Andrew62
AH elite
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
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- 1,088
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- Hunted
- Cameroon, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Uganda
I just returned home from a 7-day hunt with Bayly Sippel Safaris. The focus of this hunt was to do their 5-day rhino dart hunt, I added 2 additional days to allow for other hunting opportunities. Daytime temps ranged from 40 to 95 degrees!!
My flights were from Washington/Dulles to Doha to JNB. Flights both ways went well, service on Qatar Airways is pretty hard to beat. Compared to checking in with United, you do need an additional 15-20 minutes for Qatar to do their paperwork, it is not hard, but it does take longer than United.
After making my way through Customs, I exited the baggage pickup area and made my way towards the SAPS office. Right outside of the SAPS office I was met by the fine folks from Rifle Permits as well as my guide, Alex Menzel. The entire ‘getting my gun checked’ procedure was maybe 5 minutes, after that Alex and I headed out to his vehicle for the 4 hour ride to camp.
As Alex and I were walking from the airport terminal to his vehicle, he said that a couple of previous clients did not connect on a buffalo, so there was one tag left for the season, ‘would I like to hunt buffalo’? To which I responded, ‘Heck yeah, I’ll hunt Buffalo!!’
Due to working around other hunters schedules on the Blouberg property, my first day to hunt buffalo would be Day 4, so that meant my first 3 days would be set aside to hunt plains game animals of some sort, I had mentioned to Dempsey that should there be time, I would like to hunt kudu and eland.
Day 1, we spent time this day driving over 2 various properties that were new to Alex to hunt on. Saw some beautiful country but nothing to shoot.
Day 2, I did connect with an eland on a neighboring property. I shot my eland with my .308 using 180 grain Swift Aframe bullets. I was able to take a fairly broadside shot, the eland ran approximately 40-50 yards and expired. I was able to recover the bullet, it mushroomed perfectly.
Day 3, again we were on a neighboring property, as we were just starting our hunting day Alex saw a bush pig off in the distance, out in an open field. He made a quick call to the land owner asking permission to shoot the bush pig. The property owner gave a great price as it was a female and he wanted it shot. After a bit of a stalk I was able to take my 2nd ever bush pig. We were both super stoked even though it was a sow because daylight bush pigs just do not happen often.
Day 4, my first day of buffalo hunting. For those of you who have hunted the Blouberg property, you’ll understand when I say, ‘damn, that can be some tough hunting!’ A part of the property had very sandy soil, other areas were very mountainous with rocks to navigate on almost every step. This day we walked 17,000 steps in pretty intense heat.
Day 5, had us back at Blouberg, this day we walked 19,000 steps, about 45 minutes before dark we happened to cross paths with a nice herd of buffalo. After 2-3 minutes of looking over the herd, Alex and I sorted out two bulls, the bull to my left was 3-4” wider, but when I saw the bull to the right I could immediately tell it was much older with harder bosses so I lined up the crosshairs and sent off a 300 grain Barnes TSX. My shot was a frontal shot. At the shot the bull bucked up like a horse, came down on its front legs, scrambled to its feet and headed into some really thick thorn bushes. While the buffalo was running away I was able to hit him with a second shot.
It was immediately clear the bull was hit hard and the blood trail indicated the same. Because we did not hear a death bellow we decided to wait 30 minutes before following up. This had us following up with only 10-15 minutes of light left, and given the super thick thorn trees/bushes we were in, we decided to back out and come back in the morning.
Day 6, we left camp early and went back to follow up on the buffalo. Approximately 200 yards from where we left the tracks we came upon the buffalo, it was bedded, but still alive. Given the thickness of the cover and the inability to spread out and approach the buffalo, Alex quickly fired off a finishing round. I was good with that as safety has to come above pride in certain situations. It was until after lunch that we finally got the buffalo out of the woods, we returned to camp and took the rest of the day off from hunting.
Day 7, my last day to hunt, we were finally able to go try the rhino dart hunt part of the hunt, I had been dreaming of this particular hunt for over 25 years.
When your guide says you need to get within 40 yards to deploy the dart, and it will take the tranquilizer dart several minutes to put the rhino on the ground, it does get your mind to thinking about the importance of life, and also wondering if there will be a tree tall enough to climb up to get out of potential harms way, lol.
Thankfully, we were able to locate two rhino’s, a male and female within an hour of us heading out. After a few minutes of getting everyone in place, Alex and I started our stalk towards the rhino’s, which were probably 250 yards away in some thorn trees. By taking our time and making sure the wind was always in our favor, we were actually able to stalk up on the male to within 16 yards. I honestly do not have words to describe the feeling of being so close to such a wonderful animal. We had to wait a good 15-20 minutes for the rhino bull to turn and walk into an opening to allow me the opportunity to take the shot. Thankfully, when the time came, I was able to send the dart on its way and it was a solid hit.
At the sound of the dart hitting the rhino, the rhino took off on a run, Alex turned and yelled to me to go back to the vehicle, he and the tracker will follow the rhino and when it was down he would have me come to the rhino. I need to stop here and say, Alex and the team’s number one priority was always my safety, and I greatly appreciate that.
Anyway, within just a few minutes I had made it back to the vehicle and Alex was calling to say the rhino was down and I could come to where it was. Walking up onto a rhino is something you just need to experience. While I have known for many years that I personally have no desire to shoot and kill a rhino, I can say that this rhino darting hunt was way more spiritual than I ever had imagined.
After pictures were taken, we all headed back to camp. At camp we were greeted by the land owner, his parents, other friends and family, it truly was an event. At some point I was off by myself and the land owner’s mother came over to me and asked if I was looking at my pictures, to which I replied, ‘actually, I am writing down my thoughts on what happened, I still haven’t looked at my pictures!!’
I hunted out of Bayly Sippel’s main camp, all aspects of this camp were wonderful, rooms, bathroom and meals were very nice. There is pretty decent wifi in the lodge area. I have been in a lot of hunting lodges, and I believe this is the best I have been in. It is a mix of new build with traditional African style.
Lastly, I would like to say 'Thank You' to Alex for being such a wonderful PH. He was very entertaining, helpful, he was always wanting to be sure all aspects of my hunt were going well!!
