Lowlands to Highlands: A Hunter's Wanderings

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© 2013 Hamish Skead. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/24/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9335-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9339-1 (e)

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To my brother,

Vaughan Skead.

We will always be a team.

Thank you.

Contents

The New Africa

Introduction

Sometimes Things Just Work That Way

Crocodile

Mr Mfene

Nkonka

Big Red

Motionless

Babes on the Hunt

The Great Whites

The Tugela Elephants

Monster Buck Moments: Volume 1

Monster Buck Moments: Volume 2

The Wrong Taxi

Enraged Rhino

Rage: Spotted Aggression

Camp Raider

Mad Cool!

Double Trouble

The Day Sean Got Charged

Gwazmunthu

Youth of the Nation

Tracking Dogs

Drakensberg Bull

Thug: A Buffalo’s Tale

Yellow Eyes: Lion Hunting in the Kalahari

Thunder Valley

Bull Roarer: The Roaring Reds of Norway

A Sea of Antlers: Reindeer of Norway

The New Africa

Africa is a land without equal for the outdoorsman. It is a hunter’s paradise and has been for centuries. It is home to the widest variety of game animals anywhere in the world, and it holds the allure of the Big Five species. If it is adventure you are looking for, you will find it in this land of extreme contrast.

We have heard of the glory days of Africa, with explorers and great white hunters such as Frederick Courteney Selous, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Manners, and John Taylor but what about the present? Are we living in a different Africa? Have the adventure and excitement of the safari dwindled? Is Africa still the Dark Continent? Has Africa changed so much that we do not recognize it anymore? Has all been lost?

Traditional bowhunter in the colours of an African sunset.

Africa has changed, of that there is no doubt. Our natural resources and wilderness are under tremendous threat, as are those throughout the world. The world’s population is growing faster and faster, and the demand for housing, food, and fresh water is ever increasing. This worldwide phenomenon is unavoidable. Has this led us to lose the safari lifestyle in Africa? I don’t think so. Maybe I am an optimist, but I believe that the new Africa is a continent full of opportunity and adventure. In this, the age of aeroplanes, helicopters, motor vehicles, ships, boats, and other modern conveniences, the African adventure is closer and more accessible than ever before. Africa’s darkest corners are now never more than a few days’ travel away. The cost of getting there is also nominal if one considers the big picture.

The Grey Ghost of Africa, a beautiful kudu bull.

The honest truth is that Africa is now available to every hunter and adventurer in the world. Pursuits from hunting elephants, lions, and buffalo to chasing the tiny ten antelopes are all available, and, helpful, reliable, and enthusiastic operators are waiting to guide you. We are just as spoilt as Roosevelt and Selous but we have the benefit of travelling to places in days which would have taken them months to travel to can now be reached in only days.

Change can be both negative and positive, and it is up to us hunters to protect and tell of our trade and show the world that adventure is alive and well in Africa. Let’s hope one day many years from now people will speak of us, today’s professional hunters, as they did of Taylor and Manners.

Hunters admiring an African sunset.

A camp pet at Zingela Safaris presents a formidable roadblock.

Hamish Skead extracting a client’s impala from the Weenen thornveld.

Introduction

Lowlands Farm and the northern boundary of Wagendrift Dam.

Every child has a dream, but few have the means or opportunity to follow theirs.

At the age of six, I started shooting an air rifle, and immediately I was hooked on the outdoors, conservation, and hunting. Within a few years I had moved on to the .22-calibre rifle and 20-gauge shotgun and could be found hunting trophy masked weavers as a young boy. Who would have known that this would lead to a career in hunting? It began in 2000 and let’s hope it will continue for many more years.

The current Lowlands Hunting Safaris team.

I grew up in a family of non-hunters and still wonder if I’m not the child of the postman. My uncle David Mcfie introduced me to bird shooting and gun safety. For this I will be forever grateful. He walked me through life but let me choose my own path.

My life’s story is long and had a tragic beginning. My mother was killed when I was three. We were involved in a car accident, in which she was killed instantly. I was sitting in the seat behind her and was seriously injured. My skull had been fractured. My first memory of life is being unable to open my eyes as my eyelids were stuck together with caked blood. My second is sitting in the hospital and looking across at my older brother, Vaughan, as I had my head stitched up. It took twenty-four stitches to put me back together. Afterward, Vaughan and I lived with my dad, who soon remarried. He, too, passed away when I was 14, of lung cancer. This was not an ideal start to life, but I believe it welded Vaughan and I together into a unique force and also started me off on my own path through life.

Bird hunters after a successful pigeon shoot.

All through the hardships of growing up, I was totally infatuated with hunting. At the age of 14, I guided my first client. At the age of 15, I was the only schoolboy to own a 12-guage shotgun, which I kept under my bed and used to control the vervet monkey on school property. I received my primary education at Clifton Nottingham Road, a school with a strong outdoor-education program, which further forged my love for conservation and the outdoors. I matriculated at Michaelhouse in the Midlands. Michaelhouse has a strong outdoor education program and I was an active member of the gun and hunting clubs. This gave me a strong base on which to start my career in the outdoors.

My studies continued at Cape Technikon, where I further developed my career in nature conservation. In this course, scientific studies of plant, mammal, fish, amphibians and all aspects of zoology were covered. In the third year of training, in order to receive your diploma in Nature Conservation, a year-long practical training has to be completed. My year-long practical was done at Lower Sabie in the Kruger National Park. During the course of this year, projects and tasks had to be completed and sent to the technikon. This is where I met the greatest conservationist and outdoorsman I have ever met, Mr Philip Nel. I learnt more from him in a year than any course could ever have taught me.

