The Steep Hills of Africa

by Wayne Van Zwoll

“We’ve been here since 1820,” Andrew Pringle said. “Well,” he adds with a grin, “Not me.” The Pringles have indeed ranched in this mountainous slice of Southern Africa for nearly two centuries. They raise cattle, sheep and goats – “high wool and mohair prices helped us expand” – and they host hunters.

So do many other sub-Saharan landowners. But this country, a two hour drive north of Port Elizabeth, differs from most.

“We have no game fences,” explained Andrew, a tall, sinewy young man. “About 80 percent of South Africa is high-fenced. WE at Crusader Safaris offer 50,000 acres of free-range habitat. Most is contiguous. It varies from lowland bush to mountain bluffs at over 6,000 feet.”

The next morning dawned bright and cold. We spent the first hours at the rifle range checking zeros. After I tweaked the dial settings on the Bushnell scope, my T/C Icon in 6.5 Creedmoor planted its 120-grain GMX bullets 1½ inches above point of aim at 100 yards. The GMX, a new, lead-free bullet, has a sleek profile and a hard plastic tip. It features two cut cannelures, one for crimping and the other to permit displacement of bullet material in the rifling.

“Mountain reedbucks and vaal rheboks are small,” Andrew said as the Land Cruiser bounced up the gravel track. “Easy to kill. But they’re hard to approach in high basins. They’re always switched on.” Translation: Shoot well and don’t fret about bullet energy.

As we climbed steadily, the ladder-tall thorn receded behind us, supplanted by savannah dotted with bushes that reminded me of the plum thickets of our Great Plains and mahogany clumps in the Rockies – mule deer country.

I hadn’t expected pines. “Settlers planted them for windbreaks,” Andrew said as he negotiated another switchback. The dun winter grasses were tall where they weren’t cropped. State-colored rock chopped the curve of the hilltops. Canyons became blue in their depths. And the wind was up.

I’ve hunted in such environs before, squinting through gales that tug my binocular, teared-up eyes searching mountain nooks for any living thing. We hunched against the blow, scanning. Then we hiked to another promontory. More of the same. At the third post, Andrew pointed. “There!” The nymph-like animals bounced from rock to rock, scampering away through the grass. And very distant were vaal rheboks. I asked whether they were fleeing us. “A hundred percent,” Andrew replied.

They beat us this day – and the next. We tried another area on the third morning, but not for vaal rhebok. We were after bushbuck as we threaded a forested pass, then took to foot around the perimeter of a great grassy bowl. “Look!” Andrew hissed. Reflexively, I dropped to a sitting position and readied my sling even before spotting the game. It was a bushbuck ram, shy of 200 yards out, partly hidden in bush. “He’s quite good – no he’s very good,” Andrew told me. I swiveled into position, letting the crosswire bump along the ribs. It quivered, not quite still. The ram took a step and dropped. My bullet struck a bit high, but it was fatal. The bushbuck was very dark, almost black. “An old one,” Andrew said approvingly.

We were back on top the next day, watching a streaked orange sky brighten over the Stormberg. We left the cruiser at the end of the road and trudged up to a high meadow. A rocky fringe on its western end was the rim of a great cleft in the earth. It gaped hundreds of feet deep, hundreds of yards wide, falling a mile before gentler slopes arrested it.

Andrew and I slid into a shaded crevice, sun to our backs. We glassed just a few minutes before Andrew spied three vaal rheboks, a ram and two females. We tried a sneak and fail. As keen-eyed as bighorn sheep, the animals spotted our movements well beyond rifle range and bounded away. Immediately, I found a covered route back through the rocks. Andrew followed, and we angled down a tributary to lose elevation. Then we heard a whistle.

“Both sexes whistle when alarmed,” Andrew said. The pika-like sound carried far in the clear air. Finally I spotted the females much farther off than I expected. We glassed for the ram, moved, glassed again and found him on a ridge, alert but closer. We had cover to shave more distance. Long minutes later, we crawled onto a ledge 250 yards from the animal. “Can you shoot?” Andrew whispered. I nodded. The gusty breeze wasn’t strong, but it was driving across, full-value from the west. I shaded perhaps a hand’s width; the vertical wire edged the chest. Vitals the diameter of a coffee saucer, I mused.

The ram vaulted from his perch at the shot, then crumpled. A few kicks and it was over. We made our way through the rocks to where he lay. “Big eyes,” Andrew said. “Feel the hair. It’s as soft as rabbit fur.”

Southern Africa’s steeps also harbor the mountain reedbuck. It’s a bit stockier than the vaal rhebok but essentially the same size. Instead of slender, straight-up back spikes, it has hooked horns that turn forward. Unlike the vaal rhebok, whose habitat is almost alpine, mountain reedbucks frequent lower hills with sparse brush they used to advantage when you’re trying to paste reticle on ribs.

You needn’t be an athlete to hunt either of these antelopes. The air isn’t thin, and only the highest places gather snow. On the other hand, footing can be a challenge. At mid-elevation, loose rock and thorn combine to thwart each step. Wind and vertical stone pose new problems at the crest. Also, you may find yourself hunting many days for a shot. Endurance counts.

Late one afternoon we spied a worthy mountain reedbuck ram on the high shoulder of a ridge. We had to stalk into a low sun, but the wind favoured us. I crawled forward as Andrew peered through his binoculars. “He’s looking this way!” hissed my pal, now behind me. I stopped. The ram was behind a bush. He emerged with a dainty step, the sunlight fringing his horns. The crosswire went to sleep, and I squeezed. The recoil obscured the impact, which put the animal down instantly. “A good day,” Andrew observed. Indeed.

