By Brad Isham

No one can dispute the beauty of the kudu. With its double helix horns, face paint, long graceful legs, and the ridge of hair down the centre of its back, the kudu is what most first time African bowhunters seek to take home.

I was no different. As I planned my trip to South Africa my friends would ask, “What do you want to kill? How many animals are you going to get?” I would simply tell them that if I were lucky enough to get a kudu, anything else that happened would be fine.

It was my first day at Manzi game lodge and I was in a ground blind with walls of roughly laid stone and a sub-grade foundation of brick and mortar. The walls were a foot thick on top of the two-foot thick foundation, which was approximately two feet high, but below the ground. This left a ledge around the entire inside perimeter of the blind, about a foot deep, for a hunter to leave his pack, binoculars, water bottle and anything else he needed to be comfortable, as he would in the blind all day. Thankfully, an experienced PH had also left a one-gallon pee bottle. I unpacked, put on some face paint, nocked an arrow and settled in.

The first day, of course, was filled with anticipation and my mind created scenes of animals walking in from the many game trails surrounding the blind. Their approaches were slow, silent and cautious. I saw kudu cows in the bush and carefully raised the binoculars to reveal Y-shaped branches in the bushveld scrub that I had been sure were faces and ears.

I saw warthogs across a game trail which, according to the binoculars, were rocks and termite mounds. I had been sure they were moving just a minute ago. The shadows made them real. I was amused at the power of imagination. In the oak woods at home in Virginia or half way around the world my mind plays the exact same games.

I had been shooting well and had complete confidence in my Grizzly Stick shafts and silver flame broadheads. I had made a 67-pound, 66-inch reflex-deflex longbow for this hunt. I named it Thabazimbi, after the area I would be hunting in, which means “Mountain of Iron”. The bow had bamboo and yew limbs, and a cocobolo riser. It shot like a whisper and drove the 600-grain arrows like a nail gun. The arrows go where I point and the bow and I were content to be here.

This hunting concession is bow only. Our PH, Peter is a bowhunter, although I don’t think he has ever seen anyone shoot a longbow. It amazes me how many people don’t realise that traditional archery still exists, much less that it is an effective means of hunting. Peter watched at the practice targets and commented on how quiet the longbow was.

I love traditional archery and love to introduce it to people. Peter and I talked while I shot and I tried to answer his questions without overwhelming detail. He asked if we could make time during the week to let him shoot one of my longbows. I told him any time. Passing on traditional archery is very important to me. I believe that if you give something away it lasts forever. If you keep it, it dies with you.

The blind was quiet except for Guinea hens scratching about. Three lined up at the waterhole in a direct line away from me at 16 yards and I couldn’t help thinking about shooting all three with one arrow, shish-kabob style, to bring to Pikkie, Peter’s wife, to cook for dinner one evening.

I asked Peter later about killing them for camp meat and he told me his favorite guineafowl hen recipe. Place three guineafowl hens in a large pot of boiling water with a rock. Add salt, pepper and spices. Boil for 20 minutes. Remove the hens, throw them away and eat the rock.

I elected not to shoot guineafowl after that, although it was fun thinking of drilling three with one arrow.

I looked out of the shooting window and saw a wildebeest standing at 60 yards, staring directly into the shooting hole. I leaned left to get a better view to the right and saw the rest of the herd. There were several young bulls in the front. A few large bulls were with them, their horns past their ears and heavy bosses meeting close at the centre of their heads.

The large bulls cautiously waited at the periphery as the young wildebeest worked their way to the water like some rehearsed sacrifice. They waited for signs of trouble and eventually filed in. They constantly reshuffled themselves at the water, tested the wind and peered into the shooting hole. The muscles of their forelegs spasmed nervously. Their nerves coerced my own.

My heart pounded as I tried to slow my breathing and regain calm. I resolved to shoot a wildebeest, if they would only calm down.

My plan changed abruptly as a kudu bull walked in from the right side of the blind. There was no hole on the right so I didn’t see him until he was just a few steps from the water. He walked directly to it and took the front position between the wildebeests and me. There went my heart again! I had been dreaming of kudu for a year, ever since this hunt had been booked. Now it was here.

The bull was not a monster, but a good representative of his species, with two full curls and ivory tips. Trophy kudu bulls have horns noticeably past the second curl. This one was a beautiful trophy for me and I was happy to have it standing broadside at 18 yards.

