I hunted 7 days (a basic 7-animal plains game package, and added a kudu) with Jochen Hein of Okatjuru Safaris, east of Windhoek, Namibia.

First, I want to thank several members of both this forum and 24 Hour Campfire for their advice as I planned and prepared for this trip. In particular, I want to thank John Barsness, who recommended Okatjuru. John and his wife have written several times about their hunt there with Jochen and his late father, Fritz.

John also suggested booking a tour of Etosha National Park. We did the tour before the trip; it was a great experience in its own right, and incalculably helpful in preparing mentally for the hunt. On top of other exciting things, the impala rut was in full swing:



One impala was looking for a bigger fight.



The only downside of visiting Etosha is that you may see some animals that create unreasonable expectations about trophy sizes in an actual hunting area … like this guy.



Jim Hackiewicz’s posts, and his book, "Africa the First Time" were also really helpful. Allen Day’s advice was always good, especially in recommending this jacket that kept me toasty warm on chilly mornings there.

Jochen himself is an interesting guy to be with, possibly the only PH who doesn’t carry a rifle, but does carry an owl. (He had trapped it and was hand raising it so it would hang around his house and control the mouse population.)



Jochen hunts a couple properties of his own, and others where he’s part owner or leases hunting rights. The properties are a mix of high- and low-fenced, and definitely changed my thoughts on fences. Obviously, high fences do contain some animals effectively; you can see that by the different mixtures of game on the different properties. But even though Jochen's main property is high-fenced (this is the farm he lives on, about 30,000 acres) he does most of the serious kudu hunting on a couple other low-fenced ranches. One day on the way to a low-fenced farm they call "Kudu Land," we saw two dozen hartebeest use a warthog tunnel to go under a low fence, and Jochen says gemsbok do the same. We also saw a kudu calf jump between the wires of a low cattle fence -- maybe a 12" gap, though he could stretch it a bit since one of the stiffening sticks was broken nearby. And even behind a high fence, it took us 3 days to get a shot at a blue wildebeest.

Most of the hunting was a lot like what I expected from my reading. We drove around scanning from the truck a bit, and also often went for walks (sometimes an hour or two of steady walking) through likely areas. My wife came along on most of those walks, though Jochen usually asked her to hang tight under some convenient tree during the final stalk. Six of my eight animals were spotted while hunting on foot.

The first morning, we were walking when Jochen spotted several hartebeest bedded under an acacia. We crawled on our knees to a spot where we could check out the animals from about 100 yards. Jochen pointed out the oldest bull and set up the sticks, and then we waited several minutes until he got up, broadside to us. I fired my .375 H&H and the bull slammed to the ground. There was a cloud of dust as the other bulls ran off, but what struck me most was that several gemsbok calves also ran from the area; we’d toured Etosha National Park for a few days and saw many gemsbok of various ages, but none this young.

The bull lay there a moment with his head up, and when Jochen said, “He’s dead,†the bull’s head sank to the ground. When we walked up, we found the bullet (270-gr. TSX) had hit just behind the left shoulder and exited just in front of the right shoulder. I wasn’t as good about hanging around the skinning shed doing autopsies as some here would have been, but suppose the bullet probably clipped a little bit of spine to knock the bull down like that.



In the picture also is our “black trackerâ€â€”Jochen’s dachshund/fox terrier mix, Fox. We never really needed his services, but he added a lot of comic relief over the week. As Jochen said, “All Fox does is sleep and hunt,†and this appeared to be quite true. Almost every morning, he goes out and gets in the truck and waits to go to work. And when he’s not walking with you, he immediately jumps in the back of the cab and curls up to sleep on your jacket. At the end of the day, he steals leg bones from the skinning shed.

That afternoon, we walked around a lot and saw some blesbok, impala, wildebeest and small kudu. Then, we found a male springbok herding group of females. At first, he was loitering behind a small bush, so we edged up to a place where I could set up on the sticks and shoot if he came out either side. Eventually he did step out, nearly facing me, and I put the crosshairs on his near shoulder and fired. The shot didn’t look that great to me and I thought he might have run off from a miss; but Fox ran straight to where he’d stood, and there he was, quite dead with his back hair up when we got to him.



