One Heck Of A Ride

102 last ram when Frank had the driver stop. “There’s a good steenbok bedded in the shade over there,” he said. “Do you want one?” It took a while to find the petite animal in my binocular. When I did, it was its ears and the white on its throat and chin and around its eyes that gave it away. Bedded, it reminded me of a blacktail fawn and was just as difficult to see. My .300 Weatherby was way too much gun, but the 180-grain Nosler Partition bullet did not open up and damage the thirty-pound animal’s hide beyond repair. From Thornkloof we traveled to the little town of Hankey (its claim to fame was a 60-foot- tall sundial, Africa’s largest) to hunt a Cape eland in the hills above a valley filled with farms and citrus groves. The first mature bull we saw reminded me of a domesticated Brahma. I was amazed when Frank said these huge antelope easily leap over ten-foot-tall “game-proof” fences. He also said eland are not territorial and often wander long distances. They were named by early Dutch settlers whose word for European moose was “eland.” We hunted by spotting and stalking, as well as by following fresh tracks for a mile or more. I shot a herd bull after locating him on a hillside a half-mile away and sneaking into range. Frank had told me eland can be tough to put down, so I needed to break the shoulder and be ready to shoot again, and that’s what I did. My bull was a magnificent, massive beast that weighed close to a ton. He had heavy spiraled horns, a patch of dark, coarse hair on his forehead and loose skin Frank called a “dewlap” that hung from his throat almost all the way down to his knees. When filets from that big old bull were served for dinner that evening I was pleasantly surprised to see how tender and delicious they were. South Africa Over the next week, we traveled north to Zululand where I shot a common nyala (a mule- deer-size grey antelope with lyre-shaped spiral While in Zululand, author met Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the chief ’s daughters. South Africa 1984