What I did on my summer vacation

Who: Me and my hunting / fishing buddy Dave.
What: Hunting for plains game and fishing for tigerfish.
Where: Gobabis and Katima Mulilo, Namibia.
When: August 18 thru September 6th 2016.
Why: Because it’s fun!
How: That’s the part that follows.

The players
Claudia at Casa Piccolo in the Klein Windhoek district of Windhoek. As I’ve posted in the “African Travel” forum, Claudia runs an exceptional operation that is satisfactory in every way. I’m hardly the first to recommend Casa Piccolo, and I seriously doubt that I’ll be the last.
http://casa-piccolo.com

Gerhard, the fishing camp manager for Ndumo Safaris on the Zambezi River, just outside Katima Mulilo. Gerhard was a terrific host and an excellent dinner companion.
http://huntingsafaris.net/index.html

Joel Latham of High Mountain Hunts, US agent for Africa Awaits. Joel was a very helpful point of contact and was good enough to patiently answer many silly questions.
http://highmountainhunts.com

Bertus and Barbara Pretorius of Africa Awaits. Bertus and Barbara were excellent hosts and were greatly accommodating. Our PH, Chris, was genuinely exceptional and we owed a great deal of our success to his unstinting efforts.
http://africa-awaits-hunt.com

The schedule
We flew out of Dallas on the afternoon of Thursday, August 18th and arrived in Windhoek some 28 hours later after transiting through Dulles, Accra and Johannesburg. We had tight connections, but were fortunate enough not to lose anything on the way over. Nobody was more surprised than I was to find all of our gear waiting for us when we arrived in Windhoek. We arrived late in the evening of Friday, August 19th, and then spent Saturday recovering and acting the tourist in Windhoek (2 nights at Casa Piccolo). On Sunday morning we flew out of the smaller Eros airport to Katima Mulilo.
Monday through Friday morning were spent in the Fish Camp outside of Katima Mulilo. We flew back to Windhoek on Friday afternoon, and spent two more nights at Casa Piccolo; we souvenir shopped on Saturday. On Sunday, August 28th, Chris our PH from Africa Awaits, picked us up from our B&B and drove us out to the hunting lodge, a few miles outside of Gobabis, for seven days of plains game hunting. We left for home at 4:00 PM on September 5th, Labor Day, and arrived home some 30 hours later on Tuesday, September 6th.

My post in the African Travel forum about Casa Piccolo follows. I'm not sure how many times I can say that they were wonderful without sounding hopelessly repetitious, but I am profoundly grateful that I didn't do something boring and ordinary like stay at the Hilton.

http://forums.accuratereloadin...8121043/m/8601059422

My post on the Fishing forum on the tigerfishing:
http://forums.accuratereloadin...7221043/m/5211059422

Sunset on the Zambezi River:


Sitting around drinking scotch after a day on the water:

While at the Fish Camp, Gerhard informed us in no uncertain terms that we were required by Namibian law to drink beer and eat prawns at Andy's Bar when we returned to Windhoek. Andy's bar caters to German tourists and the Afrikaans locals; English is very much a third or fourth language. Andy sits at the bar playing knobel, a German dice game with his regulars and keeping a close eye on things. One quirk of the bar is that the regulars have brass plaques on their usual spots. It is a serious breach of bar etiquette to sit where there is a brass plaque unless your name is written on that plaque. As I really did want to try the prawns, I made it a point to sit where there were no plaques. FWIW, the prawns were every bit as advertised. He also appeared to have an excellent scotch selection, with perhaps 40 or so varieties, maybe more.

More Fish Camp pictures:

My room


The bathroom


The hot water heater


Doesn't everyone have an old elephant skull on the porch?


Our guide, Dominic. He was genuinely concerned when fishing was slow and made every effort to put us on fish. He claimed to have won the local guides' fishing tournament three times, and I believe him. An excellent fisherman and guide:

An amusing interlude took place on the way to Katima Mulilo. We were on the Air Namibia jet about half an hour outside KM, when our Captain announced over the public address system:

"Well, we've radioed the tower at Katima Mulilo, but there's no answer. We'll keep trying ..."

