Wild & Jag April 2020

Left: Front foot of my bull. Middle: My bull’s ivory. Right: My custom-built .450 Rigby next to the bull’s tail.
rumbling quite loudly. We actually thought they had smelled
us and were going to move off. Standing there for a couple of
minutes, we figured out that they were still around. Slowly we
made our way closer, constantly checking the wind. We were
about 100 steps away when I first saw a big cow. Pointing
her out to Tinie, we realised that the three bulls had met up
with a whole herd. There must have been 15 to 20 animals in
the herd.
Approaching very slowly, we paid a great deal of attention
to the wind direction. When we were about 10 steps from the
closest cow, we could clearly see the massive bull standing
right in the centre of the herd. He was definitely bigger than
the rest but was standing behind a tree once again and didn’t
present a shot opportunity. A young bull actually spotted us
and was quite curious. He walked up to us, trying to figure
out what we were. At one stage he must have been no
further than five steps, his trunk raised high in the sky. It was
at this moment that I was very thankful for having such an
experienced PH as well as Rich next to me. This situation
could get very nasty very quickly as these young bulls were
very unpredictable.
Thankfully, the youngster eventually lost interest and
My custom-built .450 Rigby on my bull with two 480 gr Woodleigh Hydros
10
GAME & HUNT APRIL 2020