ONE Sunday night, about twenty years ago, I went for a cup of coffee at the house of my then wife-to-be. On the kitchen table was some fresh meat which I was told was part of a kudu that her father had shot. While helping to butcher it, I discovered the base of a .243 bullet which had disintegrated and lodged in the vertebrae just behind and above the shoulders. Obviously, the shot had been meant for the heart/lung area but went too high. Imagine the ‘spectacular’ one-shot kill the hunter and his workers must have observed, and their perception that a .243 can put a kudu down as if poleaxed. Oom Dirk, my wife’s father, shot this, and many other kudu and springbuck with that .243. However, I can only ponder about others that may have been wounded and lost, as he was not really a dedicated hunter.
Oom Dirk resided in Somerset East in the Eastern Cape, where he managed two) to drill for underground water in the surrounding districts. He also erected and repaired windmills. I often envisaged an everyday scenario at a worksite to be something like this: he would call on his right-hand helper, old Douwa, now also deceased, “ (spanner)…” and, if he spotted any game animal, “… Douwa would haul the rifle bag from behind the seat of the blue Toyota bakkie, slip the rifle out and hand it to Oom Dirk who would then take a shot. He had permission from farm owners to take whatever game animal was permitted.
