Free Range Hunting – With a Polish Family

Recently I had the great pleasure of hosting a Polish family hunt in one of our free-range concessions in Southern KZN.

The area is more than just a concession to me. These are my family’s historical hunting grounds and have been since they settled in these parts over a century ago. My family home has countless bushbuck horns from the driven hunts conducted there in days gone by.

The area's bushveld has changed little since those days, but the wildlife populations have continued to grow.

The valleys now also abound with Nyala, Kudu, Impala, Warthog, Giraffe, Bushpig, Zebra, Duiker, Caracal, and Jackal in addition to the Bushbuck.

We often get caught up referring to the valley, but to those who have never been there. “The Valley” is roughly 300,000 ha of hilly bushveld. Hard thorn country with steep-sided valleys and densely wooded hillsides. We would, in this case, be hunting roughly 30,000 ha of that area. And without a doubt, this is the best free-range hunting in South Africa today.

When my clients approached me they made it clear to me that they wanted to have a “family hunt”. The two sons would be doing the hunting and mother and father would tag along. Well they enjoyed every minute and made the most of the adventure that is Safari.

After sighting in rifles and settling in to the bush camp; We went out to start seeing what we could find.

It wasn’t long before we got onto a group of Zebra. Amongst them was an old female with good colouring. We stalked over the hillside through a saddle and along the edge of the ridge. We spotted a stallion moving below us then suddenly going in the opposite direction came the rest of the herd to stand broadside across the valley from us.

The old mare walked forward and then turned, giving us an excellent broadside shot at 200m. Thomas stepped up and got himself steady on the sticks. He was shooting a .308 using 150 gr jacketed bullets. I know this combination intimately, having used it for most of my life. We were shooting a steep gradient downhill, making the shot even more tricky. I talked Thomas onto a point just below he top line straight up the back of her foreleg…he made a perfect shot through the heart and lungs. As the old mare made her last dash, the blood pumped out of the exist wound in a bright red stream; the sunlight catching it as it pulsed from her side and giving us a rare look at a site normally only seen through the binoculars. She stumbled and then dropped into a wash where she breathed her last breath.

The herd stallion approached cautiously a few times to see why his mare was not coming to rejoin the group, oblivious of our presence and evidently not having tied us to the demise of one of his females. When we started making our approach, he trotted off and took his herd with him. He stopped again on the ridge, looking back over his shoulder, and then with a flurry, he chased the herd over the crest and away from the danger. Life had moved on.

We made our way down the steep valley to check on her, she lay on her side between the lilies and ferns with a little stream running past. I could not help but think that it was about as good a place to die as any for the old girl… Then it was back to reality… This is when the recovery started.

One of the aspects of hunting these valleys that always needs to be considered is that there are a lot of steep hills and recovery often means either creative driving or a lot of sweat, dragging the animal uphill to where the vehicle can get to.

In extreme situations we will skin and quarter in field but generally we get the job done with a bit of muscle and a piece of canvas that has handles stitched into it.

On assessing the situation we decided that we could drive down the 45 degree slope to the edge of the drop off and then 6 of us would lift the zebra out and up the 10 m of sheer face to get it to the van.

A Zebra is a heavy animal and took a lot of heaving and grunting, fortunately, our Polish family were in excellent physical condition and lent a lot of muscle to the effort.

The plan worked a treat and we were on our way again in no time. On our way home we opened the old mares mouth and realised that she actually had no teeth left if her head. There were one or two broken stumps, but the rest were just gums. Testament to the tough nature of these animals

We moved on after a light lunch and were out looking for Kudu. We had spotted 3 average bulls and were looking for something special. We crested a hill to behold a sight not often seen with Kudu. Before us and not more than 100m away right on the top of a little hill stood a Kudu cow. Then with the sun behind them the bull walked up behind her and started to nuzzle her in the pre mating ritual. We all stood in awe of the site. Casting glances back and forth we looked him over. He was a shooter bull for sure, no question. He would be a better bull in a few years. But it was a tough call.

In the end I made the call that we all wanted to hear, let him go. Its day 1 and we are in a good area.