(Long and lots of pictures.)

As a bit of background, my wife and I have lived between South and West Africa the last 8 to 9 years. We have a base in Johannesburg where we keep an apartment and two Landrovers and a ton and a half of hunting and camping equipment.

We probably have been on forty plus hunting trips throughout Southern and Western Africa, ranging from short weekend self guided hunting breaks to 10 - 14 day full blown hunts. Diana has smiled on us many times and we have been very fortunate to be able to build up a varied trophy room from cats through large and small plains game to wild and waterfowl. In fact my wife has now said no more trophies as we have no more wall space in Johannesburg. But we also have a base in Germany with wall space free, so no need to stop yet!

This year April, I turned the big ‘50’ and invited our 4 children (2 boys and 2 girls) plus my eldest son’s girlfriend down to SA from Europe for two weeks holiday – a week in Johannesburg and 8 days at a private game / holiday lodge in Natal.

My wife and I have been privileged to be able to hunt this 3.000 h property every year around Easter time for the last 7 years staying in a 100 year old self catering farmhouse with oil lamps and an outdoor donkey fired shower and no internet or WiFi !

The border to the property is 20 kms of river so there are no fences and the game is very free roaming. The owners, whom we know very well, trust us to hunt alone or with a tracker, taking game that we deem fit for either the table or the wall.

I suppose you could best describe the vacation as a being a full on family celebration holiday with a week of self-outfitted hunting in Kwa Zulu Natal!

Here the whole clan -



The children flew in from Europe on KLM and BA, to arrive two days before my birthday and a week before Easter. We celebrated my birthday with a fantastic meal including a lemon pie birthday cake and superb wines at Turn ‘n Tender in Bryanston, Joburg. (I can only but recommend this restaurant to anyone stopping over in Joburg hungry for a really great steak and great wines!)

With a couple of days to enjoy before setting off for KZN, besides shopping, eating and drinking, we drove out to the Lion & Rhino Park, an hour outside of Joburg and just beyond the ‘Cradle of Mankind’ – a Natural Heritage Site.



The park boasts a lot of game ranging from cats (lions, cheetah, caracal) to wild dogs, rhino, sable, roan and buff plus a whole lot more plains game.



We were lucky to see the wild dogs out and about. A dog and a bitch were tussling over a scrap of meat, whilst one of the males clearly had other things than food on his mind! Sorry, but I just had to include this picture –



There were plenty of lion to see close up, with this male gorging himself on half a wildebeest. I can watch lion for hours on end.



The following day in Joburg, we shopped for the coming week, filling 4 shopping carts with provisions and drinks – Windhoek beers, Savanna cider, wines and champagnes – after all this was a celebration week!



And then finally we were off; 8 of us (our youngest daughter invited a school girl friend too), 2 Landrovers loaded to the roof tops and 525 kms of driving through Gauteng, the Free State and into the mountains of Natal -



We arrived Monday afternoon and unloaded and settled in.

Here a picture of the view that we had from the outside breakfast table every morning



The property is a peninsular bordered by the Buffalo River and varies from thick Natal bush to grassy hill and mountain sides dotted with aloe vera plants. There are a few open vlei areas but the majority of the property is bush and thick cover. Game varies from wildebeest and zebra to impala and blessbok with some other dozen plus species free roaming the property. There are some superb nyala to be found but they are shy – or so we had learned to believe over the years we have hunted the property (see below). Here a few pictures of the property and topography -












I took along 3 rifles for the trip

• CZ .416 Rigby with open sights / shooting Norma African PH 450 grain Woodleigh softs and solids

• Krieghoff .375 Holland & Holland double with a Zeiss Victory scope / shooting Norma Oryx 300 grain softs

• CZ .30-06 with a Kettner scope / shooting Norma Oryx 180 grain softs

This was not a dangerous game hunt per se; I use the Krieghoff for almost all my African hunting. The .416, I purchased a couple of years ago and carry it occasionally on plains game hunts to keep in practice and comfortable with the rifle which I find much better than shooting at paper targets. The .30-06 is a great all-rounder that my wife enjoys shooting and which the boys could use too. We checked the sights on the two scoped rifles and were happy that they held their zeros at 100 yards and I had a couple of shots with the .416 at 25 and 35 yards for the practice and was very pleased with the result.



A short side note on the .416. This was an off the shelf CZ which I purchased a few years back in Europe and to which I made six modifications from the out of the box version –

1. I swapped out the front iron sight bead for a hi-vis red foresight
2. I opened up the bolt handle 60 degrees to the chamber to allow for easier / faster reloading
3. I soldered the magazine plate closed (too often I have had or seen a fist full of bullets falling around my or someone else’s feet through an opened magazine trap door and it is easy enough to clean from the top)
4. I deactivated the hair trigger (please CZ explain to me why a heavy big bore rifle like the CZ 550 Magnum is built with hair trigger?)
5. I sun polished the bolt to give the action the smoothest movement you can imagine
6. I moved the front sling bracket from the wood stock to the barrel

I would not ‘undo’ any of these modifications and am convinced that they all make sense (at least for me and the hunting that I have done and plan to do with the .416).

