This adventure started right around the moment it was time to return back home from my latest adventure. In November of 2022, I had spent a wonderful 18 or 19 days hunting in Zimbabwe, with Mapassa Safaris, taking a majestic, old elephant bull. While waiting for my final flight back home, in Johannesburg airport, I had the pleasure of having a beer with AH member @Frederik, who came over to the airport, to listen to my stories.
As these things usually go, I wanted to make plans to get back to Africa as soon as possible. However the Zimbabwe trip had been a financially heavy one, the reasons for having booked it explained in my hunting report, so I was trying to figure out ways of getting to Africa more often and much cheaper.
I had made a cross on hunting locally in Belgium, much preferring the good weather, plentiful species and numbers of games of Africa. However, how to hunt Africa as if you are a local? The concept of a “short hunt”. It must be travel-friendly, budget-friendly, be able to leave at a short notice. The idea being that one could go to Africa multiple times perhaps per year. With AirBelgium back in 2022 and 2023, offering direct flights from Brussels to Johannesburg, after work, you would climb into the airplane around 20:00 on a Wednesday evening and arrive in Jo-Burg around 9:00 in the morning. Using Henry’s VIP services to get through the official stuff quickly, be in the bakkie by 10:00, 3-4hrs drive and be ready to hunt around 14:00-15:00. Two full days of hunting, then on Sunday evening around 20:00, again on the plane, being back at the office for the endless stream of Teams video meetings, by 10:00. That was the idea at least and what I’m still looking to try to refine.
A second goal I had, for my next trip to Africa, was to take my younger brother with me. As I have said before, everyone should at least do one “One Day I will …” each year. Life can be shorter than one thinks. One of my “One Day’s” was to take my younger brother on his first hunting safari. Spend a few days hunting and having fun together, before we each pick up our lives as fathers, and husbands again and the responsibilities of work come knocking.
So we made our plans to leave in November of 2023, and I contacted @Frederik, to see if he knew of any good places where a “last hunt of the season” deal could be found. He was enthusiastic about getting these two Belgian brothers into his country, especially as his roots are traced back to Belgium as well! He suggested a few places that he knew and in the end, we chose to go to @HENRY GRIFFITHS SAFARIS. Contact was made, deposits wired and we were on. We were going to be hunting on their North Western Province property, next to Schweizer-Reneke, about 5hrs drive from Johannesburg airport. It consisted mainly of Kalahari thornbush with some big open plains, about 25000 acres (10000 hectares) large.
My wife was pregnant at the time of our second (we did not know yet when the booking was made) and she was expected to give birth somewhere end of January. In October we received the bad news that my wife was over stressed, there was a risk of a premature birth, and we had to call our trip off. I would not be able to live with myself, had I been on the other side of the world, while my wife went into labour prematurely. So looking at agenda’s, between my brother and I only 12 months later would make sense, so November of 2024 it was! Luckily @Frederik and @HENRY GRIFFITHS SAFARIS were very understanding of the situation.
Fast forward a few months, and I had bought a .500NE double rifle from a French knife maker, but could not get it to regulate. Reloading is not very common in Belgium, and I have certainly never done it. So I asked @Frederik, if he or one of his colleagues from BASA could help out to find a load that would regulate correctly in my .500NE. One of his friends is a big reloader and made 5 four-round loadings, with incremental numbers of grains of powder, shooting the Spoor Bullet Company bonded bullets.
As my brother also never had shot anything above his .300WM bolt action rifle, @Frederik proposed to organize a small BASA-like big bore shoot on one of the days there. He would bring his fine-tuned custom CZ550 in 458 Lott, I would bring the .500NE as well as my Heym 88b with the .375H&H barrels on their maiden voyage. We were all game and getting pumped about our week together. (In the end, we booked for a trip with 6 full hunting days).
The day of departure came, we kissed our family’s goodbye and made our way to the check-in desk of Qatar Airways, as AirBelgium had gone bankrupt a few months before. So no longer a real “short-hunt”, as we would be traveling about 18 hours from Brussels over Doha to Johannesburg. The people at both the Brussels airport, as well as in Doha, from Qatar Airways, were very helpful, and even friendly. I cannot ever remember an airline representative wishing me “Good hunting”, with a smile to go! Very happy with this airline.
