Final Input from Chris:
"Well, all good things come to an end eventually. What we then have is our good memories of wonderful times with our friends and a whole bunch of great photographs to peek at when we try to get closer to the feelings and experiences we had while out in the African bush, or veld as we call it here. I am quite lucky, I can go out there fairly regularly, but for my Swedish friends that is more difficult and such a visit to the splendour of the savannahs requires planning long in advance, and, obviously the obligatory saving of ones resources, as these visits can be quite costly. For me, even better than the photographs, are the wonderful trophies we prepare from the animals we hunt and display on our walls. This is no disrespect to the animal, but quite the opposite in my view, as the animal will be admired and remembered for many a year for the challenges and tests it presented to us - many of which we pass, but some we fail as we are merely human.
So, as I said, the physical part of this trip came to an end for me when I dropped Gunnar, Seved, Henrik and Alex at the airport for their flight back to the north. Again I had that feeling of sadness one has when saying goodbye to friends that you will probably not see again soon. However, the sadness is soon over when I realize that there will be more such trips to the veld with these friends - I know this because I am now certain that Africa has crept into their souls.
Enough philosophizing for now. Let me report on my perspectives and experiences from this hunting trip. What was clear to me during this trip was that Seved and the boys were able to fit right in from where they left off last year and adapt back into the environment once again and continue forward with some great successes. I see that hunting is in their blood and they enjoy the challenges and thrills immensely, and I sincerely wish that lasts well into the future for them. Gunnar, who was on his first real hunting trip to SA (although I had walked him and very nearly bagged a good Kudu 2 years back), seemed to have the same issues that the Wiklunds had had on their first trip. Its not easy hunting here as the conditions are never as perfect as one learns about during hunting course, and if one applies too much effort to get the perfect shooting situation you will miss many opportunities and not achieve your goals. Gunnar, for whom I have great respect as a hunter and shottist - he proved his prowess time and time again - was on a serious learning curve and adapted really fast. What I admire very much is that Gunnar decided right away what he wanted to hunt, and being Gunnar he chose the most difficult - the ‘Grey Ghost', or Kudu as we call it here. During his long walks with Simon, his guide, he had quite a number of opportunities on lesser animals but stuck to his guns on the Kudu. After 3 days of hunting Gunnar was getting a bit more desperate and I took pains to advise him that a Kudu is not something that comes one's way often - in fact in all my years of hunting I have had very few opportunities for a nice bull, none of which has yet resulted in success. I wanted Gunnar to know that one should not be too disappointed should one not achieve success on this one trip. He came close to a bull on one or two occasions but initially the opportunity to take the shot never presented itself for the reasons I mentioned earlier. When the opportunity came the shot was taken, we were standing a few kilometers away and heard it, two shots, we were convinced. However, and you would have read of this in the Swedish text, the animal managed to escape. We tracked it for the rest of the afternoon and for nearly six hours the following day but eventually lost the spoor. This is the situation we hunters dread the most, but for all hunters it is not a question of ‘if it happens to one' but more a matter of ‘when....!' - as it does and will happen, this is not a perfect science. Gunnar was very disappointed. But next time we will bag that Kudu.
To talk further about snakes, spiders, rhino charges, impressive thunderstorms, those animals we shot and died quickly, and those that got away, the great shots at a good distance, the skill of our guides and trackers, the baobab trees, the peace one feels in the African bush....etc., would be pointless as these incidents have been described clearly by Seved and the boys in this blog. So enjoy the read, and dream of when you may be fortunate enough to undertake such an amazing adventure. Seved can advise and guide you on how to plan and achieve this, I am sure.
Best regards to all.
Chris Skinner"
