I had booked a hunt with Thwane Safari’s as I had heard of the vast number of Kudu Bulls available there. So I set out with my PH Rhuan Barnard on the first day in hope of getting a nice trophy bull.
We had walked the whole of the first morning and only seen a few young bulls and decided to head back to camp. This is when I first encountered the Bull that would torment me in the days to come. Whilst making our way back to the vehicle we spotted a very mature bull, characterised by his very narrow set of horns, which my PH Rhuan informed me was well over Roland. But a bull of this age and size doesn’t get to be like that by offering up many opportunities to hunters. He had seen us long before we saw him and took off into the bush.
Now my sights were set on only one bull. We went in search of him that afternoon, and although I had the opportunity to take another nice bull, I had decided to see if the narrow horned bull wouldn’t present himself. This ended up feeling like a mistake as on the second day, although we saw many Kudu bulls, none of them were of trophy size.
Day three was my last day of the hunt, and as fate would have it, the weather was overcast, so we knew that not much would be on the move. After about 3 hours of walking the sun eventually came out and that’s when I got my chance. We were lucky enough to intercept a group of 5 Kudu bulls on their way to a nearby watering hole. Of the 5, four of them were trophy bulls, but all I could focus on was the narrow horned bull amongst them. My adrenaline was pumping as my PH Rhuan got me into a good position and I managed to take the shot. To my relief, we recovered the bull within 30 meters of where it was shot.
Thank you Thwane Safaris and my excellent PH Rhuan for allowing me to persevere on my narrow horned bull, which in the end produced a beautiful unique specimen of 57′ 6/8.
BRETT PADOA
