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May 06 2012

Prep for the NT buff bash

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So, I’ve been slack with sharing progress on preparation for our upcoming NT water buffalo hunt. Current status is that Neil’s and my rigs are tuned and set up. Just final fiddling and fine-tuning left.

Here’s my final paper tune hole…

We’ve spend many hours over the last few months sighing and practicing at different distances. For the buffalo, we’ll be shooting a maximum distance of around 30m, however with a few days of chital deer hunting before the buffalo, we’ve been practicing right out to 50m.

My and Neil’s bows are now tuned, so we’ve been cutting, fletching and glueing…

We’ve had no end of trouble trying to tune my dads Diamond Triumph. The bow is 70# at 28″. I’ve tried all spines of Heritage shafts – 150,250 and 350.

The photo below is the results from left to right:

350 full length
350 29″
250 full length
250 30″
250 29.5″

The next few days will be filled with final preparations and solving the problem of my dads bow. 4 days to go…

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Jan 25 2012

Walk & Stalk Waterbuck

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Walk & Stalk Waterbuck cow shot on the edge of Khadi dam on Smitkraal farm, South Africa.
The hunt started one evening when Andy and I were walking, at sunset, past Khadi dam and saw that a herd of waterbuck cows would go down to the water to drink each evening. After discovering this, we planned to get into position near the water and wait for the herd to come in so we could stalk them.

We attempted hunting Khadi together one evening, with no luck. So a few days later, we went to hunt it again, this time with Jonathan, who was after duiker/steenbok. We decided that we would split up and hunt opposite sides of the dam incase something came in on either side. Jonathan was hunting with Andy and I was on my own.

Sitting and waiting under a tree, I see some movement across the dam. I slowly lift my binos to get a better view and realise it’s a wildebeest bull that we had seen previously at the dam. I radio Andy to see if he’d seen it, which he had, but he’d decided not to stalk due to it being out in the open.

Waiting a bit longer, I can see the wildebeest is distracted by something on the hill behind me. Not 5 minutes after seeing the wildebeest looking behind me, I get a radio call from Andy to say the waterbuck are coming down the hill behind me and are gonna come right past me. 
I get into position under a tree and wait for the herd to walk past me. Everything is dead quiet. First sight I have of the waterbuck is as they’re walking past me, up wind, about 15 meters away. They have their usual alertness that occupies African game when they go down to water. The herd walk past me and down to the water to start drinking. I choose the cow I want to take – a young cow, that’s in the open to avoid pass through woundings on other cows. The waterbuck sees my movement and looks straight at me, with which I just sit dead still…waiting. She decides alls well and goes back to drinking. Now’s my opportunity, I range her and my trusty bushnell says 25 meters. I draw and she sees movement again and looks up. I know it’s now or never, I find my mark on her shoulder, compensate for 25 meters and squeeze the shot off. With the explosion of the bow going off, I watch my 650g arrow disappear behind the waterbucks shoulder. The shot was good! She blasts through the shallows of the water past the rest of the herd, who are also in panic mode trying to find what’s happening. I watch as the herd, with my waterbuck cow, disappear along the river into the thick bush. 

First thing I do after the shot is get on the radio to let Andy know that I had shot a waterbuck and that the shot placement was good. Andy seemed more excited than me! He and Jonathan came around the dam grinning from ear to ear, to help me follow up on the cow. We had limited time as the sun was setting and light was getting low. I talked them through the shot and showed them where she was standing. We start tracking and don’t see any blood until we get to the thick bush she entered, where there was loads of blood that brushed onto the tall grass. We followed her blood trail, which was fairly sparse, over rocky terrain which made tracking difficult. No more than 70 meters later, we found where she’d collapsed. The shot had been good. The wide-cutting Magnus 1 that had smoked through her left a gapping 2″ hole through her chest cavity. We finished off in great camaraderie recalling the hunt and paying our dues to the animal that had given itself while the African sun set on horizon.

Details -
Bow: Hoyt Maxis 31 - 78lbs, 28" draw
Arrows: Carbon Express Heritage 350s with 300g Magnus 1 broadhead. Total arrow weight of 650g.
Sight: Cobra Python 5 pin
Arrow rest: Trophy Ridge Kill Shot
Release: Scott Sabertooth Buckle Strap
Quiver: Tight Spot 5 arrow
Distance: 25m
Recovery: 70m
Pass Through: Yes

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Oct 13 2011

Hello World!

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Hello!!!

Welcome to my new blog! Obviously, if you know me, you probably know about my photography blog over at nigelivy.com; this blog is aimed to share my hunting/fishing/travel adventures and my technology interests/findings (seeing as I am a director of a technology company!), and of course any other ramblings that I might want to share… If you look at the menu, you’ll see a section for Galleries – this is going to contact mainly hunting photos, so don’t go there unless you don’t mind seeing a few dead animals.

So, keep posted while I go and finish installing iOS 5 on my iPad 2!:)

P.S. – I’d like to give a special thanks to my good friend and colleague, Dan, for helping me set up this blog!

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