A few of us went to a large wheat and sheep farm about 110km North of Cape Town for a bit of pest control.
The farm is over 8,000 hectares, almost 20,000 acres in size and has two rivers flowing into a dam of 250 hectares, just over 600 acres in size on the farm.
We left home on Tuesday afternoon to arrive on the farm and settle in.
That was followed by getting ready for the night’s shooting, doing a bit of fishing while the first two of us waited for the other two to arrive.
We were asked to look out for and shoot Egyptian Geese, Guinea Fowl, Spur-winged Geese, Crows, Porcupine, Cape Fox, Cape Hare and Caracal.
Due to the size of the farm we used my 4x4 to drive to the various areas on the farm from where we walked into suitable shooting areas.
There was quite a lot of walking involved, over 30km from Tuesday till this afternoon.
We started at dusk on Tuesday and went through till around 08:00 Wednesday morning, after which we had breakfast and took a bit of a break, followed by a nap till mid early afternoon.
That was followed by a bit of plinking and fishing, had a braai and then hunted again till about midnight.
This morning it was up before sunrise to get into a spot where there are usually a lot of spur-winged geese.
A few photos, I did not photograph all the animals shot, just a few.
Total for the trip…
- 15 Guinea Fowl (I shot 7)
- 3 Cape Hare (I shot all three, all off-hand at about 50m)
- 8 Egyptian Geese (I shot 4)
- 2 Crows (I shot both)
Most of the edibles are given to the farm workers who are all too happy to receive it, but I kept two of the Cape Hare and will find suitable dishes to make over the next few weeks.
We are going back in two weeks time for another session which will be the last for the year as there is a holiday resort on the farm next to the dam and it will become busy with December holiday makers. We will start again late January and it will be a regular outing to keep the populations under control once we have it down to the numbers the farmer is happy with.
As usual my Dreamline with 23gr H&N slugs performed perfectly from shots almost straight up into the trees to take Guinea Fowl all the way out to a longest shot of 223m to take an Egyptian Goose.
A few photos… lots of the sunrises as I really enjoyed them...