Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa How was the 24HR camfire hunt in ZIM for PAC ele & Buffalo

Jorge,
As you know through PM's, I did not shoot a buffalo except for a young soft bossed bull who had been wounded by someone else and that the game scout asked me to shoot so as not to cause anyone any trouble down the road. Fortunately for me, my PH confirmed with him before I shot that this would not count as my trophy and that no trophy fee would be due. I have little doubt that if we had not asked this ahead of time that he would have tried to make us pay for it. I did shoot a decent impala and a steenbok, but spent most of my time driving from one place to the other looking for properties we could hunt. Here are the pictures. (I'm not sure why the image size on the impala pic is different?)









I will add that the camp/property where we were based did have buffalo, but the property was very small. The buff would come onto the property at night to water and then would head back across the boundary where we could not pursue them. We did chase several small herds around the property quite a bit, but never were able to see a hard bossed bull. I had let my PH know up front that I would not shoot anything but a hard bossed bull. I was not looking for a trophy book animal, but did want to be sure to shoot only a mature bull. Fortunately for me, my PH understood this and agreed with this philosophy. He and I both were very frustrated by the lack of mature bulls and were quite PO'd over the fact that the game scout/property manager was constantly urging us to just shoot any buffalo just so he could collect the trophy fee. We also found out during this hunt that this same property manager was letting other hunters from other safari companies onto the same property while we were out of camp to hunt for buffalo. We found this out only after discovering other hunters tracks, finding their truck, and then confronting the manager. I believe my PH would have shot the guy if he thought he wouldn't go to jail since we were really working our asses off to get a buff and then this guy was sabotaging us. There is much more of this sort of thing that I could relay, but this just gives a glimpse.
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