SOUTH AFRICA: LJ SAFARIS - Excellent Hunt In All Aspects

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The blue duiker hunting was well organized. I hunted with Lauren as well as her father, who is a PH.

The foliage, as you can see in photo, is thick islands of extremely dense forest with grass pasture in between.

The dogs would work an area and when they hit a trail they'd start bawling....and damn it is exciting to hear them sound off. I may have started shaking like a ten-year-old on his first deer. Lauren and her dad would put me in a specific spot and point out one of two areas the duiker would likely follow when pressured enough by the hounds. They'd done this before many times. The duikers want to stay in the brush, but to escape the hounds, they need to break out of the cover.

When they do so, they come out at about 200 miles an hour...or they run out and may stop a second to see what is happening.

I borrowed an amazing classic side-by-side 12-gauge. It was easily one of the neatest firearms I've held. It also shot true when I did my part.

I missed one on the second stand, but killed one on the fifth stand.

Very neat hunt and unique trophy. Blue duiker are truly of of Africa's great forest prizes.

 

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A little bit on Juan’s farm: He manages it conservatively. There are mature animals on it for this reason. There are some thicker areas where an animal can grow old, which also helps. He has cape grysbok on the farm, which he has good success with, if anyone is looking for that species. We would hunt bushpig here as well as some more common species. There were good numbers of bushbuck, duikers, impala, warthogs and nyala, as well as kudu and some other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Here is an ancient one-horned bushbuck. It appeared his second horn had been long-gone, and Juan couldn't recall having ever seen it.

 

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Impala from Juan and Lauren's farm...these are always hard to resist.

 

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We hunted caracal as well. While I did not kill one, it was not for lack of effort. We had three packs of hounds going the morning we tried (one on Juan’s farm, and two with another houndsman on a different farm). While the two packs on the other farm were out (I was there with Lauren) the houndsman got a call from a farmer who had heard a bushbuck barking. He said about 70% of the caracal they tree are from getting one of these calls. He had feelers out with the farmers he knew, so their staff were listening. We gather up and grabbed one pack and a dog handler and Lauren and I drove to that farm. The bushbuck was still barking. We casted the dogs through there, and eventually one picked up the trail. We actually think we had him treed after some pretty spectacular cold trailing, but the cat jumped the tree when another pack was let loose to support, and by that point it was mid-day and hot. Having already had a caracal, I was excited to hunt them because of the dog aspect, but not super concerned whether I pulled the trigger or not.

I’ve been in similar situations on deciding whether or not to release fresh hounds onto a track that is in progress. It can go one of two ways: good or bad. When it goes well, the fresher hounds offer fresh legs and put more pressure on the animal, often resulting in a treed animal. When it goes poorly, the fresher dogs can mess things up, especially on an animal like a bobcat (basically a caracal), where there is not much scent. They can flood a track. Also, the dogs running the track do not like others being dumped in if they are track-minded hounds with lead-dog mentalities. This may seem weird, but it is a lot like a pointing bird dog stealing a point from another bird dog. The dog who found the bird gets ticked off.

I think the timing was just barely off. I think the cat was jumped and just about to tree, or treed right when the other were turned loose. This just happened to end poorly, but it could have just as easily went the other way. It was getting late in the morning, the dogs were hot, and if it had been a situation where the cat was putting more space between itself and the hounds, the other pack could have saved the day. Hunting with hounds adds nuances and extra considerations, but that is what makes it so damn fun.


With more time, I’m confident we could have killed one with Juan and Lauren’s multi-pack-at-once approach, but I wanted to focus on bushpig with the remaining days.

 

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So the next morning we met the bushpig houndsman, Davey at Juan's farm.

I jumped out the truck and was like:

 

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We started on bushpig at a baitsite on Juan’s farm. Juan runs his farm conservatively with regards to harvest, so there are some high quality animals there. He also sees the bushpigs as game animals and not vermin. The bushpig houndsman, Davey, had some damn good hounds and was a relentless hunter. I’ve seen a lot of big game dogs work. His were very good. We had some action on the day we ran from Juan’s farm, but it was like the one day we were there that the pigs didn’t visit the bait site the night before.

At first light, Davey wanted to walk a loop with the hounds. I asked to come on the walk, rather than just come to the bay-up.

He looked at me.

"You fit?" he said.