The bullet hit right on the point of the left shoulder and exited just in front of the right ham. More importantly, the back hair really does smell like honey.

The second morning we walked a long way around Kudu Land, and spotted three gemsbok in a clearing. We then crawled a ways on hands and knees, through some tall grass with the famous sharp seeds that you dig out of your socks for days. We took cover behind a tree and stood up; I rested my left wrist against the trunk, with a broken branch digging into the back of my hand, and watched two of the bulls spar with one another. The one we wanted was behind a bush, so we had to wait until they switched sides. Eventually, they did, and once again I shot for the shoulder. The angle and range were almost identical to the hartebeest (maybe a bit farther away) and the results were pretty much identical. The bull slammed to the ground and died right after we walked up to him. He appeared to cry when he died, and even though I knew intellectually that this is just a muscular reaction, it still put a little lump in my throat.



That afternoon, we walked again and found a duiker feeding in a grassy clearing. I shot him at about 60 yards, but too far back. He ran about 20 yards and Fox found him immediately. Jochen finished him with a knife, and I still look a little queasy about it in the picture.


I know a lot of people really like hunting these little antelope, but while I can see the challenge, I don’t think it’s really my cup of tea. I chalked that one up as a lesson learned, and resolved to shoot better on big stuff.

With four of the eight animals I was looking for down, I was starting to think about what we’d do if we finished all the hunting early. But I hadn’t reckoned on wildebeest and kudu.

On July 4, we spent the morning looking for wildebeest and blesbok, but instead bumped a herd of impala that kept zigzagging in front of us, spooking everything in their path. Later, we also spotted a solitary old blue wildebeest bull, which Jochen saw was limping; he thought it was one a bow hunter had wounded earlier in the season. The bull stood behind a bush, snorting at us. But when I had an otherwise great position to shoot it at about 60 yards, there was a branch in the way (not right in front of the bull, either) and I declined. I could tell this Jochen disagreed, but I still thought the potential for disaster was too much.

That afternoon, we had a change of pace and Jochen sent us with Festus #1 to sit in a blind by a water hole at Kudu Land.

I should explain the “#1â€; Jochen has two Festuses who work for him. Festus #2 works as a tracker/driver/helper for Jochen when he’s guiding, and is the strong, silent type—strong because he gets to load a lot of game, and silent because he doesn’t speak much English.

Festus #1 tracks and drives mostly for Jochen’s other PH, Terry, but has also worked his way up to be qualified as a “guide†in his own right, which means he can hunt with clients at Jochen’s direction. Festus #1 has impeccable manners and a great attitude, and was a real pleasure to hunt with.


Festus #1

I wasn’t terribly excited about sitting at the waterhole, just because stand hunting has never been that interesting to me. However, I couldn’t see anything ethically wrong with it (every property Jochen hunts has several water holes, so it’s not as if the animals have no choice of where to drink), so I figured I would shoot if something exciting came along. Besides, Festus was working really hard to find game for us, and I would have hated to let him down.

This waterhole sit turned out more exciting than I expected, since as John B. says, shooting isn’t the only pleasure of hunting. Lots and lots of animals came to this water hole, including a medium-sized gemsbok that must have walked three times around the abandoned shed we were using as a blind.

But the most exciting sight was a half-dozen hartebeest bulls who came in, including one very old male. For the next half hour, each of the young bulls locked horns with the oldster in turn, trying to drive him out of the herd. Hartebeest have an interesting tactic when they fight. As soon as they lock horns, they immediately drop to their knees and try to pin one another like a couple high school wrestlers. I could have gotten some great photos; unfortunately, I was so spellbound I didn’t want to miss anything while reaching for a camera!

On the way home, we mentioned to Festus that it was Independence Day in the U.S., and how strange it felt to be away. Then we compared notes on what they do for Independence Day in Namibia: cookouts, drinking and political speeches no one listens to—some things are the same all over. Festus was silent for a moment, then said very carefully, “Ours is over now until next year. But I would like to wish you a very happy Independence Day.â€

The next morning, we again went after blesbok and wildebeest, and found a herd that had both, plus springbok and zebra. These mixed herds of different species were the strangest thing for me to get used to in Africa. I’ve seen whitetails and pronghorns together in Montana alfalfa fields, and elk and bison in Yellowstone, but that’s about it. But in Africa you can sit at a waterhole and see giraffes, impala, kudu, gemsbok, warthogs and eland in the space of half an hour. Come back a couple hours later and you’ll see a different half-dozen species in the same spot.

