ok.. first hunt report ever.. so go easy on me... here we go....
Who:
@mdwest and
@Huntress in Heels
What: 9 day safari with
@Limcroma Safaris
Where: Limpopo, SA
Why: Why not?!?!?!
When: June 10 - June 19, 2017
Animals seen: Roan, Eland, Zebra, Ostrich, Porcupine, Hartebeest, Giraffe, Warthog, Sable, White Blesbok, Common Blesbok, Nyala, Impala, Gemsbok, Waterbuck, Kudu, Bat Earer Fox, Steenbuck, Duiker, Cape Buffalo, Aardwolf, vervet monkey, baboon, common reedbuck, mountain reedbuck, elephant, bush buck, crocodile, hippopotamus, and more guinea fowl than you can shake a stick at..
Animals taken: common blesbok, impala, waterbuck, kudu, gembok, zebra, 2x wildebeest.
Day 1: Arrived at OR Tambo at approximately 7AM local time. We were met by
@riflepermits.com and our PH, Hanno, and proceeded straight to SAPS. Everything was in order, and we literally were able to clear the airport in less than 45 minutes with all bags in hand after our planes wheels touched down. We got straight on the road for camp, and arrived just in time for lunch at about 1PM. By 3PM we had confirmed zero on both of our rifles (
@Huntress in Heels took her .308 and I took my .375 H&H) and headed out for an afternoon hunt. We caught sight of a huge white blesbok pretty early into the hunt, and even though he wasnt on "the list", he was really too good to pass up, so we decided to give chase. 2 hours later, and after being busted 3 times while stalking, he disappeared into some thick brush and we werent able to find him again. This guy ended up being our nemesis most of the trip. He showed up 2 more times while we were mid hunt or in the process of tracking some other animal that had just been taken, but we could never get a shot on him. He generally stayed 2-300 yards away and in pretty thick areas. Im pretty sure he was intentionally taunting us
.. We were pretty exhausted after the 33+ hour trip to get to SA (thats another story.. 21 hours of flight time, plus a 12 hour layover in Frankfurt), so we called it a day at about 6PM and headed back to camp. Both lunch and dinner were excellent. Eland lasagna for lunch, and gemsbuck and impala filets on the braii for dinner. The rooms/accommodations and camp in general FAR exceeded our expectations. Everything was in perfect order, comfortable, and well maintained. The entire staff took time to greet each of us personally, and were all extremely friendly and approachable.
Day 2: Headed out about 630 AM to a nearby concession (less than a 15 minute drive.. the same place we had hunted the afternoon before) to see what we could find.
@Huntress in Heels connected with a really nice common blesbok about 11AM with a 130 yard shot. The shot was a little low (although perfectly on the center line of the shoulder). This resulted in us learning A LOT about hunting in Africa very early into our trip, and helped us to gain an understanding of just how good the trackers at
@Limcroma Safaris really are. The blesbok left a very thin and very occasional blood trail only. Very much unlike a whitetail, when he was hit, he took off like a rocket, and didnt stop for a LOOOOOOOONNNNNG time.. We caught up to him the first time almost 1/2 mile away and accidentally bumped him, which resulted in him taking off (once again, like a rocket).. we didnt catch up to him the second time until he had covered another 1 1/2 miles.. I could go on and on and on about everything we learned on this first animal taken, but it would take pages.. bottom line however is we ended up covering more than 3 miles before we finally caught up to him and delivered a final shot at about 5PM with the .375 to finish the hunt and really got to see our PH and tracker in action in the process. They are an incredible team. Every time I thought "he's lost.. chalk this one up to a lesson learned", we'd be back on the track and moving again.. oh.. I almost forgot to add.. about 1/2 way into tracking the terminator blesbok that refused to give up and perish, we stirred 3 cape buff in the bush that decided to pop out and say hello to us at a distance of about 25 yards... That made for an exciting couple of moments that we werent expecting when we set out that morning
... We also managed to walk up on a nice herd of impala with a really big, old ram at about 1PM while still tracking the blesbok.. We had a good trail on the blesbok at the time, so we decided to take the impala (target of opportunity). I took him down with
@Huntress in Heels .308 at a distance of about 110 yards. He moved less than 10 yards after being hit and dropped. We got the impala sorted out then got back on the track of the blesbok. Lunch that day was gamemeats pizza. For dinner we had fried impala steaks. Both were absolutely delicious.
