My true outdoor stories out of Africa....

[kickstand]

kickstand-
Yea, Oryx ,or as we call them down here 'Gemsbok' has some of the finest meat!

I've often seen you posts about your Gemsbok Horn bow, but never had any idea that it was the same animal.

Here they are mainly desert dwellers in the wild. [Sand dunes or rocky desert---hot and dry places]

Yep, same here. Southern New Mexico is part of the Chihuahuan Desert. A lot of sand and rocky dunes, with sagebrush, mesquite and yucca plants sparsely thrown about.

...they will start running at a good speed along the vehicle...

I had the opportunity to experience this. Many years before my motorcycle accident , I was drawn for one of the depredation / population control hunts. The license was valid for an entire year (but a bag limit of only one) and I could hunt on any "public" land in NM, meaning not on WSMR or any other Military installation, nor privately owned land unless I had written permission from the land owner. My brother got permission to take me onto WSMR (a secure military installation), not to hunt, but just to see what I would be hunting, since I had never seen one other than on the internet. As we drove, a young oryx trotted up to the roadside fence and paced us for a mile or so. That was fun! I was extremely busy that year running my business, and ended up getting time to go hunting for only one day. One day out of an entire licensed year. I never even saw any sign of oryx where I went, much less harvest one. Oh well, I was by myself and it would have been pretty tough loading one into my cargo van without help.

It was really very hot with temperatures in the 40 C (40C=104F) during the mid-day as only a wild uninhabited and isolated desert could be, while during the evenings back at camp, it was freezing cold with temperatures below 10 C! (50 F)

We usually don't have that much of a temperature swing in one day. During our summer, 40 to 42 C (104 -108 F) is not uncommon, but when it is that hot, we usually only drop to 20 to 24 C (68 - 75F).

... I hunted my Oryx solo only in shorts, hat, sandals and t-shirt with only my 30-06 BRNO de Lux rifle, S.A.K Huntsman pocket knife ,small fero-rod , small pocket camera and water-bottle stalking him for 3 days in the heat of the desert....WHAT A HUNT!!

I would always wear jeans, usually with a t-shirt whenever out in the desert. I would sometimes wear something with long sleeves, as the desert brush could really scrape a person up. My hunting rifle of choice was my Sig SHR970 in 30-06.

That 10 days hunting trip was a very unique hunting experience in my life who has only had a lot of Bushveld and Savanna terrain hunting experience at that time!

My entire hunting experience is limited to Southern New Mexico, however, 2 hours away from me is Ruidoso, NM, which is up in the mountains with much more tree cover than I am used to. This is where my family used to go deer and turkey hunting when I was young. Here, deer & turkey hunting season is in November, which is late fall / early winter. There was one year, (~1978) I was about 14 or so, that my family and I got snowed in while out in the mountains on a deer hunt. We had a well-stocked camper, similar to the picture below, on the back of our pickup, so food and shelter were not an issue. We weren't in any danger just being there, but all roads in and out were snow and iced over, so driving this top-heavy pickup down a single lane winding road, cut into the side of a mountain, with a shear drop off on one side, was a really bad plan. I thought it was great! I missed 3 days a school before we could safely extricate ourselves from the mountains. Ahh... fun memories...

*Note: this image is not mine. I borrowed it from the internet just to show a camper similar to the "6pack" that we had.

[W.Lynn]

Kick, outside the USA, blue jeans can be expensive and rare to find. Most folks would be comfortable working or hunting in work-wear style trousers like the Dickey's line you might find at Walmart.

[Observe]

After the meal....

[kickstand]

Do you carry all that, what appears to be cast iron, out on you foot hunts? That's hard core!

[Observe]

Kickstand
No ,on a 2-3 night foot hunt I go as a minimalist \rough camper.
[I see you guys like to call it a 'survival one nigher' etc on you tube.]

On a week long camping hunt , we do take some [cast iron] and other 'luxury' camping goodies on the truck.
Depending on the weather, we will sometimes hunt with denim pants, but the majority in our culture will hunt with short pants--its traditional over here......

[Observe]

A 'Seroot' its a local traditional hand made 'pot' for heating water on open fires. It is cone shaped with a flat bottom.

It comes in sizes from 1L to 20 L. Pictured here you can observe our 20 l model.

It heat water very quickly and if you put it just near a fire you will instantly have hot water throughout the day/night or when you return after hours of hunting/hiking.

It is not sold in shops but local craftsmen sell them some places in Limpopo along the road. It is strange that such a good idea never picked up commercially. No real camping trip around here go without one.

They are dirt cheap and many serious campers own more than one when they just get an 'extra' if they are available next to the road.

This is truly a 'must-have' for washing, food, dishes, coffee and general camp chores that require hot water.

A Seroot [local slang name] is a brilliant indigenous design out of Africa and a very practical camp item



....and a 10 l seroot another camping trip....

[kickstand]

Wow, that seroot does look like a handy item. Maybe the commercial manufacturers couldn't compete with the locals? Do you take it into the bush on the truck, already filled, or do you fill it from natural water sources? How plentiful is water in the bush?

I hope that I'm not pestering you with ridiculous questions about ridiculous things. This sort of thing just interests me.

