After a brief appearance by the rain in the North West Province not much changed, it is still a dry hot dust encrusted part of South Africa and we hope for more rain. Out of this I managed to still do a bit of wing shooting, possibly the last for 2015 but it was as good as it gets.

I arrived late at our one dove flight line with only about two and a half hour of light left Mark and I were in position in no time and the flight line we pretty good, we only shot rock pigeons and a few ring necks and let the rest be. The wind was rally blowing fast and the birds were moving very fast so the lead on the birds became bigger and bigger. After a while we had it sorted and we had a couple of great birds. Just as a thunderstorm blocked out the sun (I didn’t get a photo of ) the temperature dropped slightly and the landowner arrived and asked if we would shoot a few Francolin for him.

Of course we were just too willing, we moved off down the newly ploughed lands to piece of uncut grass and weeds. He said we should only shoot mature birds and he wanted 2 and we could each shoot 2 for ourselves. We walked in the classic line that bird shooters use and we managed to flush four birds of which I managed to put 2 down and the owner 1.

We then moved to the second grass patch it was now almost last light we flushed 2 more fairly quick which went down after that we flushed a grass owl which was awesome to see. Considering this pices of ground I along side a “fairly” busy road it was good to see the owl. We kept walking making sure our eyes were fixed on the birds before we shot, the next second the grass erupted with those soft wing beats of a predatory birds. The must have been no less than 30 grass owls that took flight and just hung around in the evening sky we all moved back to the road so as not to disturb any more from their nests. We were very close to the dam we wanted to end our walk at and there Egyptian and Spurwing geese where also flying over head along with the owls it felt we were in a movie or some romantic photo form long, long ago. It was breathtaking and really amazing we all walked back to the vehicle quite chuffed with ourselves.

We got back to the “braai” for a few lamb chops and a cold beer while we skinned and cleaned the Francolin.

I returned home and place the clean birds in the fridge in a container.

On Sunday I made a brine with

8 cups water

4 bay leaves

½ cup salt

some black pepper

a bit of chili

and a ½ cube chicken stock

once it was boiling I removed it from the heat put the lid on the pot and let it cool to room temperature, once cooled I put the birds in the brine and left them for 5 hours (4-8 is good) in the fridge.

After the bird comes out the brine we spiced the birds with butter ( a good mount to make sure they are not dry) and chicken spice from Robertson’s spice.

We covered them in foil and roast them at 260’c for 15-20 minute

Take them out and enjoy while they are still hot.

I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the meal and the hunt and cannot wait for the next one, when your hunting with us at JWK Safaris on your next hunt we can go and hunt a few and do the same.

For now we have a late season Buff to deal with so out comes the 470NE again

PH Jono