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If a blue wildebeest is the poor man's buffalo, then I guess the caracal must be the poor man's leopard! (second part of sentence original Charlie64 - I hope!)



I have used this "great" caracal mount as the sort of title picture to this report as I guess that whilst caracal were not really up there on this hunt wish list, I ended up shooting two cats and really enjoyed it - the hounds, the noise, the chase, a treed cat and a result! And what better place to hunt caracal over hounds than the Eastern Cape!


I hunted the Eastern Cape near Komga last year with KMG Safaris, taking some great old trophies including a solid blue duiker - my main target. It was a great trip and at the time I told Marius Goosen, owner of KMG, that I would return this year with a small group. And that is what we did!

My wife and I flew Air France, Germany to Joburg via Paris, and JaegerFrank (who posts on AR from time to time) and his partner flew Lufthansa direct from Germany. We opted to use camp rifles whilst JaegerFrank travelled with a pair of Blasers in 8x68S and .300 Weatherby.

Travel was smooth, Mr X from Afton had the SAPs permits for Frank and we all breezed thru OR Tambo and were met by our driver, whom I have been using in Joburg for 20 years. We were in our Sandton home and unpacked within 2 hours or landing in SA. It could not have been easier.

A couple of days in Joburg to sort out the Landrovers, see some sights and do some shopping, a trip to Safari Outdoor and a great steak dinner with superb SA red wines at the Blockhouse in Parkhurst. Then it was FlySafair to East London and the start of our group hunting trip!

















Nick Neuper and Lloyd Freitag, two young and energetic PHs, met us at the airport and an hour later we were unpacking at Outspan Lodge, near Komga, our base for the week. A beautifully located lodge at the head of a deep gorge with tasteful rooms and a large dinning and bar boma.





JaegerFrank and his partner were after a good bushbuck and an impala plus some culls. Anja and I were after a few zebra, a warty, a bushbuck and whatever else we thought good that we may see.

That afternoon we headed to the range where we all shot the rifles - Anja and I shooting Nick´s .308 Musgrave, 2 inches high at 100 m. With the two Blasers in the black at 100 m. Then at my ask, we had half an hour of fun shooting the guy`s Glocks at paper and target balloons plus Lloyd´s new Glock stock and Aimpoint sight! Shits and giggles and we all had fun!











Now let me break the week down on an animal by animal basis as opposed to days. The days were all pretty similar - up early, a dry breakfast, hunt throughout the day and back to the lodge for showers, drinks and dinner, followed by more drinks and lively talk and discussion!

We shared the camp with two other guys who were hunting with KMG - a hunter and an observer friend from the mid West USA. They kept very much to themselves, hardly said a word and left for their rooms immediately after dinner. So to all extents and purposes we had the camp to ourselves.


The Pensioner´s Caracal!





On the first day, Anja and I were driving with Nick and his tracker / skinner, Temba, on our way to try for zebra on a nearby farm, when Nick got a ´caracal call´! Let me explain…..

A number of local hunters in the Eastern Cape run hounds after cats, jackal and bushpig. NIck has some 20 plus hounds - walkers, blue ticks, terriers and more - and employs a full time houndsman and an assistant to manage the dogs. If he gets a call about a cat or a sheep or game kill, he will run the dogs on that specific cat. Others run their packs daily over agreed grounds and farms on the chance of picking up spoor and scent. And this was the call Nick got on Monday morning. Patrick’s hounds had treed a cat nearby. Patrick is the brother of the owner of Outspan, the lodge where we were staying.

Was I interested in going there and having a look at the treed caracal? If its a big lynx then I could shoot it as a trophy cat. If it is small then I could shoot it as ‘one on the house’.

We quickly collected Nick´s .22lfb rifle and one bullet! He only could find the one! Plan B was Nick´s 9 mm Glock.

Arriving at a farm gate, Patrick directed us across the fields to a large wooded thorn thicket where the hounds could be heard with the treed cat.

Anja and I followed Nick and Temba as fast as we could into the ‘thick shit’ in the direction of the barking hounds. After a battle with some thorns and a crawl under a barbed fence, we found the Houndsman, who lead us to the bay - a decent sized female cat high up on a thick branch of a Mopane tree. Nick handed me the .22 and, loading the one bullet (there was no magazine) and closing the bolt, I sighted with a full bead onto the cat’s shoulder and squeezed off the round! The lynx arched, seized up and fell, almost in slo mo, from the branch down towards the houndsman who was now beating away the dogs with a long switch broken from a thorn bush. The dogs exploded as the cat thumped audible to the ground and Nick, Temba and the houndsman battled the dogs away. We then carried the cat out of the thicket to the fields and laid her out to admire. A big, solid female lynx taken after a ‘Pensioner’s hunt’ i.e. out of the car, an easy walk up to the tree and shoot the cat! All in the space of 10 mins! A great start to the safari!















The second caracal hunt was very different, as you will read below.



