cousins, the topic of bowhunting came up. They told me they each had a bow and hunted a bit with it on their father’s farm. The farm was next to the Zimbabwe border, the previous year a hunter had hunted an elephant with his bow on their farm. They had a copy of Africa’s Bowhunter with them and they showed me the trophy page in the magazine. That sparked the interest once again and the next day at the corner café I picked up my very first copy of Africa’s Bowhunter. I read it from front to back probably 3 times before the next issue came out 2 months later. I never missed an issue. I nagged my father for a bow, but he kept on saying that if I want one I could buy it myself.
I went to study in Pretoria in 2005, it was there that I visited my first bow shop situated in Pretoria North. I asked questions and watched DVD’s and learned everything that I could from the owner. I visited 4 bow shops that year and became a regular at most of them, even though I didn’t own a bow. I had my draw length measured at one of the shops, so I would know what bow to get myself. They told me I had a 30” draw. I went to Africa’s Bowhunter’s office in Wonderboom South and bought the back issues of the magazine I had missed. I also bought “Bowhunting in Southern Africa” by Dr. Adrian de Villiers and studied it more diligently than any of my textbooks.
I on the other hand, was forced to help at our school’s food stall at a traditional archery competition at Sterkrivier. I was fascinated by the ability of these archers to shoot moving targets, flying discs and other random targets with only a simple stick and string. I was hooked and had to try it, Lucky for me some of the archers missed the flying discs and lost their arrows in the tall grass so after the shoot a friend and I searched for the lost arrows and found an Easton XX75 Gamegetter II arrow. My friend had an old fiberglass longbow without a string which they had found in the house when they moved in. We quickly took a piece of baling rope and managed to string the bow. We took a box, drew a guineafowl on it and shot the rest of the afternoon at the box, until we lost the feathers on the arrow from pass-through of the box. Trying to fix the arrow we shot some Guinea fowl with the rifle and tried to fletch the arrow with those feathers, without luck. Without being able to shoot the arrow, I lost interest in bow hunting for about a year. That was 18 years ago.
In 2001 at a family reunion, while sitting around and talking about hunting with my