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

I'm in Washington Dulles (at long last!) and have a couple hours to kill before my flight to DFW, so I thought I'd put up some descriptions and pics for y'all. As you know, I left for Zimbabwe on Aug 24 in search of Cape buffalo, eland, and kudu, with buff being the priority.

John Sharp (my PH) picked me up in Bulawayo on the afternoon of Aug. 26, and we proceeded to the Bubye Valley Conservancy (BVC), a privately held game park of nearly 1 million acres in the southeast corner of Zim. The BVC has to be seen to be believed. The quantities of game in there defy my powers of description. Consider numbers like this: five hundred lions. Yes; five hundred of which perhaps 6-10% are huntable males. More lion research is getting done in the BVC than in Hwenge Park, former home of the famous Cecil, simply because there's more wild lions in the BVC. Population numbers of elephant, buffalo, leopard, and rhino were cited for me, but I will refrain from putting them down here... the pressure the BVC is getting from poachers is already very high. More on that later.

Anyway, we got in and settled into very comfortable accommodations at Chamalaya Camp, one of 9 or 10 permanent camps in the BVC. Here's some views of the camp:









Sorry about the poor quality of the sundowner pic... I accidentally deleted the right one, all I have left is this poor one.

Anyway, that's camp. Just me, my PH, 4 hunting staff, 2 skinners, and 4 camp workers. Talk about being taken care of! I'm told it's like this in most safari camps, at least traditional ones.

So next morning we were up bright and early and out in the car scouting for game. After we did the obligatory shooting of paper to "make sure the sights are on target" (i.e., the PH needs to start assessing the client's ability to handle his rifle(s) first thing). We punched holes in paper and we were off. I was astounded by the numbers of game animals. Zebra and wildebeest in mixed herds of several hundred at every waterhole, with smaller herds in between... tens of thousands of them! Impala were all over the place as well. John pointed out a couple of nice rams and asked me if I'd like to take one later, and I told him not really. They just don't do much for me, impala. They're smaller than a Texas whitetail (which are damn small!) and aside from the lyre-shaped horns on the males and the wonderful way they run, there's not much to them.

That first morning we saw several family groups of lions, both spotted and brown hyena, giraffe by the score, and even a group of bachelor elephants, young fellows. We also spotted a solitary black rhino and caught a glimpse of a herd of buffalo bulls. The skittishness of the buff surprised me... but these critters are very shy about people, despite being huge and cantankerous.

Finally John pulled over near a waterhole where 200-300 zebra and wildebeest were milling around and trying to decide if we were a threat or what, and said, "Right, let's see if that new rifle of yours can kill a zebra." They pronounce it ZEBB-ra over there, unlike our own ZEE-bra way of saying it.

My new rifle is a Kimber Caprivi in 375 H&H Magnum, which I bought in June after a prolonged search for an African rifle that gave me fits. More on that another day, perhaps. Suffice to say I'd bought the Caprivi from Whittaker guns, which is managed by one of our 24HCF members, and who gave me a helluva deal on a great, great rifle!

So anyway, John told me to grab my rifle, he picked the shooting sticks out of the back of the car, and we wandered off into the bush to pick out a zebra stallion. It didn't take long. John pointed out the one he wanted me to shoot, about 100 yards off, and told me he wanted me to shoot the top of the chevron on the stallion's shoulder. I settled the rifle in the canvas, took a shooting breath, and released the firing pin. BOOM! One dead zebra. The 300 gr Swift A-Frame went right through him, broke both shoulders, and carried across the Limpopo River and on over South Africa, finally coming to rest somewhere in Antarctica.

Here's some dead zebra pics:





[img]http://i1200.photobucket.com/a...ra%20Gibson%20Amos_zpsiyotsel5.jpg[/img]

This last pic shows Gibson, John's skinner of many years, and Amos, his assistant. Gibson and I spent a good bit of quality animal-autopsy time together. My PH was a bit surprised at my eagerness to spend time in the skinning shed, as most hunters would just as soon leave that chore to the menials. I was eager to learn more about the anatomy and toughness of African animals, though, and the only way to do that is to get bloody and wield the knife yourself.

