would be awful nice to know that the collar has enough battery life to find them in the morning.

The ones I got from this website work great. I talked with the owner and he has extensively tested them. Everything on the GPS indicating battery life of the collar works with these batteries so you know exactly how much juice is left in them. They charge on the factory chargers so it is simple. I recommend them to anyone needing to replace their current garmin batteries or wanting a longer life span for the collar

Managed to put a few cats up the tree a couple weeks ago. Let a female and a nice tom go and let the next tom hit the dirt.

Yeah she looked to be nursing to me. Just snapped a few quick pics and let her go to get back to her kittens. Had no idea if it was a tom or a female when I started her. There were a bunch of scrapes up on the ridge, and I had seen a tom track in there. When we started her couldnt find any tracks until we got pretty close to the tree.