As usual, I had booked the VIP service from Henry @Riflepermits in order to speed through the customs procedures, and to have just a little extra piece of mind, with all these rifles and paperwork. All was in order, and soon we were climbing aboard @Frederik ‘s bakkie with a mouthful of biltong! It was great to finally be back in Africa, and back to hunting (after a 2 year hiatus for me).
We drove about six hours to get to @HENRY GRIFFITHS SAFARIS North-Western Province game farm. Before we arrived, we passed along many other game farms, where we could observe herds of different species, impala, springbok, oryx, red hartebeest, etc. My brother’s face, who saw his first African animals, was lighting up each time and the excitement was building! Upon arrival at the game farm, we saw huge herds of blesbok, blue wildebeest, roan, eland, kudu, springbok, red hartebeest and a lonely, old sable. There was so much game there, and lots of little calves as well. However, the weather had worsened, with much-needed rain approaching. As I was already in my hunting clothes since I had left home about 30 hours before, I was ready to rock and roll as soon as my rifle and ammo were out of their prisons. Everyone grabbed their gear and we went out to quickly test the rifles. Unfortunately, the altitude did a number on our rifles and we had to re-zero my brothers’ Sauer 202 in 300WM. Also, my Heym in 375H&H was not printing groups as it should.
By the time we were finished, the first splats were falling and we made our way back to camp. We waited out the rain, but no more luck, the darkness fell and the hunting would be for the next day. We checked with an updated price list for the year what would be on the menu, and the high priorities for my brother would be blue wildebeest, impala, blesbok, oryx and springbok. I would be on the lookout for blue wildebeest, red hartebeest, oryx and springbok, and then something worthy of my .500NE. For the organization of the next few days, I explained to Henry that my brother would always be on point and get first right of refusal. Only if he was not interested, while I was, would my rifle go on the sticks.
DAY 1
We got up at 4:00 in the morning, to be ready to leave at 4:30. While we were having coffee, the wind was still stormy with the occasional rain mixed it, which meant that the hunting would not be very good.
We did a little drive around, but with everything being very restless, we decided to quickly go back to the gun range, and try the test rounds for the .500NE, so we would be ready with the double rifle. We started off with a milder loading and already those were printing much better than the reloaded ammo I had gotten from the previous owner. After multiple shots, we came to the following recipe that produced less than 1 inch groups at 30m: Spoor Bullet Company softs of 570 grains, over 95 grains of Vihtavuori N540, with Federal 215 primers, cased with Norma cases. The measured speed was 2160fps. Surprisingly hot for this old double rifle, but if it works, who are we to question it!
More waiting ensued, until the storm outside would die down. Around 14:00 it had gotten sufficiently cleared up that we grabbed our gear and started on a drive in the direction of the wind, the goal being to then walk with our noses into the wind and hopefully catch something unawares. Not even 10 minutes into the drive, the bakkie stopped as a lonely red hartebeest bull was spotted. We dismounted and gave chase. This was in the more overgrown area, so we ducked from cover to cover to try to catch up with the grazing red hartebeest. When the sticks came up, we were at about 160meters from an old bull and I let the Heym loose. With the red hartebeest slightly quartering too, and me not being a 100% confident yet of where the bullet would land, I compensated too much to middle of mass, shooting through the back of the rib cage into the offside back leg, breaking the bone. Luckily this meant that the animal couldn’t run too fast, so we quickly ran after it where I tried place a second and eventually a third round into the bull to get him to expire quicker.
