Hi All,

Thought I would share some memories from my first trip to Africa. My brother and I hunted with outfitter/PH Bennie Lategan about an hour south of Kimberley, SA. All aspects of the trip were outstanding. The lowpoint of the trip was returning home.

The first animal I took was a Springbok.

Springbok


Next was a Gemsbok bull.


Gemsbok bull with PH Bennie Lategan

The first Springbok was going to be used for biltong so I shot a second that was a nicer trophy.

2nd Springbok


I was lucky enough to get in on a Kudu bull on the fourth day of the hunt.

Kudu bull on the side of the mountain.

One of the trackers field dressed him and we all carried him down to where we could bring in the jeep to pick up.

Kudu with the crew.


The sixth day brought a nice Burchell's Zebra stallion.

Burchell's Zebra

The seventh day we were after Blesbok. We took this guy just dusk.

Blesbok

I also had my PH shoot a photo without the flash to get a sillohuette shot.

Blesbok


The morning of the last day brought Impala.

Impala

My brother had equal success. He shot a slightly bigger Kudu.

Brother's Kudu

I was able to recover a few bullets. I used a Sako chambered in 300 WSM. The bullets were 180 gr. Speer Grand Slams. I was happy with how they performed.

This photo shows three of the bullets I recovered. The first one on the left was the final round I put into the Kudu as he was moving away from me. The shot was ~260 yds and it entered his ham and spined him before resting at the tip of his heart. The next two on the bullets on the right were taken from the Gemsbok shot in the shoulder at 130 yds and again at about 80 yds.

Recovered bullets.



I can't wait to go back.


Doug

Doug,
congratulations and welcome back. You all did good. Kudude

Were these taken thru a scope?

quote:

Originally posted by DB Bill:
Were these taken thru a scope?

Bill,

The photo stills were taken with a Panasonic digital camcorder (PV-GS400). The circle that you see on some of the photos is due to the lens I added on the camcorder. In those photos, the body of a 2X telephoto lens is obscuring part of the image when in wide angle mode (i.e. zoomed all the way out). I brought the 2x lens hoping to get some good close-up footage of animals while shooting.

BTW, I liked having just one piece of equipment that was able to take decent stills (4 megapixel stills) and great quality digital video.

Doug

Looks like a good trip.

That second springbok is a very nice animal indeed.