Anyway, this was an unusually open area, without the usual waist- to chest-high grass everywhere—probably because of all the zebra and wildebeest. We crab-crawled to within about 200 yards of a nice blesbok, and I got in a solid sitting position, but couldn’t shoot because Fox decided to sit down right under my muzzle. By the time he moved, so did the blesbok. And when we moved, too, something spotted us and the whole miscellaneous herd ran off.

Next, we found a breeding herd of blue wildebeest and shadowed them in the brush, looping downwind to try and cut them off at an opening or ranch road. The wind was right, the sun was right, we were quiet and never saw them look back. But somehow, one of them must have caught a glimpse, and again, they were off. (Sneak preview: there will be more of this later.)

Finally that morning, we went after a herd of blesbok in an open field. We crawled a couple hundred yards on hands and knees to a small tree about 150 yards from the herd. The tree might provide cover for setting up the sticks, but not enough cover for us to stand up. During pauses when the herd was looking elsewhere, Jochen got the sticks up and I set up in a pretty improvised position—up on both knees, just high enough to get the rifle above the grass, with the rifle braced against the side of the sticks. I aimed at a bull that was standing broadside, facing to my left. I eventually settled down and fired at his shoulder. He went straight down and kicked a couple times.

When we walked up, the bull was dead, but I was surprised to find no hole in his chest. It turned I’d pulled the shot high and left, maybe 8-9â€. (I suppose this could have been from the rifle bouncing off the side of the sticks, a theory I’ll test at the range.) This could have been a clean miss on a smaller animal, or a real disaster on a bigger one—or on this one if he’d been facing to my right. But in this case, the bad shot had hit him straight through the carotid artery: “A perfect meat shot,†Jochen said.



That afternoon, we decided to give the wildebeest chasing a miss and Festus #1 took us to a different water hole at Kudu Land. We bumped a herd of kudu on the way in, and Festus and I went after them. Festus said there was a big kudu bull—he says it as if it were one word, “kudubull,†and soon I started thinking it that way too. I only caught a glimpse of the bull’s body as we shadowed them, but it was still exciting, and disappointing when they spooked and took off. Back at the waterhole, we only saw a few young warthogs and kudu cows.

The next morning was similarly uneventful—we drove and walked around a neighbor’s ranch looking for kudu. But the wind was bad and all we saw were “silly young bulls,†as Jochen put it.

That afternoon, we returned to Kudu Land, to walk around for kudu and warthog. After about an hour and a half of strolling, Fox took off into the underbrush at top speed, and returned even faster. He’d jumped a warthog big enough to turn around and face him down. Jochen and I dropped, and Jochen whispered, “That’s a big hog. Can you shoot him offhand between the eyes at 10 yards?â€

“I can try,†I said, and attempted, as smoothly as possible, to take a step forward, rise up and shoot in one motion. But with the hog looking straight at me, that was one motion too many, and away he went as I was flicking off the safety.

Back in the truck and starting to head back to the ranch, Jochen spotted another warthog. “That’s a big one,†he said. “You can shoot him from here.â€

I’d already decided I wasn’t interested in shooting anything from the truck. Though I never felt pressured on the point, I’m curious how they don’t seem to have developed a taboo against it over there; anyway, I said “No, thanks,†and we drove on.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later (when we would have been taking pictures if I’d shot the warthog), we were driving down the last ranch road to the highway when we spotted a full-grown “kudubull†looking down on us from a hill. Jochen pointed him out, but didn’t say anything more, and I figured that was it for the day. But after we’d driven a ways down the road, Jochen told Festus #2 to stop the truck, and we dismounted for a quiet stalk back. The sun was starting to set, and eventually Jochen spotted the bull. At this point, of course, I realized I still had my sunglasses on. After setting up the sticks and a series of whispered exchanges—“Do you see him now?†“No.†“There, by the yellow flowers. Do you see him?†“Noâ€â€”Jochen helped me switch glasses.

