00:00:04 Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places, and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle, and I can't lie, I am flat out ecstatic to bring you this episode. Y'all may remember from back in a bonus drop that we did in the summer talking with a guy named Joshua Laws about some of his time spent working with an anti-poaching team in Africa, I said that at some point in the near future, we would be taking a deeper dive into that continent, into its storied and fascinating past with its wildlife and its wild places and into its incredibly rich and frankly, widely unknown and or misunderstood relationship with hunting. I invite all of you to dive in with me to this obsession that I have found with Africa and and African hunting. And I also invite all of you to walk into this with an open mind. Whether the majority of your influence about African hunting or African wildlife has come from Disney movies, National Geographic, old outdoor channel shows, or maybe even the 1980s Robert Redford classic, Out of Africa, I can promise you the reality of what goes on over there and what has gone on over there is much different than how it's been widely portrayed. It's one of those instances where, in reality, It's actually way cooler than some of the stories you may have been told, in my opinion. But anyway, let's dive into it. And by dive into it, I mean, let's set some boots on the ground in Africa. So It's June 20th, 2026, roughly 8 a.m. in the morning. 00:02:04 Speaker 2: I'm standing near the. 00:02:05 Speaker 1: Mukuzi River in KwaZulu-Natal, a coastal province located in the eastern part of South Africa. Standing with me is my wife, Lacey, and our PH, Cullen Kelly, and his tracker, Pat. The four of us are currently looking at a large herd of Cape buffalo. 00:02:25 Speaker 2: You see them coming there? 00:02:27 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:02:29 Speaker 2: You see, there's a car. He's the second one. 00:02:32 Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Oh, wow. I'm looking at him. 00:02:36 Speaker 2: He does look nice. 00:02:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a beast. 00:02:40 Speaker 1: A buffalo like that, Colin, I know you said he's young. How old do you think he is right now? 00:02:45 Speaker 2: He's probably about seven, eight years old. 00:02:47 Speaker 3: Wow. 00:02:48 Speaker 4: Until his body's, you know, not massive, and you can see his neck. 00:02:54 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. 00:02:54 Speaker 2: It's deceiving because he's got mud on his bosses. But I would say he's still not 100% finished. Yeah. 00:03:02 Speaker 1: What a crazy view, man. 00:03:05 Speaker 3: Group of hippos. 00:03:06 Speaker 1: You see the waterbuck over there? 00:03:07 Speaker 3: Heard a buffalo. Isn't that what that is? Waterbuck? Yeah, it is a waterbuck. 00:03:12 Speaker 1: Waterbuck. Mountains in the background. 00:03:18 Speaker 3: Crazy looking, man. 00:03:21 Speaker 1: Look at these buffalo coming. 00:03:22 Speaker 3: Right to us. 00:03:24 Speaker 1: Allow me to set the stage before we go any further into this. And if you will, let me invite you into a very frankly personal part of my life. I went to Africa for the first time in 2023, a relatively short plains game hunt with my wife and two other very good friends of ours. That one short trip was enough to garner a brand new obsession for me. And let me share one more important detail because I feel like there's a chance that this may relate to some of you out there. Before my first trip to Africa in 2023, I honestly had little to no interest in ever going over there to hunt. However, all of that changed when I went over there and experienced it myself. 00:04:04 Speaker 3: All of it. 00:04:05 Speaker 1: What I found was a wilderness like I had never experienced before. With the story of hunting and conserving wildlife all its own. A story that I hope to share with you just a small part of today. 00:04:18 Speaker 2: Oh, they're opening their jaws. 00:04:20 Speaker 3: The hippos? Yeah, look at it. 00:04:23 Speaker 5: Get it. 00:04:23 Speaker 1: On your hammer. 00:04:26 Speaker 2: There's an old bull at the back there. 00:04:30 Speaker 1: Really? 00:04:31 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a beautiful buffalo. 00:04:33 Speaker 1: And if you're wondering why you're hearing the four of us discuss this large herd of buffalo coming our way with nothing but a camera shutter firing off, well, that's because I actually got a Cape buffalo the day before this. It was one of the coolest hunts of my life, but... More on that later. As we move through this episode, we'll go back and forth to some of our more notable moments when we were on the ground there. But for now, the more pressing matter at hand is for all of us to get a better understanding of the wildlife and history of that wildlife in the place where I was hunting in this episode. KwaZulu-Natal and more specifically Zululand. I want to kick this off by sharing with you two very real stories that happened while we were out hunting on this trip. They'll hopefully leave you feeling entertained, but they'll also give you an idea of just how wild. 00:05:23 Speaker 3: This place is. 00:05:25 Speaker 1: Can we share the story about the kings and palas? 