Welcome to the posting side.
Feel free to share the tales of the Warthog hunt.
Sure.
It was October 2021 and my wife and I were in the Free State, RSA, about 45 min outside of Kimberly. We were celebrating our upcoming 20th wedding anniversary in December of the same year. We were going to hunt a few day, sable was the primary objective, then to Vic Falls for three days (wife’s bucket list item) before returning home.
After arriving in Joburg and spending the night at Afton Safari Lodge we took an AirLink flight into Kimberly where we were greeted by our PH. We drove to camp, got acclimated, sighted in the rifle, and went on a game drive prior to dinner. Before going to dinner I returned a call from my mother at home, who was keeping our three kids, and got the news that my father had unexpectedly passed away. Not the ideal news at any time. I’ll spare you the details on our return logistics but we left for home a couple of days later, foregoing one day of hunting and Vic Falls. That said, Elize Bester and the Afton Safari Lodge staff were most accommodating to us in our unexpected time of need.
I am always in the market for a nice pig. On our last afternoon, after several blown stalks, we got a glimpse of this nice warthog from the LandCruiser. He was is a very thick area. We went on ahead 20-30 yards and found a shooting lane while the PH walked back a bit and flushed him out. I shot him while he was running straight away. His tusks (11-1/4”, 11”) were worn but fairly symmetrical and his skin was hanging off the bones. My largest warthog in three trips to Africa(4:42 PM)…at least for a few hours.
On the way to drop the warthog off with the skinner my wife shot a nice Copper Springbok. (5:29 PM) As the shadows grew longer on our last day, of an emotional three day hunt, I shot the largest warthog I had taken (14”,13”)(6:12 PM). I enjoyed seeing my PH get so excited. This was the finest 1.5 hours of hunting I’ve been able to enjoy.
I’m not sure my wife would say this was the ideal way to spend our 20th anniversary but I’m glad she was on this particular hunting trip considering the circumstances. We missed her bucket list trip to Vic Falls although she did get a diamond and emerald (Zambian) ring. I guess I’ll have to make good on that trip to Vic Falls one day, with a hunting trip on the side.
