Hey, it's your very rude, bottom-feeder comment buddy.
Do not judge a place in Zim based upon what you saw in the area before. My father hunted Binga, just W of where you are looking, in 2002. He got a leopard, buffalo, and elephant. It was a great hunt.
We went back there in 2008 and my God did it change. The poaching was rampant. We were only after buffalo and what little plains game we saw. The other guys in camp were some Spaniards after elephant. They were tracking a bull and machine gun fire opened-up on the herd they were tracking. They left immediately, as they felt it was too dangerous hunting there. We also heard machine gun fire and found the young bull elephant they poached the next day.
We left without buffalo. We shot a cow in a snare and found another cow who had just died in a drag-log snare. We pulled snares every day.
If you bumped buffalo, they went for hours. You never found them again.
It was the worst hunt I've ever been on. It went from heaven to hell in 6 years.
Be careful with "I've been there before" and Zimbabwe.
kscowboy,
Interesting that you hunted Binga in 2008. I hunted it in September of 2008 with Rory Muil of Russ Broom Safaris as my PH. I killed a bull elephant, a cape buffalo, a hippo, and a 14' croc.
The place was swarming with natives who had moved in from the cities due to Mugabe's economic policies. The schools were closed because the teachers just wandered off after not getting paid. In one place US Aid had constructed a fence to keep elephants out, but all the wire had been stolen. We found and destroyed 35 wire snares.
There was almost no game in fact smaller than buffalo, though there seemed to be a lot of elephants. We used part of my buff for leopard bait but a native stole it the first night. Whole areas of Binga were denuded--almost desertified--by the natives and their goats.
I considered this a good hunt, as my objective was to get elephant and buff. I have heard, however, that no one hunts there now due to the increased population.
