19 April 2025
Waterberg District
Limpopo Province
Republic of South Africa
Bosveld Jacobs Safaris
‘Last blood’ is a critical link in maintaining the track on a wounded animal.
It is the link that was broken after five hours of tracking my wounded greater kudu, and the link that kept my friend Klay on the track of a sounded warthog for eight hours today. Sadly, it was also ultimately lost when the warthog escaped into its den.
Meanwhile, however, we spotted a unique old bull, a cross between a golden hartebeest and a blue hartebeest, standing alone in a field of two-foot-long grass waiting for a challenge from a younger bull.
A herd of cows was in the nearby opening, likely waiting for the winner of the fight for the dominant right to breed.
This bull’s neck was thick, and his horns were wide and covered in mud. Most of the other bulls were in roving herd. This was the first solitary wildebeest bull I had seen, and noticing his mud-covered horns reminded me of a ‘poor man’s dagga boy’.
His position in the open field made for a challenging stalk. We moved from bush to bush and could only get to within 180-200 yards.
I would have liked to get closer, but he was standing still broadside and we were behind the closet bush. As my PH, Henk, set up the sticks just to the right of the bush, the old boy turned to face us. I dialed up the magnification and began planning for a frontal chest shot. Wildebeest are wide broadside by narrow from the front so it would be a more challenging shot at that distance.
As I was waiting for the clear to shoot, the old bull began to charge in our direction. His head and body grew larger and larger in my reticle, and I began dialing down the magnification while asking my PH if I could take the shot. I asked several times while staying on target. The visual of the bull growing larger in my scope gave the impression of the close charge and filled me with adrenaline and focus.
The bull charged about 100 yards of distance before I was cleared to shoot. He was in a medium trot and quartering a few degrees when I pulled the trigger. I felt it was a good hit! He ran 40 yards to the right, bucked and ran back 30 yards to the left falling dead 10 yards from the point of first impact.
My handloaded 175g North Fork Semi-Spitzer bullet traveling an average of 2,387 fps had perfectly hit him slightly right of his center chest piercing his heart and traveling through his entire body. No meat was ruined, and I ultimately retrieved the bullet beneath the hide of his rump.
My second African animal was successfully in the bag!
Before the spot and stalk on the wildebeest, we had spotted a large princely sable bull with a group of cows and younger bull calves. We had noted their last known location and returned to find and track them.
We followed their tracks down through an opening between the trees and to a fast-moving river, which would be difficult to cross, let alone return with an animal carcass. We canvassed the bank of the river and spotted them on the side high up a hill. We considered but decided against taking a shot from our side of the river and instead followed them while they were grazing hoping that they would cross back to our side.
I did not want to lose an opportunity on another sable and wondered if my luck would change. The wind was initially in our favor, but after some time began to swirl and the sable scented us. They ran off and we tried to quietly follow. We lost them twice, and ultimately marked the last thicket in which they ran.
We returned to the Bakke to give them a chance to calm down and returned to try and help Klay and the trackers and apprentice PH in the tracking of his wounded warthog. Despite being shot with a .300 Win Mag resulting in significant blood loss from the pools that were under it when he would stop, he had managed to evade them and keep moving.
After about 90 minutes is when we lost the blood trail at the entrance to the warthog’s den, which was a hole in the ground. At that point we gave up. It was late afternoon and they had been tracking it in large loops for over 8 hours! Truly and extraordinarily hardy beast!
Across the biological spectrum, the sable is also an extraordinary beast. His beautiful shiny black coat shimmers in sunlight but is invisible in the shadows. Their movements are minimal and slow, and you have to emulate this to have a chance at the dance.
Intensely staring into the dark pockets between the branches and leaves for any sign of movement reminded me of Nietzsche: ‘If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’ Was I staring into the eyes of my prey, and was he staring back into me, and if so, what did he see?
As Freud observed: ‘Man is more moral than he thinks, and more immoral than he imagines.’
After some time, the PH spotted the large bull standing in the thicket about 75 yards away. It took me a minute to see what he was watching but I eventually spotted the tips of his horns and the bottom of the front of his chest.
The sticks came out and I set up for the shot trying to overcome the doubt instilled over the failure on the kudu. I told myself, while there is not much visible, the area of the chest that I can see is the best placement in any broadside shot.
I made a solid first shot but couldn’t see how he reacted to being hit. I could only see the thrashing in the bush and saw him run forward. The PH keep track of him and saw him again about 50-60 yards ahead of where he was first shot. He was in even deeper cover and all I could make out was a rectangular shape about 6 inches by 3 feet across the top of his back. I took another shot and hit him in the center of his back near the spine and he dropped a few feet away. We waited a moment to make sure he was down and then approached. He was still breathing so I placed a final shot in his heart.
The bull sable’s horns were long and curved and he had a secondary set of ridges developing from a thick set of bases. His black hide was magnificently shiny, and body was wide and strong. He was a mature bull who had reigned over his herd for years and undoubtably sired many generations of offspring. He was a prince fit for the eternal throne.
That evening I celebrated with a smoke on the old Oom Paul.
