Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Back from my Zimbabwe safari... Aug-Sept 2015

Part 4: Poachers and Anti-Poaching Activities in the BVC

I started this next part of the story at 0430 this morning. My body is still trying to figure out what time zone I'm in, apparently. I started out fine, but then bogged down in a depressing and pointless narrative about poaching in Africa. So I poured myself another cup of coffee and erased the whole damn thing. It's a worthy topic, but I've concluded that I can't fix it. And "raising awareness" isn't what I do best.

So instead, I'm going to focus on the positive aspects of what's being done in the BVC for at-risk wildlife. To kick this discussion off, here's a pic from my second or third morning on safari:



Here's how this pic came about. On the morning of Day 3, we were scouting waterholes well to the north of the camp. Actually, what we were doing was retrieving photos from the game cameras we had put up the previous day at selected waterholes. John and I were sitting in the car looking at this particular waterhole camera's pics from the night before, when I glanced up and saw two men materialize out of the bush at the edge of the clearing.

"John," I asked, "Would those two guys be BVC game scouts?"

He looked up and replied drily, "Well, if they weren't, we'd be in very deep trouble about now."

"How deep?"

"Six feet under deep."

We got out of the car, and the game scouts walked up to us and we shook hands and exchanged greetings. We showed them a pic that the game camera had caught of one of them getting a drink from the waterhole the night before, and everyone got a good laugh out of that. Then we snapped this pic at my request, we shook hands again, and they disappeared into the bush.

These game scouts were on a routine patrol. At any given moment, there are between 10 and 15 pairs of scouts on routine patrol in the BVC. These guys are primarily trained in game conservation, but they're on the pointy end of the conservation stick. Because poachers in Zimbabwe aren't much like poachers here in the USA.

Most Americans have lived, hunted and fished their whole lives within the bounds of the game & fish laws. Partly because we don't want to be punished for violating those laws, but mostly because we believe in conservation. To most of us, a poacher is like Joe-Bob Pudknocker from the next county over who got caught with 237 largemouth bass in coolers in the bed of his pickup last month and got fined $1000 in court last week. But in Zim, a poacher is a very hard case. A guy who carries an AK-47 and will kill anyone he thinks might stand in the way of his big payday, or who might put him in prison.

The goal is primarily rhino horn. And rhino horn is plentiful within the well-guarded confines of the Bubye Valley Conservancy. Here's a couple pics of what I'm talking about:










During my 10-day sojourn in the BVC, I observed no less than 6 black rhinos and one white rhino. My PH told me I was extremely fortunate; most of his hunters don't see a single rhino during their hunts, and I'm only one of a handful who has seen one at bad-breath distance (see previous story of buffalo stalking!).

But the fact is that the BVC has a large (and increasing!) population of breeding black rhinos. I've been asked not to publish the actual number, as they're already under intense pressure from rhino poachers and they don't need any more of them finding out about this gold mine.

A poaching operation will get word of the whereabouts of a good rhino from a "friend" who works in the Conservancy; i.e., the criminals will approach BVC employees when they're off-duty and offer them money, merchandise, etc, for information leading to a poached rhino horn. Since there are hundreds of employees in the BVC, there are plenty of targets. The informant gets a cell phone, and when he learns of the location of a well-horned rhino, he calls the operator and gives him the GPS coordinates. A team is then assembled.

The team consists of 3 or 4 men: a shooter, armed with a suppressed modern high-caliber bolt action rifle, a knife & hatchet man, and a couple of guards armed with AK-47's. They penetrate the Conservancy at a predetermined point close to the rhino, and cut their way through the electrified fence in late afternoon. The breach is rarely discovered until the next day. They locate the rhino and after sunset light it up and kill it, cut off the horn, then make quick egress. Another cell phone call brings a car to pick them up at a prearranged point, and off they go.

Payout to the poacher is in the neighborhood of $5000. The organizer has to pay off local and national government officials, which might cost him another $20-30K, but when he flies to Hong Kong or Beijing with the horn in his carry-on, he's looking at a cool half-million dollar payday. The horn will be cut up, ground up, etc, all for the benefit of Chinese and other men who don't want to take Viagra for their erectile dysfunction and prefer to stick to traditional remedies that don't actually work, but which are big status symbols in their culture.

The BVC game scouts, and the anti-poaching activities in the BVC which include the huge electrified double fence around the entire area, actually do a pretty good job. (That's the same kind of fence our Democrat politicians in Washington, who live in fenced and gated communities, claim don't work. Ha!) An official I spoke to briefly told me that this year they've got a pretty good rhino-to-poacher ratio. I asked what that meant.