A brace of zebra




We drove to a nearby farm and after exchanging greetings and pleasantries with the owner, we set off looking for zebra. It was not long before Nick / we spotted a herd and after a short stalk, Anja shot a large mare, prone off of the bipods with the .308. The mare ran a short distance and folded. Zebra number 16 for Anja!











Number 17 followed in the early afternoon, after a good stalk and a stand-off wait due to a feeding blesbok ram. A big, solid stallion that did not go far after a good lung shot from the .308 Musgrave.











A brace of zebra with two great skins on the first days hunting! Life is good!



Another rooibokkie / impala





If it was zebra nos 16 and 17, then this must have been impala number 40 something. We have shot a lot of impala over the years.

We drove to a neighbouring farm where I hunted a lot last year. Some 30.000 plus hectares and so many game animals and impala around every bend in the tracks! We spotted a good ram down by the river which Anja shot and which dropped to the shot! There was a unicorn impala in the herd and the game manager, who was with us, told Anja she should shoot the one horn as well, but he slipped into the bush before Anja could get a shot away! Next time ...






Bushbuck





The game reserve has a lot of bushbuck and I mean a lot! JaegerFrank’s girlfriend had shot a superb old old 16 inch ram the day before! A stunner of a ram.

We drove, walked and glassed searching for a good ram and late afternoon Nick and Temba spotted one, grazing at the edge of a clearing over 1.4 kms away on the other side of the valley! They, Nick and Temba, have terrific eyesight! The red blotch in the picture below is where we spotted the ram or better said where they spotted the ram!





Nick and I then put in a stalk, down into the valley floor, across a small stream and up the other side, using the contours as cover, starting 850 m out. We passed a grazing warthog at 50 m and he never saw us!

We got to within 60 m downhill of the bushbuck when Nick flicked up the sticks and bedding the rifle onto the sticks, I sighted onto the ram’s shoulder and fired. All very quick. The bushbuck dropped and I had my bushbuck! As a side note, Nick was gored in the shoulder by a bushbuck ram some 3 years back whilst on a driven hunt and he approached my buck with his Glock drawn and ready! It’s the dead ones that get you! But my buck was very dead and Nick holstered his gun.








An old ram with teeth to the gums and a horn of 15 inches! I was and am still thrilled to have taken another great bushbuck! Diana had smiled on us again!





Then it was back to the skinning shed and a celebratory beer with the owner of the game reserve and then back to the lodge for dinner, drinks and stories!

We took the bushbuck liver back to the lodge and the kitchen cooked it as a starter - strips drenched in flour, salt and pepper and pan fried. It was a wonderful bar appetizer before dinner!



An old wildi!





I have hunted and shot lots of blue wildebeest over the years and, like warthog, I never tire of hunting wildis. The reserve we were hunting does not have big, big wildis (read gene pool) but nevertheless I was happy to hunt one.

It was a cold, wet and windy morning and after passing up on a number of bulls, we found a herd that had a couple of old bulls in amongst the cows and calves. Nick and I stalked as close as we could and from about 120 m, I lay prone on the wet ground and shooting off the bipods, I waited for the bull to present a shot. He did and I fired, straight into his heart. He bolted some 20 m and collapsed. An old bull with worn down teeth and cracked horns. A good one to take. I was happy.









A solid pig in rain & wind!





Later that day, raging wind kept all the game in the valleys and dongas all day. We drove, walked and walked some more searching for a good warthog. The farm has lots of warthog but we wanted to get a big one! We spotted this guy feeding with two other pigs right at the tree line in a deep valley, sheltered from the wind. We put in a short stalk and laying prone downhill (not a great shooting position!) 180 m from the grazing warty, I tried to gauge the wind and aimed 15 cm to the right of the pigs shoulder, aiming almost into the air at his chestline. Squeezing the trigger the shot broke and I saw the pig take the hit through his hind quarters! A second shot, holding far to the right, and the pig was down for good! The wind had pushed the first shot (.308 handloads) some 40-45 cm from right to left and luckily managed to anchor him! He was a pretty good RSA pig in my book and made me very happy! Pictures and more pictures and we loaded the pig and drove back to the skinning shed and out of the wind and rain, calling it a day!









Sheep killer - a proper caracal hunt over hounds!





Late in the week, Nick got a call from a sheep farmer. They had lost an ewe, likely from a caracal. One back haunch had been eaten. They had left the carcass where it lay.





The next morning, with a dog-laden bakkie, two houndsmen, Nick, Anja and I, we drove to the sheep farm to try and catch the thieving cat!





The caracal had been back in the night and fed again, eating the face off the now bloated ewe. Nick was optimistic that the cat would be nearby and the houndsmen, one sporting a “well used” hammer shotgun with 2 dubious looking cartridges in his pocket, dropped the dogs at the kill.







After some minutes of the dogs doing their morning ablutions, as dogs do, and then milling and running around, noses to the ground, a couple of the hounds gave tongue and led the pack away on the scent of the caracal!





