Rising from my sleep at 6:00am, I quickly showered and dressed for the day.  The stars were still bright in the sky as I stepped out of my chalet to get breakfast.  Looking to my left I noticed the porch light on the chalet next to mine was turned on, and there was a pair of dusty boots beside the front door.  The new hunter must have arrived in camp last night after I went to bed. 

Hoping to get a chance to meet him at breakfast, I walked on across camp to the lodge where the lights in the dining room were shining brightly.  Edward was up early and had breakfast all ready, but I was disappointed to see that I would be the only one eating that morning.  Having gotten in late last night, the other guy must have needed his rest more than he did an early breakfast.

I finished my meal quickly, walked back to my chalet and gathered my gear, then headed back across camp just as Zwei drove up with the trackers.  Together we headed back to the ranch and again began to search for my gemsbok.  We drove down to where Zwei had left the coke can to mark the trail and dropped the trackers off at that spot to resume the chase.  Acting on a hunch, Zwei then drove us a couple of miles away to the far corner of the ranch.

As we drove past one particular area, Zwei suddenly slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the truck without a word.  He ran into the woods, was gone for about five minutes or so, then returned.  "I saw a solitary gemsbok bedded in there," he said.  "I thought it might be ours.  It was.  I found blood, and I know which direction he's headed in."

We got back in the truck and raced back to where we had dropped off the two trackers.  Riding high in the seat in the bed of the bakkie I held on as best I could, my hands freezing in the cold morning air.  Over the roar of the motor and the rush of the wind I could make out Zwei yelling into his radio.  "Kry terug tot die pad, kry terug tot die pad, ons gevind die hemsbok!"  Get back to the road, get back to the road, we've found the gemsbok.

Jacob and John were waiting for us on the side of the road, and they scrambled on board as we slid to a stop beside them.  Zwei turned the truck around, pushing small trees to the ground with his bumper, then nailed the gas and dirt-tracked the truck back onto the road.  Speeding back to where he had seen the gemsbok, the trackers jumped out before Zwei even came to a full stop.  They ran off into the woods as we accelerated and headed over to where Zwei thought the animal might cross one of the roads ahead of us.

Thus began another game of hide and seek as we kept trying to push the animal out into the open where we could get a shot.  Our immediate goal was to prevent him from rejoining the herd.  If we could do this, then any solitary gemsbok we came across was likely to be the one we were after.  The game continued like this for several hours, but we never even got a look at our quarry.  Eventually, the call called over the radio that he had eluded us and caught up with herd.

With the two trackers still on the trail, they occasionally called to tell us that he was not sticking with the group; he would join them, then move out on his own for awhile before rejoining them.  Constantly trying to move ahead of them with the truck, we did catch sight of the herd a couple of times, but we never saw the wounded animal with them.

Once, I heard Zwei speaking into his radio in Afrikaans.  He yelled up to me to get ready, then gunned the truck down a long, straight dirt road.  Whipping my head left and right, trying to see what we were after, I finally saw the entire herd of gemsbok on our right moving diagonally towards us through the brush.  Zwei shifted gears and the engine roared.  The truck leapt forward, now keeping pace with the herd.  I dialed my scope down to the lowest setting, then stood and braced myself as best I could between the seat and the back of the truck's cab.

The dust was flying out behind us, and within seconds the animals were all around the truck.  Gemsbok went left and right, in front of us and behind us, and I looked at each animal as best I could.  They were so close that I could see the whites of their eyes, and my own eyes were saturated with tears from the dust and wind.  It was an incredibly exhilarating experience; a sight I will remember for the rest of my life.  The thunder of the hooves of the antelopes was drowning out the racing motor, and their grunts and bleats were all around me. 

The herd finally split, with half of them turning back the way they had come and the other half rushing off to our left.  I swung my rifle from the left to the right, inspecting each animal through my scope as best I could, but none showed any signs of being wounded.  As the animals began to disappear back into the woods, Zwei slowed, the finally stopped the truck.

"Incredible," I said.  "Absolutely incredible." 

Zwei agreed, then said, "He wasn't with them.  I looked at every one of them as they were running alongside us, and he wasn't there.  Let's get back on the trail."

And so we did.  We walked, we drove, we pushed through the brush and thorns until a little after 1:30pm.  We separated, with Zwei walking down a long road to watch for the gemsbok in one direction and me looking in another.  Jacob was in the truck a couple of hundred yards from me, waiting for something to happen.

As the day wore on, my elation at seeing the herd of gemsbok run past began to dwindle, and I began to question our situation.  We had spent two and a half days looking for the gemsbok, and there were only a couple of hunting days left ahead of us.  I only had my zebra and my impala in the bag, and still needed a few more animals.  I had lost sight of Zwei, and suddenly I heard a rifle shot in the distance.  I hiked back up the road to the bakkie and asked Jacob if the shot had come from Zwei.  He said that it had been, but that the shot had missed.