Day 3: The morning started about the same time as the day previous. We went to a very large concession (about 25,000 acres) that was about a 30 minute drive away. This was a great piece of property. We saw tons of animals that we had not seen on the other concession (ostrich, zebra, giraffe, etc..) and the herds we ran into were consistently larger in number as well.. Waterbuck wasnt really on "the list" (much like the white blesbok), but after seeing them in the field for the first time, I knew I wanted one. We checked out several different groups in the morning, but most everything we saw was either too young, too small, or too far away to get a good stalk on. That changed about 1030AM though. We caught a glimpse of a herd with 2 large bulls and about a half dozen cows at about 200 yards and managed to close the distance to about 50 yards without them realizing we were there. A well placed .375 on the shoulder resulted in a great waterbuck bull down (he moved maybe 30 yards after being hit and then dropped). We stopped for a short lunch about noon (eland sausages! excellent stuff!) and then set up a brush blind close to a watering hole where we had seen a big kudu hanging out earlier in the day to see if he would come in for a drink. We managed to get busted by both a giraffe (hard to hide from a 20+ foot tall animal that walks 30 feet from your blind and then stares straight down on you), and later by a troops of baboons.. We were tempted to shoot the large alpha male baboon that caused all of the ruckus and kept telling everyone around that we were there.. Im glad we resisted the urge.. (more on that to follow).. after about 3 hours in the brush blind, and seeing no kudu we decided to try something else and hopped back in the truck.. We drove about 300 yards down the road near the watering hole, looked to the left, and there he was! the same big kudu bull we had seen that morning! We intentionally just kept driving past and didnt stop, hoping we wouldnt alert him or send him running into the bush. We turned the truck around about a half mile down the road and slowly moved back to the place we saw the bull.
@Huntress in Heels got to within about 60 yards of him and took the shot. The kudu immediately went head down, ran less than 20 meters, and was done. You couldnt have asked for better shot placement on a hard, quartering toward angle (maybe 25-30 degrees?). She managed to hit both heart and lungs, and the 168gr barnes ttsx performed perfectly. Dinner back at camp was sable fillets stuffed with feta and bacon, and was probably my favorite meal of the entire trip.
Day 4: There was very little animal activity the first half of the day. We saw a few warthogs, but nothing of significant size/age, and saw one nice hartebeest, but were never able to get close enough to take a shot. After a short track in some pretty thick brush we lost him. I dont think we ever got closer than about 200 yards when we first saw him, and at that point all we could really see was face and horns. In the afternoon we set up another brush blind in an attempt to set a trap for a group of gemsbok that was running around but had no luck. Things changed in the late afternoon though. Our tracker pushed a small herd of 3 bachelor males toward us..
@Huntress in Heels stalked them for about 300 yards and connected with the biggest one with a 120 yard shot at about 5PM. He dropped on the spot, never moving an inch from where the bullet impacted. We had him loaded into the truck and were on our way back to camp before nightfall. Dinner was blesbok strogonoff made with
@Huntress in Heels blesbok that was taken on Day 2, and was extremely tasty (and satisfying!
).
Day 5: We decided to go back after the hartebeest that we had spotted the day prior and managed to find him about 8AM. He gave us the slip twice though and completely disappeared on us about 30 minutes later so we decided to try a little bow hunting and moved to a really nice bow blind on the same concession. I have only been shooting a bow for about 6 months and have never taken an animal with one, so I was especially excited about this hunt. less than 30 minutes after entering the bow blind there was a huge amount of activity at the watering hole that the blind overlooked. 3 herds of impala came in, several warthogs, a couple of kudu cows, a lone kudu bull, a waterbuck, and literally hundreds of guinea fowl came and went while we were there. Before entering the blind the PH determined that the wind wasnt very favorable for us, so he lined up a bunch of zebra dung just to the rear of the blind and set it on fire. He told me it wouldnt flame, but would smolder for hours and should help to cover our scent. It was obviously VERY effective. We had numerous animals get as close as 10 yards from the blind that never once alerted on us or acting like they sensed any danger at all. Finally, about 1115 a group of 3 blue wildebeest came in. 2 of the three were "shooters". I selected the one with the bigger body and older looking face, but smaller set of horns and took a shot at 21 yards. The arrow (501gr carbon express pile driver, with a G5 Montec broadhead.. fired from a 60lb bow) connected about 3" higher than I would have liked, but SHOULD have been a kill shot. When we watched on the video that the PH took as I released the arrow, placement was good, but for some reason it looked like the arrow didnt penetrate very deeply. Once we started to track, we found the broken arrow with about 7" missing off the end (presumably still inside the wildebeest), and only found a very light blood trail. Our tracker went into high gear though and was able to follow him. We covered A LOT of ground between about 1215 and 5PM (about 4 miles?) and only actually saw the wildebeest 1 more time that day (about 3PM). He was at a full tilt run at a distance of more than 200 yards. I would have liked to have gotten a rifle shot on him at that time, but couldnt get him in my sights in time to take it. About 5PM we lost the track. We hadnt found any additional blood in probably an hour, and the wildebeest had joined up with a group of several other wildebeest and entered an area where guinea fowl had walked all over the tracks.. I was pretty bummed thinking I had lost him permanently (more on that to follow) and that I had a potentially barely wounded animal out there suffering... thankfully that wasnt entirely the case and things ended up better than I thought (although certainly not perfect).. Dinner that night was an excellent pot roast made from a wildebeest that
@Savage Hunter took a few days prior with a crossbow (
@Savage Hunter and his wife were in camp the entire week we were which was a really nice bonus to the whole hunt.. we had some really nice nights by the campfire and at the dinner table with them...)
