I received a warm welcome in the intro thread area, and several polite commands that I had to share my story!
I'm sure the initial inspiration has been repeated 1000 times on this forum. As a pre-internet high school kid from a small town who liked to hunt and fish, I eventually was lead by the card catalog and sympathetic librarian to the company of Corbett and Capstick and the like. I was all ablaze to see Africa for myself and see what I was really made of! But as young men do, you start work and a family and a lot if those things take a back burner.
Fast forward to my mid 40s and I make an unexpected new friend and hunting and fishing buddy. I'd sort of given up on the Africa thing, maybe when I'm retired, right? But it turned out my buddy had been to South Africa twice, as he had made good friends on another trip who could get us a "great deal". I kept brushing him off for a few years, sounded too good to be true, I don't have the time, can't leave the kids, it's too expensive etc etc. Then I got the bombshell that my wife didn't want to be married anymore and without getting into the gory details by the time I came out the other side of that I said, what the hell am I waiting for? If not now, when? Book it!!!
So that is the long, historic midlife crisis preamble . The nitty gritty is that we left for about 11 days total (including travel). This only included about 3 days of hunting in the Eastern Cape/Karoo on this trip. The rest was touring around with my buddy's friends seeing sights. I wasn't really sure what to expect so I didn't want to over commit on the hunting (a tragic mistake in hindsight!). I had fairly humble goals in the animals department. I really wanted a decent kudu most of all. And maybe an impala. Besides those I was open to see what happened and what interested me when I was on the ground. I've been on a lot of tough north American hunts in my life. If you are a guy who's done a lot of public land elk and deer hunting, the idea of killing more than one animal in a 3 day hunt just sounds crazy anyway! So I was going to be pretty easy to please.
The kudu was tough, numbers were low where we hunted, I'm told partially due to the extended 7 or 8 year drought. I saw one very nice bull the first evening. He offered only a too long (for me) hard quartering away shot. I hadn't slept in 3 plus days with the travel and was just shakey and nauseous from jet lag etc. I passed on the shot. It hurt, as that would be the only bull I saw, but no regrets. That shot would have been relying on luck, not confidence.
I didn't connect on an impala either, I'll spare the details, but I got close but couldn't quite seal the deal. I ended up having some blown stalks, but lots of opportunities and more fun than should be legal. I ended up getting good shots and harvesting a springbok, blesbok and a red hartebeest. Nothing huge, but this was not a trophy hunt. The hartebeest was very old however, teeth almost gone and probably a great animal to take. I'm perfectly happy.
All in all, as much fun and as many cool things as I saw in the following week, through Baviaans, the Little Karoo, Cango Caves, Plettenberg Bay, Kromriver, etc etc, I would have been very happy spending the whole time walking the veldt looking at (and maybe occasionally shooting at) animals. What a great experience, all the variety of game, all the non game animals and birds, great company, the endless braai , I was truly in heaven. What I love about hunting most I think is going to a new place and being immersed in it, not just looking at it, snapping a picture, and moving on to the next thing. Again, I know it's a common theme here, but what I thought was a once in a lifetime, I'm already scheming to get back. I have no idea what the next trip will look like but I know it will be much more ambitious. We are already talking about a wilder trip for the next one, Namibia is already being thrown around. Botswana? Zim? Another part of South Africa? To be determined. But there is definitely going to be another!
I somehow thought I'd type this in 5 min, but I'm doing it on a phone and it got a little out of hand. I'll post and include some pictures to follow so I don't accidentally screw this up! Thanks for coming along.
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and congrats on your first trip, you did well, enjoying the country, your friends, just relaxing and having a great time.
