Yesterday...

Yesterday was a really interesting day. We went with the same original six drivers and their four dogs and went to nearly the same area where we were the other day when we saw so many of the royal antelope. We were looking for duiker so we set up on the first stand - nothing. Second stand - nothing. Third and fourth stands - nothing. On the fifth spot we pushed, the guys started yelling that something was coming and literally a three pound rocket-ship flew by me, just at the edge of my vision. My visibility was the worst that I've had at any spot so far; It was 10-feet max in any direction. You could hear him coming, but you never knew exactly where he was going to cross, so he went just out of my vision after getting a glimpse through the under-brush. I was actually almost laying down with the shotgun, trying to see him. I was hunched right down with my head about a foot off the ground. Then we heard him coming back again but still didn't know where to look. This time he literally ran within two inches of my foot but at 20 miles per hour so when he appeared at just 10 feet, there was no time to get my gun up and pull the trigger. Next thing I knew he was over my foot so I just swung around and shot. Matty thinks he got it on camera, but my shot was a total miss. A couple minutes later, I had my gun reloaded and he must have hit the other line of pushers at the other end of the brush and he came right over my foot again and I swung around again trying to get him as he was going away, but you're basically just shooting into the bush where you think he's headed to and hoping that the pellets get through. But no luck again, so that was my two shots at a duiker. They were the two hardest shots I've ever even tried, virtually impossible for my abilities. 

So then we waited for dark and went back out again with a fellow who claimed that he knew what he was doing, but he kind of walked us around the pitch dark for awhile and then he got tired, so that was that. We got back in at about one in the morning. 

The Next Day...

We got up this morning and our 'pushers' didn't feel like pushing today, so we couldn't organize that. Instead we went looking for birds down by a big lake, which was kind of fun. We saw a bunch of cool birds and stopped at the market and bought huge, giant snails. These things are monsters - some of them had to be at least 20 pound snails from the ocean, I guess. We got three of the medium-sized snails, because the really giant ones had already been killed, but we don't want to eat anything that's already dead, so we had to buy the ones that were still alive. So we're going to cook those up now and eat them into our tummies.

Larry Rudolph, the current President of SCI, showed up here today with his wife, Bianca. They flew over from the USA so they'll be starting to hunt tonight. Larry's looking for royal antelope and of course a black duiker and maxwell's duiker as well as some of the smaller animals like palms civet and panther genet, cain rats and giant pouched rat. So it's going to be another long night for us tonight. We're about to head back out and it's still hot and sticky here. You step outside and you're absolutely drenched in sweat. Shirt and pants soaking wet, just everything soaked. So it's definitely a humid place.