Evening guys, I've been fairly busy iver the summer so havent got round to posting on here much. I thought I would just take 5 minutes to do a quick write up of my most recent Africa trip in late May (quite late on the write up, I know). The trip was alongside 2 Croatians, one of whom is on the forum and was the first hunt back in Africa since getting trampled by the cape buffalo.
Having a bit of spare leave to use up I got on down to Joburg the week before my 25th birthday. I wasnt looking to hunt anything in particular on this trip (except Hyena), just oppurtunity animals and whatever was going on the cull.
The first two nights were spent in a blind up in a fairly remote part of Northern RSA up towards the Zim/Bots/RSA border. We had set up for Hyena over a bait point, some meat and some gone off peppers. The peppers were being used for a huge old lone eland bull that a client had wounded a few weeks before. The agreement was that if the eland came in daylight it was shot by the PH and luckily on the second evening the bull came in on last light. Unfortunately the bull was missed and tracked away from the blind by a good friend/PH of mine.
Sitting in the blind for the second night, we knew we had a good chance of hyena after seeing one the night before and several bushpig. As we were waiting, a pair of civet cat kept running around the bait for about an hour before very suddenly disappearing. A mob of bushpig came in but we decided that tonight was the night to have patience and so we let them feed and disappear into the thick bush. At around 2am the buzzer went off and we checked the bait, a very weary old hyena looking like it was going to get running. A rather rushed shot resulted in success, and we could see that this was indeed an old male hyena with two snapped canines.
After leaving the Mesina area in the morning we headed south to meet up with the Croatians on the limpopo river banks. We had great fun in camp every night telling stories, drinking lots of beer and eating some great food.
The Croatians were able to take some beautiful trophies including Lion, Crocodile, Zebra, Wildebeest, a monster Kudu, Waterbuck, and others.
I myself shot a Blue wildbeest after a frustrating few days spent in the hot, thick bush. The Gemsbok were Unfortunately able to give me the run around.
We were able to shoot some very nice Crocs in camp given the location and I am very happy that this is the third dangerous 7 species Ive hunted with Evert.
One evening spent lamping resulted in the Croatians shooting some problem porcupines and luckily for me shooting a caracal, quite the achievement up in the Limpopo region.
The absolute highlight for me was shooting my Limpopo bushbuck, i have shot bushbuck before but never anything like this. Proper wild hunting up the banks of the river with hippo and crocs present, one morning we even saw fresh leopard tracks. The other side of the fast flowing section of river was Botswana, where you could clearly see the damage that the elephants were doing. Stalking along the river banks we managed to get into a monster 16 7/8 inch Bushbuck ram, I am not expecting to shoot one that big again any time soon.
All in all we had a great trip and I will certainly be looking at heading back out to Evert in 2023 to hunt.
Having a bit of spare leave to use up I got on down to Joburg the week before my 25th birthday. I wasnt looking to hunt anything in particular on this trip (except Hyena), just oppurtunity animals and whatever was going on the cull.
The first two nights were spent in a blind up in a fairly remote part of Northern RSA up towards the Zim/Bots/RSA border. We had set up for Hyena over a bait point, some meat and some gone off peppers. The peppers were being used for a huge old lone eland bull that a client had wounded a few weeks before. The agreement was that if the eland came in daylight it was shot by the PH and luckily on the second evening the bull came in on last light. Unfortunately the bull was missed and tracked away from the blind by a good friend/PH of mine.
Sitting in the blind for the second night, we knew we had a good chance of hyena after seeing one the night before and several bushpig. As we were waiting, a pair of civet cat kept running around the bait for about an hour before very suddenly disappearing. A mob of bushpig came in but we decided that tonight was the night to have patience and so we let them feed and disappear into the thick bush. At around 2am the buzzer went off and we checked the bait, a very weary old hyena looking like it was going to get running. A rather rushed shot resulted in success, and we could see that this was indeed an old male hyena with two snapped canines.
After leaving the Mesina area in the morning we headed south to meet up with the Croatians on the limpopo river banks. We had great fun in camp every night telling stories, drinking lots of beer and eating some great food.
The Croatians were able to take some beautiful trophies including Lion, Crocodile, Zebra, Wildebeest, a monster Kudu, Waterbuck, and others.
I myself shot a Blue wildbeest after a frustrating few days spent in the hot, thick bush. The Gemsbok were Unfortunately able to give me the run around.
We were able to shoot some very nice Crocs in camp given the location and I am very happy that this is the third dangerous 7 species Ive hunted with Evert.
One evening spent lamping resulted in the Croatians shooting some problem porcupines and luckily for me shooting a caracal, quite the achievement up in the Limpopo region.
The absolute highlight for me was shooting my Limpopo bushbuck, i have shot bushbuck before but never anything like this. Proper wild hunting up the banks of the river with hippo and crocs present, one morning we even saw fresh leopard tracks. The other side of the fast flowing section of river was Botswana, where you could clearly see the damage that the elephants were doing. Stalking along the river banks we managed to get into a monster 16 7/8 inch Bushbuck ram, I am not expecting to shoot one that big again any time soon.
All in all we had a great trip and I will certainly be looking at heading back out to Evert in 2023 to hunt.