I've spent a great deal of my life on air planes, but that's a first for me. We just kept going and shortly thereafter landed in KM.

Some plains game pictures

The mandatory warthog


A couple of springbok



A red hartbeest

I spend about ten hours a day behind a computer. While I try to maintain a decent level of fitness, it's always a struggle. I also live about 650 feet above sea level, and the area around Gobabis is about 5000 feet above sea level. I've heard people talk about African plains game hunting like it's shooting tame animals at a zoo, but my personal experience on two trips (this was my second) doesn't reflect that at all. On my first trip, I shot one "stupid" animal, but the rest seemed to have a pretty good idea of what direction was up. Case in point, I wanted to shoot a zebra, but they were too smart and alert for us; it didn't happen. The kudu was also a struggle, although we were ultimately successful.

On this trip, all of the animals were wary. Other than the warthog and one of the springbok, there was no easy shooting. The malarone elevated my pulse noticeably, as did the elevation of the hunt and the excitement. Several of the shots were at considerable range, and almost all were made under severe time constraints. While some of my shooting was excellent, other shots were less so. We didn't lose any animals, but I credit that to the use of quality bullets and the unstinting efforts of my PH, Chris, who showed considerable skill and ability when it mattered.

This trip once again re-affirmed the value of good fitness and realistic training. It's one thing to shoot 1/2 groups off a benchrest, it's another thing entirely to trot through the brush after a moving animal, slam to a stop, throw up shooting sticks and then drop an animal at over 300 yards with a single shot in under 5 seconds with a racing pulse. The trip left me with the resolve to improve my fitness and to practice under more stressful conditions. It was humbling in some ways, but it was also an epic rush. What's the point of doing everything the easy way?

Chris and my eland

Another view of my eland


My gemsbok

One afternoon, we tried to hunt from a blind. Now, I've read that people in Africa can't stand baboons, that they're destructive, etc. etc. etc. For that matter, I believed everyone. That said, it's one thing to read about it, it's another thing to see it for yourself. A troop of baboons had taken over the blind and clearly partied very hard for some considerable period of time. It had to have been for a considerable period of time because there was baboon poop EVERYWHERE. My pictures truly do not do justice to the sheer quantity of baboon stool that covered virtually every square inch of the blind. Beyond the amazing quantity of stool the nasty little creatures had managed to spray liquified poop down all of the walls. It looked like a sewer main had exploded. Really.

I never knew that baboons suffered from so many digestive disorders, but I've given serious thought to shipping a railroad car filled with Imodium over to Namibia to help combat the public menace.

The blind


The floor


The walls

Another picture of the gemsbok


My zebra

The AfricaAwaits lodge outside Gobabis

The Kudu Hunt

My top priorities for this hunt were eland, zebra and kudu. I had taken a kudu on my hunt on South Africa’s East Cape. While we had seen many, many female kudu and perhaps 20 immature bulls, we only saw three mature bulls on the entire hunt. My bull wasn’t particularly large, but he was old and scruffy looking and I was very pleased to get him. Every time I look at him on my wall, I smile a bit because the taxidermist gave him a something of a facelift. My old and scruffy brute had been transformed into a very handsome and dapper gentleman. He looks great on the wall, but he wasn’t nearly so pretty in the wild.

Hunting kudu was the highlight of my first trip, and I was eager to repeat the experience with the larger kudu of Namibia. Unfortunately, our kudu hunting got off to a slow start. We saw no kudu bulls for the first three days of hunting, and very few kudu cows; it didn’t look good. Finally, on the fourth day, we were driving down one of the innumerable dirt roads when we spotted a giraffe in the distance standing squarely in the middle of the road. We approached him slowly so we could get some good pictures, as he was the first giraffe we had seen on the hunt. When we moved forward, another giraffe appeared, followed by three more. We continued to watch the giraffe and take pictures. For some reason, I looked behind the last giraffe, which was on my left and saw a mature kudu bull not more than 60 yards from us. Of course, he was completely alerted by then and was staring right at us. He promptly took off for places unknown and that was the last we saw of him. This leads to the observation that when someone says, “Don’t look at the giraffe”, the first thing one will do is stare at the giraffe. Oh well.

