12 May 2014, 10:51
jpj3Hunt with Chris Troskie 2014
Hello, I had a very good hunt with Chris Troskie at CT Safaris Africa the last 2 weeks of March 2014. I enjoyed the trip immensely and thought I would share some of it. We saw a lot of game in beautiful country with good companionship and friendship and wonderful food! I hunted two cape buffalo in the Greater Kruger at Timbavati then several plains game species in Limpopo around Lephalale.
The first part was driving from Casper to Denver. Then flights (Delta) from Denver to Atlanta to Johannesburg. Always too long but worth the flight once one arrives. No problems with transportation, firearm permits, customs or luggage on either end of the trip. I was met at the airport by Chris and Sabina Troskie. We drove to a nice lodge that night half way to Mpumalanga then drove into the low veldt the next morning and on to Timbavati.
At Timbavati, I hunted with Chris Troskie and Paul White. Chris is based in Lephalale, South Africa and has had numerous reports here in AR so many know him or who he is. He caters to individuals and small groups so he can personally be involved with his clients. I've hunted with him a number of times (5 including a prior buffalo hunt in 2009) and have always had great hunts as he is a skilled and dedicated hunter as well as outfitter and I've consistently shot the mature trophies that I look for. Food and accommodations have always been excellent as well. He and his wife work hard to provide great hunts and service and have been very successful at that with me.
Paul White is the Assistant Warden of Timbavati and is a conservationist as well as PH with years of experience at Timbavati as well as prior properties. He is an excellent hunter with a good sense for the game sought and he emphasized the importance of hunting as a tool in conservation for wild Africa. It was very interesting to talk to him about the conservation efforts in Timbavati and the adjoining private properties that make up part of the Greater Kruger and that are open into Kruger Park. They do a limited amount of dangerous game hunting (buffalo, hippo, elephant and a leopard) to provide general revenue and to help fund their very active anti-poaching patrols, as well. Timbavati also has a lot of non-hunting safaris camps for photo safaris which we never saw as these activities are kept apart from the hunting.
Zander Bierman is a young PH from South Africa who Chris brought to film the buffalo hunts. He is working to get his dangerous game ticket. A very enthusiastic hunter with wonderful vision!
Sabina Troskie, Chris' wife, managed camp and prepared wonderful meals! Once again I enjoyed having her with us.
The late summer was warm to hot, a little humid to very humid, but cooled nicely at night. The permanent tent camp had all amenities expected and was next to a small river. It rained only a little while we were there and there was standing water from a very wet summer and it was very green with flowers everywhere. Coming from central Wyoming where we have had a very cold, windy and snowy winter, it was very nice! Summer time in Africa means leaves are on the trees and the bush and the grass is not beaten down so it is very thick, and animals are not concentrated around water as water is everywhere so game is harder to locate than in the winter.
Our first hunting day, after verifying that my rifle suffered no ill effects from baggage handlers, we drove around to spot buffalo and eventually Sampson (one of the trackers that Chris uses) saw a cow in thick bush that turned out to be at the edge of a herd of several hundred buffalo that were not visible. We dismounted, chambered rounds, then circled in front then behind the herd for favorable wind and cover, crept thought the bush and spent the next several hours looking at buffalo feeding in the thick brush. Finally, an old bull stepped out at 60 yards to where I had a clear shot and a high heart lung shot worked as it always does. He lunged out of sight in the brush then sounded his death bellow. we waited long enough to have smoked a cigarette if anyone had cared to then went to where he had collapsed. He did not require an insurance shot as he was quite dead when we approached him. I was shooting a .458 Lott on a Weatherby Mark V action, left handed, and a Leupold 2.5x Ultralight scope. Yes, I know it is not a controlled feed action, but, fortunately, the buffalo did not know
. The 500 grain Barnes TSX with Reloader 15 at 2235 fsp expanded perfectly and was under the skin of the off shoulder. I had a nice old mature bull down and was off to a great start on my hunt!
This is my first attempt to post a video so I hope it turns out...
We saw several other good, mature, old bulls that day and could have finished the hunt fairly quickly but did not want to. The hunt is the fun part!
The next day we hunted hard, saw elephant, giraffe, water buck, impala and white rhino, 2 different herds of hundreds of buffalo each and walked and crawled along with one of them for several hours getting close then walking away then approaching again to look over another part of the herd, then backing off again, to re-approach them a number of times. Mature bulls were seen but not where I could shoot as there was too much brush or too many buffalo milling around to get a clear shot. What a great time!
The next day we got into buffalo on and off all morning and finally tracked an old, blunt tipped, worn bossed dugga boy up into thick Mopani brush and tracking him got us into another herd. It is exciting to have buffalo, unaware of your presence, grazing and bedding around you on 3 sides! We walked to and stalked bulls several times but could not get a clear shot as the herd slowly milled around while grazing into the wind. Finally, we circled off to the side away from them to go for lunch and water at the Toyota. The herd then grazed to close to where we were so we went back among them again rather than dining and were able to approach another old bull that gave me a frontal chest shot into him. He ran behind thick brush. He never bellowed so I started worrying about "did I pull the shot?" in my mind although we were only 40 yards away when I shot over sticks and I had a perfect sight picture as the shot broke as recalled in my mind's eye. The other buffalo did not run off and seemed interested in something in the brush where Paul White thought he saw the bull on the ground. Then he didn't see him again. Then we heard loud thudding sounds and Paul said that was the other bulls trying to get him to stand up by butting him. We waited a few minutes, then started to approach where my bull was when I shot him to look for blood and had a really big bull come out and stare at us. That big bull looked at us in the classic "like we owed him money" a few moments, then trotted off. We went around the brush and found my bull with his head twisted sideways under him with torn up ground 15 feet between him and a pool of blood at the spot where Paul though he saw him on the ground. His sides and shoulders had scratches from the horn tips of the other bulls which had been trying to get him up. Again, no 2nd shot was needed. A nice, old, worn bossed bull. A very good, fun hunt!