Standing beside the truck there I made a decision.  "Give me your radio," I told Jacob.  He complied, so I triggered the mic and called "Zwei, Zwei, come in."

"Jah," he said.  "I am here."

"Let's move on," I told him.  "We've spent enough time looking for this gemsbok.  I hate to lose him, and it's really tough to leave a wounded animal in the bush, but we've got to spend some time on the other animals on my list.  We don't have any shots in this guy's vitals, and he's showing no signs of slowing down.  Enough."

"Ok, no problem," Zwei said.  "You and Jacob grab the bakkie and meet us at the main gate.  We'll be there in twenty minutes."

And just like that, we wrapped up the search and headed back to camp.  I was disappointed at the loss of the gemsbok, but I felt like we had truly made every effort that we could without abandoning the rest of the safari.  Gemsbok are incredibly tough animals, and ours had proved that without a hit in the boiler room, they aren't going down.  Giving up the animal was a tough call to have to make, but I'm convinced that it was the right one.

Zwei and I had a quick lunch at the lodge, then moved outside and sat on the wooden chairs in the gazebo to plan a kudu hunt for the afternoon.  Zwei wanted to go back to where we had hunted kudu on the first day of the safari, so he called Frans to make sure that it was ok to come hunt the ranch that evening.  Frans told us that he had family visiting and that he would prefer no hunting until they had left.  "That's ok with me," I told Zwei.  "I'm not crazy about that stand we sat in that first day.  The sun was absolutely brutal, and I'd like to be in something with a bit more cover."

A chair on the gazebo where we sat discussing the kudu hunt

"There is another ranch," said Zwei, "that we could hunt.  We've just recently obtained it, and there are some huge bulls on the property.  However, there are premium trophy fees on some of the bigger kudu.  You might have to pay more than you originally bargained for."

"How much more?" I asked.

"Let's say you shoot one greater than 54 inches.  The cost would go up to $2400, and I think Hannes told me you only paid $1500 for your kudu.  We'd need another $900 from you for that.  If you shoot one that's sixty inches or more, the fee is $3000, double what you paid."

I sat back and thought about it for a minute.  I knew that I would want to add an animal at the end of the hunt, which could run me anywhere from $400 to another thousand dollars.  Then again, I might never get back to Africa, and this could be my only chance at a kudu.  "Ok," I finally said.  "Let's do it.  I'll take whatever shootable kudu first shows up.  If he's 54" or less, that's fine, we'll stick with the trophy fee I paid.  If he's bigger, let's go ahead and take him."

The decision made, we relaxed for a few more minutes, then loaded up the truck and headed out.  We made a 45 minute drive to the lease, this time heading in a direction that we had not gone before.  The flatlands that we had been hunting began to disappear, and the mountains that I had occasionally seen in the distance began to grow near.  The landscape was populated with small hills and valleys, and the trees, once sparse, began to appear with more and more regularity.

Arriving at the lease, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Hannes was there talking to the ranch owner.  We got out of the truck and spent a few minutes with the two of them.  Abelard, the rancher, asked me how I was liking Africa.  I told him that it was beautiful and that I was looking forward to hunting on his property.  He wished us luck.  Thanking him, we got back in the truck and drove out onto his property.

The first thing I noticed was how thick the land was with brush and trees - much thicker than anything else that I had seen in Africa so far.  As we moved through the trees we saw impala and warthogs, and once we saw a giraffe in the distance, his head blending in beautifully with the acacia tree that he was eating out of.  There were waterbuck in plenty.  Eland snorted and jumped in the brush ahead of us.  I saw a group of female nyala and stared in awe at those beautiful antelope.

As we continued on, a warthog, another of the thousand that I had seen so far, ran out of the woods on the trail a hundred yards ahead of us.  "Shoot him, shoot him now," shouted Zwei.  "Wait for him to turn, then pop him."

There's one thing I had decided before I started my safari.  Whatever my PH told me to do, I would do it without question.  Within reason of course.  I wasn't sure why he told me to shoot; it was just another warthog, and I was thinking that we'd wait until the last day or so to try to collect one.  They're everywhere and are not difficult to hunt.  They are, however, funny animals.  They run for a bit, then stop and stand sideways before moving on.  When this warthog turned, I quickly took aim and fired.  "A hit," said Zwei.  "Shoot again if he runs."

The warthog turned and resumed his original direction, and I reloaded my rifle for another shot.  I was a bit hasty, because when he turned again my bullet sailed over his back, splashing up dust from the ground beyond him.  With a loud snort, audible even to us a hundred and twenty yards away, the warthog turned to his right and crashed into the brush on the adjacent property.