Astonishingly, the bull stood there through this Laurel & Hardy exercise, and eventually moved his head just enough for me to spot the white chevron on his face, then his horns, then his body, quartering on behind a little thorn bush. “You can shoot through that with the .375,†Jochen said.

I thought long and hard about this (it seemed long, anyway—probably 3 or 4 seconds) and eventually decided it was time to give in to 25 years of superior experience. I put the crosshairs on the kudu’s shoulder and carefully squeezed. The kudu ran a little downhill, where it seemed to go down and disappear.

“Did you hit him?†Jochen asked.

“Yes,†I said, and pointed where I’d seen him go down. As we walked up there, I suddenly saw the bull standing broadside behind another bush, about 10 yards away. I fired again at his chest, and he fell.

We walked up as he kicked a few times. “Should I finish him?â€

“No,†said Jochen. “This is what it takes for him to die.â€



The first bullet hit a little farther back on the right-hand ribs than I aimed, or thought I aimed, and was lost in the paunch somewhere. The second went through the ribs on the left, and stuck under the skin on the opposite side, just a couple inches in front of the first entry wound (you can see the bump in the photo).

From all the safari literature, I’d been convinced I’d shoot everything else in a few days, then break my heart over kudu until sundown on the last day. But that’s not how it was working out. So after coming down from the kudu high, we went out in the morning looking for a blue wildebeest. Again.

First, we spent a long time following a solitary old bull that even I could tell was huge. Unlike the several bulls that had snorted at us over the past several days, this one gave little outward sign he’d seen us, but always stayed about 200 yards away and just behind brush, until he slipped off into a herd of zebra and springbok.

Next, with my wife along, we stalked a breeding herd of about 16. We left my wife under a small acacia and sneaked within about 75 yards of the herd. Over the next several hours, which probably really lasted 10 minutes, we got the sticks up and stood, waiting for the bull to make an appearance. But while I was standing there, facing all those eyes, with my rifle at order arms, the herd started drifting toward us at an angle. The closest cow was 8-10 yards away; my wife, who was a couple dozen yards behind us, said later that she was starting to think about where to go if they stampeded or something. If buffalo hunting is anything like this, sign me up.

Eventually, I got set up on the sticks, pointing generally where the bull was, out of sight on the far side of the herd. Naturally, he saw us at the same time, and stood with his body behind a bush, grunting at us. This was starting to get very familiar. Then he spooked and ran off at top speed, taking the herd with him. This was also starting to get very familiar.

Fortunately, those weren’t the only wildebeest in Africa. In the afternoon, we made a similar stalk on a similar breeding herd, though without the close encounter in the middle. After the now-familiar period of crouching, freezing, and one-sided grunting, this herd bull stepped into the open, quartering on at about 75 yards. I hit him in the left shoulder, and he rolled onto it, flopped over a couple times, and was totally dead when we walked up to him.



The bullet was stuck under the skin on the far side of his rib cage, surrounded by a big, soft bulge from all the internal bleeding. I did stick around the skinning shed for a while while they were working on this one, and the entire right side of the rib cage was very bloodshot.

After finally getting the wildebeest, I was ready to skip warthog hunting as anticlimactic and spend the last day bird hunting or taking pictures, but my wife had her heart set on a warthog, so we went out looking for one. In the morning, we walked all over Kudu Land again, and spent a couple hours bird watching from one of the elevated blinds. But the wind was pretty high, so naturally, the only warthog we saw was a young male that ran in front of the truck about 45 seconds after Festus #2 picked us up for lunch.

That afternoon, Festus #1 took me to another elevated blind, over what turned out to be a really busy water hole, where we saw a couple kudu calves, a young waterbuck, a huge flock of go-away birds, and a steady stream of young warthogs. But while the young ones just ran in from upwind, Festus said the old ones circle downwind to test for scent. One of them did just that, 100 yards away, and ran off just before stepping into the clear. But he must not have been sure of what he smelled, because a few minutes later he came back to the same spot to check again. I shot him in front of the left shoulder, and the bullet angled down to exit behind the right shoulder. Like nearly everything else, he fell down, kicked a few times, and died. When we brought him back to the house, Fox sulked because he hadn’t been in on the kill.