We toured Timbavati with Paul White the next day and had a good game drive, a picnic by a lake, saw a very old dugga boy (wish I could have him as well, but maybe one like him in a few years!), a lot of other game. Each night we were there, we heard lions and hyena but did not see any. We saw dozens of elephants, 8 or 9 rhinos, a lot of hippo, impala, kudu, water buck, etc. Overall, a fantastic hunt in a wild part of South Africa that is open into Kruger Park.
We then drove to Lephalale. The beautiful drive across Mpumalanga and Limpopo took much of the day. It was very wet and the road to Chris' ranch, Sabrisa, which had been impassable for 2 weeks due to the massive flooding in northern South Africa that had isolated Lephalale for over a week, had opened to 4WD just a few days before we got there.
We hunted for bushbuck and kudu at Sabrisa for several days and saw a few young bushbucks and does and one old buck twice but I never could get my gun on him before he was gone in the thick riverine bush.
The property that we had been to hunt giraffe, zebra and gemsbok on was impassable due to flooding so Chris made arrangements to hunt other properties that including one though a colleague of his named Hannes Lamprecht. Hannes is a very enthusiastic professional hunter who is quite aggressive at pursuing game and a lot of fun to hunt with. The property we hunted with Hannes was huge and had all variety of plains game, rhino, and buffalo. It was not as wet as it was around Lephalale as it was over an hour south and east. We hunted zebra, gemsbok and giraffe there.
Hannes, interestingly, runs to get closer to quarry when behind good cover and that aggressive approach really intensifies the excitement of stalking! Also, it worked well where he used that technique. The zebra we were able to stalk to within just over a hundred yards (the zebra were in with impala, eland and blue wildebeest so there were a lot of eyes to watch for). Finally, after being on and off the sticks for what seemed to be a long time following along side this group of animals, a stallion presented a clean quartering away shot that I made. This was also with the Lott but using a 295 grain CEB bullet plus plastic tip at 2770 fps (sighted in with a Leupold 1.5-5x scope... both my scopes for the Lott have quick detach rings that return to zero when replacing them) hitting the floating ribs on the right and breaking the left shoulder with the core of the bullet resting just under the skin. (Just exactly as michael458 has said they would do in his Terminal Bullet Performance studies. This will be a nice elk load as well and shoots as flat as a 30-06!) The zebra went 40 yards and piled up... of course the brush was too thick and there were too many animals to see him go down so it was nice to see the CEB bullet perform as designed and there was no tracking needed as we could see him when we got to where he had been when I shot him.
We then looked for gemsbok the rest of the afternoon but saw none but in the last 40 minutes before dark, power walked through an area between roads to see if we could stir anything up in the thick brush. We did not see gemsbok but saw a lone big black wildebeest just before dark. He would have been a very nice trophy but was not what we were after. Another good day!
We were up early and back at that property by hunting light. We were looking for gemsbok as well as giraffe so I changed scopes and bullets back to the 500 grain TSX set up backed up by 500 grain Barnes Banded solids (the older flat tipped ones). We had rain gear that we left in Chris' truck and no jackets as it was summer in South Africa and it is supposed to be hot... and it had been earlier, but now was in mid 60's (19C) that morning and a little cool in the back of Hannes' truck. When the sun came up it warmed quickly with no humidity or wind so was a perfect day for hunting. The animals, however, were cold and were not out so, after driving a while and seeing very little, we left the vehicle and pushed and crawled through the dense bush, eventually pushing wildebeest and gemsbok from their beds and spending several hours stalking the gemsbok without getting close enough to shoot one. They knew we were pursuing them and stayed ahead of us. We went back to the bakie, drove around and finally saw an other group of gemsbok, got off and ran them down... no, actually we just ran when there was a lot of cover concealing us from them to get close enough to sneak in to get a shot at one before they walked off. I got to a place in the brush where I could see with a big enough gap to shoot through and shot a nice bull. I hit him a little far back but still double lunged him with a lot of bleeding as the 500 grain expanded and left a nice exit wound. He was about 125 yards away and went about a 100 yards before piling up.
Then we turned our attention to giraffe and we were able to approach a group we had seen the day before with a big bull (they ALL look big to me!) and I shot him through the shoulder joint with him quartering to me and he visibly crumpled in the shoulder then I shot him again (in the liver as I did not lead him adequately as he looked to be moving slowly. With those long legs he covered a lot of ground in just a few seconds!) as he ran and could not get a 3rd round into him before he collapsed. He did get an insurance shot with a solid. What a hunt! What a beautiful animal! Then the work started as he was HUGE but arrangements had been made to have a lot of people and several vehicles available to take care of the trophy and they soon arrived.
We hunted at Sabrisa the next day for a bushbuck unsuccessfully (but saw him from about 15 feet for just long enough to see he was a shooter but not to shoot him).
Then the time allotted was gone and we had to go back to the airport for me to start the trip home.
Overall and in summary, a great hunt! Great trophies and wonderful properties. Food was excellent, all creature comforts were excellent including meals, tent, chalet, etc. Staff and personnel worked hard to provide me a great time and a great hunt. The weather was warm, the countryside green and lush. And, the Troskie's are good friends whose company I enjoy and look forward to hunting with again. This trip left me with many fond memories. One of the most enjoyable hunts of my life!
I hope you enjoy the telling of my 2014 hunt with Chris Troskie as much as I've enjoyed many of you other AR readers' hunting stories!
Best,
jpj3
