First Hunt and New Comings

On Thursday I got the opportunity to partake in my first hunt here in Africa. It happened here on Hannes reserve and we were looking for a big bull sable; preferably with a antler length around 40 inches. The hunt was run by Roelof and his tracker Eddy. The cool part is the client is the US congressman for Alaska! Congressman Don Young is also our oldest congressman at the time at the age of 80. His age definitely doesn't represent how he acts though, this man seemed as young as ever and looked much younger too. 

We started the hunt off slow, just driving around in the buggy see if we could spot one of the 4 sable that most fit the congressman's tastes. We didn't see much for the reason that there is almost a full moon this time of the month. Since the moon is full the animals can see much better at night so they rest during the day and feed at night. About 4 hours into the hunt I spotted the first sable that had nice length but had a crooked horn and Mr. Young didn't like that. We continued on our hunt and about an hour later Roelof spotted the largest and oldest sable we had there on the reserve.

We followed it for a while and kind of figured out where it would hang around. We ended up taking about a half hour brake and had some lunch. After lunch and BSing with the congressman a little we climbed back into the buggy and continued our hunt. We were having some troubles finding it at first, but then out of nowhere there it was! It was perfectly broadside and just staring at us. The congressman lined up his shot and "BANG!!" the shot went off. I couldn't tell if he hit it and neither could anyone else. Eddy started tracking the best he could, but there was no blood so he was having some troubles. We tried for maybe half an hour and then just figured he had missed it and just nicked a small branch instead. Congressman was quite disappointed, but the next day when I was on a different hunt I heard he had shot it late in the afternoon and was quite proud of his trophy with 41 in antlers.

Back to Thursday, Hannes and his family had just returned. Along with them came another intern and her name is Suzzie. She is from Arizona, but is studying fish and game management at Montana State University.  She is good with computers, so she will be working on Hannes's website for him and joining me in my project of managing the Nyala breeding enclosure. For dinner that night I got to try sable for the first time as spaghetti meat and it was damn delicious! It was a good day and I get to wake up at 4:30 for the next hunt and my first opportunity to test out my cameraman skills.