by Kai-Uwe Denker
When Elzanne contacted me to request a contribution for this year’s Huntinamibia edition I was hesitant. First of all, the hunting season until then had not delivered something really noteworthy and moreover I have a feeling that after a quarter of a century of contributing to this publication, as not to become boring, it must come to an end. Therefore, I replied: “I don’t have something in mind at the moment. But I still have a last safari at the end of September. Should this hunt deliver something notable, I will contact you.”
When I here thus once more put pen to paper to contribute a hunting story, I do so, to, for a last time, pay homage to the harsh wilderness of my country and an incomparably magnificent game animal. Because that last safari in September 2025 indeed delivered something noteworthy.
It was the second attempt of my German client, Patrick Stoll, to bag an old bull kudu. In 2023 Patrick already came for a kudu, but we were unable to find a suitable bull.
It perhaps may not be good for my business if I here frankly say that by no means every one of my 10-day kudu safaris ends in success. But I do so defiantly and proudly. Defiantly, because there are enough hunters around who see a special challenge in this and proudly, because my heart is almost as much on the side of the kudu, as it is on the side of his pursuers.
But for this reason also, I feel somehow outdated if I relate that Henrik Lott for example, needed two attempts to bag his old bull for the Krieghoff Video “The Grey Ghost of the Mountain” and that the bull came to bag only on the 21st day of the hunt. However, we had pardoned a magnificent bull, which elsewhere probably would have been shot without a second thought, still on day 19 because we considered it not old enough.
Because I know that in many areas of Namibia kudus can be taken without much effort. But the overpopulation, caused by the opening of artificial waterholes and the disappearance of large predators like lion and wild dog, is the reason for the recurring kudu-rabies-disease in Namibia.
If such a secretive animal, in its entire being adapted to concealment, is seen often, there certainly is an overpopulation. If, however, kudus are rarely seen, but their tracks are found regularly, there is a healthy population.
Then the kudu becomes the mystical, shadowy game animal that in literature is celebrated as “the Grey Ghost”.
When Patrick, this time accompanied by his girlfriend Mona, and I thus in September 2025 set out on our second attempt for a greater kudu, the Erongo Mountains presented themselves in hazy spring atmosphere, the Albizia and black-thorn trees were already covered in their yellow-white, fragrant flowers, which in turn were buzzed around by manyfold insects.
Hunting kudu in fissured obscure mountain-country above all means long hours of patient glassing. The first afternoon thus found us on a high vantage point within the southern crater rim. In the rugged slope, in this disorder of boulders and thorny bushes, we gradually spotted several Hartmann zebras, which, hanging their heads stood motionless in the shimmering heat, to eventually, when the sun was nearing the horizon and it became cooler, start to move, snorting leisurely.
Meanwhile, when we had a breather on our descent into the valley in the commencing dusk and for a last time glassed the foot of the crater rim, spotted a kudu bull some distance away. Coming up from a ravine he moved to a black-thorn tree on a little rocky outcrop, lay the horns back into his neck to browse up into the tree and pick every reachable flower full of devotion. Then he stepped back into the ravine and was gone.
He appeared to still be somewhat young, but we took it as a good omen.
In this way we climbed some high vantage point every day to glass the wild surroundings for kudu bulls. We always spotted some Hartmann zebra and time and again klipspringers, who stood like sentinels on a boulder, watching their surroundings. Once also a group of female kudus. But in spite of all effort, we could not detect an old bull.
When on a morning we had glassed a particularly obscure terrain in vain, I pointed into the wild confusion of big boulders and bizarre Commiphora trees of a depression through which a dry riverbed with gnarled leadwood trees on its banks was winding its way and said:
“This is the home of the grey ghost!”
“Unfortunately, he is not at home at the moment”, answered Patrick, to which I replied:
“You still have not fully understood the kudu. When you look down into a valley like this and don’t see a kudu, it does not mean that there is no kudu.”
On another morning, we had climbed the edge of a plateau. On the opposite side the southern crater rim rose steeply to culminate in majestic sheer cliffs. Touched by the first light of the rising sun, the basalt cliffs were aglow in warm red-brown colours. The valley, covered in a maze of thorn-bushes, was still in the shade. In deep happiness and unending deference, I first of all let my eyes roam across the untouched wildness of the surroundings. In its harsh grandeur many parts of Namibia have no equal, are, if at all, only comparable to the famous Northern Frontier District of Kenya or a few other regions of the Somali-Maasai Zone or the Sahel.
Then I put my binoculars to my eyes and started to glass the slopes. Suddenly a joyous jolt of adrenalin went through me. For a moment the horns of a kudu bull were glinting in the sunlight by now also reaching the valley. When we now patiently and carefully scanned that spot, not one, but eventually four kudu bulls slowly took shape. For a considerable time, we watched and assessed them, as they leisurely browsed around and time and again disappeared for a long spell to reappear again. One of them seemed to be mature and perhaps shootable, the others certainly too young – all not what we were searching for.
