01 July 2009, 20:54
bpesteveNamibia with Dirk de Bod
Definitely a trip of a lifetime, at least for an old fart on an unhinged income. My friend John and I hooked up with Dirk de Bod a couple of years ago and started planning things; now it seems like the time has just flown by and we're back and trying to figure out how many mortgages it might take to go again before we ossify!Dirk's main hunting area where we were is 77 square miles a couple hours or so mostly north of Windhoek. The lodge and tent cabins were wonderful and the people taking care of us were even better.
John hunted primarily with Dirk and I was very happy having Brian Kibble as my PH for the 11 days hunting. John's interest centered around taking a gemsbok and a kudu; my first interest was a nice hartebeest and also a kudu although things changed for me a bit after we had been there a few days, more on that later.
I took two rifles with me (no problems in transit Chicago-Frankfurt-Windhoek), a CZ550 in 9,3x62 and a nice old combination gun by Emil Kerner in 16/8x57JR.
Now for photographs, at least of my game.
The first one I took was a very nice hartebeest and of course I had managed to leave my camera back at the lodge and I haven't received Brians photos yet. Dang. I'll have to post that one later.
Next was this lovely blesbok with, from left to right, me, Kadi and Zaki, our two excellent trackers:
And later that week a very nice impala, shown with Dirk and fearless Jack:
While all this was going on, each day while we spent some time in the lodge for meals and evening chats my eyes seemed to be magnetically drawn to the great eland Dirk had displayed there. I had always had a yearning to hunt eland but I never thought I'd have the chance (or the $$). Well, here I was in a hunting camp in Namibia, not knowing whether I'd ever be able to come back to Africa or not and eland were there, too. I dreamt of eland at night. In the end it was obvious that I had come here just for that - to pursue the African dream - so eland it was!
It took three and a half days and a good bit of shredding by all the thorn bush, but...
Shown with Brian, myself, young master Dirk Jr, Kadi (standing) and Zaki. Exhausting and magnificent!
This gives some idea of the terrain. It's high desert, between 5000 and 6000 feet, and very reminiscent of some of the thicker areas around Tucson where I used to live. June temperatures ran from around 40 in the morning to 75, maybe 80 in the afternoon, very low humidity thank goodness.
By some miracle I had managed to be the first to spot a disappearing duiker in the midst of our stay and thought I might give it a try. They're fairly territorial and we went back to the spot I had first seen it several days before. After a bit of a tricky stalk we managed to get set up just as the sun was going down and the full moon rising amidst a spectacular batch of underlit clouds, the first clouds we had seen. Yow!
Literally a dream come true. Vast amounts of appreciation to Dirk, Brian, Kadi, Zaki, Marena, Gys and all the great folks there who treated us so well!
Life is good.
