The hunt begins
Yesterday we saw it – Freya’s kudu! At first, we saw it from about 100 meters away. After Freya and Mel, our professional hunter (PH), moved into position, it had moved again, and she didn’t have the opportunity to get a good shot, so she had to let the first chance go. We followed it up a hill with our binoculars, where we saw it disappear. We searched for several hours to find it again, but unfortunately, we had no luck.
If we had a pair of thermal binoculars, like the Merger LRF XQ35, the search would have been much more successful, for sure. But now it’s a new day, and we are again in search of the Gray Ghost of Africa!
The old kudu is waiting
Today, we spent the whole day tracking “him” – the very special kudu bull we saw yesterday. When Orange River Hunting & Safari’s told Freya they had a particular kudu planned for her, we both had a hard time fully understanding what was so special about it – until we saw it in the bushes yesterday! It had a really wide spread – its horns didn’t just go vertically upwards, they were spread wide and it is clearly an older kudu.
We spent the first hour and a half driving around in a huge area where our PH Mel felt that Freya’s kudu was living. But there aren’t very many animals to be seen out there – it’s just as if they haven’t gotten out of bed yet. It was definitely because the sun hadn’t really caught on yet.
We choose to stop and get out of the jeep. We might as well spend the time on something else until the animals wake up. We look at tracks and see to which animals they belong. We always find the tracks surprising us. They either look bigger or smaller than we imagine.
Then, we saw two elands out on the hill to the left – there were also red hartebeest and some springbucks. We stopped and changed the plan a bit, as otherwise, we would just spend most of the time driving around.
We will see if we can spot some red hartebeest and an eland, as Mel tells us that it needs the meat and the hide. They can always use springbok – among other things for the cheetah they have chosen to bring in to reintroduce here in the area. It fits very well with our plans as we have just seen all three animals, and we set course over the red hill at a fast pace, so they don’t have too much of a head start.
When we get to the top of the hill, however, they have all disappeared.
We agree to follow the tracks of the eland again. Up and back down the red hills – no eland, no springbok, no red hartebeest. We go and go and go… and suddenly, Freya spots something out of the corner of her eye. We stop. It’s a springbok that stands and watches us from a hilltop about 300 meters from us. We laugh a little at the situation – now, we are the ones being watched. We could really use a thermal spotter or binoculars here, so we would have a better chance of spotting the wild animals in this huge area.
It is almost lunchtime, and we drive back towards the Hunters’ House. We are starting to recognize some of the places we drive past. It almost feels like home – at least, it feels good! We turn the last corner and out onto the fairly straight dirt road that leads up to the house where we stay.