On the second day, my wife and I went out early with the tracker, Keos, who has spent all of his 60 years plus on the farm and literally knows every rock, plant and animal on the property. He is always delighted to see us every year as he knows that impala will be on the menu and that a leg and shoulder or two will land in his cooking pot!

We drove to one of the hill tops and glassed a valley at the back of the property. Wildebeest, zebra, giraffe, kudu and impala were all starting to move about in the early sun. We drove back down and around the hill to the entrance to the valley, parked up and began a long, slow walk up the valley. It was not long before my wife spotted a bachelor group of impalas and after a moment on the sticks she put a .30-06 bullet perfectly into one of the ram’s shoulders. He fell within 20 yards. A pretty good horn for a Natal impala and fillets for the braai and a leg for the potjie!



A couple of days later, I went out with my youngest son and Keos after my ‘annual wildi’. The property has a lot of blue wildebeest with some very nice bulls to be had – if you are patient or lucky or both - and over the years that we have hunted the farm, I have been lucky enough to take a few nice bulls. I hoped that I could do the same in 2014.

We drove a short way and then walked and stalked into a rocky area of thick bush and within an hour Keos pointed out a solitary blue wildi bull laying up in a small clearing soaking up the warm morning sun. I whistled and the bull stood up and turned and faced us – showing me his old, worn horns. He was exactly the one to take, an old, solo bull with scarred horns and well beyond breeding. I put the red dot of the Zeiss Victory onto his shoulder and squeezed the front trigger of the .375 double. The wildi buckled and bolted. We waited a short while and followed to find the bull down some 40 yards from where I shot him. Whilst down and on his side, his head was raised so I put a second bullet into his neck and he was out. A great, tough old bull with old, battle scarred and worn horns. A good trophy to take. Both Norma bullets exited.



A side note – we found an old .375 soft bullet in the bull’s front left ankle joint just above his cloven hoof. It was an old wound, part grown over and dry with broken and chipped bone and cartilage around the wound site. Amazing that the bull seemed to be able to walk / run on that leg. Although we only saw him take a few paces, Keos said that he has know this bull for a few years now and he never seemed sick or ill. We later removed the bullet. Whilst I shoot .375 and very few people are allowed to hunt on the farm, I know that it was not my bullet from past years as all of the bulls that I have shot were – bar one – solo bulls and from the one bull that was with a herd, I recovered the bullet from the off-side shoulder.

We field gutted the bull and after a long and arduous carry over the rocks, we had the bull on the farm Toyota and back at the slaughtering shed. I would keep the flat skin and horns / skull for a European mount. We would use the meat for fillets and the rest as mince and stewing steak for ourselves and Joburg friends.

The following morning, my youngest son, Timo (13), and I went out to try for an impala for him. He shot his first African antelope aged 7 and after that has successfully taken black wildebeest, a kudu cow, blessbok, springbok, warthog and more. His birthday would also fall during this holiday and we had said that he might be able to try for a zebra on his birthday. But today we would try for an impala ram.

Out early, we slowly walked one of the back Southern valleys, Timo carrying the .30-06 and I the sticks. We had not gone 100 yards when a duiker broke cover 50 yards to our right and bolted. A female. Knowing them to be territorial, we walked slowly forward hoping to spot the ram. And sure enough, he too was there and broke cover and bolted some 75 yards before stopping next to a thorn tree and turning back to see what had spooked him.

I glassed the ram and drew a breath at what I saw. I put up the sticks and told Timo to chamber a round. The duiker remained still, watching us and me watching him. Timo found him in the scope and I told him – despite the not perfect angle – to try and put a shot into the ram’s shoulder. After what seemed like an age, the whole time with me thinking the ram would bolt, Timo fired and I saw the ram drop to the shot through my binos. At that moment, Timo was not yet really sure of what he had taken other than it was a Southern grey duiker.

Now here I would mention that I am not a record book hunter. I will usually go out to target old, mature, injured or wounded game animals, but in the case of this duiker, I was excited!

We walked over to the duiker and for the first time Timo clearly saw the ram’s horns. Through the scope he could not clearly see them due to the high grass, shadows and the tree next to and behind the ram. Plus he and I find duiker, like steenbok, horns just plain tricky to see clearly. Now he / we saw that this was indeed a superb old duiker ram!




The shot had spined the ram, dropping him on the spot. The exit wound from the .30-06 was not pretty, but we know a great taxidermist that will fix it up for Timo as a pedestal mount. I am sure that we have seen this ram once or twice before in past years and what a great ram he is!

Later our taxidermist ‘guesstimated’ him at 8 – 9 years old from his worn teeth and his horns. We measured the longer of the two horns at 6’1/4”.

Even though Timo is still young and has a long hunting life ahead of him, I doubt that he will ever take a better duiker than this one.
We skinned and caped the ram and took the straps and haunches for the table.

That evening before sunset this nyala bull came into the farmhouse garden and browsed on the bushes and shrubs.



My wife had hunted this property three years running before taking a nyala and now they were walking into the farm house garden!

