The tight angular spiral of those horns makes for a very cool trophy. Nice shot, btw.
Thanks. I was a bit concerned about the after affects of the shot tho. The body size of these Bushbuck is probably close to 20-25% bigger than those in RSA and the Chobe that I've killed in the past. Absolutely a great place to hunt them for sure.
Day 3
This is scheduled to be our last day at the Lake Natron concession. We leave at 7:30 after Oj and the standard breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage and "bacon". Today we're going down to what they call the sand river. Its perhaps a 40 min drive from camp. We go past a small town and numerous herds of goats and cattle. Lots of Masai. As soon as get to the flats past the dry river bed we start seeing gazelle.
This concession has Grants and Thompsons gazelles. Roberts gazelles will crossbreed with the Grants. They are of similar size and color, but are very rare in this area. As we drive from group to group we stop and look at whats available. Eventually we see some off n the distance away from the road in the back. As we drive closer its a true mixed herd. There are eland, Zebra, Giraffe's and Grants in the group. The more we look at one of the "Grants" the more Zidane likes it. We get out and make a short stalk away from the vehicle. The eland don't like us being there and exit stage right fairly early on. The Zebra are rather tame. It always puzzled me while there that they weren't more spooky. Just not hunted I guess.
There were 7-8 "Grants" in the group with several mature animals. We took several minutes to make sure I was looking at the same animal. They were around 125 yds out and nervous so not a lot of standing around. Finally he cleared the others and turned broadside to me. I squeezed the trigger. He quickly disappeared and Zidane says "you hit him in the guts"! My heart sank. He said don't worry I could see good blood so he won't go far.
We waited 5 min while I stewed on my shooting. That shot had felt good. We them headed out to make the recovery. He had gone perhaps 50 yds. The entrance was dead square on the shoulder! The exit was 6 inches behind the opposite shoulder. He obviously was angled some to me. The exit was what Zidane had seen. Even that wasn't in the "guts" IMHO. We moved him out to take photos and pose him. As I looked around, there was a herd of Zebra less than 300 yds away. There was a herd of 9 Giraffes that were watching us closely. Curious I guess. Would of been easy to kill one of those Zebra. Just shows how little hunting pressure that there is on them.
When we took a good look at my Gazelle Zidane told me it was a crossbreed Grants/Roberts and maybe more to the Roberts side. After some thought I got rather excited. I could still shoot a Grants and have all 3 sub species available there. Zidane said anyone, including PH's looking at the mount would not be able to dispute it being a Roberts. So I'll display it that way. For those who care the horns are 24 inches long.
After pics we found some shade and had a lunch in the bush. After a nice break we started looking at some of the Thompsons Gazelles in the area. As we drove back toward the road we pushed a herd of perhaps 25-30 Tommy's ahead of us. Suddenly we saw a dog begin chasing the herd of Tommy's. He didn't want to give up. I commented to Zidane that in my area we'd kill that dog in a heartbeat. He eventually asked if I minded him "borrowing a bullet". I told him to have at it. He was sitting but shot freehand from the truck seat. The dog was perhaps 150 yds away. He yipped and ran off 3 legged yelping along the way. It appeared to me likely that the paw was hit with bullet or rock fragments. A solid hit on the paw might of taken it off entirely. Not what Zidane apparently wanted to do. He said that he hoped that would reach the dog a lesson.
We worked our way back along the road and spent a couple of hours looking at animals. Nothing else was deemed suitable. We headed back to camp. Had a little time before dark so we went out bird hunting for a while. That was fun and we got a few spur fowl too. Pics of the gazelle and others to follow.
Bruce
All fantastic trophies.