While such diminutive creatures can’t test the lethality of Hornady’s new Creedmoor load, they demand precise shooting. At distance, wind easily kicks bullets off grapefruit-size vitals. The GMX bullet had drifted less than I expected.

I was privileged to share this hunt with Dave Emary, a longtime friend, and the engineer largely responsible for Hornady’s latest centerfire developments. He was keen to use the 6.5 Creedmoor on his first safari. I tramped the high country while he took kudu, black wildebeest, springbok and blesbok, at ranges from 125 to 283 yards. “I’d like to shoot a mountain reedbuck, too,” he told me. I joined him on the ridge that yielded my ram.

We probed from east, sun behind us, glassing into rocks and clumps of grass, trying to sift dun-and-gray animals from the fawn-and slate background, looking for the glint of eye or horn. Much like a hunt for Coues deer, I thought. Movement helped us home in on several animals. At last we saw the hook of a horn. The ram was far, and my tracker and I stayed behind to let Dave and his PH approach alone. The fewer bodies, the better. Alas, the stalk failed as the buck spied the hunters. WE rejoined them, carrying on with the climb. The sun was warm now, and soon the animals would bed, becoming all but invisible.

A ram broke cover to chase a female across the apron of the hill. Dave sat quickly, steadying the sticks. I watched through the binoculars, following the ram out, farther, farther. Was he chasing, or running from us? He stopped and I heard a whisper. “Two forty,” followed seconds later by the crack of Dave’s rifle. The mountain reedbuck pitched forward and lay still.

Fellow hunter, Aaron Carter gave the 6.5 Creedmoor a long-range workout at Crusader Safaris, shooting a kudu at 340 yards. The 120 GMX destroyed both lungs and exited. The bull traveled 30 yards. Aaron also clobbered an impala at 400 yards, the ram moving 40 yards after a pass through long shot. Neil Davies drove a 6.5 bullet into the neck of a kudu at 360 yards, dropping it instantly. We recovered that GMX, one of the few that stayed in the animals.

“You’ve not shot much,” Andrew observed, well into our hunt. “The others are piling up horns.” I told him I don’t have to shoot much to have a successful safari, and reminded him we’ve spent some days after elusive mountain game. “You like to hunt eland,” he remembered, as if tonnage mattered and no hunter should go three days on safari without shooting something. I nodded. It is my weakness.

The next day we drove two hours to dirt tracks that took us through gates fortified to hold a breeding population of rhinos. Then the fences disappeared and we entered an enormous natural amphitheater, Serengeti-like in its scope. Vertical rock walls loomed at its hem, miles ahead. Dots on distant ridges resolved themselves in powerful glass – gemsboks and hartebeests. Springboks dashed across our front as we idled through the basin’s center.

It was mid morning when we spotted an eland bull with the blue hue and heavy neck, the thick horns and prominent forehead tuft of an eland male. It moved like a steam tractor; a big bull can weigh as much as Cape buffalo.

But I concurred with Andrew that the 6.5 Creedmoor seemed a marginal choice for eland. I assure him I would get close and shoot carefully. But this bull stayed beyond a gaggle of younger bulls. When at last we pressed the advance, they moved off in that mile-eating trot every eland hunter has followed through his binoculars until all that remains, far away, is a thin plume of yellow dust.

Now it was noon. We fixed sandwiches, climbed a hill and glassed across the amphitheater. “There,” Andrew said. He was looking at an eland so distant that I couldn’t pick it out at first. “A big bull, I think. There’s another,” Andrew said. Like many large ungulates, old eland bulls often live in bachelor groups. We closed quickly on this one.

As thorn became thick, I bellied forward alone toward the only eland I could see. He was bedded. I reached the edge of cover 100 yards from this bull. Prone and steady, I waited for him to stand. Eventually he did, but he instantly turned and walked off, presenting no shot. Despairing, I glimpsed another bull. As the animal moved into shot, it passed. My rifle coughed, and the hit was audible, but the eland was gone.

Half and hour of searching turned up just one drop of blood. We continued to flank our Bushman tracker as he trailed the bull uphill. I was disconsolate, even ashamed. The 6.5 Creedmoor is too small for these beasts. We pressed on, suddenly, thick spiral horns winked above a bush, and we dashed forward. The great splayed prints showed the bull had dived into a brushy canyon.

We stopped, my lungs heaving. Excitedly, our tracker jabbed his finger. “Look!” The eland lunged up the far side of the canyon, 200 yards off, in and out of cover. Thrusting the Icon onto Andrew’s sticks, I fired offhand as the bull quartered away. Behind! I palmed the bolt and shot again as the eland afforded us one last clear chance. “Thwuck!”

We found him dying. I kneeled, regretting my first shot. That GMX had landed well, centering the near lung, ranging to the off-shoulder. But it had not been enough. My final bullet had driven forward from between the hams, slicing the dorsal aorta near the spine. “A lucky hit,” I told Andrew. “This animal is too big.” He nodded.

We left the amphitheater after dusk, the sky red-rimmed above the high rock lip, distant mountains purpling under a faint Southern Cross.

I’ve climbed to the roof of Africa, 19,000 feet up. These mountains of the eastern Cape have no match for Kilimanjaro’s arctic summit. Bu the Stormberg and its shoulders hold a charm that matches that of the Rockies, and game you won’t find anywhere else. Surely, this land hasn’t seen the last of me.