6 July 2014
I set the alarm on my watch for 0500, but I needn’t have bothered. The red-billed francolin (“bush alarm clock”) were cackling noisily outside my room while it was still black dark.
The hunter’s constellation, Orion – a familiar friend in an unfamiliar night sky – was rising before the sun had pinked the horizon. It was an unusually cold 23F (-5C), so I dressed in all the layers that I had brought with me: a long-sleeved shirt, windproof Duluth fleece, down vest, and gloves. I knew from experience that riding in the back of the bakkie would make the cold even more intense.
The warmth of Selma’s kitchen was matched by her smile. While I ate a bowl of cereal and a banana, Selma whipped up my made-to-order breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast. She did her utmost to be sure that I wouldn’t be cold on the inside, at least! A glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice topped me off.
I went back to my room for my rifle, verifying that my scope was set at its lowest magnification before sliding it into the soft case. Matheus and Michael were waiting for me at the bakkie at 0600, as we had arranged the day before. Matheus wanted to leave before sunrise because we were driving about 45 minutes to a neighboring farm owned by Reini Seifart, so that we wouldn’t disturb the game on Kowas’s 16,000 acres (about 25 square miles) while David and Claude were in one of the bowhunting blinds. Although technically Michael was the driver, Matheus pulled rank on him and did the driving himself, with me riding shotgun, while Michael huddled in the back under a blanket trying to avoid frostbite.
Our breath condensed and froze on the inside of the windscreen. Apparently the Indian designers of Mahindra bakkies are not aware that subfreezing weather exists, because there was no defroster. Matheus tried in vain to remove the increasingly thick layer of ice with a cloth. In the end he just navigated the winding 2-track by feel and memory, in the dark, with no headlights and no forward visibility. Michael had to abandon his cocoon every so often to open gates, and he looked absolutely miserable. Both Michael and Matheus are Oshiwambo from the northern (and much warmer) part of Namibia, and neither had any love for cold weather. Personally, I like hunting when the mornings are frosty and the afternoons are cool.
Bumping along the 2-track, trying to avoid the tire-swallowing aardvark holes, Matheus explained that Mr. Seifart was keen to have some oryx shot on his farm. [It took me awhile to realize that Namibian “farms” are ranches. I never saw a farm of row crops in the 3 weeks that I spent in various parts of the country.] Like most Namibian farms, the Seifart’s had a mix of cattle and game. Oryx are considered a nuisance by many farmers because they go under cattle fences, enlarging holes originally made by warthogs. If the hole is large enough to admit an oryx, it is also large enough for a cow’s calf to go through, which leads to the escape of cattle. By the end of the week at Kowas I found myself wondering why farmers bother with fences, since the warthogs and oryx make them completely permeable anyway, even for game that can’t (or won’t) jump. Kudu and eland go over cattle fences with ease.
The sun had been up for about 15 minutes when we arrived at the Seifart farm gate. The windscreen thawed quickly, and I expect that Michael was the happiest of us all to feel the sun at last. Matheus stopped the bakkie inside the gate and we traded places with Michael. We had a fantastic view of the chest-high blackhook acacia savannah from the back of the bakkie.
It wasn’t long before Matheus demonstrated his supernatural game-spotting ability, using his X-ray vision to penetrate the thick cover, pointing out a herd of kudu cows and young bulls, an oryx cow with a tiny calf the same size and color as a steenbok, and a herd of eland in the distance.
After a half hour of scouting the perimeter road from the bakkie without seeing any suitable trophy oryx, Matheus suggested that we make a speculative stalk in the direction of a salt block about a mile away. Faces into the gentle breeze, I followed Matheus as he scanned the ground for fresh oryx spoor. The numerous blackhook thorn branches had to be avoided, being both sharp and noisy. Soon he located a promising track, and within 20 minutes we came upon a lone oryx bull 300 yards distant, head down, feeding away from us, up to his belly in sourgrass. Matheus motioned for me to kneel and whispered, “He is a good bull. Follow me.”
We crept from acacia to acacia, crouch-walking in the direction of the bull only when he had his head down and was facing away from us. Alone, the oryx had no extra sets of eyes watching his back trail. Over the next 15 minutes we stalked closer and closer as the bull zigzagged through the bush, head swinging back and forth like a metronome as he filled his stomach with the abundant sourgrass.
The longer we stalked, the more excited I became, which I knew wouldn’t help my shooting. The big-bodied oryx, with his beautifully patterned face and coat, and thick, rapier-sharp horns, had been a dream of mine for the past year. I tried to suppress the adrenaline rush, but I might as well have tried to stop the Zambezi River from going over Victoria Falls.
From the cover of a blackhook acacia, Matheus set up the sticks to give me a shooting lane through the bush, but the oryx was in a shallow swale and I couldn’t see his vitals through the scope. I leaned close to Matheus’s ear and whispered, “I don’t have a clear shot.” Matheus nodded. We waited for the bull to climb up the other side of the swale, his back still to us as he fed, and Matheus gingerly moved the sticks to within 120 yards of the oryx.
I wouldn’t need ear plugs for this shot, because my heart was making more noise than any rifle. The oryx was still moving very slowly away from us, and clearly was not going to offer a broadside shot. I turned the scope from 4.5x to 8x, tracking him, waiting for a quartering away shot at a reasonable angle. The extra time to think about the shot was not an advantage!
