It’s after lunch on the 5th day of my safari. The time has finally come for impala. Secretly, I’ve been waiting for this day the entire trip. Nothing says “african safari” to me like the impala ram. On previous hunts we’d seen several groups of ‘em, but none big enough to make us take a second look. Oh I loved looking though, at every one of them. It’s thrilling just to be hunting them.

Impala act a lot like whitetail deer. They hang in the same types of terrain and cover and they’re primarily browsers, the same as our deer species in the states. Also, there’s usually one dominant ‘buck’ with each herd of ‘does’. And that’s exactly what we were after.

Ray wanted to start out on this small tract of land he called the “link road” since it connected two larger concessions. He said he’d seen some good rams there and wanted to see if we could catch one on our way in.

Darned if we didn’t spot some within a minute of crossing the gate, again! Four hundred yards or so to the northwest, a herd of eight impala fed along a barbed-wire boundary fence. One was a very nice ram, Ray said. Actually, there were two good ones in the bunch as far as I could see, but the big one did stick out.

We waited near the gate for awhile. For two reasons: One, there was a man feeding cattle in the valley and we needed him to get done and leave before we moved in, and two, I needed to be helped up in the back of the cruiser to get into my “shooting” position. After ten long minutes, we began our stalk.

Right away, the entire herd seemed to go on alert as if they knew the hunt had begun. Don’t ask me how. A couple of the older ewes keenly watched our approached. When we got to within 200 yards, they started away down the fence, using the terrain and narrow stands of brush to stay hidden from us as best they could. It was the same ‘cat & mouse’ game that we’d played with almost every antelope we’d hunted so far.

Staying just outside of my comfortable shooting range, the impala herd topped a low hill and out of sight. We steered left and took the low road around to catch them crossing in front of us on the other side. But they weren’t there! They’d doubled back on us. We doubled back too, u-turning the truck and retracing our tracks.

I saw three impala come into view, one was a ram with his classic horns against the bright blue sky behind him. He was too far to try a shot though, and they looked like they were “about to go”. Down the fence they went again, stopping in the next clump of scrubby trees. My first chance at a shot was about to happen. The impala held tight and we stopped the cruiser as soon as we were close enough. Ray helped me anchor the chair and gun rig as I quickly found the ram in my scope, behind a bush. There he stood as the other impala went back and forth behind him, trying to decide what they wanted to do. He was smart though. He stayed put. Until all at once, they broke out and farther down the fencerow until they reached the last patch of cover before an open valley sprawled away from the area.

As we eased on up, they looked nervous. I knew that if they took out again, they’d be long gone.

“The big one is in the back,” whispered Ray forcefully, “You see him?” “Yep!” I answered back. Everything seemed to slow down from that moment on, every moment, every spoken word under our breath, each flick of an impala ear. I had the ram behind the crosshairs and I meant to keep him there. The gun rig didn’t have any fine adjustments so it was a struggle to follow any movement. And our ram was moving. As I strained to track him, the ram came to the edge of the brush and stopped, contemplating his next step. When two impala ewes bolted the shelter, I knew it was moments before my ram did the same. But I needed him to take one step before I could shoot. I could only see his head and that massive rack above it. I was getting mesmerized by it. When he took it!