The Bushman are amazing...they see a track crossing the road, and they indicate by pointing where the sun will be when they expect to intersect with the animal. They are always right, too. So we humped it to catch up with this big bull, and as predicted after a few hours of heat, sand and thorns -- Did I mention thorns? Straight ones the size of daggers, hooked ones, sneaky ones that can snatch a hole your trigger finger? I look like a pin cushion, or a blood donor -- there he is...90 yards away and behind a tree...The PH sets up the sticks...I take the safety off the big Ruger...I start taking up the slack on the trigger and focusing on the Leupold red dot...and the shot isn't there. It just isn't there...it's at best a gut shot, and I won't take a gut shot intentionally.
I juggle around, move the sticks, whine, pray and, poof, he's gone again...
Sigh.
Tomorrow I'll tell you about hacking a blind into a thorn thicket, falling into an episode of Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom and seeing every animal on the Ark...except an eland! I considered shooting a mongoose, but it was a big mongoose!
2 comments:
"One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted...If one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it. What he is after is having to win it, to conquer the surly brute through his own effort and skill with all the extras that this carries with it: the immersion in the countryside, the healthfulness of the exercise, the distraction from his job."
Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting.
yeah, they kinda' forget to tell you that everything has thorns on it. I think they told me one is something like a cat's claw tree. If you have to climb up it to get away from a critter, the only way out is to be cut out.
Good luck!
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