Guys

This is a report on my trip to the Kalahari region of Namibia . This was first time in Namibia, though my fourth hunt in Africa. I also travelled with a friend - Bill - who was hunting Africa for the first time. I had been wanting to go to Namibia for several years, but a number of factors had stopped me. In 2006 I saw a deal mentioned on the AR forums by Todd Rathner at T. Jeffrey Safari Co. This looked pretty good and after a few questions to Todd and also some input from AR member "Stu C" who had taken the same hunt in 2006, I booked for June 07.

Inbound and outbound, we spent one night in Johannesburg at Afton Guest House. Communication with Afton before the hut to finalise a booking proved difficult and I only got confirmation about a month before departure. This may be due to travelling in the height of hunting season, but it was frustrating. Service from Afton inbound was good, but outbound was average. Overall Afton is great value, but I would actually prefer them to put their price up by 10% and improve their service.

From Johannesburg, Bill and I flew to Uptington via South African Airways. The airline was right onto excess baggage and charged us for every kilo over our 20kg allowance for this leg of the trip. Bill had business in SA after the hunt, so was travelling especially heavy. It cost about 950 Rand for 40kg excess. When we arrived in Uptington, SAA off-loaded our rifles and my bag but Bill's 2 cases didn't arrive from Johannesburg. We were told afterwards that the flight was overloaded and they removed 4 cases at random before departing Johannesburg. Bill was irate about not having his bags and really fuming about being charged excess baggage for the privilege. Johan - our guide who met us at the airport - arranged for SAA to get the bags flown out the following day and have them delivered to the border post as they couldn't be brought all the way into Namibia. Bill was given authority by SAA to spend up to 350 Rand in the interim. He bought some clothes and shoes which cost a total of about 1250 Rand to see him over. Bill was also without his ammunition at this point, as this was in one of the cases that was left behind. To cap-off this part of the story, Johan went to the trouble of hiring a friend and sending him on a 2 hour drive to the border to collect the bags, but the Police at the SA border would only release the bags to the owner. As a result, the better part of day 2 of the hunt was spent by us on the round trip to collect the bags.

Overall – the hunt itself was a great success. Maybel and Johan were great hosts and Johan and Hendrik made a great team of keen and accommodating guide and apprentice.
The hunt was a "cull hunt", so the trophy quality varied, but Johan the PH was committed to getting at least one good animal of each species for each of the two of us. I took two rifles on this trip, a 9.3 x 64 and a 308 Baer. I handloaded 250gn Woodleigh protected-point weldcores in the 9.3 and 180gn Accubonds for the Baer. Once on the hunt, all shots were taken with the Baer due to the range and also due to the Baer being more comfortable to shoot.

We went out the first morning to sight-in the rifles before looking for any game. Bill took one rifle on this trip, a Blaser 93 in 300 Win mag. Since he was still without ammo at this stage, we sighted in with some Federal factory ammo using Trophy Bonded Bear Claw 180 grain bullets that had been left with Johan by another client from a previous hunt. Bill's rifle shot the Bear Claws to around the MOA, about the same standard as his normal load – Winchester factory loads with 180gn Failsafes. Only a little adjustment was needed to get him hitting in the right spot with the Federal ammo.

For some reason I cant explain, both my rifles were shooting very low. I had sighted them both to hit above point-of-aim before leaving Australia. In Namibia, my 308 Baer was around 10 inches or more below point of aim and my 9.3 was also several inched low. I sighted both in to a 200 yard zero, then decided to lower the 9.3 since I had the Baer for the longer shots, so backed off a couple of clicks of elevation.

A note on bullet performance. All but one animal was taken with one shot. The single exception was due to shot placement on the first shot, not bullet performance. In the 300 Win mag, both the Trophy Bonded Bear Claw and Failsafe performed extremely well. All shots left two holes and no bullets were recovered. All the animals I took with the Baer were one-shot-kills. The Accubonds fully penetrated one gemsbok, one steenbok and eight springbok. Three Accubonds were recovered - two from shoulder shots on gemsbok (under the skin of the off-side shoulder in both cases) and one from a springbok (hit the on-side ham and stopped under the off-side skin just behind the shoulder on that case).
As expected, the majority of the shots were long range, with few under 150 yards and I believe only one at less than 100 yards. These photos are about half the animals I took on the tip. Between the two of us, about 30 animals were taken in total.
For some reason, the longer shots tended to be smaller animals, but there were some very nice animals on the properties we hunted and some great trophies were taken this trip:


Hunters accommodation



Gemsbok in the distance



First animal of the hunt - gemsbok at 340 yards



Trophy gemsbok taken at 350 yards



Springbok taken at 375 yards



Non-trophy cull springbok taken at 435 yards



Non-trophy cull springbok taken at 518 yards



Trophy steinbok.



Recovered 180gn Accubond bullets - weights left to right 111gn, 109gn and 123gn



Typical Namibian Kalahari countryside



Sunset in Namibia

Nice report, Thanks for taking the time.

Great Steinbok. Glad you enjoyed your first trip to Namibia.

Namibia is awesome isn't it? How big was the steinbok?

Great report. We'll be in Namibia in one week.

All looks great Fergus I am glad you and Bill had such a good time.

I will be there in August and will tell Johan, Deon etc hello from you.

Todd

All right

BTW - nice & crisp photography - what camera, lens etc?

Fergus,
I hunted with Johan and Deon in August of 2006 and had an awesome hunt. If you ever get the chance make sure you get up to the ranch in the Khomas Highlands, the mountains are stunning. I shot a beautiful zebra and a warthog there. I've been missing Namibia and reading your post brought the whole experience back to me. Thanks for posting.

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Namibia is awesome isn't it?

Yep, kicks butt

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How big was the steinbok?

Very even and just over 5" each side. They grow them pretty well in the Kalahari it seems. My friend took one similar, just under 5" each side.

quote:

We'll be in Namibia in one week.

Good luck. I am jealous!!!

quote:

what camera, lens etc?

Hunting photos are very important to me, but I really like hassle free photography and an easy to carry camera. Before going on this trip, I bought a new Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ3 and have been very happy with it. It was just about perfect for a trip of this sort.

These photos were shot in high-res, then reduced to 640x400 for posting.

Good report. You did well.

Nice animals! Those distances aren`t up-close heavy-bush shots.. Great job!