The first game of the hunt was in the salt! Thick bases, and an old hartebeest, we were all happy with the result. Although admittedly, with the current loading of this rifle, the distance had been pushing it a bit. We drove back with it to the skinning shed, but by the time we dropped it off, the next rains were there, and we had to stop the hunting again. Around 16:00 it started to clear up again and this time the sun managed to break through the cloud cover. As the sun would be setting by about 19:00, we had to make the most out of it. We tracked through the brush, following the spoor of a herd of blue wildebeest, until we came up to the edge of the brush with a vast plain behind it. There was a herd of blue wildebeest grazing right in front of us, and actually starting to make its way back into the bush in our direction. The herd in front of us consisted of female’s, calves and young males, but far behind them we could see a few bosses of older males. In the golden light of the sun we studied the slow movements intensely for about an hour, but by 18:00 we new we had to start to make a move. The sun was clearly in her last sprint to the horizon, and these wildebeest were not cooperating by getting closer. There would not be time for a second stalk, so we went in bold.
The group of older bulls we were trying to get to, was behind the herd in front us, just behind a small depression about 400m from us, so they could not quite see us. With Henry in the lead, then my brother, then @Frederik and finally myself, we made a bee-line directly towards the bulls. The herd of younger animals in front of us, spooked, but as we seemed to not be threatening towards them, they ran off, but did not seem too spooked. Meanwhile the group of bulls came more and more into sight, so in order to approach a bit more until we could get to the next depression, Henry put up his sticks in the air, in a giant V. This to simulate an oryx of course. With everyone nice in line, we managed to get another few 100 meters closer. We made it just to the last depression in the terrain before the bulls and Henry motioned for us to get belly down. We were going to crawl the last 100m to the bulls. Luckily we had the sun in our back as well so this helped.
We crawled for about 100 meters, then the pressure started to weigh on us. We were about 80 meters away from the bulls and Henry and @Frederik started to discuss which one looked like the oldest. Finally their minds made up, they motioned for my brother to get off his knees and ready on the sticks. There was a little bit of discussing which one they had singled out, and a shot rang out. Immediate good bucking was the result and my brother had his first African animal! After all the crawling and waiting and suspense, this was a perfect story for his first trophy! And it was a dandy of blue wildebeest. We measured it afterwards to be 27 ¼ inches wide! With the sun now properly setting, we quickly had the customary photoshoot, and off we went to the skinning shed again, smiles all around.
That evening, we opened up our box of cigars, had a whisky and even baptized my brother for his first African animal, as is the custom in Europe. I’ve been privileged to have been present for my brother’s first Scottish stag, first Belgian wild boar and now first African game. It was late when we got to bed that evening.
As these things usually go, I wanted to make plans to get back to Africa as soon as possible. However the Zimbabwe trip had been a financially heavy one, the reasons for having booked it explained in my hunting report, so I was trying to figure out ways of getting to Africa more often and much cheaper.
I had made a cross on hunting locally in Belgium, much preferring the good weather, plentiful species and numbers of games of Africa. However, how to hunt Africa as if you are a local? The concept of a “short hunt”. It must be travel-friendly, budget-friendly, be able to leave at a short notice. The idea being that one could go to Africa multiple times perhaps per year. With AirBelgium back in 2022 and 2023, offering direct flights from Brussels to Johannesburg, after work, you would climb into the airplane around 20:00 on a Wednesday evening and arrive in Jo-Burg around 9:00 in the morning. Using Henry’s VIP services to get through the official stuff quickly, be in the bakkie by 10:00, 3-4hrs drive and be ready to hunt around 14:00-15:00. Two full days of hunting, then on Sunday evening around 20:00, again on the plane, being back at the office for the endless stream of Teams video meetings, by 10:00. That was the idea at least and what I’m still looking to try to refine.
A second goal I had, for my next trip to Africa, was to take my younger brother with me. As I have said before, everyone should at least do one “One Day I will …” each year. Life can be shorter than one thinks. One of my “One Day’s” was to take my younger brother on his first hunting safari. Spend a few days hunting and having fun together, before we each pick up our lives as fathers, and husbands again and the responsibilities of work come knocking.
So we made our plans to leave in November of 2023, and I contacted @Frederik, to see if he knew of any good places where a “last hunt of the season” deal could be found. He was enthusiastic about getting these two Belgian brothers into his country, especially as his roots are traced back to Belgium as well! He suggested a few places that he knew and in the end, we chose to go to @HENRY GRIFFITHS SAFARIS. Contact was made, deposits wired and we were on. We were going to be hunting on their North Western Province property, next to Schweizer-Reneke, about 5hrs drive from Johannesburg airport. It consisted mainly of Kalahari thornbush with some big open plains, about 25000 acres (10000 hectares) large.
