11 September 2018, 19:51
Tim Carney.303 Double in Namibia --picture heavy
As promised to Lee, whose gift of 50 Woodleigh 215 gr. RNSN made the hunt, this reports on three weeks at Byseewah Safaris whose website is www.Byseewah.com. Ken and Lynda Morris, friends since my first hunt there in 1994, provided an ideal hunting experience on foot, separately with Master Hunting Guides Moses Kashonga and Naftal Aebeb. Results included two Hartman mountain zebra for skins, eland cows for camp meat, a springbok, two gemsbok, including an old fellow who had a dislocated hip and was losing condition.Two of the hunts stand out. The second zebra was in the blackthorn (acacia mellifera) that was just beginning to show its puffball white flowers. The stallion was perhaps 50 yards uphill. I fired offhand at the shoulder chevron stripes and the beast jumped, moved a bit further uphill and along the contour. Naftal and I quickly followed with no shot due to the thick bush, but the clearly distressed zebra looking, as Naftal put it, as if it was about to go down. We got to within about 30 yards as the zebra shook all over and then slowly came down towards us. A shooting lane presented itself and I put another 215 gr. Woodleigh into center chest. It fell. We looked for bullet holes once back at Byseewah for skinning. There was only one, the second shot at center chest. Best guess is that the first shot tipped a branch and then, tumbling, hit the zebra either in the neck or the head, dazing it. Without the second shot it could have escaped us.
We were looking over an old gemsbok bull of no great trophy merit as it approached the water at Freedom Dam. It stood there eyeing us as we sat in the vehicle about 150 yards away. Binos out, my Leica 10x42 and Mo's Svarovski 10x42, we could see something wasn't right. Finally the old bull turned and limped quickly away from us, moving north into the blackthorn. We moved the vehicle west, got out and walked quietly into the area north of the water; there Mo picked up the tracks. We bumped that old bull six times following him for two and a half hours across the dry river bed into mopane and back across the dry river bed into heavy blackthorn cover. At the sixth bump and run, I said to Mo that another 15 minutes would do me, and we would head back for lunch. We kept on the spoor and an astonished Mo suddenly said, "There he I, down." And there he was on his side and breathing heavily. A bullet in the brain finished him. Butchering showed a badly dislocated left back hip. He was a old bull of 32 or so inches, but even an old gemsbok produces a delicious and adequately tender meal.
The .303 double with the Trijicon RMR06 performed splendidly as the targets below show. I recovered two bullets from the first eland cow. One retained just over 207 grains and the second 187 grains with good mushrooming. During the last week, I took the opportunity to try Ken's lefthanded Mauser 03 bolt rifle with a Zeiss scope. It was heavier than the .303 but handled well and served to put down the old gemsbok bull.
Old French friends arrived for a few days hunting, and then all six of us went off for 9 days across Etosha to the old Caprivi strip (now Kavango) where we stayed in the Mamili, renamed Nkasa Lupara, just off the edge of the park and then over to Serondela Lodge on the Chobe River, ending aboard one of the Zambezi Queen boats.
A wonderful five weeks in Southern Africa included some very fine meals and South African wine, notably from Rust-en-Vrede. Byseewah produced zebra steaks, a pofadder from one of the eland, beef and oxtail and great salads from the garden. A game pie included the first two francolin shot at Byseewah which now has a huntable population of what is now called "spurfowl," rabbit, including one shot with my Darne 10 gauge near the garden inside the residential compound, sand grouse and guinea fowl. Food on the excursion was not as good, but some of the six of us managed to gain weight nonetheless...
Regards, Tim
NOTE: The .303 may be for sale. Please PM if interested.
NOTE 2: I simply could not get some of these down in size despite posting them as "small thumbnails from imgur… Tried again by resizing originals smaller -- no luck
The rifle, made by Holland&Holland in 1997. Now can take a reflex sight rather than a telescope
100meter with the Trijicon RMR06
100 meters with the reflex sight. Note the two bullets taken from a cow eland
The bar in the lapa at Byseewah with the newly-arrived hyena taken last year
Naftal and the zebra stallion with the .303 double
Large eland cow for camp meat
Mo and the old gemsbok bull with the left-handed Mauser bolt rifle
Two red-billed spurfowl hens and the Darne R-16 2-7/8 chambered 10 gauge
Fresh cheetah tracks at Byseewah with .303 cartridge for scale
Mating pair of pale chanting goshawks at Byseewah
Ruppell's Parrot at Byseewah Middle Water hole
Byseewah has 11 waterholes using solar-powered pumps and three land dams
Not so neighborly snare for warthog on the Byseewah fenceline
Golden eagle with Burchell's zebra at Etosha
Lion in the grass at Etosha
Kudu, springbok, zebra at Etosha
Thought from the forehead that this Etosha ele was a cow, wrong...
In the Nkasa Lupara
Warthog rooting for tender grass
Transport on the channel between the Chobe and Zambezi Rivers
Fisherman in his mokoro on the Chobe
Tiger fishing on the Chobe -- no luck
Ele making its way across a channel on the Chobe
Young bulls in dominance play in the Chobe
Alarmed lioness and cubs on the Chobe banks
Fish eagle pair on the Chobe
cormorant with breakfast
Elephant sunset on the Chobe