00:05:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. 00:05:30 Speaker 1: Okay, so let me tee this one up. This is in terms of like things just being wild. So that was our first morning of hunting. We were looking for mainly buffalo, but also kudu, because that's what my wife Lacey was wanting to hunt. And I think we were, I don't know, I think it was like late morning and you get a phone call and you look at me and you say something along the lines of, the king has just called me. He needs to Impala for a ceremony. Would you mind shooting them? And I looked at you and being honest, what was going through my head was, is this guy messing with me right now? Like what king has called you and asked for Impala? 00:06:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:06:09 Speaker 4: No, so it's, yeah, the king's palace is close to our boundary. 00:06:15 Speaker 1: Zulu king. 00:06:15 Speaker 2: Zulu king, yeah. So the king of the Zulu people. 00:06:18 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:06:20 Speaker 4: And yeah, obviously, you know, whenever he will call us like that, we're more than willing to help out. And obviously, him being, you know, the position that he has and, you know, being close to us, yeah, we obviously always go out of our way to help him. 00:06:39 Speaker 1: Yeah. So, and it was just wild, man. Probably not as wild to you because you're here every day, but like we had that little conversation. Lacey didn't quite catch it. Lacey goes, what are we doing? And I looked at her, I said, we're going to shoot Impala for the Zulu King. And then I said, I don't even feel like that's a real sentence, but apparently that's what we're going to do. 00:07:00 Speaker 2: It's kind of strange to think about it like that. 00:07:03 Speaker 1: I've told so many people that story already. In terms of other, like, wild experiences and i'm not even sure which day this was but we had seen some buffalo on the river and spotted them and we moved around we were trying to uh following pat and you and we were trying to see if we could get to them and you were worried that it was so thick that we were we weren't going to be able to get up to them and we were making our way there and uh we're probably within 100 yards of where those two buffalo were along the bank of that river and then I hear a noise, not, didn't seem far from us. 00:07:41 Speaker 3: It was loud. 00:07:41 Speaker 1: And you turned around and looked at me and said, leopard. And I'm like, there's a leopard growling in the trees. There's two buffalo up there. This is just the wildest out of world experience I think I'd ever, I'd ever experienced in my life until that point. I'm like, what is he, what even is life right now? Like, it's just crazy. 00:08:01 Speaker 4: I mean, it just shows you how wild this area is. I mean, I think that was, three o'clock in the afternoon. 00:08:05 Speaker 3: I mean, it was early. 00:08:06 Speaker 2: We were walking up, just talking up. 00:08:08 Speaker 4: To East Buffalo and there's a leopard calling, you know, within like 50 yards of us right in the bush there. So, yeah, and I mean, I mean, you've seen multiple times how we've seen all the lion tracks like following the buffalo and obviously we've seen the lions a couple of times but it just shows you, I mean, how wild this area is. I mean, I mean, yeah, what an amazing experience to hear that leopard while we're going after buffalo. 00:08:33 Speaker 1: Look, I tell you, there's just some situations in life that you just don't ever picture yourself ending up in. And my wife and I getting to hunt two impala for the Zulu king that they then used for a ceremony at the palace, well, I definitely just didn't see that coming. However, I can tell you I have gotten so much mileage out of that story. I mean, I've told it to everybody, and now I've told it to y'all. And the leopard growling when we were sneaking up on those buffalo, I'm talking that was just flat out wild, man. For a boy from central Mississippi, I just never pictured that happening to me. It was a rare combination of sending chills down my spine, but also having the time of my life simultaneously. I mean, just incredible. No other way to explain it. But now that we all have a better understanding of how wild this place is, let's really dig into the meat of this subject. Like I mentioned earlier, KwaZulu-Natal is a province. Zululand, however, is a historical and regional name for the northeastern part of it. It refers to the territory of the Zulu kingdom. That place is specifically where