My wife was pregnant at the time of our second (we did not know yet when the booking was made) and she was expected to give birth somewhere end of January. In October we received the bad news that my wife was over stressed, there was a risk of a premature birth, and we had to call our trip off. I would not be able to live with myself, had I been on the other side of the world, while my wife went into labour prematurely. So looking at agenda’s, between my brother and I only 12 months later would make sense, so November of 2024 it was! Luckily @Frederik and @HENRY GRIFFITHS SAFARIS were very understanding of the situation.
Fast forward a few months, and I had bought a .500NE double rifle from a French knife maker, but could not get it to regulate. Reloading is not very common in Belgium, and I have certainly never done it. So I asked @Frederik, if he or one of his colleagues from BASA could help out to find a load that would regulate correctly in my .500NE. One of his friends is a big reloader and made 5 four-round loadings, with incremental numbers of grains of powder, shooting the Spoor Bullet Company bonded bullets.
As my brother also never had shot anything above his .300WM bolt action rifle, @Frederik proposed to organize a small BASA-like big bore shoot on one of the days there. He would bring his fine-tuned custom CZ550 in 458 Lott, I would bring the .500NE as well as my Heym 88b with the .375H&H barrels on their maiden voyage. We were all game and getting pumped about our week together. (In the end, we booked for a trip with 6 full hunting days).
The day of departure came, we kissed our family’s goodbye and made our way to the check-in desk of Qatar Airways, as AirBelgium had gone bankrupt a few months before. So no longer a real “short-hunt”, as we would be traveling about 18 hours from Brussels over Doha to Johannesburg. The people at both the Brussels airport, as well as in Doha, from Qatar Airways, were very helpful, and even friendly. I cannot ever remember an airline representative wishing me “Good hunting”, with a smile to go! Very happy with this airline.
As usual, I had booked the VIP service from Henry @Riflepermits in order to speed through the customs procedures, and to have just a little extra piece of mind, with all these rifles and paperwork. All was in order, and soon we were climbing aboard @Frederik ‘s bakkie with a mouthful of biltong! It was great to finally be back in Africa, and back to hunting (after a 2 year hiatus for me).
We drove about six hours to get to @HENRY GRIFFITHS SAFARIS North-Western Province game farm. Before we arrived, we passed along many other game farms, where we could observe herds of different species, impala, springbok, oryx, red hartebeest, etc. My brother’s face, who saw his first African animals, was lighting up each time and the excitement was building! Upon arrival at the game farm, we saw huge herds of blesbok, blue wildebeest, roan, eland, kudu, springbok, red hartebeest and a lonely, old sable. There was so much game there, and lots of little calves as well. However, the weather had worsened, with much-needed rain approaching. As I was already in my hunting clothes since I had left home about 30 hours before, I was ready to rock and roll as soon as my rifle and ammo were out of their prisons. Everyone grabbed their gear and we went out to quickly test the rifles. Unfortunately, the altitude did a number on our rifles and we had to re-zero my brothers’ Sauer 202 in 300WM. Also, my Heym in 375H&H was not printing groups as it should.
By the time we were finished, the first splats were falling and we made our way back to camp. We waited out the rain, but no more luck, the darkness fell and the hunting would be for the next day. We checked with an updated price list for the year what would be on the menu, and the high priorities for my brother would be blue wildebeest, impala, blesbok, oryx and springbok. I would be on the lookout for blue wildebeest, red hartebeest, oryx and springbok, and then something worthy of my .500NE. For the organization of the next few days, I explained to Henry that my brother would always be on point and get first right of refusal. Only if he was not interested, while I was, would my rifle go on the sticks.
DAY 1
We got up at 4:00 in the morning, to be ready to leave at 4:30. While we were having coffee, the wind was still stormy with the occasional rain mixed it, which meant that the hunting would not be very good.