Day 6: Back into the bow blind in the AM to see if maybe the wildebeest from the day before would return.. We watched 2 herds of Impala come in at the same time about 0830.. It was a pretty neat experience watching the rams from each herd competing, with lots of grunts and posturing, but no real fighting.. The herds ended up taking turns at the watering hole and then left.. We left the blind about noon for lunch. No wildebeest came in and activity in general was a lot lighter with very few animals spotted. We returned to the blind in the afternoon with one last hope that we might see my wildebeest from Day 5, but had no luck. We did see a lot more animal activity in the afternoon though with waterbuck, kudu, impala, and zebra all coming in for a drink.
Day 7: Having decided that we werent going to see my wildebeest again, we turned back to rifle hunting.
@Huntress in Heels spied a group of about 8 zebras early at about 730AM. She and the PH jumped out of the truck and stalked them for about 20 minutes while the tracker and I moved further down the road with the truck.
@Huntress in Heels put a big stallion down before 8AM. He dropped in his tracks with a single shot through the heart and both lungs. The skinner recovered the bullet. The 168gr barnes ttsx performed perfectly. We decided we were done hunting at that point, had a 9AM celebration beer with our PH
, and planned an afternoon walk on the crocodile river just to look around. While walking the river banks we ran into a female bushbuck, saw a couple of troops of baboons, and heard a hippo off in the distance, but never got close enough to see him.. We sat through the sunset on the bank of the river sipping some amarula with the PH and just enjoyed a slow evening after 7 days of pretty hard/fast hunting and had a really nice time.. We returned to camp about 6:30PM, had some excellent loins on the braii from
@Huntress in Heels kudu taken on Day 3 as well as some eland taken by another hunter in camp on the same day.. It was a great end to a really nice day..
Day 8: Since we had decided we were done hunting (this isnt how things really turned out.. but we THOUGHT at this point we were done hunting
).. we asked the PH if he would mind helping us out with some excursions.. He did a great job getting us a truck tour on short notice of the Marakele National Park. This was a great experience. We didnt see a whole lot of animals (an elephant, some impala, a few reedbuck, etc.. but thats about it).. but the park is absolutely beautiful.. we drove up to the top of a mountain and sat at about 6500 feet looking across the waterburg mountains for about half an hour and took some great pics.. We also visited a nearby privately owned/operated predator park and viewed lions, cheetah, leopard, hyena, etc..and
@Huntress in Heels flirted and played with monkeys for a little while
.. We made it back to camp just in time for dinner and had kudu kabobs on the braii... about 9PM we decided "we cant be done hunting! what were we thinking????" and asked the PH if he could take us back out again in the morning.. he laughed at us and told us he had been waiting on that question all day, and already had a nice concession laid on for us in the morning
Day 9: We had thought the night before that it would be nice to see if we could find 1 really good impala ram for
@Huntress in Heels .. She really liked the one I had taken on Day 2 and had been talking about potentially getting another one before we left.. Things changed quickly for us though when we spotted a huge wildebeest about 9AM. A quick decision was made and our impala hunt turned into a wildebeest hunt. It didnt take long to close the distance and
@Huntress in Heels made a clean shot at about 120 yards. The wildebeest ran about 40 yards was dropped.. We were loaded up before 10AM and thought we were finally done.. but then the PH's phone rang with some really good news.. my wildebeest from Day 5 was found! He didnt go back to the same watering hole the next day like we had hoped, but had gone to another one about a half mile away.. A bow hunter was hunting there that morning and saw him laying dead about 100 yards from the watering hole... We didnt want to disturb the other hunters hunt, so we waited until after lunch (when the other hunter planned on switching locations) and went to recover my wildebeest. From the looks of it he had died sometime either later afternoon or during the night after I had shot him. The jackals and warthogs had eaten him up pretty badly so there wasnt much to recover other than a skull mount in terms of a trophy, but at least he was recovered and I knew that he wasnt still running around out in the bush with an arrowing festering inside of him still hurting.. We were able to recover the arrow and determined that the shot was actually in a "good" place, it just didnt penetrate enough (as we suspected based on the video we watched). It looked like it had gone in at the right location (would have been a lung shot, but would have missed the heart), struck rib, and deflected, missing lungs slightly, but perforated the liver.. So he was able to move after being shot, and covered a whole lot of ground, but didnt survive long (I was thankful.. I really thought he was going to take several days, if not weeks to die, and that it would likely be of infection rather than the actual arrow).. So in the end it ended up being a 2 wildebeest day.. even though when we set out in the morning we didnt intend on taking any wildebeest at all that day
.. That evening we went back to the crocodile river for another stroll and managed to spot a croc that was about 10 feet long, and a couple of hippos just before sunset.. was a great end to a great hunt...