[Observe]

Some places do have a small water source , but in the dry areas where we camp and hunt, we usually take 3-4 20 l plastic cans with water on the truck for 2 x people for about a week.
The base camp will be near the truck out in the bush and we usually walk out in different directions each day [in shorts and T-shirt mostly--hot!] on the hunt with a small light weight backpack with just the basics [water,oranges,biltong[jerky],binoculars, jacket for if we got stuck at night,lighter etc].

In a real crises [eg. snake bite-Mamba/Cobra/Puffadder] or broken leg etc ,we have the ability to drive out to the nearest hospital [sometimes about 100 km = 160 miles away] for what it is worth!
We took extra care when out there, and luckily have no major incident so far, though some others were not so fortunate.
You must always respect nature during a hunt and never get drawn in by the false Hollywood hype that you can life like Tarzan or survive out there like tv stars just like that.
Though we do have a lot of skills for coping out there, it is better to not challenge nature over here---
You have cold temperatures to content with [heat snow for water] and we hot temperatures [no water],
---but Africa have 100 x more different types of wildlife that can take you out [apart from armed illegal poachers and corrupt police working with them]--so, better be careful .
Its not all doom and gloom, Africa's nature and wildlife are beautiful and for the most part its very safe to hunt!



Here I get ready to bow hunt Bush-pigs at night from a quick self-made shelter next to their 'road'.

[0utlaw]

Love your stories. Very similar yet totally different here we're in an almost tropical area so the challenges are different but we fo get the occasional Rambo survival type that the Rangers have to rescue a few times a year.

BTW 100 kilometers is about 62 miles.

[kickstand]

I too thoroughly enjoy the bush stories, thank you for sharing them with us. They take me back to my younger days of deer hunting in the mountains of South Central New Mexico. I also used to do a fair amount of Dove and Quail hunting here in the hot desert climate.

Quail will run your butt off. Although they can and do fly, they much prefer to run along the ground, ducking and dodging between the scrub brush and small sand dunes of the desert landscape. After chasing quail for a day, a person is plumb tired!

Dove like to fly, and fly fast! When I was a teenager, my father, brothers and I would drive 20 to 25 miles (we lived in "the city") in order to get to a good hunting spot along the banks of the Rio Grande* (translation: Big River). I gave up dove hunting about 20 years ago. About 12 years ago, my wife and I bought our current home, which just happens to be about a mile from those old dove hunting spots. I could probably get my bag limit with a pellet gun in my back yard. I may start dove hunting again. One of the prime reasons for my hesitation is that if dove are not cooked just right, they taste like liver. I dislike liver, a LOT!

It's hard to describe or explain, but a dove hunter can tell if that bird in the air is a dove or not, when it's not much more than a small black dot in the distant sky, half a mile or more away. There's just something about the way they fly that makes them distinctive in flight.

*The Rio Grande is the "river" that cuts pretty much right down the center of New Mexico, separating Eastern and Western NM. I put River in quotes because from about September thru about May, the state of NM, I'm assuming at the direction of the Federal Govt, closes off the outflow of Elephant Butte Dam (about 100 miles / 160km north of me), so the riverbed is about a 50 yard wide stretch of dry sand from Central NM to Central Texas. Through the summer months, the river is full and flowing for the farmers that use it for irrigation.

[W.Lynn]

A 'Seroot' its a local traditional hand made 'pot' for heating water on open fires. It is cone shaped with a flat bottom.

It comes in sizes from 1L to 20 L. Pictured here you can observe our 20 l model.

It heat water very quickly and if you put it just near a fire you will instantly have hot water throughout the day/night or when you return after hours of hunting/hiking.

It is not sold in shops but local craftsmen sell them some places in Limpopo along the road. It is strange that such a good idea never picked up commercially. No real camping trip around here go without one.

They are dirt cheap and many serious campers own more than one when they just get an 'extra' if they are available next to the road.

This is truly a 'must-have' for washing, food, dishes, coffee and general camp chores that require hot water.

A Seroot [local slang name] is a brilliant indigenous design out of Africa and a very practical camp item

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....and a 10 l seroot another camping trip....

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I would like to have one! I wonder if having one shipped would be cheaper than having one made?

[Observe]

I would like to have one! I wonder if having one shipped would be cheaper than having one made?

They are so cheap here that I don't think it will be worth it to pay the shipping costs.
Best ask a skilled friend to craft one locally!
You will not be disappointing in owning one.

[Observe]

A day in the life of a solo spear hunter playing the waiting game near a kraal this time...
Its an easy broadside shot with my Bow or Revolver if I wanted to (+ _ 35 m) , but no......
Not a chance here with my Cold Steel Boar Spear at that unexpected nice warthog boar that day..
( He is feeding at the "wrong" place there.....
All you can do in this situation is just to apply tons of patience while you calmly observe and learn, while firmly believing your day /opportunity will come eventually..
As always, its the hunt and not the kill that matters most!
8 hours of waiting in ambush with my spear, and nothing to show for it except a photo and some good life-long memories.
Aah well, next time....

[Observe]

[Observe]

I am looking for a hand crafted Bush King knife with Elephant ivory handles like this.....



...and have the following very valuable items to trade for it......