we're going to be focusing on today. Which brings me to another important point that we need to go ahead and talk about. This may go without saying, but Africa is like really big, huge even. And I've found oftentimes many folks, myself included, I have definitely been guilty of this, but we will talk about Africa or hunting in Africa or a safari in Africa as if it's one blanket statement, as if you could go on a hunting trip in Africa and it yield the same experience regardless of where you go, as almost as if the history of the wildlife and the wild places in Africa is the same regardless of where you're talking about. Think about it like this. Imagine someone walking up to you and saying, hey, I recently went hunting in America. I don't know about you, but my follow-up question immediately to that would be, awesome, where at in America? Because my mind would go to, well, if you go hunting where I live in Mississippi, you're going to have a very different experience than, let's say, if you went to Idaho or even Alaska. The same principle applies to Africa. A hunt where, let's say, where Steve went in Tanzania is going to be a very different experience than, say, going to the dense forest of Cameroon. I found out really quickly that there is no way that you could just blanket cover African wildlife, African wildlife management, and hunting in a single podcast episode. There's no way. I would be doing a disservice to you, a disservice to the show, a disservice to everybody, really. So I thought it would be best practice if we zoomed in on a very specific place and covered its story, its wildlife. And Zululand, where I was at, is a very, very special place with special people. And speaking of special people, it's time we heard from some of them. What's the first memory that you have that's associated with hunting? 00:11:26 Speaker 3: Was that going back when I was a child? All the way back. All the way back. I guess it would have. 00:11:32 Speaker 6: Been back when I was probably 12 years old, when I went with my dad, took us up to hunt blessbuck in an area where I live in the mountains. And so we went up there to hunt blessbuck, and my dad said, that can be all. first trophy to go after. And we had to hunt it properly. You know, we had to stalk it, crawl, whatever it was after the animal. And I actually shot and wounded it. So that was my first lesson of to learn to shoot properly. But we eventually got it and it was all turned out being really good. 00:12:05 Speaker 3: Yeah. So your dad hunted then? 00:12:08 Speaker 6: He hunted, but not as a professional hunter though. You know, he hunted just for the pleasure of hunting. 00:12:13 Speaker 1: The voice that you just heard belongs to a man by the name of Gary Kelly. And you might have put this together already, but you may have noticed that the PH I was standing with earlier looking at Buffalo was named Cullen Kelly. Cullen is the youngest son of Gary. Gary, Cullen, and his other son, Sean, run an operation called Gary Kelly Safaris. Gary Kelly Safaris is a safari outfitter that has been in existence since 1970. Now, Gary is what you would refer to in America as... An OG, a pioneer, a man whose family ties to Africa can be traced all the way back to 1816. At the time of this conversation, I was sitting with Gary in a tented camp right along the Makuzi River. And Gary graciously agreed to sit down with me and share some of his own perspectives from a life spent in the African wilderness. Did you just get so into hunting and that you just enjoyed it? Did that lead you to be in the PH? 00:13:11 Speaker 6: I think it was, so our family was from Irish descent and we said, my dad and my grandfather settled in Swaziland, which is, as you know, is a separate country next door to us here. And I was born there and growing up on a reserve like that, we all spoke about it. We never had the opportunity to do it and they knew some of the really famous professionals from Botswana and Tanzania. So you'd get to meet those guys and they would talk about the things that they did in those countries, and it really excited me. So as a young boy, that's all I ever wanted to do was go hunting. 00:13:48 Speaker 1: Really? 00:13:50 Speaker 3: But I was lucky, though. 00:13:51 Speaker 6: You know, when I came back from the Army, I was given the opportunity to come and work up here on Zooland, but I worked as a fencing boy. So that meant we worked with the laborers, digging holes and putting fences up. And that was the first reserve outside of the game reserves, private reserve. 00:14:10 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:14:10 Speaker 6: A place called Ubizan. So it took us about eight, nine months to fence it. And that was, and I'd work with the laborers. I'd go and meet them in the morning, go there, work from, I think it was seven to 12 and then from two to five in the evening. Yeah. Come back and then we fenced the place off. Then we started bringing game in from the game reserves. 