Begining of August PH Charl van Rooyen from Infinito Safaris and our client Daven Harris from Wales managed to shoot a big trophy eland bull in the mountains. How to get it down, well luckily we could reach the spot with some difficulties with the land Cruiser and it decided to die under a tree which Charl thought would not hold the weight of the eland.

But have a look yourself and enjoy.

Loading the Eland

Need to use the method that I have seen used several times loading big animals including buffalo. Have a wench on the front of the truck then on top of the roll bar just behind and above the cab there is a pulley wheel insert. Use the wench to pull the animal into the back of the truck. Alot of manpower is still necesary but it seems easier especially if the animal does not expire beneath a tree.

That looks like a lot of fun or should I say hard work

that looks like good fun, i just saw more of daven than i needed

best regards

peter

Peter,

That, wasnt Daven without the shirt dont worry

That was great! Thanks for sharing.

Adam

Charl, you should really get a winch!!!

While Jaco Human hasn't been posting much lately, I'm sure he could describe the way we loaded my eland into his bakkie. He had the super winch set-up with pulleys that take the cable back to the back of the truck, etc. etc. We tested it before the hunt. Of course, it didn't work when Jaco wanted to demonstrate just how easy it was going to be to load the darn thing. Jaco ended up gutting it on the spot and with alot of verbal encouragement to the tracker and Jaco's son (I got a softer version of the encouragement directed toward me) we got it loaded. Yup, they are heavy. Especially on a really hot day at noon in October in the Limpopo.



I don't remember if it was my idea or Jaco's, but we ended up tying the Eland to a tree in front of the bakkie, running the cable over the truck and then backing up the truck as we lifted the carcass.

Why didn't they gut it first? That would have knocked the weight down by a large amount.

surestrike,

We managed didnt we, if we didnt have that many hands we would have done it without thinkig twice.

Some of the funniest things I have witnessed is the loading of game into the truck, especially Eland because of their size..I recall a big Eland I shot with Phillip Price, Swartkei safaris many years ago and we had 17 boys on the hood as we went up a steep incline on a creek bed to keep the front end down and we had another truck pulling us..I got all this on film, including one of the staff giving directions and doing absolutly nothing, it was a hoot....

South Africans seldom gut animals in the field as they like to keep the dirt out of them and Africans may not gut an animal for hours, most of them have very clean facilites at camp to do this..Contrary to our belief that not gutting them immediatly contaminates the meat, it never seems to hurt the flavor of the meat as far as I can tell....

Hannes Swanapoel has a large slab of 1" thick rubber matting, such as one would use on a horse stall floor, in his pickup he drags it out on the ground, pulls the Eland on it and has an over head pully on the pickups headache and the cable comes over the truck and hooks up to the slab and pulls the Eland into the truck..slicker'n snot!

The winch on our bakkie broke so we had to do the next best thing... Bring in a tractor and dump bed trailer full of help.

As a humorous aside, I like David's idea of a wench on the front of the truck, but more importantly, in camp at night!

All of the Land Cruisers we used were equipped with a winch in the front of the bed, and a 4 inch roller bolted to the back. Every animal loaded fairly easily, but those eland bulls don't quite fit into anything!

quote:

Originally posted by Karl S:
Charl, you should really get a winch!!!

Where is the fun in that ??

The winch is on it's way! I had enough this year with making plans, and hoping big animals will die under big trees!

The Welshmen thought it was brilliant fun as we cut open a road for the vehicle, and hoisting it up on the cruiser.

Notice how Daven got involved (the bloke with the rugby shorts). He is a good friend and very good hunter!

Really great video, thanks for sharing. Liked the music as well. When I shot my Eland, no winch available but we had 11 helpers and they barely were able to get it on board the Land Rover after much shoving, lifting grunting and groaning. Eland are never easy!!

Larry Sellers
SCI Life Member

Another method I saw over there was to dig two sloping trenches back towards the carcass and then reverse the truck towards the animal such that you have a wheel in each rut.

The idea is that as you reverse back down the slope of the trenches, you're lowering the bed of the truck almost to ground level which makes loading a lot easier if there is no winch available...

