THE NOT SO OLD MAN AND THE BOYKIE
Father-and-son eland adventure
IPARTICULARLY enjoyed Robert Ruark’s classic book The Old Man and the Boy. In it he tells a tale of the lessons of life, passed on to a young boy by his grandfather. There is a comfortable friendship between the two and during their many adventures together, they share their thoughts and deliberate the meaning of life. They do this while out fishing and hunting quail, duck and furred animals. I decided that to a certain degree, I would try to emulate this strategy.
My son Matthew is now 19 and since he was young, he has come along on many of my outdoor trips. A month after he was born I bought a CZ in .22lr planning to teach him to shoot as soon as he was able to. I later had it fully customized and that little rifle has taught many young kids how to shoot and handle a rifle responsibly. On our early hunts, my aim was to instill in Matthew the values
and traditions of a responsible hunter.
Our annual father-and-son hunting trips have become a highlight of my year. We enjoy the entire process together from planning the trip to shooting range practice sessions, purchasing the provisions and packing, the journey to our destination, enjoying good company around the campfire at night, and the challenge of the hunt itself.
Fast forward to the end of July 2019 and we were on our way to Sheldrake Game Ranch near Musina. I had hunted there many times and this was to be our second father-and-son trip to this hunter’s paradise. As I already had venison in the freezer at home, Matthew was going to be up first. He had previously hunted various small to medium-sized plains game species. My hunting strategy for mopane bushveld is to look for species that thrive there like impala, kudu and eland. So, after I had looked at the pricelist, I decided to let Matthew try for an eland cow. To my mind, allowing a relative youngster to hunt an eland bull was somehow disrespectful to these magnificent animals.
The year before I had acquired a CZ550 in 9.3x62mm which I thought would perfectly compliment Matthew’s Oberndorf Mauser in 7x57mm – it’s actually mine until he gets to 21 years of age. He was still a bit recoil shy with the CZ but we attended a good few range sessions to get him used to the larger calibre. We planned to use 286 grain PMP Proamm ammo and I had fitted a Leupold VX-R 1.25–4x20 scope.
When we arrived on the farm we checked the rifles on the range and for some reason my boy was shooting all over the place. I thought perhaps it was the scope so I let him take a few shots with my Winchester Model 70 in .375H&H loaded with 300 grain Barnes TSX ammo and topped with a Schmidt & Bender 1.5–6x42 scope. His first 3-shot group measured about 40mm. I thought this was too good to be true and got him to shoot another – with the same result. Matthew is left eye dominant and I am the opposite. All his rifles have been right-hand actions shot left-eyed but, for some reason, his eye lines up perfectly from the right side of the butt of my Winchester. He was thus good to go.
Early the next morning we were dropped off in a far corner of the farm with our tracker, Norman. I had hunted with Norman before and knew we were in good hands. The benefit of using an experienced tracker is that they know every bush and tree, every gully and water source – and they know where the animals are. We started off slowly, keeping the gentle breeze in our face, scanning the bush ahead. To me, this is the best type of hunting, walking quietly through the thick mopane bush, soft red sand underfoot all the while avoiding the cornflake-like dry mopane leaves.
By mid-morning we were at a dry riverbed and decided to walk upstream keeping the riverbed vegetation to our right, upwind. We had gone about 500 metres when we spotted movement up ahead, over a slight rise on the righthand side of the riverbed.
I could just see five or six eland browsing and moving towards our left. We quickly dropped down and proceeded to bum shuffle towards a small tree in the middle of the riverbed to try and get into some cover. Before we could get there an eland cow walked out towards the middle of the riverbed and turned to look downstream towards us. She had probably spotted our movement but did not appear alarmed, more intrigued. Norman got the shortened shooting sticks up in one smooth, deliberate movement and Matthew quickly got steady behind the scope. I was directly behind him with my binoculars.
I softly talked Matthew through the shot. The cow was facing us head on which was not ideal but there was nothing behind her. The instruction was; one third up from the bottom, straight in the middle, remember to breathe, when you are ready…
Boom! The shot reverberated through the riverine bush. We heard the clear ‘thud’ of a solid hit and I quickly instructed Matthew to reload while I kept the cow in view with my binoculars. She stumbled at the shot and started running towards us. I was on the point of telling Matthew to shoot her again but, at that exact moment, her legs folded and she collapsed into the soft sand.
Absolute silence surrounded us. I could hear my own ragged breathing and my heart was racing. I gently put a hand on Matthew’s shoulder and could gradually feel the tension leave his body. Slowly we got up, Matthew made the rifle safe and we approached the cow. She had fallen less than 20 metres from us and was probably only 60 metres away when Matthew took the shot.
Once we confirmed she was dead, we hugged and congratulated Matthew on his success. Norman walked off to get some radio signal to request assistance to recover the eland which gave us some time to be together and reflect on the hunt. We had done this many times before – pay respect to our quarry. We sat in the soft sand and leant our backs against the cow. Matthew talked me through the process; what our intention was, the fact that she did not suffer, how we would utilize every bit of the healthy venison, what his thoughts were at the time of pulling the trigger, all done as it should be.
Then the hard work started. First we rolled the very heavy cow into position to take some photos. Once the recovery Land Cruiser arrived I enlightened my sprog that my job was done; I had helped to get him into a position to shoot his dream antelope and I had paid, now he had to do the rest. And to his credit he did.
He cranked that winch handle on the Cruiser to load the eland all on his own. Once we got to the skinning shed he helped to hoist, skin and gut the animal, and he helped to clean the skinning platform. I think he even helped to clean the back of the Land Cruiser. He probably did about 90% of the work. Once this process was completed we inspected the eland’s heart to find a bullet hole straight through the middle – we could not have asked for better shot placement.
In the evening around the fire it is our tradition to make every successful hunter (dad or lad) retell his story to the rest of the party and on this trip we were five dads and eight lads. This is always a great event, everyone is enthusiastic and many questions are asked. I sat there with a cold one in hand, hearing questions being shot at him from all sides, feeling proud of my son, and the hunter he has become. He fielded all the questions with the confidence of an experienced hunter which I suppose he is fast becoming especially now that he has moved on to larger game.