If you drive through Ripple Creek for a day, you will see hundreds, if not thousands, of Impala. These sleek antelope travel in bands of five to five hundred. On the first few days of the hunt, I harvested eleven antelope for baits. As Impala rams age, they hit a point in mid life where their horns are as long as they will ever be. As they continue to age, they wear down the tips of their horns. While their bodies get larger and their horns gain mass, the overall length begins to decrease. These large-bodied, stubby horned rams are ideal for bait as they are typically past prime breeding age and provide the most meat for you money.

While hunting bait impala on the first day of the hunt, we spotted an exceptional trophy impala at dusk. He was about four hundred yards from the road in a large flat. The second we stopped the truck, took off at a run. “Tricky bugger,” George said as we watched the ram sprinting across the flat. “He’ll be here again. Impala’s are territorial.” For the next nine days, we looked at thousands of impala, none of which were the size of what we started referring to as “The Big Impala.” We returned to the same flat every night at dusk for a week looking for him, but he eluded us. On the ninth night as we sat glassing the herds of impala trying to spot him, I asked George if there was a possibility that he might have moved out. “Maybe Pete,” he replied. “But more likely he’s out there somewhere in the brush and we can’t see him. Or maybe the cheetahs ate him yesterday.” The day before, the flat, which usually teemed with different species of impala, had been completely empty with the exception of a few giraffe. We later found the tracks of two cheetahs crossing the road.

“Let’s try him in the morning,” George said as the sun set. “He’s not used to us seeing him here and we might be able to surprise him.” The next morning, we began glassing the flat as the sun was just coming over the horizon, painting everything with a golden glow. As we were driving to a new glassing point, we heard a tap on the roof. George immediately stopped and pulled out his binoculars. “There he is!” he exclaimed. “Is it The Big Impala?” I asked. “Yes, let’s go!” The Big Impala was with a group of females and moved into the brush. Taking Absent and Tyge with us, we slowly moved into the brush after them. After stalking them for several hundred yards, we spotted them in an opening, feeding away from us. George set up the shooting sticks and I quickly found him in my scope. “Two-hundred eight-three yards,” George whispered as I steadied the cross hairs on his shoulder. As the rifle went off, I saw him flinch before he bounded into the brush. “You missed,” George said quietly as we watched the rest of the herd bound off. “No,” I replied. “I hit him. I saw him flinch at the shot.” “I don’t think you did, Pete,” Tyge chimed in. “I didn’t hear the bullet hit.”

“Well, if you think you hit him, lets go make sure you didn’t,” George said as we began walking to where they had been standing. After searching for over an hour, we were unable to find any sign that I had hit him. No blood, no hair, nothing. “Don’t worry, Pete,” George said consolingly. “He’ll be back again.” “I could swear that I saw him flinch when I shot,” I insisted. “But, even if I did, it doesn’t look like we’re going to find him.”

We returned that night and again started sorting through the hundreds of impala milling about. “Is that him?” I asked pointing to a distant brown dot across the plain. “That’s not him, but he’s pretty good. You have two on license; I think we should go after him.” Once again we were sneaking across the plain, using the occasional trees for cover. The impala knew we were there, but didn’t run. They began feeding away from us into thicker cover. After slowly following them for a few hundred more yards, we finally had a clear shot at the big ram. I set up on the sticks and centered the cross hairs on him. He was facing directly away from us with his head down feeding. “Wait until he turns,” George instructed me. I took a deep breath and slowly released it to calm my heart. The distance was about 150 yards. The ram suddenly stopped feeding and looked directly back at us as I felt the breeze on the back of my neck. He took one step to the left, giving me a strong quartering away shot. I placed the cross hairs on his flank, aiming through him for his off-side shoulder.

I heard the bullet hit as I squeezed the trigger. After a sprint of about thirty yards, he piled up in some brush. “Good shot!” George exclaimed as he slapped me on the back. As we approached to fallen ram, the first thing I noticed was that while his horns we long and sharply pointed, he was not nearly as large bodied as the other rams we had taken for bait. “The ones with the biggest horns typically don’t have that big of bodies,” George explained to me. “They’re usually very average sized. The really big-bodied impala tend to have shorter, thicker horns. We moved the ram into a more open area and took some of the best pictures of the trip with twilight sky as a background. “Now we just need to find The Big Impala and you’ll have two for your trophy room!” George said as we carried the ram back to the truck.

The next night, we again returned to the flat behind camp to look for The Big Impala. As the sun was setting, we spotted him with a group of females as they moved into a patch of thick brush. The winds were swirling, so there was no way we could make the stalk. The thick brush was at the base of a large Kopje. Kopje’s are very similar to the buttes you find in the United States, except they’re typically solid rock. The face of the kopje rose straight up a hundred feet before leveling off at the top. “If you can climb, I think we can actually get up the back side and come across the top and get a shot at him. Are you up for it?” George asked. I said that I was and we took off in the cruiser making circle around to the backside of the giant rock. When we got to the back side, I noticed that it also rose almost straight up to the top. “Let’s go!” George said and he and Absent and I began climbing up the side of the face. Climbing require both hands and I soon fell behind, trying not to smash my rifle scope, binoculars and rangefinder against the rocks while climbing. Noticing that I was falling behind and that the light was fading, George and Absent began climbing back down to assist me. George took my rifle and range finder, Absent my binoculars and we again headed up the side of the rock.

When we reached to top, we were able to quickly cross to the other side. In the fading light, we spotted The Big Impala and his harem of females feeding about a hundred yards from the base of the Kopje. While he had been spooked and running every other time we had seen him, he was now relaxed and feeding, feeling secure in the thick brush. Using a tight sling, I laid prone at the edge of the rock and dropped him with a single shot. “Finally!” George exclaimed. As he took off down the side of the nearly vertical slope like a mountain goat. I looked at Absent with an uncertain expression on my face. “Let’s go, Boss,” he said with a grin. “I take your gun for you.”

Handing my rifle to Absent, I began working my way down the steep face. Surprisingly, I managed to get to the bottom without breaking anything. “Nice, eh?” George commented as we looked down at The Big Impala. His lyre-shaped horns were shiny-black and sharply pointed. “He’s a fantastic impala.”

As George and Absent posed the impala for pictures, taking advantage of the setting sun for a backdrop, I looked him over. There was a spot on his back where the hair was shaved off in a straight line. When I reviewed the footage from when I thought I hit him the first time, you can actually the bullet crease him right over his back.

Tags: Impala Hunting, lemco, Safari, zimbabwe