By Mike Handley
-- Sweat rivulets scrimshawed my dusty face as I labored to keep up with Christo Carstens. Jogging pell-mell through the savannahs of South Africa can quickly humble a desk potato who’s supported R.J. Reynolds for more than three decades.
The first day of a weeklong safari, after a morning of playing cat and mouse with a couple of ever-wary kudu bulls, we found ourselves knee deep in long grass, moving in and out of the shadows cast by stands of acacia. Christo was valiantly trying to get downwind of a herd of blue wildebeests intent upon remaining downwind from us.
Photo: The population of blue wildebeests is thriving in southern Africa. This old bull’s position in the herd hierarchy was filled almost immediately by one of the many younger males.
By some strange and fortunate twist of fate, these animals were foolish enough to think they could outrun any threat wearing a hat and wheezing. True, perhaps, but they should’ve followed their instinct and left us choking on their dust. Instead, they kept zigzagging ahead — never far enough to dissuade Christo, though I was plenty dissuaded.
Whenever I was thoroughly convinced that we were out of the hunt, however, I’d hear the increasingly familiar moan. Wildebeests are vocal animals. Their low calls sound like something between a fat man passing gas and a white-tailed buck grunting.
It’s a lot more subtle than the sometimes scary beer belch of a rutting impala ram.
For nearly two hours, I became quite accustomed to seeing the back of Christo’s sweat-stained shirt and hearing the low bellows and snorts of our quarry to the fore. We’d seen the herd bull several times, always on the move, but never long enough in the open for us to set up a shot.
I was beginning to hate blue wildebeests.
The first time I went to South Africa, shooting one of these critters didn’t really appeal to me. They’re homely buggers, resembling some kind of experiment gone terribly awry. Think of the molecularly-challenged Jeff Goldblum in “The Fly.”
Unlike other antelope inhabiting the plains of southern Africa, these rascals are anything but graceful. A steep back tapers down to narrow hips and a long-haired tail. They have both a black Mohawk that stretches from head to humped back and a black, curled beard that would look more at home on the chin of a Phoenician king.
Their coats are the most attractive feature, ranging from brindle (explaining why they’re also called brindled gnus) to bluish gray with dark stripes cascading off muscled-up shoulders. But they have faces that only a wildebeest mother could love: long, boxy, black, with big teardrop-shaped lobes under their tear ducts.
Trust me on this: Blue wildebeests had to be the inspiration for the mythological Minotaur — half man, half bull; the love child of an unnatural coupling. (I’m not making this up.)
Their nostrils are extremely hairy, too, by design. Since they travel en masse, they kick up a lot of dust. And the myriad hairs in their noses keep the dirt out of their lungs.
Others have described these goat-eyed anomalies as having been assembled with the animal kingdom’s spare parts. God, I wish I’d come up with that line!
The late Robert Ruark, hero of most whiskey-sipping journalists who happen to love the chase AND Africa, once described Cape buffalo as being capable of looking at you like you owe them money. Blue wildebeests look at you as if they owe YOU money.
It’s hard to believe that they are among the favorite prey of lions, hyenas, crocodiles and other carnivores. Of all the antelope I’ve sampled on my plate, wildebeest is the strongest, toughest cut of meat to swallow. It’s best suited for sausage, which I’ve also eaten.
Yet for all their ugliness … for all their culinary worthlessness to civilized men, I had to have one when I returned to South Africa — due in no small part to a friend’s shoulder mount, which I’d have to say is one of the prettiest African animals gracing the crowded walls of our office.
So before I ever boarded the plane to Johannesburg, I did my homework. I learned all I could about them, including what constitutes a trophy among bulls with seemingly very little differences.
Blue wildebeests are gregarious and social creatures, always living (and surviving) in groups of 20 to 40 animals, mostly cows and calves led by a mature bull. Small clans of bachelors sometimes shadow the main herd. They graze in the mornings and evenings, require a lot of water, and spend the midday hours in the shadows.
Those that aren’t eaten (or shot) can live up to 20 years. But the herd bull we were after would never see his 20th birthday.
As soon as we cleared a section of bush, we saw the bulk of the herd galloping away in yet another cloud of teeth-coating dust. But lo and behold, the big bull was well behind the throng of horns and hooves — loping along, tail swishing, and no doubt grunting. Christo planted the homemade shooting sticks firmly in the ground a second before the inquisitive bull stopped to take our measure.
What might’ve been a shot on the fly was now a piece of cake. I lifted the scratched-up .30-06 atop the sticks and found the bull’s shoulder in my scope. Afterward, as the animal rocketed forward, Christo slapped me on the back.
“Great shot, Mike,” he was grinning like a Red Sox fan. “We’ll find him about 80 yards.”
Sure enough, 80 steps away, the pot-bellied bull had skidded to a halt beneath a scrubby tree.
“They always go 80 yards when shot through the heart,” Christo explained. “I don’t know why that is, but it’s so.”
It truly was an exceptional specimen, beautiful in its ugliness, with horns well past the ears.
One can hunt a lot of animals and be completely satisfied once he’s crossed them off his mental to-do list. Caribou are like that. Everyone should hunt the tundra at least once, but I think most people could get their fill of it in one trip.
Africa isn’t like that. I’ll never get my fill of that faraway place. And as far as animals go, I can’t say that I’ve had my fill of chasing wildebeests either. Next time, should I be as fortunate, I’m going to have the entire hide tanned for a bedspread.
Now if I could just find a legal way to bring some of that wildebeest sausage back to the States!
Editor’s Note: Mark Twain once said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.” If you’ve ever considered going to Africa, there is no better time than now, and it’s surprisingly affordable. For more information on the various hunting packages offered by Amber African Adventures in both South Africa and Zambia, call Jessie Jimenez at (830) 866-3756 or Russell Weakland at (301) 790-2084.
– Mike Handley
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