"It means we've killed more poachers than the poachers have killed rhino," he replied matter-of-factly.

Plainly speaking: poachers don't like to be caught. They think nothing of killing people to save themselves, so if apprehended, they almost invariably try to shoot their way out of it. Sadly for them, the BVC's game scouts are trained ex-military men who know how to fight with rifles, whereas the poachers have little or no training. As you can see from the wear on the well-worn and well-maintained rifles carried by the game scouts, these are men who know how to keep and use a fighting rifle. The poachers rarely survive such encounters.

Elephant are also highly prized by poachers, for their ivory. Although the payout isn't as good as it is for rhino horn, they still make attempts. The results are usually the same.

My PH showed me some photos of carcasses of poached rhinos and elephants. Not pretty.

On the other hand, living rhinos and elephants make great photo opportunites, and I did manage to get few of those. Here's a couple shots of a trio of young bulls at a waterhole:





This trio of boys was a lot of fun to watch. They reminded me a great deal of my son and his two younger cousins when they were in the 9-12 year old age span. The big boy, in the center here, was obviously the eldest. He took great delight in pushing his young cousins around with his tusks, spraying them in the face with trunkfuls of water, etc. Number two, on the left, got pissed off and tried to retaliate and got the equivalent of an elephant noogie for his trouble, whereas Number 3, on the right, kept poking at the other two as if to say, "Hey guys, wait for me! Wait for me!" while his cousins more or less ignored him. It was pretty cute.

Cute is not a word I'd use to describe this jumbo, however:


[img]http://i1200.photobucket.com/a...ephant%20Bulls%208_zps1yplweim.jpg[/img]

This bad pic is the only one I got of him, and he was wandering away from us at this point. I should have got several pics of him when he was standing less than 20 yards from the windshield of the car, but for some reason I completely forgot I had a camera hanging in the middle of my chest.

Here's what happened. We had seen the three young bachelor bulls in the morning of Day 1, and I got some of the history of the elephant herd in BVC. Many of the elephant are native to that area, but the Conservancy got a good deal on elephant from the Zambezi valley many years ago, elephant that were going to be culled if they weren't sold and moved elsewhere. So these Zambezi elephant were darted and moved south.

Now, these Zambezi bulls aren't little guys like the bachelor boys we saw in the morning. They're big, tall, muscular elephant with an attitude.

So imagine my surprise when, just before sunset, we drove around a corner and found ourselves looking up at a Zambezi bull at less than 100 yards. And I mean looking UP. The bull didn't like the look of us, and without hesitation he turned toward us and started walking toward us With A Purpose, as John put it. Not exactly charging, but his ears were wide out and his trunk was up and he was high-stepping toward us at a brisk pace.

John stopped the car as the bull advanced down the middle of the road toward us. He put the Land Cruiser in reverse gear, but kept his foot on the clutch. He reached into the overhead bin and pulled down his Freedom Arms 454 Casull revolver, which someone posted a pic of here a few weeks ago. He put it out the window and cocked the hammer, and I had to wonder if he really thought that little pistola was going to be of any use in this situation, should things get truly hairy. John tromped on the accelerator, and the Toyota diesel engine let out a roar. To my surprise, the bull stopped at that sound. He was close enough to the car that I couldn't see the top of his head without leaning forward to peer up through the top of the windshield. (I probably don't need to point out that my heart rate and blood pressure were quite a bit above normal.) He stomped his forefoot and raised his trunk again to try to wind us, hesitating. John mashed the accelerator again, and the engine roared again, and the bull took a step back, his head swaying side to side uncertainly. He mashed the accelerator two or three more times over a span of 30-40 seconds, and finally the bull turned and slowly walked off into the bush. Which is about the time I remembered my camera and took this photo.

I asked John if he really thought the 454 revolver would do any good.

"I'm sure it would have an effect," he replied matter-of-factly. "I didn't have time to get the 470 out of the back, now, did I? Had to do something."

I asked about the ballistics of his loads (340 gr LBT-WFN's, IIRC). "One of these would get his attention, at least," he opined, "And turn him if it didn't kill him. But I've a bit of experience with frontal brain shots on the elephant, and these bullets will go straight through a Land Cruiser engine, fender to fender, so I'm pretty sure they'd get the job done." (In later talks around the campfire, I learned that John has killed over 100 elephant over the course of his career, both hunting and culling, and nearly all of these with brain shots.)

When my PH discovered I'd failed to even think of taking a pic of the elephant as he advanced at us, or at any time during the standoff, he teased me mildly but was understanding. "They do get your attention, don't they?" he chuckled.