00:14:32 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:14:33 Speaker 6: So that was our start of the first private game reserve outside of the national parks. 00:14:39 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:14:40 Speaker 6: But that was in 1969 and 70 is when that all started. 00:14:49 Speaker 1: Gary just gave us a whole lot to think about and learn there. A lot of fascinating Zulu land and African history that I was completely unaware of before this conversation and then researching all of this. He also used a lot of terms that just aren't all that common in American hunting jargon. Fencing Boy, game reserves, private reserves, things that we're going to have to learn about if we're going to understand this place and its wild places fully. In the year 1988, there was a short film released to the public titled The Zululand Mystery. In it, covered one of the most formative events to ever happen to the wildlife of Zululand. 00:15:35 Speaker 5: During the closing years of the last century, the people of Zululand were facing disaster. Their livelihood, which depended on their herds of cattle, was in jeopardy. The Zulus were helpless in the face of a killer disease which was attacking their livestock, a disease they called Nagana. 00:16:01 Speaker 3: Villages were littered. 00:16:02 Speaker 5: With the corpses of valuable animals, which they'd seen reduced to mere skeletons before their inevitable death. And they were convinced that this was due to their cattle eating food contaminated by local game animals. Meanwhile, the Europeans hunting these game animals had their own problem. Large numbers of their horses were dying, poisoned, they believed, by the deadly bite of the tsetse fly, which infested the game country. Both Zulu and Hunter faced apparently insoluble problems. 00:16:37 Speaker 1: Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, you had two significant things happening in Zululand. And frankly, neither of them were good for the wildlife. One was market hunting. I know that's a term that we're familiar with because we dealt with market hunting issues of our own here in North America back in our early history. Well, Zululand dealt with it as well, with things like elephant ivory, and game skins. This led to the first game reserves being established in the 1890s. The hope of these reserves was to conserve the remaining wildlife. However, with this new landscape and the regulations it involved, African wildlife now offered little to no monetary value, and many of the people that lived there didn't see any value in them at all. However, they did see a whole lot of value in cattle, which brings us to the video clip that we just watched. In Africa lives a blood feeding bug called the tsetse fly. And you would be amazed at the impact that this little bug can make. Ask anybody who's ever hunted in an area where there are tsetse flies present and they will tell you how intolerable those bugs can be. But the reason I bring them up today is because of the role that they play in this story. A sickness they spread called nagana that is fatal to cows. During this perfect storm of events, you had a couple of things happening all at once. One, cows being valued very highly. Two, wildlife not being valued at all. Three, a disease called Nagana being spread by tsetse flies killing all the cows. And four, and this one is the key detail that ties it all together, the common thought at the time that the tsetse flies were only around because of the wildlife. So they thought that if the wildlife was gone, then the tsetse fly would be gone. So What do you think happened next? 00:18:30 Speaker 7: Until a few years ago, large areas of vegetation that formed the habitat of the tsetse fly were cleared. Fences were built to keep cattle away from the wild animals that act as reservoir hosts of trypnosomes. And sometimes the wild animals were just killed. 00:18:55 Speaker 1: From the year 1929 to 1931, over 35,000 wild animals were killed in Zululand in the name of cattle disease control. Not targeting any specific species or anything like that, just killing wild animals. Pretty much a free-for-all. A second campaign was launched in 1943. This one lasted until the year 1950. During that time, over 38,000 more wild animals were killed, again, in the name of cattle disease control. There was also large-scale habitat destruction because the thought was that wildlife habitat was also tsetse fly habitat. There were also fences built around the wildlife reserves in the thinking that they could separate the wild animals from their highly valued cattle. I mean, it's kind of crazy to hear, isn't it? Personally, when I always thought about Africa, when I still think about Africa, I think about all of this untouched, pristine wilderness with wild animals. just running everywhere and thankfully some of it is still like that but the question