We did a little drive around, but with everything being very restless, we decided to quickly go back to the gun range, and try the test rounds for the .500NE, so we would be ready with the double rifle. We started off with a milder loading and already those were printing much better than the reloaded ammo I had gotten from the previous owner. After multiple shots, we came to the following recipe that produced less than 1 inch groups at 30m: Spoor Bullet Company softs of 570 grains, over 95 grains of Vihtavuori N540, with Federal 215 primers, cased with Norma cases. The measured speed was 2160fps. Surprisingly hot for this old double rifle, but if it works, who are we to question it!
More waiting ensued, until the storm outside would die down. Around 14:00 it had gotten sufficiently cleared up that we grabbed our gear and started on a drive in the direction of the wind, the goal being to then walk with our noses into the wind and hopefully catch something unawares. Not even 10 minutes into the drive, the bakkie stopped as a lonely red hartebeest bull was spotted. We dismounted and gave chase. This was in the more overgrown area, so we ducked from cover to cover to try to catch up with the grazing red hartebeest. When the sticks came up, we were at about 160meters from an old bull and I let the Heym loose. With the red hartebeest slightly quartering too, and me not being a 100% confident yet of where the bullet would land, I compensated too much to middle of mass, shooting through the back of the rib cage into the offside back leg, breaking the bone. Luckily this meant that the animal couldn’t run too fast, so we quickly ran after it where I tried place a second and eventually a third round into the bull to get him to expire quicker.
The first game of the hunt was in the salt! Thick bases, and an old hartebeest, we were all happy with the result. Although admittedly, with the current loading of this rifle, the distance had been pushing it a bit. We drove back with it to the skinning shed, but by the time we dropped it off, the next rains were there, and we had to stop the hunting again. Around 16:00 it started to clear up again and this time the sun managed to break through the cloud cover. As the sun would be setting by about 19:00, we had to make the most out of it. We tracked through the brush, following the spoor of a herd of blue wildebeest, until we came up to the edge of the brush with a vast plain behind it. There was a herd of blue wildebeest grazing right in front of us, and actually starting to make its way back into the bush in our direction. The herd in front of us consisted of female’s, calves and young males, but far behind them we could see a few bosses of older males. In the golden light of the sun we studied the slow movements intensely for about an hour, but by 18:00 we new we had to start to make a move. The sun was clearly in her last sprint to the horizon, and these wildebeest were not cooperating by getting closer. There would not be time for a second stalk, so we went in bold.
The group of older bulls we were trying to get to, was behind the herd in front us, just behind a small depression about 400m from us, so they could not quite see us. With Henry in the lead, then my brother, then @Frederik and finally myself, we made a bee-line directly towards the bulls. The herd of younger animals in front of us, spooked, but as we seemed to not be threatening towards them, they ran off, but did not seem too spooked. Meanwhile the group of bulls came more and more into sight, so in order to approach a bit more until we could get to the next depression, Henry put up his sticks in the air, in a giant V. This to simulate an oryx of course. With everyone nice in line, we managed to get another few 100 meters closer. We made it just to the last depression in the terrain before the bulls and Henry motioned for us to get belly down. We were going to crawl the last 100m to the bulls. Luckily we had the sun in our back as well so this helped.
We crawled for about 100 meters, then the pressure started to weigh on us. We were about 80 meters away from the bulls and Henry and @Frederik started to discuss which one looked like the oldest. Finally their minds made up, they motioned for my brother to get off his knees and ready on the sticks. There was a little bit of discussing which one they had singled out, and a shot rang out. Immediate good bucking was the result and my brother had his first African animal! After all the crawling and waiting and suspense, this was a perfect story for his first trophy! And it was a dandy of blue wildebeest. We measured it afterwards to be 27 ¼ inches wide! With the sun now properly setting, we quickly had the customary photoshoot, and off we went to the skinning shed again, smiles all around.
That evening, we opened up our box of cigars, had a whisky and even baptized my brother for his first African animal, as is the custom in Europe. I’ve been privileged to have been present for my brother’s first Scottish stag, first Belgian wild boar and now first African game. It was late when we got to bed that evening.