John admits he's done a great deal of animal postmortem dissection himself. We spent many an hour sitting at the campfire over the 10 days of our safari, talking about bullets, terminal ballistics of various calibers/bullets, and "stopping" power versus hunting.

Those of you who are familiar with my law enforcement background and/or my training company, Tactical Anatomy Systems LLC, will not be surprised to learn I spent much of my time in Africa discussing and otherwise researching these topics. More on that later.

It's good you are back safely. That is an amazingly comfortable looking and attractive camp.

Well, hell... my connection here at the airport sucks... I'm having trouble getting my pics to load! I guess I'll pick this huntalogue up when I get to DFW, maybe the internet connection will be better there...

Thanks for sharing. Glad you had a great time.

So far it sounds like a great trip. Were you using handloads?

Welcome back!

Sounds like you had a great trip. I can't wait for the rest of the report.

Mike

Been waiting for this Doc!

Post more when you can!

Hell doc, you just left!! Welcome back! So.....when are u going back?

Yeah Doc!

Did you re-book yet?


SNORK!

Did you get a buffalo?

The suspense is nerve wracking!

Can't wait to read and see the rest of this one. Glad you made it back safely.

Congrats Doc cant wait to read the rest of the story.

Welcome back and we all definitely want to bread more.

Looking forward to more stories and pics, doc.

Waiting not so patiently.....



Great start but let's hear the rest!

Looking forward to the full report! Welcome back!

Eric

tag for easy access

Great trip, congrats.

Looking forward to the full travelogue.

Savor the time retelling it; your audience is on the hook.

Sorry to leave you boys hangin', but it's been a sch!tstorm since I made my first post yesterday. Let's just say American Airlines must hate me with the white hot intensity of a thousand burning suns, the way they treat me...

Anyways, I got home last night just before midnight, after 42 hours in transit. This should tell you two things: first, southern Africa is a looooong way from Texas; and two... I'm so stupid tired I forget the second thing.

Soooo, anyway, back to the story...

Part 2: Cape Buffalo

The whole point of this trip was to hunt Cape buffalo. The most dangerous game of all the dangerous game, the DG species that injures or kills more hunters than any other, the sixteen-hundred pound bull that dominates the southern African bush like nothing else. Don't ask me why buffalo, I can't explain it. I could cite Ruark and Hemingway and Taylor and a dozen other writers, but that wouldn't explain it either.

When I booked this hunt 3 years ago I specifically searched for PH's who both 1) had a lot of buffalo (BIG buffalo) in their concessions, and 2) were considered to be good at it. After talking to a lot of people, it came down to 5 PH's, and after I'd talked to those 5 at the DSC convention in 2012, it came down to two: John Sharp and Lou Halloran, both of Zimbabwe. John got the nod for a lot of reasons, which I won't go into. Suffice to say that he's as good a guide/PH as you're going to find in Africa today.

When I booked the hunt, John advised me strongly to book a 10-day hunt. Jorge agreed, as did a number of other Africa hunting veterans. As John put it, "There are simply no guarantees when you hunt buffalo. You might kill your bull in 3 days, but more likely you won't get a shot at a good bull until you've hunted 7 or 8 or even 10 days."

Case in point, the guy John hunted right before me booked a 21-day lion & buffalo hunt; killed his lion on Day 6, and then hunted hard for 15 more days before he finally got a shot at a buffalo. He succeeded, but it took him more than 2 weeks. Another guy hunted hard with John's compadre PH David L., and went home after 2 weeks without the 43+ inch buffalo bull he wanted. And so on.

So we started hunting buffalo on Day 1. We got out to the "rifle range" (a deserted stretch of road about a mile from camp), and John set up a shooting table while Isaac, his head tracker, trotted out about 100 yards and set up a cardboard box with a Shoot-n-See target pasted to it. I dutifully put 2 rounds downrange, we pronounced the rifle/scope/load/hunter good to go, and we went hunting.

