The Namibian Escarpment is perhaps the most prominent geological feature of the country. People have described this rugged escarpment, where the coastal plains of the Namib Desert rise steeply towards the Central Highlands, as the rocky backbone which runs through the entire country parallel to the coastline. At times these fissured badlands amidst the arid country are of such rough inhospitality that people have called Namibia the country that ‘God created in anger`. Kai-Uwe Denker
The possibly most outstanding single feature within the Escarpment is Gamsberg Mountain. Seen from the coastal plains, this 2349m high table mountain seems to rise in high and mighty repose and sublimity over the turbulent structure of the surrounding mountain ranges. When, in 2023, I was looking for a suitable new hunting area, I eventually contacted my colleague Diethelm Metzger and his wife Katja, as it was known to me that the family owned land at Gamsberg Mountain. With them I reached an agreement for hunting rights in the Ilala Private Game Reserve, initiated by Katja’s father.
Here I eventually found what I was looking for: 18,000ha wild, unaltered Namibia. The southern outskirts of Ilala, where the picturesque farmstead with a magnificent view of Gamsberg lies, is still Khomas Highland landscape. But where the dry riverbed of the Chausib has cut through the last Khomas Highland buttress, another world opens up. Frightening in its brusque inhospitality and liberating in its grandiose vastness.
The terrain now drops in a jumble of limestone ridges from the folded Khomas Highland mountain-chains towards the Kuiseb River. One of my clients has compared this terrain to a gigantic brain in whose folds there is a huge labyrinth – not entirely inappropriate. If one likes to stay with this comparison, one can say that this brain is cut in two halves by the dry riverbed of the Chausib. The essential things for a camp, water and shade, are only found deep down in the ravines, in the labyrinth of the brain-folds, where, however, there is no field of vision. My plain camp is located under a spreading camelthorn tree in the incision of the Chausib. From here one can climb up into the respective brain-halves.
In September 2024, an extremely dry year, my friend Thomas, a veteran of many hunts amongst my clients, came for a hunt in this area. He lives the principle according to which a good experience is more important than the success of a hunt. Amongst our mutual hunts there was outstanding success but also completely unsuccessful hunts. The present hunt was for the Namibian emblem animal, our characteristic, most typical game animal, the gemsbok. The difficulty with experienced clients who have already shot everything, at times lies in the fact that they seek the special challenge. In Thomas’ case, in a terrain which in itself is difficult enough, to hunt with a clumsy big-game rifle fitted with open sights and a pyramid front bead, which, depending on the shooting distance, has “to be taken somewhat fuller or less full.” Well, time would tell.
At first light, following zebra paths in zig-zag fashion over the ribs of rock, Thomas and I climb from the shade of the Chausib riverbed towards the limestone ridges in the west. Where the first scattered deposits of white limestone soil and quartz gravel begin in the clay-brown ribs of rock on the steep slope, the first rays of the morning sun reach us. Soon we are on the glaring white cambers of the plateau and let our eyes glide over it, then, following a game path, turn to the right, stopping every so often to glass into new depressions.
And suddenly a solitary gemsbok stands on a distant hillock. Stopping abruptly, we slowly sink to the ground, cower down and look through our binoculars. Amidst the many-layered pale nuances of colour of a huge, desolate landscape, confined towards the south by the brown buttresses of Khomas Highland folds, the gemsbok, seemingly a bull with short, thick horns, stands on a slight rise, scanning around.
There he stands, a sturdy grey-white body with a black side- stripe, black also the thighs, set off against the white lower legs, a black-and-white facial mask and churlish horn-lances, the sharp-edged ears cocked forward in tense alertness. Strikingly coloured and yet his contours melt with the glaring desert landscape; the king of Africa’s arid zones in his entire, unassuming grandeur. And in a gap far in the southwest Gamsberg Mountain rises sublime and light blue in the cool morning air.
The gemsbok moves down into a depression, and I discuss with Thomas, that although the first day, we should not dally around, because under the circumstances of this drought-year chances might be few and far between. Once the bull is down in the depression we rise and try to get closer. In the huge stillness our steps appear annoyingly loud on the quartz-gravel. When we carefully peer over the next rise the bull already stands facing in our direction, fully alert. It is still too far and thus, freezing motionless, we stare at each other for minutes on end. Then the bull turns and steps away to the right. Covered by a little rise in the ground, we try to intercept him in a semicircle. In this we spook a few Rüpell’s Korhaans, which fly away the alarm and the gemsbok now finally runs off, disappears in a deep ravine and re-appears at the opposite limestone slope, gallops across the slope for a short while and goes over into a beautifully elegant trot. With every stride the white lower legs accentuate the animal otherwise merging with the grey-white limestone soil. The black side-stripe merges into the bushy tail floating backwards. He falls into gallop again, reaches the horizon and as he disappears behind it, the horn- lances, swaying in the rhythm of his steps, are still visible for a short while. Then he is gone.
