03 August 2015, 23:35
ChrisTroskieAn expensive exercise...
A week or so ago my Tracker - Samson - somewhat hesitantly asked if I would shoot a warthog for him and the rest of the staff as rations…"Sammy", I said; "how can it be possible that you have no meat? We've been hunting all year long so the freezers should be full"! Hauw boss," he replied… "We were hunting Hyena… there's no warthog meat left..."
"So you're saying that all the warthog meat we had in your freezer went to the Hyena?" I replied… "How the hell is that possible? That meat was for you!"
"But Boss, the Hyena was hungry and ate a lot!" was his timid reply and as I hadn't shot anything myself for a while, I said: “Okay, keep a lookout for pigs in the vlei and let me know when you see a big one there.”
Now to give some background - we have a piece of marshland (vlei) right behind our house that - in winter - is frequented by many, many warthogs. They are typically active in there early in the morning and late in the afternoon and I’ve shot quite a few in there over the years - some for rations - and some with clients…
Something else for readers to bear in mind as I continue with my story is that most of my shooting nowadays involves using my open sighted .458 LOTT and I don't get to shoot my other (scoped) rifles all that often...
Moving on…
I was still having my second cup of coffee in bed a few days later when the call came on the radio… “Mr. Troskie, come quick. There’s a big pig in the vlei!” Well I burnt my tongue as I gulped down my coffee, tore my jeans as I got dressed, scratched my thirty-odd six as I pulled it out of the safe and off I went - direction vlei… Given the start to this day I should have known then already that this day was going to be… let’s just say: “interesting”...
I found Sammy crouched down in the tree line next to the vlei and he pointed at our quarry for the day. It was a decent pig - not trophy-wise - but certainly in body-size… I got onto the sticks and peaked through the scope… The pig became aware of us and looked up in our direction… I knew I didn’t have much time before he would decide to get the heck out of there so I took aim…
Quartering towards me quite a bit - the pig was not in the ideal position for a shot at this distance - but I nevertheless applied that final bit of pressure to the trigger and sent a 180gr projectile towards his chest…
The hit of the bullet was distinctive as the shot broke the early morning silence - as was the reaction of the pig - but I immediately knew that the shot was not good. At the angle I was shooting from; the bullet should have dropped him right there but it didn’t…
Instead; the pig made a 90 degree turn and headed for the tree line on the other side of the vlei! There was no time for a second shot and before I knew it he was out of sight…
“Sammy,” I said, “we’ve got trouble… go get Miss Walker!”
So the three of us, Sammy, myself and Miss Walker - my Jack Russel - made our way towards where the pig had disappeared... It didn’t take Ms. Walker long to get onto the track and my heart sank when I saw the first specks of blood as this shot had clearly not reached the vitals…
Miss Walker bumped the pig where it was laying down within minutes after we had started our follow-up. I rushed closer to put an end to things but by the time I got there the pig had already departed - direction - boundary fence…
And when we got to the boundary fence and saw where the pig had crawled through I knew I had trouble coming my way…
1.) I’d have to call my neighbor and ask him for permission to follow up on the wounded pig
and…
2.) I’d have to face my wife and tell her I had wounded a pig…
I didn’t quite know which was worse - telling my neighbor that I had just wounded a pig or telling my wife that there was a wounded animal out there. Either way - this was a bad situation to be in…
My neighbor is not a bad guy but he can be a little a little “abrupt” at times… My wife on the other hand is not anti-hunting but she is an animal lover who cringes at the thought of any animal suffering and always is abrupt when it gets to such matters…
No time for regrets now though… I was the one who had made that shot and I had to deal with the consequences…
As it turned out; my neighbor was the least of my worries. He simply said: “No problem; go ahead and look for your pig.” My wife on the other hand, was a little less accommodating… “You cannot let an animal suffer because you don’t know how to shoot! You get out there right away and come back with a dead pig!”