I thought for a second. I lift three days a week and do cardio, plus regularly play ice hockey. But I also know that once mountain lion season in the states starts, I jump several levels of fitness. The only way to truly get in shape for climbing mountains chasing dogs is by climbing mountains chasing dogs. I was nowhere near mountain lion shape, and I knew Davey hunts bushpig everyday he is not doing other jobs. He was .00001% body fat with a tan so deep it changed his race.

But I wanted to go.

"Yes," I said, but I knew I would struggle to keep up with the guy, despite a decent fitness level.

We took off. We chatted about hound hunting. I fired a million questions to him on bushpig habits, biology, family groupings, patterns, etc. He did the same about bears, lion, and bobcats. He told me which hounds were experienced, which were failsafe dogs (if they barked, they were on a proper track, and which were up-and-comers). We talked dog breeds and characteristics.

We found a two night old track and a couple dogs lit up, showing they knew what was up, but it was just too old.

We kept walking. And walking. And crawling through brush. And walking.

We hunted into the day. We got on some, but had to pull dogs due to government land. We got on some more, but it was a colder trail.

I was excited though. I know good dogs, and I know relentless hunters. Davey was like Juan. No quit. All go.

We made plan for the next day for me and Lauren to hunt with Davey on another farm where he had recently killed the sow of a family group and knew their patterns well.

 

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When Davey was heading out, Juan, Lauren, my buddy and I were sitting overlooking an area early afternoon, but about to head back to camp for a quick meal before the evening hunt.

A mature boar warthog was chilling in the meadow, but wasn't sporting trophy tusks.

Juan say, "shoot it for camp meat. He's a cull."

"You sure?" I said.

"Go for it," Juan said, smiling.

Some animals I like to kill in moderation, or severe moderation. I went 9 years and 363 days between my tom mountain lion kills, despite treeing triple digit number in the time between. I like chasing them, and once and again a buddy or family member will kill one over my hounds, but the dead ones don't make tracks to chase, so I don't like killing many.

However, warthogs are different to me. In my deviant brain, they are the type of animal that I could shoot ten in a morning, and be plenty happy shooting an eleventh. I've shot a few on various safaris. I love putting a bullet in those pigs. They are just a neat animal. Iconic, prolific and so ugly they are beautiful to me. Is re-shootability a word? I don't know. I put rabbits in the same category, and coyotes, and probably pronghorn if I can get multiple tags in a year.

So I got into a legs-crossed sitting position and sent 150 grains his way.

He dropped, kicked twice and moved no more.

I love little unexpected bonuses like that on safari, and Juan and Lauren were full of them.

 

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Forgot to add this.

When we arrived at the coastal camp, the girls told us that they probably wouldn't go hunting with us anymore.

It was new and super nice. They wanted to hang out there. Giraffes were spotted out the window, and they would take jogs on the property and weave through zebras and giraffes and wildebeests.

My wife did make Juan promise there were no lions.

Lauren immediately set them up with a spa afternoon.

And they also wanted to do a game drive, so Lauren arranged that on a conservancy with the Big Five for the final day.

 

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Juan and Lauren also own a very nice restaurant in Kenton.

We grabbed a drink there in town midday.

Great view. I spotted a bushbuck in the distance. Our ladies rolled their eyes at me.

Then the ladies wanted a beach walk.

I said something stupid like, "ehhhh, I think we need to go back and get ready for the evening hunt."

Again, stupid...

I am full of dumb ideas. This was one. They'd just followed their husbands halfway around the globe to chase them up mountains chasing critters...and they just wanted some time on the beach with their not-so-great white hunters...

I could tell by the looks I received I was in the wrong.

Sometimes I get a bit too laser-focused and intense. I am not good at stopping to smell the roses.

"Let's go to the beach!" I then said.

It was a slight recovery.

It was a great time too.

Then we left and went with Juan to kill things on his farm.

 

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The next morning we casted dogs into an area where pigs were coming into a dam. They lit up immediately and we had a split race on our hands. Unfortunately, both pigs caught were young. Dogs hit a trail and go, and don’t differentiate between sow, boar and young. Davey was helping the farmer get rid of the pigs, so both were dispatched. We walked the hounds back to the damn area and Davey searched for the boar’s tracks we had seen. Soon enough, we go the hounds on that track.