Exciting stuff and I really enjoy watching hounds working a track! The hounds went away and we followed. After some 20 minutes, the barking and howling became more frantic, the hounds were onto the cat! And some 15 minutes later a large tom caracal treed in a woody and thorny thicket! With the .22 and 3 bullets (a kind farmer had given Nick some bullets during the week!), I crawled to the base of the tree and taking a full bead on the cat’s shoulder, I fired. The little .22 cracked and the cat crunched up. A second shot dropped the cat from the tree and Nick and the houndsmen held the now very excited dogs off of the downed cat, brandishing twigs and switches hastily cut and broken from the surrounding bush!

















A great cat he was too, an exciting hunt and a happy farmer couple who were rid of a sheep killing caracal! Plus this one we worked for unlike the ‘Pensioner’s Cat’ that we took at the start of the hunt!



No yellows on the Kei





Having pretty much shot everything we wanted to hunt, we opted to spend an afternoon fishing on the Kei River. A beautiful river that is the boundary of the reserve we were doing most of the hunting on.








Nick rigged up two rods with bait balls consisting of maize, molasses and ground wheat. I opted to walk up the river fishing an old Orvis 5 weight fly rod with a matching Orvis Battenkill reel that belonged to my father, casting caddis patterns and damsels. I had one smallmouth yellow follower but he never hooked up and after a few hours I made my way back to Anja and Nick and a cold beer by the river! They too had blanked but nonetheless it was a pleasant afternoon in glorious, sunny surroundings. An amusing highlight was that they had had a warthog sow and two piglets on the road above them running back and forth for an hour plus wanting to come to the river to drink. The banks of the Kei are pretty steep and Nick and Anja had chosen a flattish spot to fish from which just so happened to be the pig's watering place!



Bass on fly!





Whilst the yellowfish did not perform as we had hoped, the bass did! Anja, Nick and I fished a small lake on the reserve one morning, catching and releasing dozens and dozens of small bass. I fished an Orvis SuperFine 1 weight that I had made for me by a guy in Romania a few years back. A beautiful little rod and great fun playing small 1/2 lb bass! Anja fished the Orvis 5 weight and Nick a new Orvis 5 weight that I brought over from Europe as a gift for Nick and Marius.
















On our last afternoon, we fished another lake on the sheep farm where we took the tom caracal. There we caught bigger bass but the fishing was tricky due to lots of weed banks, loosing fish in the weeds. But we caught good fish and it was a fun last afternoon / early evening and a great way to end the week!














Ps All the fish were catch & release! I would have liked to have pan fried some bass filets but they were all pretty small plus Nick said they often tasted muddy. We put them all back!



Komga Livestock Auction





Before the bass fishing, we spent a few hours at the local livestock show and auction. Basically because Nick wanted to buy some cattle, but Anja and I were happy to look around - sheep, chickens, ducks, turkeys, a horse show and a cattle auction. A fun insight into rural agri in the Eastern Cape!











It was a good weeks hunting and fishing. Good animals, superb countryside, nice accommodations and good food, topped off with hard working PHs.

Maybe a short paragraph on the reserve that we hunted in - it is fenced on one side and bordered by the Kei River on the other. 25.000 hectares of deep valleys, hills and mountains and thick bush interspersed with a number of open vleis. Just to comment on the size of the reserve, the 25.000 h is calculated based on a flat topography reading, therefore to get the true size of the property add 50 % on top to account for the valley slopes and sides, hence we would be hunting on a reserve of some 35.000 h plus minus. There are parts of this game reserve that are so wild and inaccessible that they have never been hunted! It is a big game reserve by any standards







On the way to King Phalo Airport, we stopped at a local sporting gun shop and had a look around.

And then it was a short hop to Joburg, an Uber ride to the house and a great farewell steak dinner, before we all made our way back to Germany, after another fun hunt in the Eastern Cape!






Big thank you to Marius, Nick and Lloyd for a great week in the Eastern Cape with some solid animals! And thanks to all AR readers and others that came along on this hunt report! Appreciate comments and feedback as always!





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Some great trophies. Looks like a fun hunt.

Well done. Excellent report.

Thanks for the hunt report! Very nice bushbuck. The caracal hunting with hounds would be fun to try.

Charlie64, I always enjoy your hunt reports and this one was no different. Your hunts prove that you don't need to be hunting the big 5 to have a great adventure!
I hope you hunt more often so we can enjoy more reports!

weidmannsheil

JCHB

PICTURES!PICTURES!

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quote:

PICTURES!PICTURES!

What is it they say .... a picture is worth 1.000 words !

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Caracals are a lot of fun to hunt! Took one with Marius in 2021

Great report, with LOTS if pics. Really appreciate both! I hope to hunt/take Caracal on my hunt next year in Namibia. You have a lot of good trophies. Congrats!

Thank you for taking the time to do the report, Charles. It is very much appreciated. Thank you.

Looking forward to our special hunt next year.