Kudu, How Do You Do?

The morning of my second day in Africa I woke up at 4:30 am and could not go back to sleep. I spent a couple hours writing and drawing pictures in my journal. I couldn't wait to get back out there and see more of Africa. I figured I could catch up on sleep when I got home. Finally the sun came up and we had a bite to eat before hitting the road. I tried a piece of blood sausage for breakfast, and decided that it definitely wasn't for me. It was all I could do to choke it down without hurling. I relegated myself to safer breakfast fare, homemade white and whole grain bread, marmalade, and cheese. Much better.


Ken had harvested a nice Oryx bull the night before, so it was again my turn to hunt. We saw oryx, kudu, and warthog that I could have shot, but they were all too small. George, our tracker, just kept telling me "young one", which meant it wasn't a good trophy and that I shouldn't shoot. At one point I had my crosshairs on a warthog hiding under a small acacia tree, and I was really close to pulling the trigger. At the last minute George convinced me he was just barely too young, and I let him go. I hadn't fired a shot but I sure got my heart rate up.


We were headed back to the farm for lunch when George spotted a good kudu bull standing like a statue in the shade on a hillside. The bull had us pegged, and there was no way we could get any closer without spooking him. We ranged him at 380 yards. A long shot, but I felt like I could make it. However, I didn't want to risk a poor shot and I decided not to shoot.


George and Hans Peter, our guide, had a heated conversation in Afrikaans about what we should do. Hans Peter told me to shoot the the mountain above and behind the bull to see if it would get him to run downhill closer to us. I was worried that I might be missing my chance, but didn't feel like I had many more options. I shot and the bull ran downhill, but right into a thicket of trees where we couldn't see him. Now what? Hans Peter and George went the rounds again in Afrikaans, and it was decided that I would set up for a shot and George would hike up the hill and try to push the bull out into the open. I ranged the areas where I thought he might come out at 300 yards and I set up to shoot. In just a few minutes George had climbed the hill, and the bull, hearing George, decided it was time to move. When he busted out of the thicket it didn't look like he was going to stop, and I was unsure about taking a running shot at 300 yards. However, I only had a small window to shoot before he was over the hill and gone. When the bull slowed down to look over his shoulder to see what had spooked him, I put a 225 grain .338 Winchester Magnum slug in his front shoulder. He stumbled, and I shot one more time, anchoring him for good.


We hiked up the hill in the heat, and I made my way to my bull. The beautiful spiral horns of the Kudu were one of the factors that had most excited me about hunting in Africa, and I couldn't believe that on only my second day of the hunt I had taken the Gray Ghost of the Kalahari.

There was no getting a vehicle anywhere near my Kudu, so after a few photos, Hans Peter radioed the farm and a group workers showed up to help pack out the animal. They made short work of the task, and we were only about a half hour late for lunch.