is how is it like that I mean think about the spot where we started this episode where my wife and I were standing with Cullen and Pat looking at herds of buffalo and hippo swimming in the river and a lot of other animals and we were standing in in Zululand where all of this stuff took place. So how was that possible? How did the place like that in Zululand turn out to be like that when we just heard of all this history that came before it? Well, I think both Gary and Cullen will have some solid insight here. 00:20:26 Speaker 6: So if it wasn't for hunting, there'd be no wildlife left up here at all. If you look, so the areas that we hunted down south, now the Getty Foundation, they own about 200,000 hectares of land. And they've got eight photographic lodges on there. That was where we started the hunting. And it was all cattle. You go and speak to the ranger, they had no idea or have no idea of what it was like back in the 70s. They've just seen it now that it's got game on. But it was hunting that brought the game back into those areas and developed to what it is today. 00:21:03 Speaker 1: Because the hunting added value to the animals. 00:21:05 Speaker 3: Added value to it. Exactly right, yeah. 00:21:07 Speaker 1: That's incredible. 00:21:08 Speaker 3: Changed the whole thing. 00:21:09 Speaker 1: Have there been any significant changes between when you started in 1970 to now that are worth highlighting? 00:21:19 Speaker 6: The biggest change is the amount of game that's available. You know, if I look back, honestly, I mean, we would go, guys would come on a 10-day hunt here. And if you'd go around in a day and if you saw 10 or 15 animals in total, it was a lot. But we were really upfront with the guys. And, you know, I was very lucky to hunt with some of the really top guys in the state, like C.J. McElroy, the guy that started the Safari Club International, a lot of the Weatherby Award guys. Because what was happening is they were coming to South Africa because Mozambique had shut down because of the war in Mozambique. So they were coming here for Inyana, Suni, Red Diker, which they couldn't get up there. But the numbers were small. So we would tell the guys up front, listen, this is brand new. You know, there's not lots of game, but they came anyhow. So, I mean, often the guys would come for 10 days and go home, didn't shoot in the island. 00:22:15 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:22:16 Speaker 6: But their attitude was, you know, we've come here to hunt. This is not a guaranteed type deal. So they would come, go back and book and come back the following year. So that's the biggest change for me is that there was very little game. And as more and more landowners started to realize that there was a value and they started to protect it, so there was more game areas. Whether it was here, up in the Limpopo province, everywhere was the same. 00:22:45 Speaker 1: It didn't happen overnight. But slowly, landowners and other people throughout Zululand began to see the value in wildlife on the landscape once again. Where did this value come from? It came from hunting. Mainly, the economic value driven by people willing to come and pay to go on safari and hunt. And as a result, the wildlife and wild habitats of Zululand all of the sudden had an avenue to make a return. Re-establishment and reintroduction efforts were started, mainly by taking wild animals from some of those original game reserves and moving them to what were now private properties, or private reserves. What was so cool about learning this for me is the parallels that I saw between this part of the story and some of our own history here at home. We have several instances in North America where we took species that were almost wiped out and relocated them. We did it in Mississippi with wild turkeys. We've done it with white-tailed deer. Turns out Zululand in Africa has done some of the same things, except instead of moving around deer and turkeys, they were moving around elephants, lions, and yala and impala. Conservation being spearheaded by hunting all the same. And what's so cool is that Gary Kelly was there to witness all of this. 00:23:56 Speaker 6: It's hunting plays a major, major part in it. And if it wasn't for hunting, what happened here in Zuland, it was my, I mean, I was right involved in it. It's not third hand or somebody else telling a story about it. You know, there would be no game here. It was hunting that brought it in 100%. 00:24:12 Speaker 1: And after, I'm not blowing smoke because I'm sitting here talking to you or because I'm talking into a microphone. After what myself, my wife, my friends have gotten to see these past seven days, Just to think about that going away, that would be a shame. Because this is special, man. What y'all got here is special. 00:24:36 Speaker 3: It really is special. 00:24:38 Speaker 1: Incredible. 