Rough, But Awesome…

YourJob

Alright, let’s get one thing straight. I love this. But no one is going to sit there and tell me that this is easy either.

My point is, to appreciate what YOU have! Appreciate the money you make and the fact that most of you at least have every weekend off amongst other “benefits”. My last day off was somewhere around 6-7 weeks ago, and before that I think somewhere in early May. I am by no means complaining at all but just speaking my mind and hoping that it gives some perspective.

Moving forward, we shot 2 really nice kudu recently. One of which I have great footage of, the other one, long story, blah! And this evening we took a spectacular Blue Wildebeest. I got great footage of this one as well.

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It’s been almost numbingly cold. The only other warm layers I have left to wear are if I double up on my thermal underwear (I brought 2 pairs) and if I throw on my insulated fancy socks. From now on the coldness reviews will be rated by snowballs. One being the least and so on. Well two mornings ago it was at about a one snowball rating. That is if we took the frost JUST on the shooting rest on the top of the vehicle and put it all together, it would make about one snowball in about 4-5 inches in diameter. One is enough… I hope I do not have to rate it anywhere past there this season. This California blood is not used to below freezing temps! Haha!

I hope everyone is doing well! One month from today I will be flying home! I am starting to miss home, friends and family at this point… oh and American food haha (even though we eat very well here).

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Cheers!

-The Jonny

Becoming A Well Oiled Machine…

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The above was a candid photo taken of us. Courtesy of Frank. We smoked a huge Blesbok shortly after this was taken.

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Today I got great footage of a Kudu we took. Our client Brian was shooting a 280 Remington with Barnes TTSX bullets. Unfortunately the video will have to come later but here is a photo to whet your palette.

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Ok-Ok! While I’m at it, here’s the Gemsbok we got on the hillside shortly after the kudu.

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Things really flowed during our morning hunt. It was great.
We just finished lunch a little while ago. I put up the photos and everything to get the companies blog up to date. If anyone is curious you can see it at www.namibiasafaricorporation.com/news
It’s 1:52 and we are heading back out for the afternoon hunt at 3pm. I believe it’s time for a much needed nap! 😉

Cheers!

PS: This morning was below freezing temperatures. There was slush in the bed of the truck where there had been some water before. Fortunately there was no wind otherwise it would have been quite unpleasant.

I Have Two Favorite Holidays…

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One is Christmas and the other is the 4th of July. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I am always a little sad being halfway around the world with people who don’t celebrate this holiday on this day. The closest thing I had to fireworks is our usual crackling African fire. I am happy to be out here but on days like this, I just wish I could teleport home for a few hours and enjoy our typical American rituals on our independence day.

Well our two biggest groups coming through for hunting are finally behind us (including the Ukrainians). I thought we were busy at other times previously this season but these last two weeks have redefined my already redefined understanding of the word “busy”. Sleep, awww, my sweet love, how I could drown in the deepest, darkest-depths of the abyss I now truly know as Sleep… I’ve never known sleep like this, even if it only comes in waves of 4 to 5 hours.

Today was just another work day for me. It was a rough one actually. Everyone I worked with today seemed to have an extremely short fuse or was totally on edge and out of character. That sucked. I really tried hard to just laugh it off and stay positive however. It was a strange day but fortunately its not usually like that. We hunted Gemsbok, Red Hartebeest and Springbok all day long only stopping for a quick lunch but to no avail. The wind was driving the animals mad and they were running around like hell when they caught ANY glimpse of us, even from like 500 yards plus away. It was quite frustrating and I believe that added to the temperaments.

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The wind is officially here again. It usually comes in waves of 2-3 days. And they say it is going to become very cold this weekend. I am not welcoming it. Especially because tomorrow we are going to go and hunt the back mountains for Kudu and Mountain Zebra. When we do those hunts, many days we don’t return until 3pm-5pm. It’s usually a long and vigorous day. But it sure is beautiful back there.

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I’ll be up at 4:30am tomorrow to get up and give the clients a knock at 5, breakfast at 5:30 and hopefully out the door at 6. I hope the temp is at least in the 50’s or higher including wind chill…

With all that said, I hope everyone is enjoying a very happy and safe 4th of July. And if you read this in time, please light a firework or two for me 😉

Cheers!

-The Jonny