jphilibert
AH member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2014
- Messages
- 20
- Reaction score
- 24
- Location
- Massachusetts USA
- Member of
- NRA, Shirley Rod and Gun Club, SCI, DU
Dory
I am not a Africa Veteran by any stretch having recently returned from my first trip at Africa Maximum Safari's in NW RSA but would echo some of the advice others have posted. I spent A LOT of time looking at pictures online of what was on my target list so I had an idea of what constituted good representative samples. I had a package that included three plains game (Impala, Springbuck, and Blesbok) and had created a list of other six other species of interest in a rough rank order and had budgeted for three. I shared this info via email with my outfitter prior to the trip that helped him decide where it made sense for me to hunt (i.e. which concessions). Once there I learned there are species of opportunity (i.e bush pigs, duikers) that although not on my original list I felt I would take if they came along in place of one of my "other three" (plus they are relatively inexpensive). I also trusted my PH as he was very discriminate on what was good knowing what I was looking for. With that said I shot one animal the first day (Blesbok) and three the second day (Springbuck, B. Wildebeest, and R. Hartebeest) of a six day trip and was thinking to myself holy shit I'm going to spend a good part of this trip sitting by the pool if I don't slow down! But despite hunting hard luck would have it we did not encounter, or get a chance on good examples of the other 2 (impala and bushbuck) until the last two days respectively. I did have to practice some patience though as I really wanted a bushbuck but had seen a really nice old Waterbuck bull (also on my hit list) on this property. Walking out of the woods after not seeing the Bushbuck the last night guess who was standing in a field at 70 yards broadside? Yeah... Mr. Waterbuck and to boot my PH whispered to me that the outfitter would "drop the trophy fee down"! I had to take my hat off, bow my head and spend a minute and think this one over as I could not take both if I wanted to have a home to come home to (although I thought to myself maybe I could live in the taxidermy shipping crate if it was bigger?
). I reluctantly ended up passing and God shined down as the next morning, which was the last day of my hunt, at 6:05 am the Bushbuck (14" left, 15" right, 12" bases) in my new Avatar would be a nice new full mount in my trophy room. You just never know. Need to have an idea of priorities and realize as I have already there is plenty more animals left for the next trip back to Africa, and the one after that, and the one after that....
I am not a Africa Veteran by any stretch having recently returned from my first trip at Africa Maximum Safari's in NW RSA but would echo some of the advice others have posted. I spent A LOT of time looking at pictures online of what was on my target list so I had an idea of what constituted good representative samples. I had a package that included three plains game (Impala, Springbuck, and Blesbok) and had created a list of other six other species of interest in a rough rank order and had budgeted for three. I shared this info via email with my outfitter prior to the trip that helped him decide where it made sense for me to hunt (i.e. which concessions). Once there I learned there are species of opportunity (i.e bush pigs, duikers) that although not on my original list I felt I would take if they came along in place of one of my "other three" (plus they are relatively inexpensive). I also trusted my PH as he was very discriminate on what was good knowing what I was looking for. With that said I shot one animal the first day (Blesbok) and three the second day (Springbuck, B. Wildebeest, and R. Hartebeest) of a six day trip and was thinking to myself holy shit I'm going to spend a good part of this trip sitting by the pool if I don't slow down! But despite hunting hard luck would have it we did not encounter, or get a chance on good examples of the other 2 (impala and bushbuck) until the last two days respectively. I did have to practice some patience though as I really wanted a bushbuck but had seen a really nice old Waterbuck bull (also on my hit list) on this property. Walking out of the woods after not seeing the Bushbuck the last night guess who was standing in a field at 70 yards broadside? Yeah... Mr. Waterbuck and to boot my PH whispered to me that the outfitter would "drop the trophy fee down"! I had to take my hat off, bow my head and spend a minute and think this one over as I could not take both if I wanted to have a home to come home to (although I thought to myself maybe I could live in the taxidermy shipping crate if it was bigger?
![Sneaky :sneaky: :sneaky:](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/twitter/twemoji@14.0.2/assets/72x72/1f60f.png)