Drywaller44
AH veteran
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2022
- Messages
- 106
- Reaction score
- 400
- Location
- St. Louis MO
- Media
- 22
- Hunted
- South Africa
Day 5
The plan today is to go look for a bushbuck up at Mountain Top again. We are trying to work on finishing my package and I would like to get a bushbuck. They are hard little critters to find but boy are they fun to hunt. We arrived up at Mountain Top just as the mist was clearing, hiked onto a ridge and began glassing. We had a couple of female bushbuck come out below us but no luck with a ram. We glassed this ridge for at least 2 hours before moving on. While glassing the ridge we did have a group of kudu cows come out on the ridge to our left with 3 young bulls. Two of those bulls started fighting with each other, that was a lot of fun to watch.
We took our time moving to different ridge tops until we finally got lucky on the 4th ridge. We had two trackers that day, Sada and X. X has great eyes and usually spots everything before anyone else. It was around noon when X spotted a bushbuck ram with a smaller ram and a female. They were down in the valley across from us and it was hard to make out the size of his horns but he looked nice and dark. So we decided to work our way down the steep rocky ridge to get a closer look. We moved to within 155 yards of the bushbuck ram and had him standing broadside in the open for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately once we had a good look at the ram Don decided he was an inch or two too small to take. It was still exciting getting in close enough for a shot. I enjoy just stalking these amazing animals. Of course it helps to ease the disappointment when I've already had success the previous days.
Before putting the stalk on the bushbuck we had noticed 6 black wildebeest on top of the ridge in a more open area so we decided to go take a look at them after the bushbuck was too small. It was noon and highly unlikely that we would see another bushbuck moving at that time and I figured I could always hunt the bushbuck another day. As we stalked to about 215 yards of the black wildebeest, the zebra herd that was nearby them noticed us and alerted them. So the zebras and wildebeest all moved away from us getting on the skyline. We were able to make out 2 nice black wildebeest bulls, one was slightly bigger than the other though. It had a little more mass to its bosses. So that's the one we wanted to target. The wildebeest and zebra were on to us in this position though and we had no shot, so we pulled back and got in the truck. We drove a wide circle around them out of their view before we exited the truck and began our stalk from the opposite side. We got lucky and found a ditch that we were able to stay low in and get to within 235 yards of the wildebeest. The zebra were still right alongside of them and seem to be more wary, so we had a lot of eyes on us but we were able to get set up on the sticks without getting noticed. Don had already spotted the biggest bull of the herd and when I got on the sticks I confirmed with him that I was on the right one. Then I sent a shot his way and hit him in about the same spot I had with the waterbuck. Another liver shot and now we had a tracking job on our hands again.
When I hit him it almost seemed to me that he didn't even react, but you could hear the impact of the bullet on him because of the suppressor. When the wildebeest took off he was the only one that broke left and when he rejoined the herd he seemed to be getting pushed off to one side. I wasn't able to get a second shot off since there were just too many other animals and I was afraid I'd hit the wrong one. So we watched them run for 600 yards or so and then went back to the truck to go try and find them. We were able to find them a ways off and when we were on the opposite ridge from them we got out to stalk closer on foot. It took awhile to get up close to them and we ended up spooking the herd but only 5 wildebeest ran past us going left. That's a good sign since there was 6 so the injured one must have been pushed out or was lying somewhere dead if we were lucky. For the next couple hours we covered a lot of ground searching back and forth in the more open area looking for him around all the bushes and searching for blood. We did come across some blood eventually confirming that he had gone in the direction that we thought he had. We eventually pinpointed the location where he most likely was and got Rocky our dog for the day on a leash. He wasn't able to pick up much of a scent though but we got lucky and our tracker X was able to locate the black wildebeest sitting under a tree. We were able to get to about 20 yards from him and I put 2 more bullets in him to finish him off under that tree. What a relief to get him. I was actually more worried about losing him than the waterbuck since we didn't know how well he was hit at the time. I also was feeling pretty bad for making a mediocre shot for the second day in a row. It's a great feeling to be able to put your hands on the animal you've hunted.