At this point, the boar bee lined out of there and ran like hell. I am not kidding when I say we traveled though eight or nine farms chasing dogs chasing that pig. Davey caught a glimpse of him, and said he was a nice one. Eventually, the dogs took that pig right through a rooting area from another group of pigs. Shortly after, the dogs started circling and acting different. Davey was confident they had gotten on a different pig. We walked into the bay up and it was another young pig. Davey commented that I was the unluckiest bushpig hunter ever. I told him that we did damn well, three pigs in a day and that he had a heck of a pack of hounds. Although it was hot and late, we walked the hounds around hoping to pick up the trail of the boar again, but weren’t able to. I was content with the experience I had, and you can’t control which pigs the dogs chase. It was great seeing them do their thing.

 

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Juan and I chatted, and although I was happy with my experiences with the caracal and bushpig on my package, he said he would credit the trophy fees on those animals towards one of the nyala bulls we’d been eyeing on his farm that I was quite interested in. This, as I said, was an unexpected bonus, and I would not have felt like he was being unfair if I had just not gotten the animals. We made a plan and were able to turn up two mature bulls and get a shot right before dark. It was an old and heavy bull I was really happy with.

 

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We flew into JNB. We stayed in Johannesburg at Afton Guest House. I hadn't been there since my first safari in 2005. Place was great then, and even better now. My wife was like, "we should just stay here another day and rest?"
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"Haha, no. Let's go hunting," I said.
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I eyeballed the vaal rhebuck on the left of the picture and went to bed.
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We flew to Port Elizabeth early the next morning.

Afton House is a great place to stay and is overlooked. They have great services set up also with firearms permits and meet and greets. I have used them since 2007, and I agree that they have only gotten better. Great write up. Thanks for sharing it.

 

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After I got my Nyala, we were getting photos. I write for some hunting magazines and am pretty particular (or nerdy) about getting nice shots I can potentially use for a story.

There was a little grass in front of the antelope's nose. I grabbed a chunk and pulled it out. Then another. I got a little more aggressive with a stubborn clump. Right as Juan is saying, "hey watch out for the-" WHAM! My hand crashed into a cactus. Like punching hard.

I had immediate pain.

A little backstory: I hunted the Eastern Cape in 2014. The hounds chased a warthog into a hole. It came out when I was standing over it and I dodged it by jumping into an acacia bush. I ended up with a thorn through the knuckle connecting my thumb to my hand....interestingly, this story can be found in the latest Field Ethos magazine. I had to get a local surgeon...then a follow up at home a few months later.

Back to the Nyala hunt: I pulled a couple spines out of my hand, but the way it felt, I figured one was in the joint, and I knew that sensation. We finished with photos and it still hurt pretty bad.

The next day it was swollen and painful to move.

 

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It continued to cause a lot of pain and the swelling didn't go down. Moving the finger felt terrible.

So when I got home, I went to see the hand surgeon...again.

"So, have you seen a lot of 'thorn-in-the-hand' cases," I asked.

"No," he responded. "Only two, and both of them were you."

Lucky me.

He took an X-ray, saw nothing, and prescribed some oral steroids and a follow up visit to see if those would help.

 

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I took the steroids. It felt a bit better and less painful to move on the initial dose (which is the biggest dose) then just felt worse.

I did some online research.

Apparently, plant thorns can (rarely) leave a tiny piece in the joint that can cause big issues.

I've had a million cactus spines in me, and have had tips break off. They fill with pus, migrate to the surface and pop out.

But they can get in your joint and not come out. And since they aren't water soluble, the body won't dissolve them. They just stay there, causing bad arthritis.

More on this later...

 

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I went in to see my doc again. I told him that once the steroids wore off, it went back to the pain and swelling.

We talked about exploratory surgery and flushing the joint out.

He kind of wanted to wait. At that point I was like six or seven weeks out and it had only gotten worse. I also told him once September started, I would be hunting a ton and would not be able to keep my hands clean (risking infection in the incision). So he set me up for a surgery later that week.

 

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For the other thorn, the doc gave me a nerve block and some sedatives. That thorn was at the surface of the skin. For this, he said he had to put me all the way under since he would really be digging around in the joint.

The hope was that he would find something and not just flush it out hoping something came out.

 

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So, here is what caused all the issues:

Yes, that tiny little thorn tip.

 

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He really opened me up. That little piece of thorn was stuck in my joint.

 

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I gave this article to my doctor.

As you can see in the highlighted area, for a thorn to do this to a hand is incredibly rare. This was a medical case study from 2019...and it says that it was the first reported case in a hand in ten years.