The sun was like a gentle kitten, quietly licking the back of my hand. It was mid morning in the Karoo and the temperature was still in the pleasant range. An ancient dried up inland sea, the Greater Karoo is a vast savanna landscape sculpted by millennia to resemble nothing else on earth: undulating terrain, huge plateaus, monument-like outcrops that plead for room with the sky, and wild animals that cluster like fleas on the hide of the world.
I was crouched behind my PH and good friend Pete Wenham and he was excited. We were stalking a herd of mountain reedbuck and the chess game was not playing out in our favour; open country, little natural cover and a gypsy wind was giving the advantage to the animals. However, Pete’s ever roving eyes had picked a ram where he ought not have been.
“He’s got to be a taker! Pete whispered as he fixed it through his binos. My Swarovski 10x42s pulled it into focus and I realised it was not alone; a small harem of ewes fed around it. “The fact that he’s miles from the main herd and holding a couple of girls suggest he’s an old campaigner.”
Perfect. As a trophy hunter, I’m not motivated by the tape measure—I love the pursuit of old animals, past their prime, that have served the gene pool well and outwitted countless other hunters in doing so. If I can take one at the end of its life, I’m satisfied; especially if I have had to work for it. And you have to work for your animals in the Karoo.
The stalk was tortuous: winding through dry dongas or creek beds, crawling on hands and knees through savanna grass and sidling Indian file around the mountain face to close the gap to a comfortable shooting distance. I’m an old fashioned hunter—a stalker— not a long range shooter, so the thrill for me is getting close, undetected. I like to see the eyelashes of my quarry before I pull the trigger.
This old ram was in a somnolent state, induced no doubt by the warmth of the direct sun and the contentment of a full belly. His horns were thick at the base and broomed; We’d closed the distance to 120m so I could now see this with the naked eye. It had taken us over an hour to close the 400m from where we first spotted him and he was still none the wiser we were there.
The shot was on— he was broadside and in plain sight, but time was on his side—as Mick Jagger so beautifully put it! I savoured the moment awhile longer and pinched myself; I was hunting Africa—a dream so many have, but neglect to realise.
The shot ended my reverie but not the memory.
However, I had one last act to administer. Walking up to the old campaigner, I bent and plucked some hair from its flank. Standing, I solemnly cast the bristles to the wind. It’s an ancient custom of the African Bushmen, said to show respect to the animal and help it on its journey to the next realm.
You do that in Africa.
