Report by: Trevor Brittingham
Location: Lake Natron
Date: 19 July 2006
A Day to Remember
The wake up call came at 5:30 followed by a 6:00 a.m. breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. Everyone had successfully rubbed the sleep from their eyes with anticipation of the first morning hunt.
After silencing our growling stomachs, the discussion of “who goes with who” arose. Jack and Leon concluded it would be best to send Barron, Jill, and Alex in one vehicle with P.H., Peter Barnard, while I accompany them to a popular dried riverbed about 30 minutes away from camp.
It wasn’t until after watching the sun rise that everyone loaded into the land cruisers, shouted “good luck” to one another, and drove away in opposite directions. Not far from camp, we spotted the first game of the safari, a small group of gerenuk with no shooters. Moments later after leaving the gerenuk behind, one of the trackers points to the right of the vehicle and quietly says, “Mbuni,” meaning ostrich in Swahili. Seeing two large male birds, talk of whether we could hunt them lead to the question of whether we wanted to kill one, which immediately put us on the ground with shooting sticks and gun in hand.
As we moved in closer, the first opportunity was a large male crossing our path to the right. Waiting on the sticks for a motionless target, I watched the ostrich steadily pass bush after tree until no shot was available. We moved up to a mound of dirt to find the second male standing still and within range. However, a shrub was blocking the shot. Not a minute later, the huge bird was moving slowly toward an opening. That’s when I went into silent, mental checklist.
Safety off. Finger on the trigger. Breath in full, let half out. Clear target. Squeeze.
“BOOM!”
The rifle rung out and dust rattled from the black feathers of the ostrich simultaneous to the blast. A fatal shot had the remarkably tough bird wobbling from side to side as it began its final dash. Stories of perfectly shot ostriches running for hundreds of yards prompted me to fire another bullet into the bird as it started to turn away. The second shot dropped it where it stood and from then on, nobody could keep me from smiling.
We moved on with the hunt after dropping the ostrich off at the skinning shed, but about a hundred yards before making the delivery, some tracks were spotted on the road. At first glance, they appeared to be hyena tracks but soon became small lioness tracks. Knowing there were very few lions in the area, a closer look was taken and Leon decided they actually were the tracks of a massive leopard.
“Grant’s gazelle,” Leon explained to us, was the ideal bait to use for this leopard, “we must shoot an old Grant’s just now so we will have some bait.” We made it to the riverbed twenty minutes later, seeing many exciting animals along the way including dik-dik, gerenuk, young Grant’s gazelle, lesser kudu, baboons, and giraffe.
The further we traveled down the riverbed, the closer we got to Mount Kitumbiene, standing 9300 imposing feet above sea level. At the farthest point of the riverbed, just as it opened to a sandy plain with shrubs and trees, we spotted a significant group of Grant’s with a few fairly large males. While my dad and I glassed in one direction, Leon pointed in the other and told us there was a “monster” feeding among the bushes. We both looked over and immediately knew what he was looking at. Jack was the first to the sand with his camera as I pulled the gun from its case. When Leon joined us with the sticks and his tracker, Juma, the car drove away and we began silently closing the gap between us and the tall black horns.
The first two attempts on the sticks were cluttered by brush and other gazelle. We moved from tree to tree until the big male’s attention went from browsing in the thick, short brush to the females in the open riverbed. He moved clear of the foliage at about seventy yards and stood perfectly broadside. The set up could not have been any better.
My mental checklist completed, I squeezed the curved metal trigger until the rifle kicked back against me. As the wide gazelle turned back to run, I jacked another round into the chamber knowing my first shot was questionably high on the shoulder.
“GaBOOM! Thud!” The second shot hit him quartering away and put him down immediately. After handshakes and even bigger grins than before, we approached the trophy Grant’s gazelle to find exceptional mass and length and an unusual spread for such an old male.
After photographs and loading the animal into the truck, we returned to camp. The whole ride back, I periodically peered over my shoulder admiring the beautiful trophy laying in the truck bed and knowing that with two amazing animals down on the first day of my hunt, I would be happy without anything else for the remaining twenty.
Trevor Brittingham