00:24:40 Speaker 3: Thank you. 00:24:41 Speaker 1: I asked you what would happen to this place if y'all left and stopped hunting it, and you were like, it would all go to cattle. It wouldn't be like this anymore. 00:24:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. 00:24:51 Speaker 4: So if there was no hunting, so a lot of the I'm just talking specifically the reserves around us. The photographic reserves around us, a lot of them are owned by people that are extremely wealthy, so they're putting in money every year. On this reserve, if we didn't have hunting, 100% it would go back to cattle farming. The community would take it back to cattle farming. 00:25:20 Speaker 2: I mean, so. 00:25:21 Speaker 4: I did mention to you, we've got a 99-year lease here. So we pay a yearly lease to the community. We give them all the meat. All our staff are employed here or from the community. I think there's 52 families in the community, 130-odd people that we look after. So, yeah, I mean, if you look at the bigger picture here, it's amazing what the hunting actually does for this area. 00:25:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, and I try, I mean, believe me, man, I'm going to try my best to paint that picture just using podcasting words and a couple photos, but it's, nothing does it justice like coming here and seeing this place. And I'm just going to sound maybe like I'm being hyperbolic, but being here and seeing how wild it really is And then knowing that, one, you and your family and everyone else that works here that cares a lot about it, and then, two, funding from hunters is what keeps this place this wild and keeps that community and the shapes that it's in. It's like, man, it's just something special y'all have here. 00:26:34 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:26:34 Speaker 1: Something way, way, way, way special that I wish, you almost wish you could take everybody and be like, you've got to come experience this. Because you can't fully appreciate it until you come and experience it. 00:26:45 Speaker 4: No, for sure. I mean, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Obviously, we speak to multiple clients and when you're in America and you try and explain it to them, but until you hear, it's hard to kind of grasp the beauty and the concept of what we're doing here, you know. But, yeah, we're very fortunate. It's in a magnificent area. We've got amazing people involved, great community and, yeah, Yeah, this Zululand, it's a hidden gem. I mean, you know, not a lot of people know about it. It's as wild as you can get, you know, and here in South Africa. So, yeah, we're very fortunate and grateful for what we have here. 00:27:32 Speaker 6: To give you an example of that, you can go and hunt plains game in numerous different areas all over South Africa and Zimbabwe and stuff. But to go and hunt plains game on a Big Five area, is exceptionally special because you can be hunting an impala and walk into a pride of lions or be chased by an elephant. 00:27:51 Speaker 3: That happened to Jordan and Jesse. Exactly. 00:27:58 Speaker 1: It's incredible, man. When you started all this in 1970, did you ever have any idea what it was going to turn into with your sons being PHs and this whole big organization that you have now? 00:28:14 Speaker 6: I think it was a dream that you think about, that you hope that as your life goes on, that your sons or whoever you know are going to be involved in it. But I always thought I would like them to do what they want to do. If they want to be involved in the business, then I would very much like them to be. So it is a dream come true that they're involved in it. And then they become really good at it, which is good. 00:28:39 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:28:39 Speaker 1: Well, I have not met Sean, but I can. tell you from first-hand experience, Cullen wants to be involved. Man, that guy. 00:28:48 Speaker 3: He loves what he does. 00:28:49 Speaker 1: You can tell. 00:28:50 Speaker 6: That's the most important thing. If you stop enjoying what you're doing, then get out of it. 00:28:55 Speaker 1: What's the point? 00:28:55 Speaker 3: What is the point? 00:28:57 Speaker 1: If y'all didn't love what you did, this place wouldn't. 00:29:00 Speaker 3: Be like this. It wouldn't. 00:29:01 Speaker 6: No, definitely not. I'm pleased you guys really enjoyed it. You've got to come back. 00:29:06 Speaker 1: I told Cullen, I think it was like the third or fourth day, I told Cullen, I said, I hope you like us because you're about to be stuck with us. 00:29:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fantastic. Awesome. 00:29:16 Speaker 1: If you travel to Zululand today and you visit its wild places, thankfully, it'll look very different than how it did after the great habitat and wildlife destruction in the early 1900s. In fact, it will look, in my opinion at least, how it's supposed to look. Wild. 00:29:33 Speaker 3: It is wild. 00:29:34 Speaker 1: And it's kept that way because of the efforts, dollars, and passions of hunters. Never forget that. Sustainable hunting sustains wildlife. 