On our way back, as we descend into the gorge of the Chausib, a klipspringer stands on a crag like a statue, scenting down into a landscape at once of dead-silent grandeur and awe-inspiring loneliness.
In the afternoon we stumble down-river over the rubble and the boulders of the Chausib, the hot afternoon sun on our faces. The riverbed narrows ever more to form a canyon with rock-faces on both sides. In the riverbed, tracks of a leopard and a hyena. Surprisingly the little spring, in spite of the almost complete lack of rain, still holds some water, though very bitter. Many tracks lead towards the spring from downriver, mainly of Hartmann zebras, but also quite a few gemsbok tracks.
When a tributary coming in from the western limestone ridges meets the Chausib, we leave the dry riverbed and climb steeply on a zebra- path over loose slabs into the slope on the left. Six zebras come towards us. With the low sun in our eyes the lifeless landscape now appears blackish, and the contours of the hardy animals become blurred. We turn southward, following a zebra-path on the limestone ridge. To our left the wild rocky gorge of the Chausib canyon, to the right the ravine of the tributary at whose confluence we left the canyon. At the opposite crest of this ravine bizarre bastions of limestone, amalgamated with sandstone and rubble, run along the ridge to form a somewhat more prominent feature in this jumble of ravines and ridges. We trudge wearily up to the limestone plateau, stop at the summit and turn to look back over the wild maze of domes and incisions that drops towards the Kuiseb; over the awe-inspiring lonely land, up to blue mountain ranges in the far distance. Those who say that God created this land in anger are mistaken. He created it in tender wisdom for those who can appreciate the unique and disregard discomfort and dawning despair. To drain the cup of freedom of its harsh grandeur to the full.
“Those who say that God created this land in anger are mistaken. He created it in tender wisdom for those who can appreciate the unique and disregard discomfort and dawning despair.To drain the cup of freedom of its harsh grandeur to the full.”
The landscape appears completely lifeless. Hardly ever is the voice of a bird to be heard. In the ravines here and there stand leafless Moringa trees with their bulky, water storing trunks and just asleafless Commiphora glaucescens trees, their golden-brown trunks inconspicuously fitting in with the pale-brown landscape now gilded by the evening light. In this way, stopping every now and then to glass the surroundings, we return parallel to the course of the Chausib River and, as dusk falls, descend towards camp over the rocky ribs.
In this way the days pass; in looking over an awe-inspiring lonely landscape. At sunrise the croaking duet of the Rüpell’s Korhaans. In grandiose panoramas and the sight of Hartmann zebras moving on their paths over the ridges in timeless ease. And here and there a small group of springbuck. Then again only lifeless, windswept desert-plains and scattered gemsbok tracks on the game paths. This is the recipe for survival of the desert animals; continuously migrating from nowhere to somewhere in search of sparse water and fodder resources.
On a morning, we sit on the rocks of a little mountain, looking down onto the limestone ridges and try to look into the deeply cut incisions. We see Hartmann zebras move over the windswept ridges and a small group of springbuck, glassing in vain for a gemsbok. There, an old kudu bull dissolves from the ribs of rock at the foot of the mountain we sit on and steps onto a small quartz-gravel plain sprinkled into the broken terrain towards a Shepherd’s tree. It stops there to browse around the tree for minutes on end. Laying the marvellous horns – the tip of the left horn is somewhat broken – far into his back, he browses up into the little tree. The white lips in his coal-black face with the white chevron marking on the bridge of his nose pick every reachable leave full of devotion. Then he turns and steps majestically over the gravel plain, back into the ribs of rock, grey and ponderous. The kudu bull, pendant of the keen-eyed, restless gemsbok amidst the two great indigenous Namibian game animals, in their uniqueness en par with Africa’s other three great antelopes found elsewhere; the sable antelope of the Miombo Woodland Zone, the Lord Derby eland of the north-western savannas and the bongo of the gloomy equatorial rainforests.
When our hunt slowly draws towards its end, without us being able to find a gemsbok in the drought-stricken landscape, I decide to climb into the eastern, if one so likes the right, brain side of Ilala. This is somewhat more arduous, because on this side one first has to climb over a mighty Khomas Highland fold which runs north-westwards parallel to the Chausib. Therefore, we take the hunting assistant Erastus with us, who carries additional water. Following a zebra-path through the riverbed, which first leads over a limestone ridge into an isolated basin of quartz gravel, to then steeply lead up to the saddle of the Khomas Highland fold. In the basin, next to the zebra-path in the scanty shade of a scraggy tree, lie the bones and the horns, turned yellow, of an obviously ancient gemsbok bull, who, in the harsh, silent seclusion of this place, lay down to die and breathed the last of his tough, nomadic life. We look at the remains in silence for a moment, then we climb, still in the cool shade of the slope, towards the crest, in the saddle of which the crags and pinnacles of the rocky ribs stand out against the hot white light of the sun just rising behind it. Amidst all the lifeless rigour of rock and stone, there is the silhouette of a bizarre Commiphora tree, its branches becoming ever more refined to form a delicate filigree of outer twigs.
