2024 African Adventure Part 3: The final installment

We spent the next day sightseeing. It was July 5th, my 50th birthday. Quintin and Mari-Anne took us to a park in Thabazimbi where we saw wild elephants and the new world record klipspringer LOL. I wasn’t going to include this, but I felt that I should acknowledge and thank Quintin, Mari-Anne and the staff for all that they did. When I went over for breakfast that morning, the staff all greeted me and sang me happy birthday. Mari-Anne and Quintin followed them by saying good morning and happy birthday! Justin arrived and he also said happy birthday and we all had breakfast. That afternoon after our outing, we returned to the lodge. I wasn’t allowed to go into the dining area, so I figured something was up. We had some drinks and then we were called over to the dining area. They had decorated the entire room with balloons and other decorations. I’m a simple person and usually don’t even celebrate my birthday. I have to say this touched me quite a bit. We spent the rest of the late afternoon enjoying sundowners and some other drinks LOL, and then settled down to a nice wood fire cooked bbq dinner. We all held hands at the dinner table and Quintin said a prayer in Afrikaans language blessing the meal, giving thanks to the animals we harvested, and thanks to our friendship. This was a birthday that I will never forget.
I hadn’t planned on shooting a zebra during this trip. I’m not sure why, I just didn’t plan on it or have any reason to want to shoot one. First off, I would like to say that I understand game management and what needs to be done for the health of a herd. I do have a background in fisheries management. Quintin’s neighbor Yenny called him and said he needed to take a few zebra stallions out of his herd since he had too many in the group. This sounded like a good experience to me, to help manage some animals, and after seeing them in the wild I knew they were very wary. Plus, they are very cool looking and have individual markings. Our plan for the next morning was to go and take off a couple Zebra from Yenny’s farm. The first spots turned up empty but then we found a small group with one stallion. He had some very unusual markings, and it was decided he was the one we wanted. A quick stalk and the sticks were up. The shot was only about 100yds but the 175gr LRX zipped through both shoulders and the stallion hit the dirt. Walking up to him I was thinking, “I just shot a horse”, but it was more than that. As I ran my fingers through his mane and admired his size, I began to understand. I thanked him for his sacrifice, and we took lots of photos and admired his “shadow” stripes and unique patterns. He was an old stallion whose teeth were very worn. He was a good one to get out. After taking him to the skinning shed, we set back out to explore the farm. We saw everything BUT zebra. After several hours our tracker Franz stopped us and pointed to the hillside above us. 200yds away stood a large zebra perfectly broadside. There was no time to think, a quick shot using Quintin as a rest and the zebra hit the ground, again the 175gr LRX zipping through both shoulders. We all just looked at each other wondering what had just happened since it elapsed over a few seconds and then Franz grabbed my hand and said, “I love hunting with you, animals just fall where they are standing”. When we got up to the zebra, we realized that it was a very large mare. She was alone, and well past breeding age, so another good one to remove from the group. This one was going to require some help, so we called in for re-enforcements via radio and soon had several workers to help us get her off the mountain. We were all beat for the day, so we returned to the lodge for some R&R and drinks.
On the last day we decided to hit a new area for kudu. Although we saw a few bulls that were worth shooting, they gave us the slip all day. It was a last hoorah effort and we hunted them until dark over several mountains trying to seize our chance. In the end, they won the day and I’m not sad about that at all.
There is a lot more to this story than just hunting activities, such as helping Quintin with load development, sightseeing, etc that I did not include. It made the trip extra special outside of the hunting. We like to immerse ourselves in the local culture wherever we travel, and I feel we were able to get a look at what life like is in Africa – the good and the bad. I would like to thank Quintin, his wife Mari-Anne, and his brother Justin for the experience. The people that we met on this trip were salt of the earth folks and some of the nicest people that we have ever met.

If you are considering a hunt to Africa I strongly suggest you talk with Quintin at African Legacy Safaris.  He always has a booth at the Safari Club International show and his email is: quintin@africanlegacysafaris.co.za

I hope everyone enjoyed my writeup of the trip.  On to the next adventure now!