South African Safari June 2021

 And about a week after our annual prairie dog trip (see post below), Kathy, Alex, Nick, and I took off for a South African Safari with John X Safaris.

We left Indy to Newark to Johannesburg.  We spent the night in Jo-burg since we arrived too late for the last flight to Port Elizabeth.  We got up a 4 am to catch the flight down to the coast and then drove about 2 hours E along the coast to the John X Safaris hunting grounds, arriving Saturday about Noon.  We ate a quick lunch and then off to the range.

After proving our proficiency with the rental guns, we took a drive to the top of the plains (about 2,000' above sea level).  We saw a nice Impala that Alex shot.  First Day success!

Alex with his PH Martin inspecting the impala


The daily routine was to get up in the morning at 6:30, eat a light breakfast, then go hunt until lunch.  Back to the lodge for a meal then a quick nap.  We headed out again about 3 pm and hunted until sundown.  We returned for showers and cocktails before dinner at 7:30.  Then more cocktails around the campfire most nights.

The hunts went like this: drive to a location, get out the optics, glass for animals.  Once found, stalk them and try to get a shot off.  We were pretty successful at this - ended up with 13 animals including impala, kudu, baboon, ostrich, zebra, springbuck, blesbuck, bushbuck, and warthog (some multiples in there).  We saw tons more animals that we did not shoot including sable, cape buffalo, monkeys, jackal, blue wildebeest, black wildebeest, and giraffe.

We saw the gamut of temperatures.  It was 80 for the first two days and then the winds blew at 25 mph sustained on the third day.  After that, it was 60 for the high and 40 for the low with little to no wind on the last two days.  That latter bit?  Yep, that's how it was supposed to be the entire time as it is their winter down there.  Oh well, the weather is out of our control.  

Can't say enough good things about John X Safaris.  Easy to work with, fantastic guides, awesome people.  Only positive things to report.  If you are wondering about the price, it is very reasonable.  Flights are $2,500, a week's stay is about $2,500, and we each shot about 3 animals for another $2,500.  Taxidermy is not included and will have to be added, but you can make that as expensive as you wish.  And I'll tell ya this, you can't book a moose hunt or a caribou hunt for that price!  What would you rather do, take one animal for $10k or take 3 animals for $7.5k?  It was an easy decision for us.

Don't get me wrong, the 15-hour flight to Johannesburg is a very long flight.  Again, worth it.

You need to check out John X Safaris here:  www.johnxsafaris.com

You can also look them up on YouTube(R) if you want to see any of their videos.  They are on Instagram(R) as well.  Awesome stuff out there.

Alex with his baboon sitting atop a termite mound

Nick with his proper warthog

Nick's waterbuck

Kathy's kudu

My kudu, and yes, both Kathy's & Nick's kudus were larger


Comments

  1. Dave PorrillJuly 3, 2021 at 7:30 AM

    So help me here ... photo 3 ... which one is Nick?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dave PorrillJuly 3, 2021 at 7:32 AM

    I guess in the end, size does matter to the girls!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cleaning Winchester SX3 / SX4 Shotguns

Image
The Winchester SX4 is my Go To shotgun for everything - clays, doves, ducks, geese, pheasants, whatever.  It is an awesome firearm.  The drawback?  There are multiple moving parts and a few of them like to collect carbon.  And this carbon sticks as if it were put on those parts with super glue! Specifically, the magazine tube and the gas piston are the main carbon collectors.  Those parts come out more black than silver & gold. The inner components of an SX3 / SX4 with highlights where carbon will form So what is my trick for cleaning those bits?  I drop the gas piston into my Hornady sonic cleaner.  Inside the cleaner I put in about a cup of Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Solution for gun parts, add some DI water, a couple squirts of Dawn liquid dish soap, and then top it off with a dash or two of the citrus version of Dr. Bronner's pure castile liquid soap.  I have found that the citrus Dr. Bronner's is awesome at removing grease and oil.  All of that bakes in the son
Read more

Winchester SX4 Trigger Assembly Update

Image
First, you need to read the post immediately before this one to understand why I had to take my Winchester SX4 shotgun apart - all the way apart - specifically the trigger assembly. Second, my bad.  I had neglected to clean the gun after returning from last October's pheasant trip.  I had about one bale of grass seed inside that gun, which in the end, may have kept the #8 pellet from getting out on its own.  Shame. Finally, I did not give up.  I watched four different YouTube videos on how to disassemble and reassemble the trigger group.  Sadly, no one did the SX4, only the previous version, the SX3.  Close enough.  Why did it take 4 videos?  Because no one explained HOW the damn sear goes back in.  Everyone either ASSUMED we all know how OR in two cases, the reassembly process was out of the camera frame.  Aggravating! The key, and this is more for me to remember, was on the fourth video, the author said, "The sear kinda slides down into a channel in the housing."  Bam. 
Read more

Determine Sex of Deer from Tracks

Image
It IS possible to determine from a set of tracks whether the deer you are tracking is a doe (female) or a buck (male).  And, it's actually pretty simple if you know a few facts about deer. First, you have to know what a deer track looks like.  Deer leave a track that looks like the outline of a heart. Next, you have to know the direction of travel.  Deer are moving toward the "pointy" end of the heart.  So in the above example, the deer is traveling toward the top of this post, or up. Here is an actual photo of deer tracks in the wild so you can get a better idea.  Again, this deer is traveling up, or towards the top of this page.  (It is also clear that this deer was STANDING, not walking - well clear enough to me.  Read on to find out why I know that). Sometimes if the ground is soft or if the deer is traveling really fast (jumping), the track left will show the deer's dew claws at the rear of the direction traveling, like so: The two little "
Read more