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Gasping, rifles across our backs, we scrambled up the hill with our hands in the dirt. I looked up into the sun to where the blood trail crossed the ridge and tried to blink the sting from my eyes. Sweat dripped down my forearms, leaving dark prints in the dust. We were moving fast. When you wound a kudu you must catch up to him quickly or he will vanish into the bush, and you will never see him again.

I was hunting in South Africa, on the East Cape, on a ten-day safari with ten animals to kill. I had tags for warthog, wildebeest, bushbok, gemsbok, impala, duiker, two species of springbok, and a blesbok. But the animal I wanted most was the last on the list; the kudu. Now I’d put a bullet in one’s chest, and I knew that if I didn’t move fast we would lose the animal in the steep terrain. I did not want this animal to suffer.

On the slope above me professional hunter Alan Shenck paused long enough to whisper. “Hurry up,” he said, “I think you’ve hit him low.” He pointed at some spatter on the rocks. Behind us our skinner, M’stele, held the leads restraining Shenck’s two Jack Russell terriers, Muzzy and Fletch. Their panting matched my own.

We had spotted the bull an hour earlier; it had been standing on a ridge across the ravine from the baboon shit-covered cliff on which we’d set up. We’d been glassing there since we’d climbed it in the dark that morning.

Glassing for kudu requires great focus. You must memorize the shapes and shadows of bushes. Anthills will fool you. Stumps will make your heart jump. Your brain will tire and you will lose patience, and then the animal will move and you will miss it. Missing movement is bad, because kudu do not move often. When they do you must be ready.

One way to maintain your concentration is to look for other wildlife, and when I saw this bull I’d been watching a shrike impale a grasshopper on an acacia thorn. The kudu was hidden behind the bush on which the bird had perched. He was browsing, pulling leaves from the branches, and I saw him when his mane caught the light.