From that point on, we began to seriously try for kudu, but it was windy and the weather wasn’t really co-operating. We would see one or two bulls a day, but they always spotted us first, or the wind was completely wrong, or both. On the next to last day, Chris spotted a nice bull at close range, but I stepped on our tracking dog when climbing out of the Toyota. He yelped, and the kudu took off to join his buddies in places unknown. I felt like a moron and it was a long drive home that evening.

We had specifically targeted kudu for the last three days, and it was the focus of our hunt on the final day. I had accepted that I was very likely to go home without a kudu, but there was no quit in Chris or the rest of the team. We tried a new property that was much more hilly and considerably rougher than the previous properties. We hunted all morning, but it was very, very quiet. We weren’t even seeing warthog.

Finally, about 4:00, we spotted a small herd of bulls. We tried to put on a stalk, but the wind was wrong, and they wanted no part of us. Once again, we trudged back to the Toyota unsuccessful. Things were quiet in the safari car.

We continued hunting with no luck. Sunset was about 6:00, and we were out of time. Chris never quit though. About 5 minutes after the sun set, he saw a pair of bulls. “Get your gun, “ he said, “this is you last chance.”

I’d like to tell you that I then made the best shot of my life, but that’s not what happened. I rushed things and blew the shot. I felt completely sick. Especially when I realized that I could have found a more solid shooting position if I’d look around a little. Everyone was disappointed, but Chris grabbed his binos, and told me to follow him. We made our way through the thorn brush for about ten minutes; he kept scanning. Bear in mind this is now about 15 minutes after sunset and the light was vanishing rapidly. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was in myself.

Suddenly, Chris said, “There he is!”

The kudu were on the far hillside, some considerable distance away. We folded up the shooting sticks so that I could shoot from the sitting position. “This is it”, he said simply. I concentrated as well as I could and fired a shot. My 7mm Ultra is a flat shooter, but this was pushing it, for sure. “You hit him!” he shouted. The two kudu started moving off, but mine was limping badly. We jumped up and followed them as quickly as we could, running through the thorns as the light began to vanish. “There he is!” Chris said again, “Right there!”

We had closed to perhaps 200 yards or a bit more. I got on the sticks and fired again. The sight picture looked good, but the kudu disappeared behind the brush. Chris and I jumped up again and ran after the kudu, Chris moving considerably faster than I. We paused at a clearing, “We’ll get the dog,” he said. There was no need though. Behind one of the bushes lay my kudu. The final shot had done its work well in the twilight.

The kudu was shot 600 meters from the nearest road, so we had to skin and quarter him on the spot, in the dark. We carried the head, the hide and the meat out on our backs. The experience was, shall we say, strenuous.

It’s a terrible, terrible hunting cliché to shoot your trophy on the last minute of the last day, but that’s just what happened, without exaggeration or embellishment; the truth is far better than fiction. All of this took place after the sun had set, in golden evening light and in twilight. The team never gave up and it paid off in the final minutes of the hunt.

Me, after the Kudu hunt

Excellent pictures. Those accommodations are far too comfortable -- how will you convince people that you were roughing it?

Some great pics. Looks like a great hunt. Love that Kudu. Nice mass that extends all the way up. Looks like an old bull. Congrats Bruce

Great report.
Great hunt.
Great pictures.
Especially like that big wide Kudu.
Thanks for posting.

Really good stuff and well done on the big Tiger.

Holy Kudu!!!!

That's one heck of a summer vacation. Thanks for bringing us along on the trip.