We ran up to where we had last seen him and found good bright red blood on the ground.  We could see where the blood trail went into the brush on the next property.  Zwei grabbed his cell phone.  "I must get us permission to enter that property," he said.  "We cannot go after the warthog without it." 

Getting no signal on his phone, he dashed off into the woods.  "He go to find tall tree," said Jacob.  A few minutes later I could hear Zwei's voice in the distance, and before long he returned saying that we were fine to go look for the pig.

We moved quickly through the thick brush, fanning out whenever we lost the trail so that we could quickly recover it.  The daylight was already starting to fade, and we knew we still had a kudu to hunt.  From ahead of me I heard Zwei say, "There he lays."

"Dead?" I asked.  "How does he look?  Good one?"

"He is a monster," Zwei assured me.  "You will never in your life shoot a better warthog.  He is an absolute beast."

I tore through the thorny bushes as quickly as I could, then laughed with joy when I saw the size of the animal's tusks.  Long and symmetrical, they were in perfect shape. The lower teeth were also perfect, as sharp as scalpel blades and impressive in their own right.  It was an absolutely beautiful pig.

With the sun beginning to set we quickly dragged the warthog back to the truck and got him loaded.  We drove a mile or so down the road, then, coming to a large open field, we stopped for pictures.  As we were preparing the animal for the photo session, Hannes and Abelard came driving up.  "Ah," said Abelard.  "What an enormous warthog. They don't get this big anymore, eh?"  I shook his hand, accepted his congratulations, and thanked him again for the hunt.

When we finished with the pictures, Hannes and Abelard loaded the warthog into their truck.  Hannes said that he would take the pig back to camp for me.  I gave him some of my shipping tags from Coppersmith and quickly explained how I wanted him caped out.  "Shoulder mount," I said.  "No worries about the backskin on this one; he's pretty old and beat up back there."

As Hannes and Abelard drove off, we continued on our way to the kudu blind.  When we got there, I was extremely impressed with the construction of the blind.  It was large enough for two people to sit in comfortably, and was fashioned out of tree limbs, wire, and brush.  It blended in beautifully with the landscape and overlooked a long stretch of road that reminded me of my deer lease back in South Carolina.

Jacob drove away in the truck as Zwei and I settled into the blind.  It took a few minutes for me to get things arranged to my satisfaction.  I broke several small twigs off of the inside of the blind so that my arm wouldn't rub against them and make noise when I went to raise my rifle.  Zwei, having left his binoculars in Hannes's truck a couple of nights ago, asked to use mine for the duration of tonight's hunt.  I handed them over, then sat back in my chair and started watching the road in front of us.

The kudu blind

Zwei was snoring softly an hour later when the first kudu stepped into view.  It was a beautiful cow; the white stripes on her hide seemed to reflect the fading light of the setting sun.  "Kudu," I hissed to wake Zwei out of his nap.

Coming awake quickly, Zwei raised the binoculars I had loaned him and examined the cow.  As he looked at her, a big male stepped into view.  "That's about a 52 inch bull," he told me.  "He's a good one; a definite shooter if you want him, but wait for him to give you a clear shot if you decide to take him."

I looked at the big kudu carefully through my rifle scope.  His facial markings were perfect, and his dark horns ended in a pair of beautiful ivory tips.  It was indeed a great kudu, so I told Zwei that I would take him if he gave me a good shot opportunity.  At least, I thought, this one won't hit me too hard in the wallet.

The bull and cow few together on the roadside for a good half an hour, but in that time there was never a safe shot opportunity.  Either the cow was always in front of or behind the bull, or the bull's vitals were blocked by trees.  Something eventually scared both animals off, because they suddenly jerked their heads up and fled the scene at the same time.

"There will be more before long," Zwei said.  "We will just wait and maybe a bigger bull will show up soon."

He was right.  As the last light began to fade away, another kudu cow appeared.  She was joined by a second cow, then a third, a fourth, and eventually about eight cows were in view.  We watched them feed for a few minutes, when I noticed movement at the edge of the woods to the left.  Two big kudu bulls stepped into sight, both bigger than the one we had seen earlier.

"The one on the right.  With the wide horns.  Take than one when he gives you a shot."

We watched the big bull for quite some time, but he would not cooperate and give me a clear shot.  It was getting dark enough now that I could not even see the kudu without my scope.  I'm going to preach about optics here for just a minute.  You may have your hunting future planned in your mind, knowing that you're going to Africa in such and such a year, or out west to hunt elk next fall, or you may just be looking ahead to the coming deer season.  If you're considering a new scope purchase, you can't invest too much money in quality optics. 

