SOUTH AFRICA'S EASTERN CAPE
Following the last edition, we had one more hunting day at Lynedoch Safaris before travelling around sites in the Cape and then a few more days of hunting at Bhejane Game Reserve. The next two species were hunted at Bhejane Game Reserve, situated near the small Karoo of the Eastern Cape.
BLUE WILDEBEEST:
On my last hunt at Lynedoch, I wanted to try and take a trophy blue wildebeest. These guys inhabit the drier areas of open grassy plains as well as bushveld but they have a preference for short grass, their wide flat muzzles ideally adapted for grazing. Wildebeest are probably the most well-known antelope due to documentaries about the great migrations where more than a million animals move off the Serengeti Plains, crossing croc-infested waters to find greener pastures.
Unfortunately, due to the increasing humanisation of the wild areas, the Serengeti is the largest of only three areas left where such migrations can still occur. Wildebeest are still widespread throughout central and southern Africa in their hundreds of thousands, just in smaller herds. The previous afternoon we had travelled back up the range where I shot my eland bull five days prior. We had seen some wildebeest in the same vicinity at that time and a bull or two had warranted a further look. We drove to the upper bush edge and walked around the face to glass along the top edge of a 4km-wide basin. We could see a variety of game: eland cows, kudu, baboons and zebra were clustered at various locations. JJ picked out the dark bodies of some wildebeest lying down in the shadows three-quarters of the way around; a dozen or so, he thought.
he said. We dropped down to the cover of the bush and sidled around towards the wildebeest. said JJ, so we dropped lower with the aim of getting to the middle of the basin. That way we’d be well under cover
