Moses Lake Man Draws Kudos For His Record Kudu

Rick Tolley’s first African safari has taught him a thing or two about patience.

Shooting a world-record kudu was one thing. Getting it home to Moses Lake has been another.

Tolley is not the stereotypical safari hunter. He’s a humble guy of modest means who has never patronized a taxidermist to put a big-game trophy on the wall.

At 46, the Grant County hunter has reached a stage at which his finger isn’t so quick to squeeze his rifle trigger.

“It’s just been the last few years that I’ve become selective on deer,” he said. “I pass up a lot of bucks.”

That doesn’t mean Tolley has lost his passion for hunting. An African safari, however, might not have occurred to him had it not been for a friend who has hunted in Africa five times.

“Sitting in someone’s trophy room has an effect on you,” Tolley said. “You can only hear those stories so many times before you start thinking you have to do it, too.”

Tolley has rationalized the enormous cost of an African safari with the meticulousness of a married man, even though he doesn’t have a spouse to convince.

“I work for the Job Corps and I have a limited vacation,” he said. “To have a decent elk hunt anymore, the weather has to be conducive to hunting. If your timing is off, the hunt is wasted.”

He left with a clear conscience for South Africa in June on a $5,000 budget hunt on which he could take eight game species in 10 days.

“That’s not so much money when you consider what you get,” he said. “African hunting isn’t so contingent on weather and factors you can’t control.”

His hunt was not a Hemingway-style safari with wall tents and servants in the vast isolation of the African bush.

“We stayed in ranchers’ homes and drove each day to different hunting areas on private land,” he said.

Nevertheless, Tolley got a taste of the untamed Africa, where the only familiar sights were on the 7mm Remington magnum and .243-caliber rifles he’d packed from home.

“One day, we hiked with shepherds, who led us to spots where they had spotted wart hogs,” he said.

“We’d been walking for two-thirds of the day when the sheep dogs got all excited and the men started hollering. The dogs had cornered a wart hog in its hole.

“We got closer, we could tell it was a sow. We wanted to leave it be, but before they could get the dogs pulled back, the sow charged. Men were running everywhere and dogs were flying. One dog got ripped up pretty bad from those awful wart hog tusks.

“The shepherds do that for a living, but I was pretty played out by the end of that day.”

Tolley was intrigued to hunt species such as the wildebeest, duiker and impala. But early in the safari, he confided to his guide that the one species he had dreamed of taking was the kudu, a large African antelope with narrow white stripes across its back and tall, spiraling horns.

“The guide downplayed my chances of getting a nice one,” Tolley said. His heart sank further on the first day devoted to kudu.

“We weren’t that far out of Port Elizabeth, a city of a million people,” he said. “But the bush there is very dense. The ranchers cut swaths through it. The hunters put up towers for stands.”

The hunters picked up eight farm hands and dropped them off along fence lines before taking a stand. “The beaters would try to push the game toward us,” Tolley said. “I saw kudu, all right, but they would sprint across those swaths faster than I could blink.”

Tolley’s partner eventually felled a kudu from a tower several hundred yards away. “It was a 46-incher, and I told my guide I’d be very pleased to take something that nice,” Tolley said.

Several hours and several drives later, he got his chance.

“I could just see the ivory tips of the horns through the brush and the guide was telling me to shoot,” Tolley said. The notion of firing semi-blindly into the brush was as foreign as the country Tolley was visiting.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I waited.”

Patience paid off with a clear but rushed shot as the bull charged into the opening.

“The guide instantly knew it was a nice kudu,” Tolley said. “I figured that was hype.”

The tape measure changed his mind.

“He said it was 58 inches, and possibly the third biggest kudu ever taken,” Tolley said.

“Then we got back to the ranch and the guide telephoned the main outfitter who called him a fool and said, ‘That’s not No. 3, that’s No. 1!”’

“The ranch owner said several hunters had spotted that kudu and tried to get it in the past,” Tolley said. “One of his friends from America had a chance at it, but his rifle safety stuck. The rancher said he was going to be sick when he heard the news.”

Unofficially, the kudu scored 140 points on the Safari Club International scale, measuring 58 inches long with 12-inch bases. News of the trophy has crisscrossed the globe in trophy-hunting circles.

But the trophy itself has not traveled so quickly.

“Eight months later, and I still don’t have it,” Tolley said Wednesday. The outfitter was supposed to have the horns and cape treated and secure the permits for export so Tolley could get the taxidermy work done in the United States.

“It’s nerve-wracking, considering that I can’t even get them to confirm exactly where the horns are,” he said.

The delay has given him time to stew and second-guess, yet he seems to be taking it all with the patience of a man who’d been there before, even though he hadn’t.

“I figure the total outlay for the safari will be somewhere near $12,000 when the kudu finally arrives with the other trophies and I get all the taxidermy done,” he said. “And I can’t wait until I can get over there again.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review