LCA’s first hunt
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It was time for us to go hunt the eland cow Johnny Bell donated to Life Christian Adventure (LCA). The whole of February 2010 was spent planning this hunt. End of February, Johnny chose a good location for the pop-up blind, thus allowing enough time for the game to get used to the blind.
We left on Saturday 22 May 2010 for the farm, located in the Eastern Free State, Wepener district. We arrived on the farm around 17:30. The hunting arrangement was that I will have a day and a half to try and shoot an eland cow with my bow from the blind, and if I was not successful by Monday afternoon around 14:00, we will hunt the eland with Johnny’s 30-06 rifle. Sunday just after dawn I was in the blind. I quickly ranged a few points to determine the distance I needed to set my sight; the distance would be between 20 - 25 yards. At around 10:00 there was a herd of eland cow that walked past the blind, but did not even stop. No more than 30 minutes later a herd of oryx came in, one bull with five cows. They settled at 40 yards. The rest of the day they ruled, no eland, springbuck, or blesbuck were allowed close to the salt lick.
That night, around the fire, I discussed the day’s activities with Johnny and he gave permission to shoot a young eland bull, if one came in. He asked nicely that I do not shoot any of the big bulls he had on the farm.
I could not believe it when the first game to walk in the next morning, were 3 big eland bulls. The longer I watched them, the bigger they got, and eventually I took a few photos. I did not want to ruin the first LCA hunt by shooting the wrong animal. When I later showed the photos to Johnny, he indicated that they were shooters and not his trophy bulls!
The oryx came back, but this time they did not hinder any other game from coming in. I was still watching the oryx when a herd of 7 young eland bull ran in from the back. They eventually settled and I lined up on one of the youngsters, but before I could take the shot they became suspicious and left.
At 14:00 Johnny picked me up and after a few practice shots with the 30-06 we decided to go look for a young eland bull. We had not travelled far when the eland was spotted. They were standing in a semi-dry pan. We got off the vehicle and started to stalk them. There were enough trees between them and us which allowed us to get close enough for a shot. Johnny shot the bull, it was a good shot and it did not go further than 30m. The bull's horns were 27 inches, carcass weighed 252kg.
The meat was process into biltong and droëwors. We sold everything, and the money was donated to an orphanage of Life Christian Foundation, The Promise Centre in Mozambique.