GRONG Report post Posted June 22, 2014 Holy crap Nathan!! That's fantastic man!! Gotta love that experience with your wife, so very cool my man! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tjhunt2 Report post Posted June 22, 2014 That's awesome you got to share all this with your wife. Congratulations to the both of you and thanks for the great pictures and story. This is as close to Africa as I will ever come. TJ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Chef Report post Posted June 22, 2014 Loving the play by play. Congrats on a successful trip! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Couestracker Report post Posted June 23, 2014 Awesome recap of your excellent safari hunt. Very cool you and your wife were able to share the adventure. Beautiful collection of mounts as well. You're both very lucky indeed. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nhunter84 Report post Posted June 25, 2014 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. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nhunter84 Report post Posted June 30, 2014 The afternoon after getting the zebra we loaded up and headed for the coast to finish out our safari. On the way down the weather reports were talking about a huge cold front with horrible winds and rain for 3 days fixing to hit the coast. So needless to say I didn't have high hopes for catching a caracal with the hounds. The next morning I woke up to lots of cloud cover but a calm morning with no rain so I was super excited. Jeff Ford dropped me and the dog handler off in an area where a rancher had seen a caracal about a week prior. We started hiking into a canyon and Jeff went to a high point to listen for the bushbuck barking. Bushbuck bark like a dog when they see a caracal moving through the jungle so that is one strategy to try and find a fresh track. Anyways the dog handler and myself started hiking through the jungle free casting 11 walker type hounds. About a mile in to our walk the dogs started to trail something. At first it started kind of slow like they were trailing a cat but in short order the tempo increased and the dogs were obviously trailing a jackal. After about 3 miles of fighting our way through the jungle we got the dogs gathered where they had made a loss going across an open farm field. At this point Jeff called us on the radio and said a rancher had heard a bushbuck barking in a canyon so we loaded up and headed there. As we walked into the canyon where this rancher had heard the bushbuck bark we got lucky and heard a ram bushbuck open up across the canyon from us. He sounded pissed so we called all the dogs and started running in that direction. When we hit the bottom of the canyon the dogs opened but started heading in the opposite direction of where we had heard the bushbuck. We guessed that the cat was headed up canyon so we frantically circled below the dogs and luckily managed to catch them trailing across an opening and got them gathered and turned around. Once we hit the area we had heard the bushbuck in the dogs started trailing and the tempo picked up. About a half mile later we heard the hounds start to bark treed. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nhunter84 Report post Posted July 1, 2014 After we got the caracal we headed to a new spot in the afternoon to look for bushbuck. We sat on a high bluff overlooking a brush line to see if any bushbuck would come out. From there we glassed waterbuck, warthog, eland, zebra, impala, bushbuck, and hartebeest. We never did see a good bushbuck come out of the brush but spotted a warthog rooting in some long grass. My wife decided to try and get a warthog so off we went. We snuck along the bluff and got to about 180 yards. We managed to find a small opening through the jungle brush in which we could sneak a shot through. It was a perfect shot and the pig ran about 20 yards before piling up. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nhunter84 Report post Posted July 1, 2014 The rest of the evening was spent stalking along the edges of the jungle trying to find a mature ram bushbuck. Right on dark we saw a bushbuck ram with its head in the brush about 75 yards away. My wife was looking farther up the cut and didn't see it. As the bushbuck moved we saw it was a very nice ram, but by the time my wife spotted it was moving into the jungle and we could not get a shot. The next day we woke up to a very cold and windy morning. The bushbuck hate the cold weather, so we were in luck and they were going to be out sunning themselves in the middle of the day. Normally you only see bushbuck right at first light or right at dark. We spent the whole morning looking and saw several decent rams sunning themselves, but none were quite what we were hoping for. Finally around 3 pm we walked out to a bluff overlooking a river bottom and there was a very nice bushbuck sunning himself and browsing on the edge of the jungle. We moved into position and made an excellent shot at 280 yards on a very nice old ram 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
stanley Report post Posted July 1, 2014 VERY, VERY awesome!!!!!! The post that keeps on giving! S. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bonecollector Report post Posted July 1, 2014 Very cool trip. Congrats! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LawDog Report post Posted July 2, 2014 Nhunter84 - Thanks for your write ups. I'm leaving tomorrow morning for my first trip to South Africa and your posts have been my best reading materials to get me more fired up than I already am. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nhunter84 Report post Posted July 3, 2014 Awesome have fun. Can't wait to see the pics Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Big Browns Report post Posted July 3, 2014 WOW! Very Cool!!!!!!!! Post more pictures if you have them...... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