Reaching the saddle out of breath and soaked with perspiration, we now have the glaring light of day in our eyes, which certainly will turn hot. We sit down amidst the rocks and begin to glass the terrain beneath us. Soon we spot a few gemsbok. We climb down and start to creep up to the animals slowly moving away to the north. At midday the game eventually comes to rest on a small flat plateau at the foot of a pebble-strewn slope with a big, spreading Shepherd’s tree in the middle. From several sides, more gemsbok come moving to this spot and soon 15 of the big antelopes have gathered here, while we try to close in laboriously in crab-fashion over the rubble. At the edge of the group there is an old bull, always staying close to a cow seemingly in heat. When we have closed in to 200m, the risk that one of the many animals will detect us becomes just too great and we decide to risk the shot. But in an attempt to adjust for the distance, which is somewhat far for the heavy bullet, in “taking full bead”, Thomas fires above the bull. We are left to gaze after the antelopes, running off in panic in a big cloud of dust.
The next morning finds us on the saddle again. After a short while of glassing, we again detect gemsbok down in the plain and notice in delight that it is the old bull and the rutting cow. The bull drives the cow over a ridge into a deep ravine. Here we close in carefully and eventually realise that both animals are bedded down in an idyllic little valley. We creep up to the edge and are within convenient shooting distance now. The bull must just stand up then success should be certain. But suddenly the cow, all the time scanning into all directions, detects us. She stands up, looks up towards us for a short while and runs off. The bull is up and away with her without even pausing for a second. They stop after a while but now it is over 200m once more and the hurried shot misses its target. We all know the deep frustration of such moments. Thomas utters a few swear-words and declares: “Enough now!”
But one does not throw in the towel so soon and, once the first rage has ebbed off, we walk in the direction of the Kuiseb in a wide semicircle. Eventually we sit down on a ridge and start to glass again. We just see three gemsbok, which seemingly got our wind, make off over a ridge far in the south. It is hot noon now and thus makes little sense to go after them. First of all, we try to find some shade, which is not easy. At last, we lie down tightly pressed against a little stony ridge which offers the scantest shade from the hot desert sun, drink a lot of water and chew some biltong.
As it becomes cooler in the afternoon we rise from this hard resting place, beat the dust from our clothes and eventually walk into the direction where we saw the three gemsbok disappear. Carefully stalking along on the ridge, we suddenly detect the animals bedded down in a depression, sink to the ground and retreat into cover. Then we outflank the place and close in again from behind a rocky outcrop behind which the animals are resting, chewing the cud. In this way we come into convenient shooting distance. In the meantime, the animals have risen and start to feed, amongst them a bull. It is not the old fellow that got away twice, but we cannot be choosy any longer. As Thomas goes into firing position, I can see from his pale, tense features that a heavy burden now rests on his shoulders.
But the gemsbok bull, struck by the heavy projectile, collapses in the foreparts, gets up once more, but finally is down after a short rush. I nod to Thomas – few words are needed between us – then Erastus, who at first had remained behind, arrives and we go down in big relief. By now it is too late to retrieve the meat. Thomas and Erastus will have to spend the night next to our booty, guard the meat against the hyenas, which are plentiful in the Kuiseb River, and start to cut up the animal. We still have enough water, and they can prepare the liver of the bull on the coals. I give short instructions, then quickly look around in the vicinity for a place that I can reach in the morning with the car to load the meat. When I come back, Thomas squats behind the gemsbok bull, holding the legs, while Erastus is busy gralloching. I have the impression that Thomas is still in a turmoil of emotions; of huge, humble vacillation and the simultaneous awareness, that after all, this had been a great hunt. I give him a little slap on the slouch-hat under which he seems to squat down and a somewhat firmer slap on his back, then I set out on my way back to camp.
After days such as this I like to be on my own to savour. The sun is far in the west by now and enchants the barren land with warm colours. Clay-brown the Khomas Highland folds, a mild yellowish white the limestone plains and in a clear light-blue the distant mountain ranges beyond the Kuiseb River. I reach the mountain, toil up to the saddle one last time – here a cool westerly breeze blows into my sweaty face – and let my eyes roam out far, until the contours become blurred by distant coastal fog moving inland over the Namib. Then, as dusk is falling, I trudge down the zebra-path to camp with weary bones.
What would this wild, impractical landscape be without its zebra- paths…
From the 2025 issue of Huntinamibia
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