‘If someone tells you they’ve never missed, they are lying here – everyone misses, misses all the time. Africa is different.’ The African sable taught me a new way to be ok with this. Africa is different, and this day I’m going to describe…it would not just be different. This day would leave a place in my heart I will always try to go back to.
Read more: The African Sable: Falling in Love in the mountains of AfricaIt was not turning out to be a good day. I had missed a couple of shots before lunch there with Crusader Safaris, but my PH, Josh – he was patient. My future, a sable in the mountains, seemed far from me. A sable was never on my mind, I had seen the photos, but it didn’t interest me. I had chosen the hard way to hunt Africa: close-up. To me, long-distance shooting doesn’t make you a good hunter, it makes you a good shooter. So, I had asked to only take shots within 200 yards. In Africa, 200 yards might as well be 20 yards in America. Many eyes, many ears, as our tracker, Whytee kept saying. To me, a sable was just another antelope on the plains, more eyes, more ears, and not what I came for.
And, in a morning of stalks and tries – reedbuck, blesbok, impala- all in a moving tapestry fit for a movie B-roll of Africa, all spooking other herds. One moment you would be waiting for a herd to come in, the next moment a random impala would take off running through your herd and they would all follow.
And I would miss. It was mentally exhausting.
My only kill for the day – a baboon. This was on top of two frustrating days of spooking animals that were on my list. While my wallet was thankful, my spirit was not. That morning I had sat in my lodgings with my journal and asked God for a good day…just one good day. Work had followed me here in the form of email and with jet lag I was just tired. But, when we had left that morning for the plains, God had delivered, the plains were filled with animals. Unfortunately, I had not delivered on my end and had not killed anything but a stinky baboon.
An Ancient Returns
But, the camp was abuzz when we returned. An old sable was in the hills above camp. He had disappeared for months and as we ate lunch, Andrew, the owner of Crusader Safaris, was talking about how he thought the old bull had been killed. But there he was, back up in the rocky hills, high above camp, with two black wildebeests. Sables are giant antelope, with short necks, long faces, dark manes with giant ringed horns that rise up vertically toward the skies. They are incredible, but they were also not on my list.
The conversation centered around his age, location, and his alarm system. He had taken up residence with two jumpy wildebeests. Now, I had hunted wildebeests days before and they were skittish and constantly running for no reason, ‘goofy’, as Josh, my PH, had called them. As I had learned, with impala performing doglike zoomies on the plains, when one herd jumps – they all jump. So, the old bull had a nice alarm system for the home he had found to live out his last days.
I walked out and sat outside, looking up at the mountain. He had been up there for months, on and off, but no one wanted to make the treacherous drive up and the hard climb down the rock face to get him. But, there he was – I had prayed so hard that morning for a good day. For the first time in months, he had reappeared. So, it seemed God has done his part, again, so I needed to do mine.
The Plan
Talking over hamburgers in the chow hall at camp, we decided to make a play for him. My wallet be damned, this day had not been great, so I was in. We ate our lunch of kudu hamburgers and talked the plan. Andrew would park on the road and with his spotting scope he would watch. We would take the old Red Road up the back side of the mountain, a treacherous road. This road would stop us and our side-quest.
Once at the top, Andrew would radio in, let us know where the sable was, and we would make the hike – two miles, another half mile down to the rocks above him. But, if his buddies spooked, we would be in for a long mountain stalk in the rocky outcrops, which we wanted to avoid – it would take a lot of patience, a lot of creeping and crawling, but we convinced ourselves we could pull it off.
Heading off to try our luck
Leaving camp, we pulled off the side of the camp road and looked up at him through our binoculars. As we stared up at the large mountain top, Josh, my 23 year old baby faced athletic PH asked Whytee, our wise colored tracker, our chances for a successful hunt. ‘100%’, he replied. Josh scoffed, ‘That’s a long way up, a long time for him to get spooked and run off.’ Whytee stared through his binoculars, not looking up at us, and replied, ‘Yes. 99%.’ For Josh, for me, it was good enough.
The road was treacherous, like nothing I had encountered in North America in the south or the mountain west. Josh naviagated it, like a pro, slowly rock crawling us up. Across the plains on the top of the mountains we drove until we arrive at the point where we would walk.
We stop, make another plan. Whytee would go up first, check where he was, then signal for us to come up and point to the shooting spot. Josh and I would follow, and if all went to plan, it would be a very quick end to a long couple of days. We were two hours from camp in the dark and no one wanted to be here trying to get down the Red Road at dark.
We park, hop out, Josh keys the radio to Andrew, but there is no response. He curses under his breath – we may end up hiking two miles for no reason. We figured it was worth a shot, what’s 2 miles? So we begin the 2 mile hike to the edge of the mountain where he, hopefully, is still below.
The Hunt Begins
When we were 100 yards from the top, the radio crackles – it’s Andrew. Radioing from the the same spot we had done our glassing from previously. ‘He’s still there, old bastard is just eating.’
It’s time. What will become a four hour stalk is upon us. Whytee goes up, and points to the spot – we get into position, below the crest of the hill, and then crawl our way up. Though we are 200 yards away he is simply a black dot obscured by brush. Ugh – he’s just lazy, feeding, loving life.
