“He’s an absolute monster,” said Pete matter-of-factly, “and he lives on this big plateau.” ‘Big’ was an understatement. Even ‘huge’ didn’t cut it. The landscape in Eastern Cape is steroid-induced expansive, and Pete’s ‘plateau’ was the size of Switzerland. The ‘he’ Pete was referring to was a steenbok and, paradoxically, the ‘monster’ was a bit bigger than a hare but smaller than a large puppy. One of South Africa’s ‘tiny ten’ antelope, it is a very fascinating animal and extremely challenging to hunt – unless you are a long-range shooter, and I am not.
Ironically, hunting these miniature species never appealed before coming to Africa, but they grew on me, crawled under my skin like microscopic parasites and itched. The steenbok, in particular, had won my heart, but I was…
