Canadian Hunter returns after 16 years to target bushpig

Last week Darryll Hartwick from Canada returned to Blaauwkrantz to target bushpig.Darryll hunted here in 1997 with my Father,Arthur Rudman as his PH when he bagged amongst others a very good "black" bushbuck ram.

After multiple other African hunting destinations and 16 years later Darryll was unlucky on the first evening of his 2nd Blaauwkrantz hunt when the pigs caught our wind, so it was all up to the last evening of his short four day hunt  to taste bushpig success.In between he managed to hunt a fine common reedbuck and grysbok too and so not only was he lucky in dropping this fine 150lbs boar in its tracks but the pigs actually got to the bait before complete darkness, making his twilight shot quite a special occurrence in itself.

Well done to Darryll, our current Bushking!

450 Nitro Express slays a tusker on Blaauwkrantz

Bigbore huntsman Dave Branham from Arizona managed to shoot this old tusker with his 450 Nitro Express double rifle last week after an exciting hunt.

Driving along in my Landcruiser, we spotted the pig disappearing into some very thick bush and as it did I noticed that the old beast was limping quite a bit.We set off after it and due to our extremely thick bush we naturally could hardly see a thing.I got my tracker Jeffrey and student PH,Andrew to track the monster while Dave and I waited ahead in a clearing hoping they would flush it.This was also fruitless.Knowing that this was a really special trophy I decided to fetch the tracker dogs and after a couple of hours we were back at the spot and not long after turning Chalky and Jone loose we heard that they had something in bay.Dave's short double rifle was perfect for the crawling and pushing through the dense thicket to where the hounds were barking.The dogs knew better than to get too close and kept their distance making it possible for Dave to shoot the boar at 6 yards in the thick stuff.It took off and disappeared again but after a 25 yard track we found the beast dead with a good double lung shot.
It was a really old tusker, possibly 12-13 years old and had been fighting with other boars in the rut, resulting in the injuries and limp that I noticed when we first saw it.The longest tusk measured just shy of 14 inches making it a really great warthog for Blaauwkrantz.

Congratulations Dave!