00:29:45 Speaker 2: That's a fact, my friends. 00:29:46 Speaker 1: To wrap up this episode, Cullen and I are going to share the story of my first Cape buffalo. This story kicks off with me recounting to Cullen two buffalo that we spotted on day two right along the Macousie River. And at this point in my life, I had only ever seen buffalo on watching YouTube or I had seen some from far away or, you know, out of the truck. When I followed you and Pat down there, wind in our face, obviously, and we go down to the kind of the edge of the trees and that buffalo was 50 yards away. 00:30:18 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:30:19 Speaker 1: It was the closest I'd ever been to a buffalo and him not know I was there. 00:30:23 Speaker 3: And that was. 00:30:24 Speaker 1: It was amazing. I mean, you told me, you know, you're, I'm used, I can't remember how you worded it, but you were like, that bull's plenty old, but it's early. We should, we should pass this one. 00:30:32 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:30:33 Speaker 1: But I just wanted to stand there and watch him for. 00:30:36 Speaker 3: A little while. 00:30:37 Speaker 2: I just enjoy the experience. 00:30:38 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. 00:30:39 Speaker 4: I think that was the second day. So, you know, I mean, what an, what an amazing hunt. I mean, we got up to perfect shooting distance. He was right on the open feeding on the broad side, but, um, an old bull but um you know at that stage of the safari i just thought you know we could maybe look for for something you know but but better or to have a bit few more experiences like that you know during the hunt but yeah i mean that was it was a it was a hunt in itself you just didn't didn't pull the trigger yeah oh. 00:31:10 Speaker 1: It was amazing man and we had similar experiences like that two or three more times. I remember there was those ones that were on. 00:31:18 Speaker 2: That big hillside up on the top. 00:31:20 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:31:20 Speaker 1: Rondebosch Valley. 00:31:21 Speaker 2: Rondebosch Valley. 00:31:22 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:31:23 Speaker 1: Did I say that right? 00:31:23 Speaker 2: That's right. 00:31:25 Speaker 1: But all that stuff, man, like that's what I was telling Lacey. I was like, every time that we get out and follow them up to a Buffalo, if we shoot it or not, it's just, it's so insane to me just to be able to be there doing that and experiencing it. And, um, It all made it work out, or it just, it made it all that better because we, yeah, yesterday afternoon I shot one, the evening of day five. Kind of explain how we got to that buffalo from your perspective as a PH, because I can't do it justice, seeing as it was my first time buffalo hunting. 00:31:57 Speaker 4: So I think, don't forget, we had seen the bulls in the river the day before, and they kind of spooked a bit from us, and we couldn't get them. 00:32:06 Speaker 2: We heard the leopard. 00:32:08 Speaker 4: Then obviously that next morning, which was yesterday morning, we went and tried to find them and we saw them, but they were in that thick, thick bush where you couldn't even see. 00:32:16 Speaker 2: Like a meter in front of you. 00:32:17 Speaker 4: And yeah, I think in terms of the hunt, how it went down is, you know, just starting to get pretty late. If I remember, it was about four o'clock when we, it might've even been later when we started to stalk up to them. But, you know, we'd spotted them from further up on the hillside and the two bulls were lying down. Well, actually the one was standing, one was lying, but the wind was kind of like a bit iffy. 00:32:50 Speaker 2: And I think we'd walked maybe not even like 15 meters and then there was that bush buck right on the road. 00:32:56 Speaker 1: Started barking at us. 00:32:57 Speaker 4: Yeah, and he started barking and I was concerned that, you know, obviously that's an alarm call. You know, the buffalo are going to, you know, get up and move off or something. And actually, I think that's why that one bull, when we actually first saw them was kind of standing up, you know, he obviously stood up and heard something and was, was trying to see what it was. But I think it was obviously meant to be, because I feel like as soon as we saw those bulls, when I saw them and we started moving a bit closer, definitely the wind was in our face. 00:33:30 Speaker 2: And, um, And obviously, you know, with buffalo hunting, it's, you know, that's the number one. You need the wind in your face. 00:33:39 Speaker 4: And, yeah, I mean, we managed to get alongside the river and the reeds and, you know, stopped at first. It was 100 yards, I think. And actually, it was just under 