Kudu Hunt

[Jinx]

Went hunting with my friend in June this year. Wanted to shoot a kudu cow because the meat is much better and the males are too expensive just for meat hunting.

We arrived at noon on the game farm where we sited in the rifles. I used a 30-06 and he had a 35 Rem. We had to shoot 8 Impalas as well. We set off at around 3 in the afternoon, rifle hunting is only allowed on walk and stalk and bow hunting hides are set up at the water holes on the farm.

I decided to try and find my kudu first for they are very elusive, their nick name is "the grey ghost". We walked from 3 and it gets dark around 17:30 in winter. We had walked in a large circle with no constant wind, thus our cent was everywhere and we didn't see anything.

Because we were the only people on the farm we had to make our way back to the truck before it was too dark. While walking back to the truck with it getting dark we rounded a corner where the kudu cow and kudu bull stood. She was probably coming into heat because they did not notice us.

The bull was one of the biggest I have ever seen, and made a quick calculation which one to take but decided on the cow. I steadied myself against a thorn tree and sent a 180gr Nosler on its way. She didn't even flinch and just ran off. My friend asked where I aimed and wasn't very positive, she only ran about 50 metres.

Was a great hunt, but the wind was very quiet for the next 5 days and we didn't get a shot on anything else. The sausage and biltong we made was excellent.

 

[Slopeshunter]

Congrats, nice picture.

So as I assume you are a South African resident are there places where you can hunt that is just government land (what we'd refer to as crown land over here) where anyone can hunt? Or is all the land pretty much divided up into farms?

Cheers

 

[Jinx]

Unfortunately the government does not own any land which you can hunt on. All the land that can be hunted on is privately owned. Thus if you don't have friends that own a game farm it is difficult to hunt or its very expensive. There is a saying over here:"Only the bank managers hunt for free".

The fact that a lot of foreigners come hunting in South Africa and Africa very few game farms cater for local hunters.

How does hunting work in the U.S with government land. I read a lot of the threads about drawing a "tag"?

 

[Slopeshunter]

I live in Alberta Canada, but it's similar here as in the US. We have crown land which is basically "owned by the people", so during the hunting season you're free to hunt any crown land that has an open season in it.

As far as private land goes, you just ask permission and you either get a 'yes' or a 'no' from the land owner. In Alberta it is illegal for a land owner to charge money for you to access their land to hunt. And any animals that are on his land are wild animals which he has no control/ownership/management over. The animals just move naturally across differnt properties going about their business.

As far as drawing a "tag" goes, we do have that here. That just allows the government wildlife managers to control the number of tags for a certain species that's given out in a certain hunting zone.

Hope that helps clear things up.

cheers.