With all of the buck fever trembling confidence I could harness I slid out of my seat to the floor of the blind. With great caution I raised my bow and myself into the dark shadows of the blind, on the side of the shooting hole where the kudu’s vision was impaired.

I stood watching, breathing slowly, trying to find just the right spot in the “African Triangle” above the front leg. I waited to give both the kudu and myself time to relax. I stepped carefully forward with my left leg. I found the spot and came to full draw.

The wildebeest no longer existed in my mind’s eye, only the kudu. I took one last breath and released. Crack! The bow made a sound that instantly alerted me that something was very, very wrong.

I felt sick as I watched a feeble arrow pass through the tall hair on the hump above the kudu’s shoulder, well beyond anything vital. All hooves exited the waterhole in a great panic. I watched from the small window as my kudu ran alone through the bush and out of sight. I knew he would not be recovered.

Emotionally drained, I recreated the disaster inside the blind. What I found was that the lower limb of my bow had struck the ledge inside the blind. I had stepped too close to the shooting window. There was a small fracture in the glass of my lower limb, and a hole in my heart.

I waited to make sure all of the animals had left the area, then exited the blind to check my arrow. There was blood. My heart sank even lower. A little blood was barely visible on the shaft. It was only on one side on two of the four feathers. Why couldn’t it have been a clean miss?

I walked back to the blind, turned on the radio, and called Peter. I sat waiting for him, already knowing the outcome of my mistake.

Peter arrived with his lead tracker, Daniel, two Jack Russell terriers and his .375 bolt-action rifle. I didn’t like the idea of shooting the kudu with the rifle but I knew I had no option. Even seeing the kudu again would be a miracle. We walked behind Daniel as he tracked. We found only single spots of blood, very few and very far between. I knew this was not good.

Peter told me the plans for the dogs. We would release them on the kudu’s trail. When they sounded we would run as fast as we could to them. The kudu would either stay to fight the dogs, or he would run. If he fought we may get another arrow or a bullet in him. If he ran he probably wouldn’t stop.

The dogs sounded, we ran. Peter was the same height as me, but probably outweighed me by 40 pounds. His speed amazed me as he moved 30 yards ahead in the first few seconds.
The kudu had chosen the flight option. We tracked it until we ran out of blood and spoor and even the dogs circled back, exhausted and dejected.

Peter assessed the situation and told me matter of factly what I had known when I had released the string. He asked if I wanted to go back to the lodge or spend the rest of the day in the blind. I told him I wasn’t yet ready to face my mistake or my wife and friends at the lodge. I elected to stay.

Very diplomatically, he tried to assure me that this was the ugly side of bowhunting nobody wanted to see or talk about, but it happened, sooner or later to everyone. I knew this, of course, and I appreciated his efforts, but I owned this mistake and the wound was still fresh.

I spent a long rest of the day alone in the blind. Peter picked me up that evening, bringing my hunting partners and our wives with him. I wasn’t prepared to see everyone, but they had all been told what had happened and were there to support me, which softened some of my pain and embarrassment.

At the lodge that evening, Peter told me he had seen animals that had been hit and not recovered return to the same waterhole. The chances of seeing the kudu again were slight, but I had to try.

I hunted at the waterhole a few more times during the week at Peter’s direction. He rotated other hunters in camp into the blind as well. I tried not to give up hope, but it was running thin. Unless I was chosen for a miracle I doubted I would ever see the kudu again.

One day in the blind a single kudu bull came in. I examined it with binoculars at 16 yards for 30 minutes, looking for anything that might resemble an injury. I looked at it from all angles, several times. I never found a mark or any indication of a wound. The bull was similar, but I was positive it was not my bull. He and I shared the time peacefully until he decided to walk untroubled into the bushveld and out of sight.

Even the smallest wounds in Africa will become infected, cause disease, and certain death. Thank God for His plan to clean up our mistakes. This doesn’t make the gravity of the mistake any less severe. God does, however, ensure that other creatures may benefit from my error.

Eventually the kudu bull will become weak and sick and the leopards will have their way with him. The caracals and monitor lizards will have their share. The buzzards will circle down from the sky for the rest. The bones will be stripped clean by rodents and insects and eventually recede into the earth. The great-spiraled horns may be the last to go.

In the end, all that will be left of the kudu bull will be a memory, my memory, for all time.