One Heck Of A Ride

101 South Africa the only formal education most of its students would have, so its classes emphasized reading and writing English (Xhosa was their first language) and mathematics, he said. (The world was starting to condemn apartheid in 1984, and the media was showing only its darkest side and painting all white South Africans with the same brush. In the two weeks I spent with Frank, I got the impression that he really cared for his workers and their families.) Our next stop was the farm’s gun range, where the first shot from my .300 Weatherby struck the target exactly where it should have. After that, we drove off to find a blesbok, a reddish brown antelope with a white blaze (“bles” in Afrikaans) on its face. Thorn Kloof included a huge chunk of real estate, with thousands of acres of wildlife habitat, but it was a game farm (as were all the farms I hunted on this trip) and Frank knew where to go to find his herds. The blesbok is about the same size and has similar habits as our North American pronghorn. As do our pronghorn, blesbok prefer wide-open spaces with minimum cover, and those that haven’t had much hunting pressure will tolerate vehicles driving up to a certain distance before running off. For Frank’s blesbok, that distance was about 150 yards. A herd of perhaps twenty or so blesbok with two or three rams were watching us from that distance when the driver stopped the Land Cruiser and Frank and I looked them over with our binoculars. “See the one on the left next to the ewe by that little bush?” he asked. “Yes” “He’s a good one. You may want to shoot him.” That was all the encouragement I needed. Minutes later, I was posing for a photo with the ram. Frank said we would drive to several different farms to hunt the animals on the list I’d given him earlier. Nearly all of the species except for Vaal rhebok, nyala and Cape eland were found on Thornkloof, but he said there were better trophies elsewhere. Over the next two days, I shot two springbucks, South Africa’s signature antelope. As many as 2.5 million of these little guys (they usually weigh less than 100 pounds) still roam the arid Kalahari and Karoo plains of western South Africa. Namibia and Botswana. They also have been introduced to game farms, such as Frank’s, far east of their natural range. Although springbok are not difficult to hunt, they nonetheless are interesting antelope. Game farmers have bred them in three colors. The “normal” ram I shot had a yellowish-brown coat and a dark, almost black stripe along its flanks and on its face and rump. (My “black” springbuck actually was dark brown with darker markings. I also shot a white springbok, the third subspecies, on another farm on this hunt.) I learned how springbok were named when I saw them leap six to seven feet straight up with their backs arched and their legs stiff and straight. (SouthAfricans call this “pronking” or “stotting.”) All have lyre-shaped horns and “pockets” on the middle of their backs to their tails. As they die, the folds of skin hiding long white hair inside those pockets relax, and the hair briefly forms wide white fans. We were returning to the farmhouse with my From left: Pioneer South African outfitter Chappie Scott, author and professional hunter Frank Bowker behind bar at Thornkloof. South Africa, 1984