100 yards. And then we managed to get another 30 yards or so closer to them. Obviously, you know, being that time of the evening, it's always a concern, you know, if If something happens and they run off or something, that's why I said to you, you know, if he kind of facing towards us, we'll probably pass on the shot because, you know, it's so late in the evening. But yeah, I mean, we got into a great position and things were definitely meant to be because as you got on the sticks, you know, I did say to you, you know, I'm going to have to make a noise for them to stand up because at this stage, both the bulls were lying down. And it's not always the best thing because when you make a noise like that, because, you know, they'll often stand up and kind of face to where you are and then they're kind of alert. I've also had it before where they've just stood up and completely bombshelled, you know, out of there. But when you got on the sticks, you know, he just stood up on his own. 00:34:53 Speaker 1: I was, I mean, I had, I don't think I had, much sooner said, you asked me if I was good and comfortable. And I was like, yeah. And about that time he just stood up. I was like, oh, geez, thank you, Lord. 00:35:05 Speaker 4: I mean, we were, I mean, we're so fortunate like that. And then obviously, you know, you had the patience and the foresight to wait for him to actually present you a shot. I mean, you know, he was scratching himself. So his horn was in front of his shoulder. Then he kind of was, you know, did that, two or three times and then, you know, then kind of presented a shot, which I feel like you, like you had said, kind of made you get, got you time to, to get settled, you know, and, and pinpoint your, your first shot. 00:35:33 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:35:34 Speaker 1: I was, I was honestly grateful because, uh, it's, for me, like I, I couldn't tell you exactly how many years I've wanted to Buffalo hunt, but I can tell you it's been multiple years. And then when all of a sudden you're actually looking, It's there looking at one, you know, with your finger on the trigger. It's like, Oh boy, pull it. 00:35:54 Speaker 2: This is the moment. 00:35:55 Speaker 1: You better pull it together. So when he, you know, pull it, basically what he was doing is he, he was faced correctly. He was slightly quartering to me, but he kept like, he kept on bringing his head back in the way. And so I had to wait. So by the time that he pulled his head up and I was clear, I had, I had calmed down enough that I felt good about it and sent one at him. But yeah, no, man, that, that whole experience was amazing. And it, I don't know. It was amazing before I shot the buffalo. 00:36:23 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:36:23 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:36:23 Speaker 4: I mean, like just discussing the, the buffalo hunting here. I mean, as you have been, it's, you know, I've, I've been fortunate to hunt all over Africa and hunt buffalo all over Africa. And, um, I know South Africa has the stigma around it, but the buffalo hunting here is as wild as anywhere else. It is, it is proper. Um, I mean, Yeah, it's an amazing hunt. And as you've seen, it's, you know, it's a challenging hunt. You see lots of buffalo. It's not like, you know, you're never seeing buffalo. It really is an amazing place to hunt buffalo. And I'm glad that's the experience that you wanted and the experience that you got. 00:37:08 Speaker 5: You know. 00:37:08 Speaker 1: Oh, man, I wouldn't change a single thing about it. I mean, I would have taken it if it happened on day two, but I'm tickled it happened on day five. 00:37:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. 00:37:16 Speaker 1: You know what I mean? For as long as I'm alive on this earth, I will never forget looking at that buffalo through the sights just seconds before I pulled the trigger. Thankfully, I had a second or two to gather myself and I was able to make that first shot count because the second shot I flat out missed him. But the third shot, I knocked him down. And then we went and recovered him and man did we celebrate. It was great. Africa is a special place. You should go. Hope all of you enjoyed this journey over to the Dark Continent on this episode of Backwoods University. When we come back next time, just like we've seen in our own wildlife history here in North America, we have made a lot of improvements, but we still have our issues. Africa is no different. And we're going to be learning about some of those issues that Zululand and the Kelly family face today. It's fascinating, it's wild, and some of it's controversial. I have no doubt that y'all will enjoy it. As always, thank you for listening. It means so, so much to all of us. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend this week. And stick around, because I promise you, there is a whole lot more on the way.