The Lower Sabie students Hamish, Kim, and Deirdre with Mr Phillip Nel.

However, I also learnt at the Lower Sabie that I could not work for a government organization and that a career in which I was my own boss would be a far better one for me. After graduating from Cape Technikon with a diploma in Nature Conservation, I completed a Professional Hunters course at the Gerard Steenamp School. I then established my business, Lowlands Hunting Safaris, and have been hunting ever since. I based the business in the Kwazulu Natal Midlands on our home farm, Lowlands. This farm has been in my family for more than one hundred years, and the small town of Estcourt is the closest town. Hunting was a way to diversifying an already successful farming business, and since its establishment, we have enjoyed many years of growth and have met great people from all walks of life. Some of the great benefits of hunting are the people you meet and the places you see. This world has so much to offer, but so few people get to see it. We as hunters follow our feet to some of the greatest destinations in the world. We get to hunt some of the world’s finest wild animals and to see the scenic splendour that some people will only ever see in coffee-table books.

Looking down on the scenic Bushman’s River valley.

Hunting is the greatest way of life and a gift to whomever can call this life theirs.

This book will tell of the people I have met, the areas we have seen, the animals we have chased, and the great adventures we have embarked on.

I am truly grateful to my family, friends, colleagues, clients, and staff for making this adventure a reality.

Come and join the adventure.

Adversity does not build character, it reveals it!

Hunters are the best conservationists.

Magabeni mountain the background behind Bhizayo Safari Lodge and the heart of Lowlands Farm.

This base camp used by Lowlands Hunting Safaris was hand made by Hamish.

The original team of Lowlands, who you will get to know well in this book. From left to right: Roy Barnes, Hamish Skead, Sean Bosse, and Waldo Bekker.

Sometimes Things Just Work That Way

The view over prime common reedbuck habitat, in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains.

I have lived and hunted my home farm of Lowlands since 1990. I have guided many clients on to nab top-quality common reedbuck and have taken a few old and hornless males myself. The common reedbucks on this farm have been my responsibility and companions for as long as I can remember.

In 2006, my family celebrated our centenary year of owning the properties that make up Lowlands Farm. Maybe it was for all those years of fighting the jackals, dogs, and other predators in my efforts to ensure that the reedbuck population flourished.

A giant common reedbuck male.

Common reedbuck are similar in body to white-tailed deer, with a thick coat, and swept-forward horns as their recognizable features.

It was a miserable midsummer day. Drizzle soaked one through to the bone. Less than ideal conditions for hunting! My herd boys informed me that a bushbuck male was living in an isolated piece of natural bush right on the southern boundary of the farm which they’d seen on a few occasions in that same area. I thus decided on this less than perfect day to pack a rifle and take a drive to this remote part of the farm to investigate. I was spurred on by the thought of bagging myself a bushbuck, a species which was rapidly destroying my reputation as a professional hunter because of my lack of success in hunting one of these secretive and elusive animals.

The last thing I was considering was the sequence o f events that followed.

I proceeded up the rocky roads (a better term for these roads would be tracks) towards the isolated thicket where the bushbuck had been seen.

On nearing the thicket, I drove the vehicle into a small donga (erosion gulley) so it could not be seen and would not disturb the area. I then unpacked my Winchester .375 H&H and opened a box of test ammunition, brand-new Barnes X bullets. Their triple shock-expanding solid was my bullet of choice. You might say that a bushbuck would not be much of a test for a bullet of this calibre; (375H&H is a very large calibre for small antelope) however, the bulk of what I hunted was smaller game, so in my mind, it was an adequate test.

Rifle over my shoulder and binoculars around my neck, off I went to examine the thicket for any sign of the buck. (One has to be sceptical of some reports, as the reporter is often more concerned about his stomach and the good steaks he could be in line for if I was to shoot the animal!) I found it hard to believe that a bushbuck would choose that area as his home, as it consisted of about fifteen trees in total, each not much taller than eight feet. However, although they weren’t fresh, I managed to find bushbuck tracks in the muddy part of the stream.I proceeded to sweep though the thicket but found nothing but a few red-winged francolins that made enough noise to put the wind up any bushbuck that might have been there. I immediately lost my enthusiasm and began to walk out of the bottom of the thicket. In the back of my mind, I thought, Well, let me just walk to the edge of the valley and have a look to see if there’s anywhere else I could look for this animal.

Hunting vehicle at the top of Magabeni mountain.

I had walked out of the thicket in a daydream when two dark objects caught my eye from a patch of very tall grass. It struck me like a door being slammed in my face. A monster reedbuck! My sense rushed back to me, and I ducked down like a mongoose spotted by a martial eagle! I came up with binoculars in position. There he was like a god. He had seen me and wasn’t sure what to think of my reaction.

I knew this was not a time for hesitation. The next events blurred together. I felt the .375 rock into my shoulder, and the Barnes X was gone. It was only at this moment that the adrenalin rush caught up with me. The shakes set in.

As I stood up in the open grassland, I realized what had just transpired. I had shot an absolute monster common reedbuck, and it was over as quickly as it had started. I found the animal in the spot where he had been seen standing, and he was bigger and more beautiful than I could have imagined. He measured seventeen inches and had a twenty-one-inch spread from tip to tip. Truly a monster. It was amazing after looking for all these years to suddenly get one, and for it to be done just like that.

I guess sometimes things just work like that.

The huge common reedbuck taken in this story. He measures seventeen inches. I am accompanied by my pup, an Australian cattle dog, Tex.

Extraction on common reedbuck is often very difficult as the mountainous terrain provides many obstacles and limits vehicle access.

Crocodile