Twice now on this trip my Swarovski scope, expensive to be sure, was paying off great dividends.  Yesterday when I had been able to inspect a gemsbok's hooves at 400 yards and see blood, and now, tonight, in the early twilight looking at a big kudu bull, I was reaping the rewards of the money that I put into my scope.  When buying a new rifle and scope, please buy a quality scope.  Get a Zeiss, Swarovski, or even a high end Leupold.  It's going to cost you a thousand dollars or more, but it's a lifetime investment... and the outcome of your hunt may depend on it.

Turning our attention back to the kudu bull, he finally made his mistake.  He stepped away from the other kudu and suddenly I had a perfect look at his vitals.  With my crosshairs centered on his heart, I whispered to Zwei, "I'm on him.  I've got a steady hold and a wide open target.  Want me to hit him?"

"Take him," Zwei simply said.

I knew I had him when I squeezed the trigger.  When you make a good shot you know it, and this shot felt perfect.  I have never been more certain of a shot than when I hauled down on this kudu.  I did not see or hear the hit, and I did not see the big bull's reaction.  He was gone by the time I had recovered from the recoil."

"He's hit hard," said Zwei.  "Yakob, Yakob," he said into his radio.  "Kom kry vsa die bakkie."  I didn't need to ask what he was saying.  Come pick us up in the truck.

Not waiting for Jacob, we ran to where the kudu had been standing and start to look for blood.  I didn't see any, but Zwei, deep in the thicket, immediately said, "Here he is."

The big bull had only gone forty yards, at most, from where I had shot him.  He was huge and beautiful laying on the ground in a tangle of thorns.  At last, here was the animal I had dreamed of for so many years.  As I looked at him in awe, practicality began to seep in and I wondered how the three of us would get him out of those thick briars and into the back of the truck.

"We will cut a road to him," Zwei said.

I thought he was kidding at first, but Jacob came walking up with a shovel and a hand saw.  We worked for an hour in the dark, cutting that road.  It was indeed hard work, but we got it done.  We hacked at the small trees with the shovel, or sawed them down where we could.  The dust was heavy in the air from all of our digging and moving around, but we got it done.  Between the three of us, we pushed and pulled and got the animal loaded into the truck with relative ease. 

We never really know what a day has in store for us.  From the frustration I had felt at noon today looking for the lost gemsbok to the elation in my soul as I thought back to an incredible warthog and the reality of my kudu.  This has turned out, I thought, to be a heck of a day.  A warthog and a kudu, both taken just hours apart.  Earlier today I was getting worried thinking that my safari was drawing to a close with only two animals in the salt, and now I had doubled that number and collected two more of the trophies on my list.

With the kudu now safe in the back of the truck, we drove back to Abelard's house to show the animal to him.  He grinned when he saw it, then said, "Excuse me for a moment, I must bring my family out to show them."

They piled out of the house, three generations of his family, and walked over to the truck to see the kudu.  The kids clambered up onto the sides of the bakkie and made the appropriate noises of excitement as they petted the kudu's head and felt his horns.  The men and women all looked at the animal appreciatively, each offering us congratulations on the kill.  We estimated his horns to be between 53 and 54 inches, and I thanked Abelard once again for both the warthog and the kudu.

I sat in the back of the truck on the way home this time, enjoying the cold wind of the African night.  It was a wonderful feeling to ride that way, looking down at the kudu that filled the back of that vehicle.  From time to time I would run my hands along his horns, feeling the rough texture of them, admiring the way they were created.  The ride back to camp passed too quickly, but it had to be about 9:00pm by the time that we got there.  It was only then that I remembered that tonight was the big "cookout night" in camp, where Edward would cook up a variety of game meats on his big wood fired grill.

We still had not taken any pictures with the kudu, and knowing that we had already missed supper we drove over to Hannes's farm for our photo session.  Zwei yelled across the compound for John to come help us with the kudu, and when he showed up we unloaded the animal in an open dirt field and took a half dozen pictures or so.  We had to load the animal back in the truck after the pictures, but it was a bit easier to do with four of us present to help.

It was a short drive from there to the skinning area where we unloaded the kudu for the final time.  From there we headed back into camp, exhausted and satisfied from the events of the day.  Zwei and I found that the guys had left us plenty of food, and we gorged ourselves on T-bone steaks, grilled chicken, eland, and impala.  Professional Hunter Eric Sourer stopped in to say hello and good night to us, explaining that he and his client had been hunting springbok a bit further south for the last couple of days.  I would, he told me, get a chance to meet his client the next morning before they headed out on their own kudu hunt.

"Let's meet at about 7:00 in the morning," Zwei said to me as we prepared to part for the evening.  "Get some rest now, because we'll work pretty hard on tomorrow's hunt."

I took his advice, falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillows.  I didn't even bother to shoo away the wolf spider that was waiting for me on the nightstand beside my bed.