As he feeds his way further into the brush, the wildebeests on look out, we realize, after 45 minutes of laying, then inching over to the right, then inching over to the left, ants biting us, this wasn’t going to work. We scoot back behind the crest. Time for Plan B. It’s time to scale down the rock face, moving down to the northern side of the rock cliff.
Whytee goes first, we follow, down the hills, down a rock path to a new spot. We set up, no shot, he goes further into the brush. Whytee goes further down, signals for us to follow. The weedlebeest see us but do nothing – like the sable, we are obscured.
We finally decide on a spot, a long rock face jutting out from the forest around us. We settle in and there he is, in his thicket, eating. For an hour we sit as he eats. We quietly chat, Josh checking his phone, me taking photos, practicing the shot repeatedly to pass the time.
Another hour passes. We sit, with Whytee keeping an eye behind us for cape buffalo that we have seen signs of, and Josh every now and again whispering, ‘he’ll make a mistake, mate, then we’ll smash ‘im.’
Two hours in that spot, watching that sable. I feel a sense of sadness as I can see that he’s lean in his back legs, the universal sign of an old animal. I had dealt with it earlier in the year, when my dear Phoenix, at 15 years old, had come to the end of our journey. But, he’s happy – gobbling up the grass around him. For old bulls like this, death is a horrible thing as starvation sets in as their teeth are two worn down to eat, they lose weight, and either starve or are killed by predators. I’m happy for him as I watch him through my binos and get to know him.
The Mistake
With enough time, and we had plenty of it, he would, as Josh predicted, make a mistake. So smart, but for an Africa sable will make mistakes. All three of us were on our bins, growing tired of his lazing about when it finally happened. Obscured in the brush, our fingers crossed that he would turn to his side, he finally began to make the mistake. He walks to his left and exposes his shoulder. ‘Hit him’ whispers Josh. I slowly squeeze, like all good shots, it surprises me. He’s hit, he freezes, I reload. Two hours of waiting comes to an end in a millisecond, but he’s not down – Him, us, we are all frozen. Josh says loudly in my ear, ‘hit him again, same spot.’ I take another shot.
He drops.
He kicks.
He’s gone.
We breathe.
And sit, making sure he does not get back up. Should he pop back up and run, it will be a night of looking for him. When we are sure, we take our time, climbing down the rock cliffs into the clearing, walk two hundred yards over, there he is – food still in his mouth, first shot is 2 inches from the second shot. After days of missed shots, my old form had come back, thankfully, for him.
The Sadness of my African Sable
As we arrive to him, I take a moment and thank him. There is that moment, if you have never hunted you don’t know it, and if you have, you know what I am talking about. That moment when time stands still and you just respect the animal. You dote over him, you pat him, you talk about him, He’s ancient, probably 10 years old, and massive in the front, but his rear legs, like my baby Phoenix, are all skin and bones. He’s terribly scarred up from a life of fighting, had eventually been pushed out, but for years he was the top bull in the area. Lot of offspring, this guy had an amazing run.
I well up a little writing this. To be honest, to this day, he saddens me greatly. Not for hunting him, but in thinking of my little girl, Phoenix, and her back legs toward the end. The images of her in the end, the ones I can’t look at, those back legs hustling her along but slowly giving out. Phoenix, she’d be proud being compared to an African sable. But, he was happy, like her. Him, the two wieldebeest, hanging out day after day, eating his brush and walking about – laying in the sun, going for some water, lonely with no herd, but with familiars.
We take our photos, I smile and push those sad thoughts from my head. We take his skin to find there is little meat. He’s ancient in old bull terms and we decide to leave what we do not take for the crows and scavengers. Typically, at this time of day, we’d pack out all we can and send a team up to harvest the rest. But, there’s just not a lot to bring back to feed the village and camp.
It’s all bone, little muscle, a little backstrap but with what we have to do to get back, it doesn’t make sense. I pull out my notebook and write him down, with a heart. Much as I hate it, we leave him…the proud African sable…yet I am glad I was there for his end – he didn’t know me, but somehow, it made up for times I wasn’t there for some things in my life I won’t talk about.
We make the climb up the the rock cliffs back out. I get to carry the gear, Whytee the head, Josh the massive skin.
Whytee heads to get the truck, Josh and I sit. In what feels like a time-warped I have climbed up into, we watch the sun go down, talking about life and the hunt. I text Stephanie a photo. Next to my wedding, I had just experienced the best day I have ever experienced. That perfect mix of the hardest physical day I’ve ever had, a day I knew God was not only real but somehow that he liked me, and for my spirit the most rewarding.
We load up, take the Red Road back down to a back road, come in to camp. The stalk had been 4 hours, the pack out an hour, and we still had hours to go. We left camp at 2pm, at this rate we’d be back by 9pm. Josh plays his play list, songs he’s gathered from those he guides, and as we drive back, I get to hear the favorites of men I will never meet but have left their mark.
I hope my song is playing for someone in Josh’s Land Cruiser right now and that someone has just had the best day of their life.