Outdoor Writer
Our family thrives on sarcasm. One of my son’s favorite sayings when he hears me sparring with my daughter is, “This family is going to hell; straight and surely to hell!”
Of course, they get it from me. I’m a geneticist, and after two sentences of conversation anybody can see that I carry a full complement of smart-alecky genes. But there are times when one meets one’s match…
On my first African safari, Arnold Claassen of Blaauwkrantz Safaris was my PH. He is now my, long-suffering friend. He’s also a very perceptive man and decided to give me as good as I gave in the verbal stakes, and I ended up hunting with the sarcastic equivalent of my son or daughter.
It begins…
“You had one job, just one job!” Arnold shook his head in disgust. The little common duiker had been beautifully, but precariously, placed atop the bush next to me. However, just as Arnold was about to take a photograph with my camera, I noticed some blood on the animal’s mouth. So, to protect future viewers of the trophy shot from any icky bits, I had reached up to dab away the blood, which promptly led to a slow tumble of the antelope from bush to ground. I felt very small as Arnold and our tracker, Neville, repositioned the duiker at my shoulder height. I don’t think I breathed again until the session finished, but Arnold was still muttering under his breath as he carried the little animal back up the hill to the truck.
And the next time…
“Where the #%&!!! did your first shot go?!” exploded Arnold. This wasn’t the only time my PH asked this, and Arnold’s curse was well-deserved. From the solidest of rests, I had missed a 100-yard shot at a stationary klipspringer. Of course, this did not keep me from trying to justify myself, but my pathetic excuses elicited a scathing look and, “I told you the first day, when we were checking out your rifle, that you had the scope set too high, and that you would be shooting over animals!”
And again…
“You do know that the scope has settings other than 14x, don’t you?” Now, I admit that of all the episodes of PH-rebuking, this one was likely the most well-deserved. Throughout my safari I had problems finding animals in the field of view of my wonderful Nightforce scope that sat majestically atop my Remington 7mm Magnum. I purchased this scope after weeks of consideration. I even contacted François Rudman at Blaauwkrantz Safaris to get his advice on what magnification I might need for hunting my prime species of interest, the tiny and almost-always-taken-at-extreme-distances, Vaal rhebok. (By this time in my hunt, the diminutive ‘Vaalie’ was long since in the salt and I would not again come close to the 325-yard shot used to collect the little ram.) But I liked being able to see exactly where I was to aim on subsequent trophies and had therefore left the scope turned to full magnification. At least that is what I told Arnold right after his bitter admonition. The truth was that, in my innocence and excitement, I never considered that I could pick up the chosen animal faster if I increased my field of view with a lower setting. And Arnold wasn’t one to let me get away with the feeble argument of needing a larger target: “So tell me,” he said, “how did your decision to keep your scope cranked all the way up work out for you, when you almost shot a second mountain reedbuck because you couldn’t see the one you’d already hit in your tiny field of view?!”
And finally…
My long-suffering PH warned me. He had taken the time to explain repeatedly what might happen if I placed a speedy 7mm round into a klipspringer. In fact, to really hammer home his point, he had shown me an online video of a hunter who used a high-speed cartridge that turned a beautiful male klippie into a good imitation of a naked mole-rat – a disgusting little mammal that is a mass of pink, wrinkly skin. So, after having missed an easy first shot at the stationary klippie, I took the time to carefully aim behind the shoulder of the diminutive ram as he paused on another rock ledge.
As I came down out of the recoil from the second shot, I heard my PH shout, “You blew him up!” Sure enough, where the klippie once stood there was now only a slowly dissipating cloud of grizzled hair. Though I have had lower moments in my hunting career, I could not at the time remember them. As we reached the klippie, I sighed with relief to see that the nearside was intact. However, when Arnold flipped the little male over, I almost screamed. This was when Arnold came into his own as a truly top-rate, sensitive guide. Looking into my eyes that were threatening to tear up with horror, he tenderly delivered his verbal coup de grâce: “Just make sure to put that side of the mounted klippie up against the wall of your trophy room.”
The author would challenge anyone to find a better outfitter/PH than his friend Arnold Claassen. Don’t let the sarcasm fool you; after countless Safaris with great PHs, in numerous African countries, no better PH has surfaced. Check Arnold and his safaris out at https://www.facebook.com/Africanselecthuntingsafaris/.
Mike Arnold is a Professor of Genetics at the University of Georgia and author of the 2022 book, BRINGING BACK THE LIONS: International Hunters, Local Tribespeople, and the Miraculous Rescue of a Doomed Ecosystem in Mozambique. Mike’s book is available for purchase at bringingbackthelions.com.