I had the rifle sighted 3 inches high at 100 with my load, but on John's recommendation we zeroed it dead on at 100 yards. "You won't get many shots farther than 80 yards in this country," John opined. "And I certainly won't advise you to shoot at a buffalo any farther away than that."



Basically, hunting buffalo amounts to driving around to find bull tracks, then following them. We drove to a dozen waterholes, and at each one the trackers got out and walked around the periphery of the bareground area around the waterhole, looking at tracks. They would then return to the car and make pronouncements in Fanagolo, which John would translate to me as, "Nothing. Just a herd," or "Nothing," or "Two young bulls that headed south". That sort of thing.



This pic shows the process. That's Lovemore (number 2 tracker) on the left, Isaac in the middle, and the Game Scout on the right. I never got his name, I got the impression that the rest of the crew didn't care for him much.

Toward the end of the day we encountered a couple of buffalo herds, which are damned impressive... two or three hundred buffalo cows, calves, and bulls thundering away from the waterhole in a huge cloud of dust. Mostly you just hear the thunder and see the dust:




But occasionally you can catch a glimpse of some buffalo, like this, and it can be truly impressive:





Eventually we came to a waterhole with enough buffalo tracks to make Isaac pay attention. Not a herd this time, but six bulls; he told John that 2 went east, two went north, and two went west. Then suddenly Lovemore picked out four of them in the bush to the north, about 250 yards out. One was broadside and looking at us, as big as a pickup truck he was, his head turned to look directly at us, and yes, he did look at us as if we owed him money. Ruark will be blessed forever for that quip. (I wonder if he made that description up himself, or did Selby, or Virginia?)

As I write about this for other people to read, I feel as if I must restrain myself from citing Ruark, as every trite and amateur bit of writing about buffalo hunting I've ever come across cites him and it’s tiresome. We’ve all read Ruark, he was long dead before any of us could have met him, we all know the clichés, let’s move on… but that doesn't change the fact that the damn things DO look at you like you owe them money. So I guess we're stuck with it.

Anyway, the buff moved on. The big one looking at us was mature in the bosses, but no wider than the ears (which means less than 32" or so) and John dismissed him. “We can do much better than him,” he promised.
I wish I had a thousand dollars for every time a guide has told me we can do better, and then we didn’t. PLEASE God don’t let these words be prophetic, I prayed.

Then we had an Elephant Encounter. I'll get to that later. I have only two words for it that I'll share with you now: Holy, and Sch!tt.

Next morning we were up and back to the waterhole by six. The trackers got out, and found the herd, which Isaac said were 5 dagga boys, two of which he said were big old bulls. He said they were lying up in the district to the north, and coming to water in the early morning. We got back in the car and headed down the road to find the place where their tracks crossed, the road, then we got out.

"Load your rifle," John said quietly. He then went through what I guessed was a standard explanation of the process. "We'll go in single file, you right behind me. Keep in mind these things have incredible hearing, so don't cough, don't clear your throat. Let your nose run, and if you must fart, do it quietly. We have the wind, so they won't smell you, but they will hear you and if they do they'll be gone."

Then John took his rifle from Isaac. It's a beautiful old Rigby 470 double, which the head guy at Holland & Holland said at one time was "the finest working double rifle that has ever passed through my hands". It was made in 1927, and the barrels were severely damaged some time later; it came to H&H in the 70's, and they rebarreled it, but that pretty much wrecked its collector value; hence the "working double rifle" classification. I had a lot of opportunity to scrutinize this rifle, as it was front and center in my field of vision, 3 feet from my nose, for the next several days.

Here's a pic of the stalk starting out: Isaac in the lead, watching tracks; Lovemore behind him, scanning ahead for visual contact with the buffalo, then John behind him. I'm tail-end Charlie, with the camera, which is why you can't see me. Obviously.



In the bush, we stayed close together, usually only a pace or two apart. We started tracking at 0645. At that time the temp was in the low 80's.