When the oryx finally turned to the right a bit, I placed the crosshairs far enough back on his ribcage to intercept the opposite shoulder, and high enough to clear the brush and grass under him. The Jewell trigger broke cleanly at 1 pound, and of course I lost sight of the bull when the rifle recoiled. My sight picture had looked perfect. Knowing the reputation that oryx have for toughness, I immediately cycled the action without lifting the rifle from the sticks, and reacquired the oryx in the scope. He hadn’t taken a step from where he was shot. The bull was down but trying weakly to get his front feet back under him. Matheus said, “If he stands up, shoot him again.” Through the scope I could see that the bull was fading fast. “Safe your rifle,” Matheus said, grinning broadly and shaking my hand.
My knees didn’t seem to be too steady as I walked over to have a close look at my trophy. The oryx’s horns were heavy at the base, long, and icepick-sharp, just beginning to wear down with age and combat. His hair rose, then fell as he died. This magnificent bull, the animal most emblematic of the Kalahari, still had his last meal in his mouth, and had met his end quickly. We should all be so fortunate.
Matheus called Michael on the radio, and eventually the clatter of diesel could be heard approaching through the bush. I could see that my bullet had entered high on the right lung, and must have hit the spine to produce the instantaneous collapse. There was no exit wound.
Michael cleared the grass around the oryx and set the bull up for photos. Both Michael and Matheus always took exceptional care to get the photos done properly, knowing that the pictures are valued as trophies as much as the heads and horns. Matheus has a keen eye for photo composition, as well as for game spotting. I found him to be the consummate professional, and he has the further distinction of being the first black PH in all of Namibia.
By 0830 we had the 550-pound oryx winched into the bakkie. We stopped by Mr. Seifart’s house to let him know that he could pick up the oryx’s carcass at Kowas later that day. Reini isn’t a hunter – his hobby is hotrodding American cars and trucks – but the oryx was a welcome source of meat for his farm workers, and one less competitor for his cattle’s forage (not an issue this year, after the rains!).
At the Kowas skinning shed, Matheus and Michael pitched in to help Timo (the skinner) butcher the oryx bull. They were a marvel of efficiency and teamwork, using nothing other than a boning knife, a sharpening steel, and a hacksaw to skin, gut, and quarter the oryx in 30 minutes.
I took the opportunity to examine in greater detail the performance of the Barnes 180gr TSX. The bullet smashed a rib on entry, took out the top of the right lung and the bottom of the spine, and ended up under the left shoulder blade.
The bullet was perfectly mushroomed, with part of 1 petal missing (94% weight retention). My custom is to pay the skinner(s) R20 (US$2) each for every bullet recovered, which provided plenty of incentive for the rest of my hunt!
Selma had lunch waiting for me – game sausage casserole in filo dough. Matheus stuck his head in the door to let me know that we’d be going back to the Seifart farm around 1500 to hunt for springbok, assuming that I would be able to walk after the enormous plate of food that I had consumed.
The afternoon was a very pleasant, cloudless 65F (18C). Matheus, Michael, and I retraced our morning route to the Seifart farm. Matheus spotted a jackal in the 2-track, but every jackal at Kowas knows what a stopped bakkie means. I flipped down the legs of my bipod to shoot from the roof of the bakkie. The jackal was already moving and I missed him cleanly. The joke at Kowas is that there is no trophy fee for jackals, but if you miss one you have to pay US$100. Matheus promised to keep my embarrassing secret.
On the way to Seifart’s farm, Reini himself was driving his bakkie headed for Kowas to claim the morning’s oryx. He must have some hungry farmhands!
Unlike Kowas, which has several hills (locally called “mountains”), Seifart’s farm is flat. Matheus climbed a windmill to get a better look over the thornveld. He spotted a herd of springbok, but they were too far away and in too much cover to judge the quality of any trophies. The wind was in our favor, though, so Matheus led a stalk towards them.
Having ascertained that I was interested in all of Namibia’s flora and fauna, Matheus took the time to point out the snakehead bulbs that were especially abundant here. Oryx use their hooves to dig up the bulbs, and chew them to obtain moisture. In this way, oryx can go their whole lives without ever drinking liquid water. Snakehead is toxic to livestock, however.
We walked for close to a mile before getting a good look at the springbok herd. There were about 15 ewes and 1 young ram, but nothing that justified any further effort. As we hiked back to the bakkie we saw a male red-crested korhaan performing his amazing aerial courtship flight – climbing high into the sky and then fluttering down as if wingshot, only to flare and land softly at the last possible moment.
The sun was setting behind us as we pulled into Kowas, with the bush TV already tuned to Channel 1.
Miguel, David, Jacques, Claude, and Bakkies were sitting around the fire. Ansie brought me a cold Coke to wet my dusty throat. David was in high spirits, having taken his first African trophy with his bow – a springbok ram at a waterhole. Claude captured David’s springbok hunt on video, which can be seen starting at 3:30 on the
Delgado Safari.
Miguel had shot a kudu bull with his Blaser .338 WM very late in the afternoon, and he and Jacques had run out of daylight before the bull could be recovered. Miguel was subdued but optimistic that the kudu would be found the next morning, and worried that jackals might damage the cape.
Miguel’s appetite may not have been quite up to par, but David and I each had two generous helpings of Selma’s wildebeest tenderloin Stroganoff, potato-stuffed squash, and a crunchy mint custard for dessert.
Matheus and I will be looking for kudu tomorrow morning …