So this was it… Sammy, me and the pig… as Walker had meanwhile evidently lost interest in this hunt…
We persevered and slowly but surely made progress tracking the minuscule drops of blood… all the way up to the aardvark hole that it had decided to find refuge in…
As it turned out this “hole”, was connected to a network of many other holes in a huge termite mound… The pig had entered through one hole and could be anywhere inside or it could have exited through one of the other holes around. Yet we could not find any trace of such behavior and had to assume the pig was still inside…
It was quite clear though that we were not going to get the pig out of there - well not anytime soon and not without some serious earth moving equipment at the very least!
With heavy hearts we turned to start making our way back to “Brandy" - my Land Rover… One thing I knew for sure was that my bride was not going to accept the fact that I had left a wounded pig inside an aardvark hole to die a slow and painful death. I knew this full and well after an experience with a bushbuck some 8 years ago!
It was just then that the pig appeared in front of us...And suddenly the devil was on my shoulder...
It was a pig - right? Not the same one I’d shot at and wounded earlier, but what would she know? She wasn’t there…And I knew my neighbor wouldn’t have an issue with me shooting a different pig - as long as I paid him for it…
At least, if I killed this pig - I would return home with a warthog, my staff would have meat, my bride wouldn’t be any the wiser and I’d avoid the ridicule and accusations of me being a selfish, heartless, cruel bastard - right? And in any case; the pig I shot in the vlei did not wear a collar and did not have a name - neither did the one that was now standing in front of me… It was just another pig looking at me from 20 yards and it hadn't been “lured" out of anywhere… The decision to come and stand in front of me was made entirely on its own - correct…?
Before you could say: “Cecil” or "Farm Boy", I had him in my crosshairs… At 20 yards I could hardly make a mistake this time around and the pig dropped in his tracks with a bullet - between its eyes…
“I’m saved!” I thought ,as I started up Brandy and headed home with the pig in the back… The money that I owed my neighbor for shooting a pig on his property was nothing compared to what I’d have to face back home if I were to return without a pig - shot on ours… These thoughts were still mine as I struck the deep aardvark hole that I hadn’t seen in front of me…
My forehead hit the steering wheel and Sammy (who had originally been on the back with the dead pig) was suddenly sitting on the hood of the old Land Rover… The engine was screaming at top revs and we were engulfed in a large cloud of dust…!
“Shit”, I thought as I turned off the ignition… I opened the hood and one look into the engine compartment confirmed what I already knew… Two engine mountings had been torn right off during the impact… This was going to be expensive as Brandy is no youngster and spare parts are hard to come by these days…
But even more importantly; there, right in front of Brandy and in front of the aardvark hole was lying…
Another Warthog - perfectly dead with a bullet hole in its chest!
With no small effort we finally managed to get Brandy out of the hole and crawled back home at a snail’s pace…
By the time we arrived home with not one but TWO dead Warthogs in the back of the pick-up, Sabina had long left for town and wouldn’t even have known if we’d recovered the pig or not…
By the time we got home, the vlei was again full of pigs and I could have shot several more on our own property without having to pay my neighbor for one…
By the time we got home I realized that the rifle rest of my Trigger Stick tripod that retails at $200 had come off during our “excursion" and was lying somewhere in the bush - rendering the shooting sticks useless as is (we have been unable to find the rifle rest ever since)…
And by the time I got to the spares shop I discovered that repairing Brandy’s would set me back $300!
Needless to say - it was not with great pleasure that I handed the my neighbor his fee for the pig I shot on his property…
So that’s a total of $700 for staff rations in one day… rather expensive I'd say - even at "two for the price of one"!
Confused with how that first shot of mine at the pig in the vlei didn’t find its intended target, I went to my shooting range to see what was going on… And then it dawned on me… I’d loaned this same rifle to a Client a couple of weeks before and even though it was shooting perfectly straight when I was using it - his shots were all “off-target”. Resultantly; we adjusted the scope to get the rifle to shoot where he wanted it to shoot and in the process of sighting it "in” for him, we were sighting it “out” for me…
An expensive lesson for sure... but at least I got to “shoot” on two “farms” and I had an interesting "hunt" nevertheless!
Sammy with the first Warthog