The morning of the sixth hunting day of the present safari, for Patrick thus altogether the sixteenth day in search of a bull kudu, found us squatting amongst some boulders of a ridge from where we could look down into a corrie, in which steep slopes were tumbling into a small valley from all sides. A wild terrain with deep ravines and rocky outcrops, wherein a kudu could vanish amongst big, grey boulders, Moringa and Sterculia trees, amongst bizarre Commiphora and blackthorn trees.
A few years ago, a landslide had occurred on a steep slope here during a torrential downpour which had piled up big boulders on both sides of a ravine, while the ravine was washed out deeply during subsequent rainy seasons. Through this landslide a small clearing was created on a slope, in which the first pioneer plants were slowly establishing themselves. When now glassing this terrain, and as my eyes just wandered across the clearing, it appeared to me as if suddenly the curtain of a stage was lifted, onto which now at last the leading actor of this drama stepped.
In great composure, one with himself and his harsh, wild surroundings, grey and ponderous, the heavy neck and the head carried low, the long beard on the underside of his neck caressed by the morning sun, the spirals of his magnificent horns projecting out far over his back, a big old kudu bull stepped across the clearance with dignified, slightly swaying steps.
Nothing, no other game animal, can match the consummate harmony of this moment, when a fully mature bull kudu materializes from invisibility and in indescribable, self-assured unpretentiousness steps onto the stage of his innate natural surroundings in his entire splendour.
Actually, only hindsight really brings the wondrous moment in all its grandeur to mind.
Because now it was time to take action, to make use of what could be the only chance.
Before we retreated behind the ridge to descend into the valley in cover, I noticed another, younger bull in the vicinity of the old one. Before we worked our way towards a small rocky outcrop, where we would be in convenient shooting distance of the clearance, at first using the cover of a dry riverbed and later as silently as possible and with madly beating heart stumbling over the pebble strewn ground of a thorny thicket, I said: “we have to be careful that you do not shoot the wrong bull!”
When eventually climbing the outcrop and peering over the edge with bated breath, the stage was empty.
Cautiously Patrick got ready. Then once more began the search for a kudu, which this time we knew had to be in the immediate vicinity. After a while of breathless lurking and watching Patrick had a kudu in his scope – but it was the young one.
Calming down again. And searching on, all the time in anxious tension – where is the old one?
Then suddenly he was there. He stood between big boulders, sternon under a thorn bush. In front of the backdrop lying in glistening sunlight the heavy neck of the animal standing in the shade and the horns jutting up in marvelous spirals stood out in dark silhouette.
Patrick had him in his scope but in this position a shot was impossible. The kudu took one step to the side – and was gone again.
Higher in the slope a second young bull appeared. One must have experienced all this to really know how wonderfully the kudu can merge with his surroundings. The old bull appeared again, suddenly became uneasy, moved along in the ravine all the while scenting the air, stepped up onto the opposite bank, was in the open for a moment: the shot rolled thundering through the valley.
The kudu dived back down into the ravine and I could see the impact of the projectile higher up in the slope.
Therefore, I at first had the impression that the shot went above target and urged Patrick to come to my position higher up, lay down on a flat rock and be ready should the kudu reappear somewhere.
But seconds later clattering sounds could be heard in the ravine as if the kudu fell. Then dead silence reigned.
We discussed things in a hushed voice. Patrick said: “At least I did not see him run off.”
“Did you see the two younger bulls make off? This is a kudu; they can disappear on tip-toes unseen! But I too believe that he must be lying in the ravine.”
After waiting for ten minutes, we went over there and climbed the piled-up boulders in anxious anticipation to look into the ravine.
And for the second time on this day, it appeared to me as though the curtain of a stage was lifted – this time for the final act.
There, a few meters beneath us, lay, as he fell and breathed his last, an old kudu bull magnificent beyond words – our prey.
The red strains of blood on the rocks where he crashed down into the ravine, and especially on his muzzle, illuminated in a dramatic way the ambivalence of this drama of life and death which can not to be glossed over.
From the 2026 issue of Huntinamibia
Experiencing intense moments in nature, embracing physical exertion and deprivation as a challenge in order to come to know hunting in a way that is rarely possible in today’s hunting grounds in Germany. This was the motivation for my hunting companion Holger and me to travel to Namibia.
That is why I came here: to put my hunting skills at the service of a community. My first African safari, in pursuit of the Greater Kudu five years ago, brought me to the magnificent backdrop of the Erongo Mountains. It was an intense combination of strenuous hiking and meditative
When Elzanne contacted me to request a contribution for this year’s Huntinamibia edition I was hesitant. First of all, the hunting season until then had not delivered something really noteworthy and moreover I have a feeling that after a quarter of a century of contributing to this publication, as not