Overall, it was a good hunt for good game, with interesting people, in a beautiful country with a lot to see. A lot of people ask me if I’d go back. The answer is that I’d certainly go back to Africa, and to Namibia. My first choice would probably be to see someplace different and hunt different game. But I’d be happy to do it with the same people!

Equipment Notes

The only rifle I brought was my Mark X Whitworth in .375 H&H. I used 270-gr. TSXs over 74.0 grains of RL-15 for everything, and they worked astonishingly well. (At least I was astonished, since I’d never shot game with anything bigger than a .30-06 before.)

Here are the only two recovered bullets, both of which retained 100% of their weight:



Left is from the finishing shot on the kudu. Right is from the wildebeest, after doing a whole lot of damage.

My scope was a Leupold Vari-X III 2.5-8X in Talley QD rings. I shot everything on 4X except the duiker and blesbok where I went up to 6X. (I might have gone to 6X for the springbok, too, but don’t remember for sure.) A fixed 4X, or the 3X I brought as a spare, surely would have worked equally well.

For clothing, I wore Filson shirts, both Safari Cloth and Feather Cloth. I must have hunted 2-3 days in each of those, as well as in a discontinued model of L.L. Bean ripstop field shirt, and none of them shows a scratch despite constant thorns. The Bean shirt has epaulets that I'd probably cut off, because they serve no purpose and snagged on thorns a few times.

I wore Royal Robbins 5.11 pants every day, and they were great, especially for the built-in knee pad pockets. But if I were shopping again, I’d buy them 2†longer in the inseam so the pads would hang lower.

In the morning, I wore my Integral Designs Dolomitti jacket to stay warm, but usually had it off by 8:30. It’s noisy, so I’d leave it in the truck and warm up instantly when we walked. In the evenings, I wore a Patagonia R4 fleece, which was warm and quiet but vulnerable to thorns. I think the perfect jacket for this type of hunting would be made out of Filson Safari Cloth, but insulated with Primaloft like the Dolomitti.

I also had a pair of Churchill elkhide gloves. After digging thorns out of my palms the day after the gemsbok stalk, I learned the gloves would be more helpful if I actually put them on before long crawls. I also learned that my wife doesn’t think “Snows of Kilimanjaro†jokes are very funny.

Congratulations on a fine hunt! Your photos were excellent - I loved the pictures of the impala rams! The stripes and chevron on your kudu bull were really nice - bright contrast.

I, too, was in Namibia over the July 4th - and had the same strange reaction. No streams of traffic going to the lake, no fireworks shows - it was actually a nice opportunity to reflect on the significance of the date (and I made my own fireworks show with a 12 gauge over a water hole with doves and sand grouse for invited guests!).

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts and share your photos.

Living vicariously until next time...

Acer

Great report John. The long ones are always the best as the person reporting has taken time to try and let us experience their experiences. Thanks for the details.

gj - and a beautyfull first pic on those impalas

Great report, John. And pics, too. The very first one of the two impala is quite dramatic.

My Namibian PH, Fred Burchell, didn't carry a weapon on plains game hunt either.

Talking about crying; there is a story in the July\August '04 Texas TrophyHunters Magazine by Steve Ramirez, named "Spirals of Smoke." It is about kudu hunting on Fred's ranch which is 30 miles south of Etosha Park.
"Look," Fred said while pointing toward the old bull's eyes. "The Bushmen say that a kudu will always cry when he dies."

Thanks for the great report

17 days and counting

Great photos....the impala photo looks like they are jumping out of my screen! What camera set-up did you use for this photo?

Glad you enjoyed the hunt. It is an ideal place to get introduced to africa. I was hunting with Jochen and Festus end of may. I think we talked on the phone. Did Festus use his "Festus Special knife"?

That's a great report. I really enjoyed the non-typical photos of the Impala, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by ROSCOE:
Great photos....the impala photo looks like they are jumping out of my screen! What camera set-up did you use for this photo?

Olympus E500 with the longer lens from the standard 2-lens kit for both impala pics and the springbok. Shot as a RAW image for max quality.

I actually got a whole series of this clash that I'll post another time -- it was good to be in the right place at the right time, with a fast CF card.

