This hunt was a rather big group, which is not my usual way of doing things.We left rather late on Thursday from Paarl. About 200 km outside of Paarl is a small place called Matjiesfontein, which used to be a railway siding. The hotel still stands and we stopped for a couple of drinks and some traditional Karoo lamb curry.
From there we took the long road to Jansenville and arrived at the farm house after dark. That night four of us were selected to hunt on the neighbours farm, who apparently had not hunted his farm for several years. So with great anticipation we finally retired to bed. (or some of us did, others did some more drinking).
The next morning we drove to the hunting venue and saw a lot of kudu cows. With our spirits up we took our positions and waited for the kudu. To our dissapointment we only saw cows. We were instructed to also shoot cows as the kudu needed to be thinned out. So before lunch my friend shot a cow. After lunch we drove to a different area. Again we saw some cows. A herd of 4 cows passed me at 250m, so I shot one of them. After checking it was dead I walked back to my stand and walked into a bull carrying about 38 inch horns. A snap shot missed and he was into the thickets and I never saw him again.
We ended the day, but whilst driving back we saw another herd of cows with a young bull amongst them. One of the other hunters shot him from the back of the vehicle.
I then went with the recovery team to collect the cow shot in the morning. By then the sun was setting. We used a tractor and trailer. On our way back we bumped into another herd with a small bull in the group. I took the bull, allthough it was very small.
Upon our arrival at camp we discovered the rest of the group had faired no better. It seemed as if only one decent bull was wounded and lost.
That evening around the campfire I had a rather heated debate with the farmer that they as a community are over hunting and are not permitting the bulls to reach maturity. He vehemtly defended their position, saying that the kudu are to numerous and needed to be thinned out. Well, did my part and cropped two in order to save their farms!
I personally believe the area is over hunted and all the decent bulls shot out.
The next day a small group (me included) went to search for the wounded kudu, but to no avail. We spent about 3 hours on the track. Initially there was lots of blood, but the track went cold.
That afternoon, with a howling wind, my friend and I went in search of two impala. They proved tricky to hunt and with the weather getting worse I took a long shot and brought a ewe down. With that we called it a day.
That night we had another nice braai, with a couple of penalty drinks for those that did something silly on the hunt.
The next morning we left and on our way back drove through some serious blizzards and snow!
All in all not a great hunt, but that is often the case with big groups. The game in the area, allthough plentifull, was mostly made up of cows and young bulls.
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