Having blooded the .375 and the .30-06, all that remained was to take out the .416, so I decided on the second to last day to try and take a blessbok. My wife has shot a number of zebra over the years, so we did not need another zebra skin hence not going for a zebra with the .416 plus I had already taken my yearly wildi bull. A blessbok it would have to be.

Now in truth, with the blessbok on the property being in one particular area and being used to humans walking and vehicles driving by, this was not hunting in the true sense but rather a ballistical exercise with the .416 and 450 grain solids.

Around mid day, I saw a suitable old, solo ram and walked to within 35 yards. He lifted his head to look straight at me and then, disinterested in me, slowly turned broadside. I aimed offhand at the buck’s shoulder and fired. The ram ran some 10 steps and turned back to face me. I was non plussed! How could I have missed at that distance? I reloaded, waited a few more seconds, the ram just stood and looked at me, so I shouldered the CZ and fired again. This time I could clearly see that the ram was hit. For a few moments he waivered on his legs side to side and then dropped heavily to the ground.



On examining the buck, I saw that my first shot had been a sound shoulder shot, perhaps a shade high, through both lungs (which you can see on the picture). The second shot was a slightly raking shot that penetrated various organs. Once again, I was amazed at just how tough these ‘lowly’ antelope are compared to others of similar size.

The blessbok ended our hunting trip. We had had a superb family week on the farm, with excellent meals and BBQs, top wines, smiles and laughter and some great animals taken [all cleanly – even counting two shots on the wildi and the blessbok]. I have a weak spot for red wines and whilst in Joburg spent time at a wine shop that we know picking a different wine for each evening. We drank some great SA reds!



The following day we packed up the house and our 4 trophies and returned to Joburg via the taxidermists in Newcastle.

On our last day, the girls opted for shopping and sight-seeing whilst the boys decided to spend an afternoon pigeon and dove shooting. A short drive outside Joburg, we spent an hour and a bit shooting a flight line before the weather changed and dark rain clouds pushed in, forcing us to stop. Nevertheless, we managed a few dozen birds and had great fun doing so.



As the sun broke through the clouds over the maize during the rain, we were treated to this magnificent rainbow!



It was a most memorable holiday with all the family together in Johannesburg and in Natal, enjoying and hunting a property that we have come to know and cherish. We have hunted probably more than our fair share of Africa over the years and have taken some great, old trophies, but I was especially happy for Timo and his duiker on this trip and was delighted to have the whole family around to enjoy my birthday and the whole vacation with me and my wife! We hunted a modest bag of 4 animals but everyone that had wanted to hunt had done so and we were pleased with the animals we had taken.

Now to finish up this - my first full AR - report in the traditional AR way, whilst I did not get a great sunset picture, I did however get this picture of the moon rising into the night sky



And as a ‘abf’ comment, I did miss one shot with the .30-06 at an impala ram, uphill at around 125 yards. This just confirmed to me that I need to stick with the .375 double for all my hunting!

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the report and the photography

Seriously lekker!

Fantastic report! An adventure that the family will remember forever.

Looks and sounds like you had an outstanding time. Congratulations on a fine family vacation.

Super photos and the Duiker is a beauty. Looks like you had a grand time with your family.

Well done!

Of all my african safaris, done solo or with good friends, my family trip ranks at the top.

Thanks for posting

Outstanding report and pics!

Very nice report, thanks for sharing with us the entire story. Memories forever. I turn 50 in July, and I can only imagine how great it would be to spend it with the family on a game farm in South Africa.

Awesome duiker your boy shot. Well done Timo!

This is what I would call holiday. Thanks for sharing your memories.

Great fun hunt & nice animals. You can adopt me any time!

Congratulations! Clearly a fantastic family trip!

The duiker is a beauty! But what I really like is seeing the entrance wounds on quite a few trophy photos EXACTLY where they should be! Good shooting!

Great report and photos. This is one of the reasons why AR is the best. Hunters sharing memorable experiences with their fellows.
JCHB

Very nice report and a proper time with your family. Thanks for sharing.


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great photos. thanks for the report

Thanks for all the comments! It was indeed a great family hunting holiday and I would not have changed anything! Cheers


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Looks like you all had a great time, well done.

Well done! What a way to spend your Birthday.
Thanks for the Report.

Happy Birthday! fantastic you could share it with your family.

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If I may come back to our 2014 April family hunt - the taxidermy work on the duiker my son hunted in now done.

I think that this will quickly become one of my favorite pieces in the house!





Cheers
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Ps I know there is a taxidermy section but I thought this would be a great spot to post the picture to round off the report.

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He's a bloody beauty!!!

Great trophies and photos - thanks for sharing.

Looks great!

Family adventure!

Your boy did well and should be proud!!

Charlie your report is fantastic ,great photos ,great safari and a marvelous family .

This is one of my favourite reports because it`s a family trip. Load the land rovers and drive down. I wish I could do the same. Congratulations to Timo on a great duiker

Vert serious duiker indeed.

Well done!

Congratulations on a trip well done last year.

That mount is very cool.