The pictures of Jochen, Festus, the kudu and the warthog were on film and I scanned the negatives on a Canon MP950. The rest were with a Canon Powershot S45, but the lens cover jammed on the next to last day of the hunt. I was really glad I'd brought three cameras!

quote:

Originally posted by farrknives:
Glad you enjoyed the hunt. It is an ideal place to get introduced to africa. I was hunting with Jochen and Festus end of may. I think we talked on the phone. Did Festus use his "Festus Special knife"?

Dan,

I remember -- we exchanged e-mails before I booked the trip.

Jochen mentioned that you'd made them some very nice knives, but I never saw Festus use one. I wish I had!

John

Congratulations on a successful hunt. Great report and thanks for sharing.

John

Great report! We've also had excellent luck sending clients to Jochem.

Mark

Congratulations.......You made some memories.......Good report

Hi John,

Great report. That looks like a terrific safari with memories for a lifetime.

That impala action shot is one of the best I've ever seen.

Great hunting with great hunters,
Kyler

Great report and photos. The impala photo is great. I had a chance for a picture like that last year, but I was a little too slow.

Since people are liking the impala pic, here's the whole sequence.

John:
Congratulations. Your Impala pics are some of the best I've ever seen, bar none.

John,

Thanks for the great report on an excellent safari.

Those impala photos are incredible. Truly "National Geographic" quality in my book!!!

Phil

John , thanks for a great report and some very fine pictures of the Impala.

Congratulation on your hunt and very nice photos.Thanks for sharing.


Hamdeni

Good story! And some great pics, both of trophies, animals and people. I must say that the pic of the two fighting black-faced impalas really is something special..
Congrats and thanks for sharing your experience with us..

That first Impala pic looks like a painting. Excellent!

quote:

Originally posted by John Frazer:

What an exceptional photo! I swear, it looks like a painting done by the most talented African artist, capturing the dust and the rocks in motion.

Oh and I forgot to mention, Good job on your hunt!

Excellent series of impala photos. To me the black faced impala are very intriguing.

You know, I realized I should give credit where credit is due -- since I didn't, of course, take the trophy photos myself. I'm not patient enough to take enough shots on a self-timer...

Anyway, Jochen took all the trophy pics except the warthog -- Festus did that one, and has obviously paid a lot of attention to how it's done.

Those Impala pics are great. What makes them even better is that they are Black Faced Impala. I'll bet National Geographic doesn't even have very many pics of Black Faced Impala fighting. AWESOME!

John,

Welcome home! What an excellent report, and great photos.

See you in September.

Todd

John:

When did Fritz die? Did he die of skin cancer? The kudu on my outdoor writer website was shot at their place.

quote:

Originally posted by AnotherAZWriter:
John:

When did Fritz die? Did he die of skin cancer?

I think 2-3 years ago; don't know the cause.

John, Good Job!!. Great Picts.

Ahhhhhhh... that breaks my savage heart that Fritz is gone. I hunted with him back in 1980 on my first trip to 'South West Africa' ... He was a very fine man and we got all of the local stuff that was available ... No high fences .... His lovely wife Jutta was a gourmet cook .. Fabulous meals .. Heck I even whacked a cattle killing cheetah ... And one night ... hours after my wife had killed her big old kudu bull .. and after a reasonable amount of celebrating .. his two boys roared into sight on motorcycles .. For don't you know .. I had expressed interest in hunting a spring hare .. I leaped on the back of one .. driven by today's professional hunter .. and we buzzed around to the 'garden' .. within minutes I was back with my newest trophy taken out of a herd of two ...Running !!! Or was it hopping !!!??? To this day I have shot more lions, leopards, buffalo .. even elephants .. than I have spring hares .. but I still admire my mounted spring hare ... and that wonderful evening so long ago ... If you never knew Fritz ... a very very fine man ... you are the poorer for it .. To you, my friend ...

great report and pics , that brought back some great memories of my own trip as well!

Awesome pictures and a very good report! If you haven't realized it yet you have been ruined. Once you hunt Africa you can't wait to get back again. It's like some kind of viral infection that takes over and you feel it mutate until all you start doing is dreaming of Africa.

Whitetail deer, mule deer, elk even bear hunting will begin to cease to capture your hunting ambitions. Wait until you start tapping into the BIG FIVE! You'll be a lost cause. Welcome to the universe of the safari infirmed!

Dr. Tim

Thank you for your detailed report, and excellent photography!