Day 10: Time to go home.. We woke up and had our final meal in camp.. an OUTSTANDING steak and eggs breakfast, with
@Savage Hunter 's Cape Buffalo providing us with the steaks (Ill let
@Savage Hunter tell you the cape buff story
).. Before heading back to Jo'berg we stopped at a local school where the children of the staff that work
@Limcroma Safaris attend class for a visit... This is something I highly recommend and was one of the great highlights of our trip.. We got to interact with the kids for a little bit.. they sang several songs, performed dances, etc.. and we presented them with some gifts.. it was wonderful getting to see the kids so excited and happy, and get a chance to observe how different things are for them in SA than they are for our kids in the US, and still see how joyful they are... After the school we did some curio shopping (picked up a couple of trinkets) and then headed for the airport.. Boarded on time, and made it back to the US just in time to go pick our dogs up at the kennel, get some dinner, and go straight to bed..
A few lessons learned:
- If you havent been on Safari before DONT GO! Addictions are easy to form and expensive!
(we were already planning our next trip by Day 5 and will be going back for Cape Buff, Eland, Bushbuck, and Nyala in 2019)...
- Barnes Bullets are AWESOME - I could not believe how well the 168gr TTSX we were using in
@Huntress in Heels rifle performed. Absolutely flawless. I am now a believer and am completely sold on them.
- African animals are TOUGH - any whitetail hit in the same place as I hit my wildebeest would have laid down 100 yards away and waited to die.. my wildebeest ran for MILES and fought the good fight..
@Huntress in Heels hit her blesbok good enough that any whitetail would have gone 100 yards and found somewhere comfortable to lay down.. but instead, the blesbok ran for a LONG, LONG way..
- SA is colder in winter than you would think. I should have carried some light gloves and maybe a thin mask for my face and ears. I was very glad to have my light parka with a hood, but a bit more would have been better
- Packing "light" is right.... while I would have benefited from packing some gloves.. there were a lot of things I could have (should have) left at home.. and a lot of things I left behind as gifts for our tracker and PH that we never used (additional flashlights/headlamps, pocket knives, etc..)..
End summary of all of the above is.. We had a WONDERFUL experience.. to a person, everyone
@Limcroma Safaris treated us exceptionally well, the hunting was absolutely excellent with a lot of animals present and animal quality being extremely high.. the food was marvelous (Marcel did an amazing job with every single meal).. our PH and tracker were the epitome of professionalism and their skills and capabilities were exceptional.. the camp is well kept, well maintained, and comfortable..
I checked out at least 25-30 outfitters in SA and Namibia initially, then down selected to 6 for real consideration after getting price lists, talking to representatives, considering air travel, and a number of other factors.. When we were ready to make a final decision it came down to one of 3 options.. We went with
@Limcroma Safaris largely because of our interaction with
@firehuntfish, but thought any one of the three would probably be a good choice and that we would have a good time..
I am EXTREMELY happy that we made the decision to go with
@Limcroma Safaris .. They werent just a good choice, and we didnt just have a good time.. They went above and beyond to meet our every expectation.. and exceeded our expectations on multiple occasions... It was one of, if not the best, vacations
@Huntress in Heels have ever had.
I apologize in advance for the "black out" on the pics below..
@Huntress in Heels isnt usually as concerned about internet anonymity as I am (its part of being in the industry I am in I guess..).. she has a bunch of pics posted on her social media accounts from the trip if you want to see our smiling faces (Ill warn you in advance.. Im ugly
).. but hopefully these will give you an idea of the animals available
@Limcroma Safaris this year...
