African Bowhunt With Tony Dukes
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DAY FOUR: 

The new hide heated up early, encouraging me to strip down to a t-shirt, and the impalas to drink. A steenbok made his way around incoming warthogs as the sun begins it's relentless pounding on the red dirt. By 11:00 we had been under siege by vervet monkeys and warthogs. We decide to go in for lunch and then returned to the hopeful waterbuck location.

I refused Riaan's offer to nap while he watched, this was just to exciting to miss a thing. 

2:30: more wildebeest came in, two really good bulls. Now would be the time, I thought. The bulls were facing me at ten yards, I could clearly hear every  breath and slurp. I could see their eyelashes blink ... but the angle wasn't right. 

One moves and as I begin to draw, warthogs come blundering in spooking the heavy horned antelope. It was guineas and warthog and franklin quail until the last hour of hunting -- when another herd of wildebeest appeared.

Eight, large bulls, a bachelor group. 

One at a time, they cautiously eased in until they were either drinking loudly or licking salt. Again I lowered my raised bow. 

My guide said I should take this opportunity for these were good bulls, all of them. I tried to pick out what I thought was the best one, he was 12 yards. The extreme darkness of the hide and the cloud of thick dust surrounding the animals made defining my sight pin extraordinarily hard.

Before I left, Mike Ellig of Dusk Devil had fixed me up with one of his new bowsights with exceptional light gathering fiber optics with a blue light over the pins. I'd used red lights before but the glow clouded the view, but not with this blue light. Mike definitely knew what he was doing when he put it on. When I turned it on I immediately experienced a clean, clear pin definition.

I give this setup credit for giving me control over my arrow placement. The bull turned when he satisfied his urge for salt. I drew as he came broadside. My crested arrow disappeared 3" behind his shoulder and 4" up from his bottom profile, the perfect whitetail shot! 

I was elated. But Riann was not smiling, he said my hit was low for the wildebeest. What would have been a short, heavily blooded trial, if it were a deer, was one nearly indistinguishable track after another, that lead into the inpenetratable wall of solid thorn brush. Darkness quickly added to the unexpected truth and disappointment of no visible sign of a mortally hit wildebeest. 

We will be on the tracks early tomorrow.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Hunt Info | Hunt Equipment|

Sponsors For The 2003 African Bowhunt
A note of appreciation to the sponsors that backed me on my first African bowhunt. (TonyDukes):
 Alpine Archery (bow), Magnus Broadheads (broadheads), Sims Vibration Laboratory (limb savers), Pro Release (release aid), Eze-Eye (arrow wraps), Montana Black Gold (bow sight), Bododle (arrow rests), LaCross Boots (rubber boots), Nikon (binoculars), Robinson Outdoors (Scent Shield) , Game Tracker (arrows) and Freddie Bear Sports (Sticks N' Limbs camouflage) and Bowhunting.net.