The plan today is to go look for a bushbuck up at Mountain Top again. We are trying to work on finishing my package and I would like to get a bushbuck. They are hard little critters to find but boy are they fun to hunt. We arrived up at Mountain Top just as the mist was clearing, hiked onto a ridge and began glassing. We had a couple of female bushbuck come out below us but no luck with a ram. We glassed this ridge for at least 2 hours before moving on. While glassing the ridge we did have a group of kudu cows come out on the ridge to our left with 3 young bulls. Two of those bulls started fighting with each other, that was a lot of fun to watch.
We took our time moving to different ridge tops until we finally got lucky on the 4th ridge. We had two trackers that day, Sada and X. X has great eyes and usually spots everything before anyone else. It was around noon when X spotted a bushbuck ram with a smaller ram and a female. They were down in the valley across from us and it was hard to make out the size of his horns but he looked nice and dark. So we decided to work our way down the steep rocky ridge to get a closer look. We moved to within 155 yards of the bushbuck ram and had him standing broadside in the open for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately once we had a good look at the ram Don decided he was an inch or two too small to take. It was still exciting getting in close enough for a shot. I enjoy just stalking these amazing animals. Of course it helps to ease the disappointment when I've already had success the previous days.
Before putting the stalk on the bushbuck we had noticed 6 black wildebeest on top of the ridge in a more open area so we decided to go take a look at them after the bushbuck was too small. It was noon and highly unlikely that we would see another bushbuck moving at that time and I figured I could always hunt the bushbuck another day. As we stalked to about 215 yards of the black wildebeest, the zebra herd that was nearby them noticed us and alerted them. So the zebras and wildebeest all moved away from us getting on the skyline. We were able to make out 2 nice black wildebeest bulls, one was slightly bigger than the other though. It had a little more mass to its bosses. So that's the one we wanted to target. The wildebeest and zebra were on to us in this position though and we had no shot, so we pulled back and got in the truck. We drove a wide circle around them out of their view before we exited the truck and began our stalk from the opposite side. We got lucky and found a ditch that we were able to stay low in and get to within 235 yards of the wildebeest. The zebra were still right alongside of them and seem to be more wary, so we had a lot of eyes on us but we were able to get set up on the sticks without getting noticed. Don had already spotted the biggest bull of the herd and when I got on the sticks I confirmed with him that I was on the right one. Then I sent a shot his way and hit him in about the same spot I had with the waterbuck. Another liver shot and now we had a tracking job on our hands again.
When I hit him it almost seemed to me that he didn't even react, but you could hear the impact of the bullet on him because of the suppressor. When the wildebeest took off he was the only one that broke left and when he rejoined the herd he seemed to be getting pushed off to one side. I wasn't able to get a second shot off since there were just too many other animals and I was afraid I'd hit the wrong one. So we watched them run for 600 yards or so and then went back to the truck to go try and find them. We were able to find them a ways off and when we were on the opposite ridge from them we got out to stalk closer on foot. It took awhile to get up close to them and we ended up spooking the herd but only 5 wildebeest ran past us going left. That's a good sign since there was 6 so the injured one must have been pushed out or was lying somewhere dead if we were lucky. For the next couple hours we covered a lot of ground searching back and forth in the more open area looking for him around all the bushes and searching for blood. We did come across some blood eventually confirming that he had gone in the direction that we thought he had. We eventually pinpointed the location where he most likely was and got Rocky our dog for the day on a leash. He wasn't able to pick up much of a scent though but we got lucky and our tracker X was able to locate the black wildebeest sitting under a tree. We were able to get to about 20 yards from him and I put 2 more bullets in him to finish him off under that tree. What a relief to get him. I was actually more worried about losing him than the waterbuck since we didn't know how well he was hit at the time. I also was feeling pretty bad for making a mediocre shot for the second day in a row. It's a great feeling to be able to put your hands on the animal you've hunted.