One Heck Of A Ride

82 Author was so impressed with the “strange feeling” he got from Romney Mountain that he hired two artists to recreate it in his trophy room Author on top of Romney Mountain. Human sacrifice rituals reportedly still occur on the granite mountain Zimbabwe 1981 hooves. Their unique hair is hollow, thick and mostly erect, and it rattles when it is touched. Chris said early Boer trekkers used the “cushiony” hides from klipspringers for their saddle blankets. (Romney Mountain, the granite hill where I shot the klipspringer on Eaglemont Ranch was so picturesque that I took several photos of it. I also climbed to its top to see more of it, and it gave me a strange feeling. At an SCI convention thirty years later, Jannie Meyer, who had the ranch then, told me the local people still conducted human sacrifices there. His stories about witchcraft and ritual killing led me to hire two artists to recreate the hill in a diorama when I built my trophy room in our home in Lompoc.) The next day was overcast and the game wasn’t moving around much. Chris and I spent the morning unsuccessfully trying to find a cooperative zebra before Chris drove us about thirty miles to a party hosted by one of his friends. We were served cottage pie, impala steak, buffalo stew, watercress salad, oranges and cream, and wine while Mexican music played in honor of a group of hunters from that country that were there. It was an interesting mix of people, with Mexicans, Texans, Zimbabwean professional hunters, and me, and it was an enjoyable evening. When Chris and I returned to the lodge at 1:30 AM, the generator was shut down for the night. It took a while, but I was able to get to my room and into bed in the dark. Wewere up five hours later and eating a special breakfast Giovanni prepared for us. I opened that day’s hunt by shooting dassies (rock hyrax) to get one suitable for a mount. After brunch, we used an abandoned grass-thatched hunt overlooking a dam on the river as a blind, and waited for a kudu bull that had been seen there to show up. It was warm, and after some baboons briefly broke the monotony, I dozed off. The next thing I knew, Chris was tapping my shoulder while holding a finger to his lips. Approaching the water was an impala with horns much longer than those on the ram I’d shot earlier. One shot from my .300 Weatherby slammed it to the ground. I was glad I’d switched to the Noslers. After dinner that evening, Chris and I left to check the baboon he’d set out for leopard bait. We approached the site quietly and sat there with a big light with a red lens ready to turn on if we heard bones being crushed, but Mr. Spots didn’t show up.