The Nyae Nyae Conservancy, part of an area traditionally known as Bushmanland, is one of the wildlife jewels of arid Namibia. It is the haunt of giant tuskers as well as the rest of the Big Five and a range of plains game. The limited quota set out for trophy hunting – especially the legendary elephant bulls – is in high demand internationally, for here Africa is still wild, free and unfenced.
We were standing around the morning fire, watching the dawn over mugs of coffee with some trepidation. It was an overcast and drizzly morning, with the temperature down to 28 degrees after weeks of murderous days measuring 41 degrees-plus. This was our last day in camp and it would be Stephan’s last chance to shoot a roan be-fore the licence expired.
A great, ominous wall of angry sky had rolled in from the north the previous evening. It had dumped heavy rain over the wild and unfenced Khaudum National Park directly to our north, and random showers were also quenching the 792 000 hectares of wilderness on which we were hunting. The rain was bringing welcome relief from the fierce drought that had parched the sandy savannah for more than two years, but now it spelt trouble for the day’s hunt.
Stephan Jacobs’s company, SMJ Safaris, holds the hunting concession for the Nyae Nyae. The season had come to
