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Taxidermy - Larry Reese
Today I was going to do some taxidermy training with the staff of Eland Safaris, visit some friends and just take care of some business and let Cody sleep late, which he was in desperate need of. Chelsea. who I have not talked about much in these articles, because she has not hunted much at the young age of 16, who came along for the cultural experience and to be official photographer. But she was now getting the bug and wanted to harvest an animal also. Du Toit being the great guy that he is told her he had a common Blesbok running with his heard of white Blesbok and if she like she wanted to could harvest it for free cause we could use the meat. So over Breakfast Du Toit and Rick made a plan and Kathy with the Kudu under her belt, would just relax at the Lodge this morning. Rick, Chelsea and Du Toit loaded up and went to locate the heard of white Blesbok. The Plan was to go to a large tree that was just off the thick brush but far enough out into the field to allow a less than 200 yard shot if the Blesbok traveled down that way. The Blesbok and the Wildebeest were at the very far end of this very long field. They got set up without detection an now it was a waiting game to see if the white Blesbok would feed in there direction. After an hour of waiting the Blue Wildebeest got a little crazy an started to run around for no apparent reason. After a few minutes of this nonsense they started to run down the field than veered off heading right for Chelsea's tree. About 200 yards out the 100 wildebeest were bearing down on her location as she turned to Du Toit and said " I am scared". Du Toit assured her they would not run over the tree and pushed her gently closer to the tree as the Wildebeest herd split up an passed with in 20 yards on both sides of the tree. After the dust and Chelsea's nerves had
settled they noticed the Blesbok were also moving slowly down the field. Du Toit
was pointing out the Blesbok he wanted Chelsea to take and giving her final
instructions. When the common Blesbok was parallel to their location Chelsea
took aim and an fired, as the gun rocked her back her father Rick was saying
" He is down, you got him". Chelsea had harvested her first animal, and
of all places Africa. And to make things even better her dad was there to experience
it with her an get it on film.
After taking pictures and loading the common Blesbok on the truck they headed back to the lodge to have the animal processed an some lunch. After lunch Rick wanted to see if he could get a bigger Impala, so they headed back out. After looking over a few different herds Rick picked out a nice ram and made an excellent 300 yard shot.
Larry C. Reese- Wildlife Artistry Taxidermy
www.WildlifeArtistry.com
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