Hunting In South Africa

I knew that if I was going to make the trip all the way to South Africa I HAD to do some hunting! However, with a relatively pretty short trip planned, the fact that my husband wasn't as interested in hunting and the wedding being the primary focus, I knew that the time for hunting was going to be limited. Lucky for me, the groom of the wedding is actually a hunting guide - Crusader Safaris - and he offered up his colleagues to take me on a little hunting adventure. Crusader Safaris is an amazing, no high-fences, outfit. I was so lucky to have the opportunity to hunt with them. If you ever go to South Africa you better hunt with them!!!

We met up with our guide in a small town, Bedford, and drove out to our hunting grounds. Immediately when we got there we spotted a Kudu up on a ridge about a mile away. A kudu was the number one game species on my list. We hopped into the vehicle and we were off! I was so excited...I was really hunting in South Africa. We drove past a herd of impala (another animal on my wish list), a herd of wildebeast and saw a couple of other kudus. Finally, we arrived about as close as we could get in the vehicle and I knew it was time to put the stalk on my bull. My guide Scott, Jeff and I headed off. We walked about 300 yards or so and came to a ridge that overlooked where we knew the kudu was. Sure enough, a quick peak over the ridge and we spotted him! We walked about another 100 yards or so and got set up. Of course, from the angle we were at all the vitals of the bull were right behind a tree. We decided to wait it out. After about 20 minutes, and with a huge rain cloud coming rapidly toward us, we knew that we better make a move to get this kudu to budge. Scott whistled and the kudu immediately hopped up, walked about 50 yards away from us and then turned perfectly quartered away. I had my shot. I put the crosshairs just behind his shoulder, took a deep breath and fired! Thwop - we heard the bullet hit, the bull reared up like it was a perfect shot and we watched him dart off into the bush. The smile on my face was huge (similar to the ones you saw after the bungee), my guide gave me a congratulatory high five, Jeff gave me a hug and then it started pouring down rain. I am from Oregon and I am telling you, this was big, dumping down, wet rain! We decided to go and check out my kill. We followed the path we thought he had taken and unfortunately, due to the rain, had a hard time tracking (no tracks, no blood). After about 10 minutes we spotted my bull slowing limping up on the next ridge over (about 100 yards away). We knew I had hit him, based on the limp, so we had to go after him. Dang it! I was so disappointed in myself - here I was in South Africa on the hunt of a lifetime and my first attempt at taking down an animal was a bad shot! I went from being on cloud 99 to feeling like the lowest of low. Fortunately, all the guys were super nice to me and really optimistic that we would find him. We tracked that kudu in the pouring down rain for a couple hours and no luck. The guys decided that since we were losing daylight, and I only had one day to hunt, that we should go out to hunt some other species and the boys would go back and track down the kudu the next day.

The rest of the hunt was exciting. We were on impala about 4 different times, with my crosshairs twice on a nice ram - but never a clean, good shot (and after injuring an animal I was a little trigger-shy). Finally, daylight got the best of us and my South African hunting adventure was over. Still it was exciting and there was still a chance that my kudu would be found. The next morning, I awoke to hear that they had found my kudu and it was indeed down! Yeah! I got my kudu! The antlers and cape are coming my way (it will take about a year) And, this picture is of a kudu, not taken by me just found on the internet - figured some of you might be curious. I am so excited to decorate an entire room with my South African kudu during my Life As A Wife.