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2006 East Cape Hunt with Owen Smith, Jimbah Safaris (formerly of Bethaven Safaris)
I recently spent a glorious two weeks hunting and visiting with my friends Owen and Riana Smith. Since we met some years ago I have hunted with them several times, I have taken friends to hunt with them on their first African hunt, and I recommend them to everyone that I talk to about hunting in Africa [that is to say everyone I talk to!]. They are a wonderfully charming couple who make you feel that they are welcoming you to their home, and go out of their way to treat you well, and to make sure that your hunt is perfect!
This most recent hunt was intended to be one without any pressure. I have most of the plains game trophies that I want [ or so I thought ] and the intention was to have a culling/meat hunt to supply meat to the ranch's Biltong and dry sausage butchery. They make a moist and very tasty biltong, not the dry that you often find, and the dry sausage is spiced very nicely, spicy, but suitable for almost anyone's tastes.
We would spend the morning hours getting the staff sorted out and hard at work at their various chores and then go off in search of Kudu and Blue Wildebeest cows as well as an Impala doe if the opportunity presented itself.
The first Kudu cow appeared as we were heading back to the lodge after seeing nothing on our first day out. The trackers spotted it first, of course, in plain sight from the track we were on, about 150 yards off the road and downhill. We stopped slowly, got quietly out of the bakkie and off the road a short ways and set up on the sticks, the whole time expecting her to bolt in the veldt, I quickly set up, she stood facing me quartering towards the left. One shot from the .270 [into the shoulder at Owen's instruction] and she leapt into the air, head down, back hunched. Spun around 180 degrees and fell dead on the spot.
Well, I thought, that wasn't too bad, maybe this meat hunting won't be too hard after all. Of course, that was the last one like that!
Upon returning to the lodge we learned that they had just gotten a huge order for meat products from a Cape Town wholesaler and the pressure was now on to get enough meat to fill the order!
There were three other hunters in the lodge on 10 day, 8 animal packages, and while the meat that they produced would also contribute to the butchery product, Owen and I would be looking for 2-3 bigger animals Kudu or Wildebeest, per day for the rest of my stay! That turned out to be a lot of work.
In a very short time I determined that hunting Kudu cows is just as hard as hunting Kudu bulls except that there are more of them, but they evaporate they same way that the bulls do, and the Blue Wildebeest, in their herds, have many sets of eyes watching for trouble and even when shot, if not perfectly, can run a very, very long way.
The first Blue Wildebeest opportunity, my second shot of the hunt, was hit badly, too low on the shoulder, and she took off with the herd, we chased until it was obvious they were going over the mountain and we would never catch them. So we sent the trackers after them on foot and we drove around the mountain to cut them off on the other side. There, we got close enough that both of us got another shot into her and down she went, but as we walked up to be sure of the kill - up she jumped and came right at us - Owen saw only head and horns in the scope of the .375 but that shot finished it!
After a few tough days of stalking and losing too many Kudu in the thick, mountainous bush, we were falling behind our meat production goals. So this day we got a somewhat earlier start and were transiting the ranch to where we'd seen Kudu the previous day. One of the trackers suddenly tapped urgently on the roof of the bakkie and we silently rolled to a stop. A Bushbuck had been spotted grazing on the flats of the river banks about 100 yards away but down about 200 yards. I'd always thought I'd like a Bushbuck but had not discussed it this trip. Owen glassed it for quite a while and looked at me, saying, "If you've EVER thought about taking a Bushbuck this is the one! You need to take this one and get a full body mount!!!" So I crawled out on to the rocks on the edge of the cliff, stretched out prone with my coat as a rest on the edge of the rocks and took the shot - he collapsed in a pile where he stood. He will make an awesome full body mount!
Another day we visited one of the concessions that Owen has used over the years, Kriegerskrall, run by the 6th generation of family ownership, Harold Lombard. While there we took the opportunity to walk the edges of a long valley circling around the ranch where Mountain Reedbuck are often sighted. The terrain was much more open and the Reedbuck herds have very good eyesight! We watched several little family groups escaping over the opposite ridge top 800-1000 yards ahead of us! Then after getting hot, and thirsty and tiring a bit we walked past a head high Acacia bush where a beautiful, huge Mountain Reedbuck Ram was bedded down 15 feet away. He jumped up just as we saw him, he went into full turbo boost and was gone before I could get the rifle off my shoulder! We shortly after that, saw ANOTHER small herd go up and over the hill we were on as we tramped back toward the ranch house. Suddenly, Welcome, the tracker, motioned us to stop. Through the makeshift sign language he and I had developed he indicated a Bushbuck ram was on the other side of a small copse of bush where I could not see it, I whispered, "Is he a GOOD one?" Welcome looked at me in desperation [or exasperation] and while quickly setting up the sticks said, "Shoot, Shoot, Shoot!!!" As those were the only words I'd ever heard him utter in English, I stepped out from behind the bush, put the crosshairs on the Reedbuck's shoulder, not 100 yards away, and pulled the trigger. He is a very nice one and after that long hot walk, he looked fine to me!
On the last full day of the hunt we went out in the afternoon to try to find a small herd of Blue Wildebeest that we had spooked earlier that day. We had seen them near the top of one of the mountains towards the front of the ranch property. As the bakkie crawled slowly up and up the switchback mountain road we spotted the herd, at the bottom of the valley hundreds of yards below us and in the middle of a large grassy plain right near where we had started up the mountain! We rolled as quietly as possible back down the mountain and toward the grassy area. But there was no way we could get very close. We decided to stalk down a partially dry creek bed that was about 5 feet deep, as we got within shooting range of the herd two cows separated and wandered towards us, quartering slightly to the right. Owen picked out the older of the two and set up the sticks, then they moved, and we moved, again and again, finally I handed Owen the .270 and took his .375 and one shot off the sticks ended it.
As I mentioned earlier, this was intended to be a culling/meat hunt but I ended up with two very nice trophies, that I had not anticipated, and I learned that a cull hunt is not necessarily "target practice." It was certainly as tough as any hunting I've done there, the thrill of success and the disappointment of failure is just as intense. Owen believes in HUNTING, so when you are with him you walk and stalk, a lot!. You glass and strategize and quickly adjust to plans B and C etc. You work for your trophies and you get every mile that you've paid for! It really is great fun.
Owen and Riana's new hunting location is at Esperant Lodge, in the Eastern Cape, just south of Cookhouse and north of Addo. They have assembled a group of ranch concessions that hold great supplies of the usual plains game animals, all within a very short drive of the lodge, or a longish walk!
Those of you who know Owen will recognize this pose!
Of course I ended my trip to South Africa in Cape Town, as I recommend everyone do. I usually stay at The Commodore Hotel and this was the view from my room! It was an awesome end to a great trip.
A few photos of the new lodge area.
 
 
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