Where to hunt Limpopo Springbok
Limpopo springbok is a variety of springbok, a small, graceful antelope with lyre-shaped antlers, which is one of the symbols of South Africa. It has a unique color, with yellowish back, wide horizontal stripes running along the body, and white underbelly with snow-white hairs reaching high on the sides and the haunch. Limpopo springbok hunting is offered by outfitters in the north of South Africa, near the border with Zimbabwe.
Price distribution
The shooting fee for a Limpopo springbok is about $650. Few hunters are willing to travel all the way to Africa after just one antelope, though, and would like to target a few other plains game species such as impala, warthog, and kudu, too. Plains game packages that include springbok with a few other species usually cost in the $4,000-$5,000 range.
Learn more from our blog story
“I beheld the boundless plains, and even the hill sides which stretched away on every side of me, thickly covered, not with" herds," but with " one vast herd" of springboks; far as the eye could strain the landscape was alive with them, until they softened down into a dim red mass of living creatures.” wrote Rouaelyn Gordon-Cumming of the springbok “trek-bokken”, or migration, he witnessed in 1843. How did they hunt springbok back then, and how have things changed since?
24 Mar 2019 Good Times, Bad Times: Springbok hunting in Gordon-Cumming’s “Five Years in South Africa” and todayWhen to hunt Limpopo Springbok?
It’s not easy to pinpoint the best times for springbok hunting. Hunting opportunities in South Africa hunting opportunities exist year round, but in the north of the country, where the outfitters who offer Limpopo springbok hunts are located, December to February may be too hot for comfortable plains game hunt. If you have to pick a few months, that would probably be the end of the dry season.
Hunting methods All hunting methods (7)
Springbok are the creatures of open plains, and spot-and-stalk is the rule. It may be easy to get any springbok from a herd, but getting the right trophy is another story. Identifying the right animal may be harder than for most other species of antelopes, as both sexes carry horns, and females are larger than males. A springbok is a relatively small animal, usually weighing no more than 50 pounds, and in most cases you will have to connect with a tiny vitals of this dweller of the open place from a considerable distance, typically 250 to 350 yards. It’s a good idea to select an accurate rifle for a cartridge with a flat trajectory for springbok hunting.
Why hunt Limpopo Springbok?
“As I rode along in the intense and maddening excitement of the chase, I felt a glad feeling of unrestrained freedom” - wrote about springbok hunting Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming, one of the first British hunters in South Africa. It might sound like madness for a modern city dweller to make a journey to the other side of the world, only to harvest a 50-pound creature with little, lyre-shaped, horns. But most of the hunters who followed the tracks of Gordon-Cumming, although by airplane and 4wd truck rather than sailboat and ox-drawn wagon, will subscribe to his other statement: “I shall ever refer to those times as by far the brightest and happiest of my life”
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