Having said that, a front mounted recovery winch with the cruiser modified so the cable can feed over the roof and into the load bay is undoubtedly the way to go especially if its combined with a specially strengthen tail gate that can be used as a loading ramp.

I 've seen various cheap low (relatively speaking) power Chinese boat trailer winches mounted in the beds of pick ups and while these may be great for a dozen or so deer carcasses a year, I doubt they would be industrial enough for safari use..

Thanks Larry....

Pete, the trenches are a well known method, but I would have loved to see the look on lads faces if I told them we are going to dig trenches in those rocks !!!

Cheers

Charl

i had a similar experience. i shot an eland bull near dusk. the guide went for the big front eend loader to pick it up but it was broken. the pickup had no winch so he, i and about four others hoisted that carcass with aid of a come along into the back of the truck, after gutting it on site. it took over an hour to do it in the dark. we left it in the cooler overnight before starting to butcher it the next day. i do not recall it being as funny as that vuideo for some reason.

Great video... well-done. I remember the team at Asanta Sana, near Craddock I believe, fashioning a huge stretcher made of tarp and pipes to haul an eland bull out of the mountains! I thought Russell Lovemore and I were gonna kill ourselves! But our crew was tougher then we were and they perservered. I'll have to dig those pictures up one day!

This is all amateur hour. You don't know trouble 'til you've tried this with a big stink bull Giraffe. Cut him off at the knees, winch the body in back end first, hook the winch to the head and then fold the kneck over the body. Gets you some interesting looks on the road I can tell you that.

My best experience in loading those Toyota land cruisers is when we went out hunting shot two Zebras, and one Oryx. This does not count the two P.H.'s, two trackers, and us two hunters on board. Needless to say it was a little overloaded. The tires that you could step on to climb into the back of the truck were way up inside the wheel well opening. At that time Hartmut, my PH said no more shooting.
But, we did have a winch mounted on the front and overhead pices that protected the cab. So loading animals was not a problem. They even had ramps on the side of the bed of the truck that would fit to the tail gate area so there was an incline to pull the animals up and into the bed of the truck.

You need to get your self one of these, we load almost anything anywhere.

Johann,

Very interesting looking vehicle...is it a unimog of some type?

Regards,

Pete

Hi Pete
Yes it's a Mog 404 , we are situated in mountainous terrain and this truck will go any where you are willing to drive.

The only other vehicles that last in our area are Toyota Land Cruisers and a Hilux. Really tough country.

Regards

Johann,

I've not seen a Mog with a body like that, but the conventional ones are popular with forestry company's here as only a tracked vehicle will have better off road ability...

Unfortunately we don't get the same Land Cruiser models you guys use for hunting here in the UK, rather the very expensive upmarket version, and even the latest versions of the Hilux is fast turning into a yuppie "lifestyle" vehicle rather than the workhorse it was...

Regards,

Pete

Johann and I shot a Mountain Zebra in August this year in THE most God-awlful place one can imagine. Worse than an elk in criss-crossed lodge pole. No problem for his mog. Johann simply drove over anything and everything in the way and backed right next to the zebra.

Of course, he then sat down comfortably in the shade--with a coke-- while Jonas the tracker and I loaded the zebra............

First Eland I shot we loaded into a Bakkie via the digging a ramp method and using 2 tiktoks (what they were calling come-a-longs) and it was a snap. No one really worked up a sweat.

Regarding the photo above with the eland tied into the back.....

You have to be real careful with rigging like this. If/when the eland moves those ropes can really cut some hair. If you want a great cape for a shoulder mount I would try and avoid any ropes/strap contact with the cape. European mount, no problem!

Grafton: Thanks for the observation.

Good point about always taking care to prevent rub marks and hair loss on your trophies. The better you treat them in the field, the better the finished product. This was the only good photo I had, of the whole thing in the truck

My hunting partner (a pro) and I do our own taxidermy and are very particular. I am actually up in the truck getting polar fleece jackets to pad the ropes, before leaving that spot. Even a short trip could ruin a cape.