Within 50 yards we came across fresh cow turds. Having grown up around cattle in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I know that cow turds that are shiny and wet-looking on a hot summer morning only stay that way for a couple minutes after they drop out of the cow's azz... and I also knew that there ain't no domestic cattle in this part of Africa... so these fresh turds were actually fresh buffalo bull turds. At which point my focus became a lot more, well, focused.

Then I laughed at myself because, of course, NObody ever shoots a buffalo on the first stalk of the first day of his first buffalo hunt.

"Get ready!" John said, setting out the sticks.

Holy. Sch!tt... !!! Thinks I, and I laid the rifle in the canvas sling between the shooting sticks. I could make out the bulk of something that appeared to be about the size, shape, and black color of a railway oil car about 20 yards ahead in the thick mopane brush. After peering for a while, I could make out something that looked like horns at one end of the railway car. Then suddenly it was gone, and virtually without a sound. John said, "Put your rifle on safe", and I did. And we began stalking again.

And stalking. And stalking.

BTW, this is what buffalo look like when you're stalking them in the mopane scrub:




... except that this one is a lot easier to see than they usually are, and it's a lot farther away than they usually are. This one's about 40 yards out.

We got close enough half a dozen times to set up the sticks, but either the buff we could shoot was one of the young ones with soft bosses, or there was too much brush for a good shot, or they just started moving again before I could get set up. BTW, you only have about 3-4 seconds from the time the sticks go up to take your shot. There's no time to dawdle.

Finally, at about 11:00, after more than 4 hours of stalking, we had 3 bulls staked out. Isaac and John and I had gone in alone. We were about 15 yards from the bulls, which were in a very dense thicket of mopane. We scootched up to them on our butts, slowly and being vewy, vewy quiieet... One bull fed out of the thicket to the right. John peered at him through his binoculars. "He's young. Soft bosses," he whispered, very softly. The second bull started to move out to the left, and John started to put up the sticks.

Then the brush to our left front exploded and a Sherman tank came barreling out of it... actually, it was a black rhino bull. Sherman tanks are smaller and slower. The rhino had been startled by the buff, and being a rhino and doing what rhino's do best (i.e., charge at anything they think might be a threat) it came at the buff, which of course scattered to the four winds. The rhino thundered past our position without seeing us, scarcely 5 yards away. Holy. Sch!tt.

I didn't get a picture of the rhino as he galloped past. I didn't take a picture of my underwear afterward, either. At that point we decided we were done for the morning. It was time for lunch and a nap.

Yes, Ed, I was. I used Hornady brass, IMR4895 powder, and Swift A-Frame 300 gr bullets, which were good for about 2500 fps and dead-nuts accurate in my rifle. I had solids loaded with Hornady DGS 300 gr bullets, which are reputed to be decent and shot to the same POA/POI as the A-frames. FWIW, I didn't shoot anything with solids.

A good writer knows where to take a break! I was sitting on the edge of my computer chair when you decide to take a nap. Well done.

Just woke from a nap to read your writing about Doc writing about taking a nap.

Part 3: Cape Buffalo 2

Day 3 and Day 4 of my hunt were pretty much more of the same: we got up, found buffalo bull tracks at a waterhole, then followed them. We got close on bulls several times, but never as close as that first morning. No opportunities for a shot presented themselves, but that' buffalo hunting, eh?

Afternoons, after lunch and siesta, we went out looking for plains game. Specifically, kudu and eland. We saw lots of kudu, mostly cows, but occasionally young bulls. The young bulls were big enough to make my jaw drop... 50-inch racks, or bigger, but the horns were thin and the bulls hadn't had a chance to breed yet, so my PH said we would have to pass no matter how dry my mouth was nor how hard my heart was pounding.

I should say at this point that kudu was not a high priority for me on this hunt at first. This was primarily because I'd never seen kudu bulls alive in the wild. After I saw my first pair of live bulls vanish into the brush like grey ghosts, my priorities changed.

ON the morning of Day 4 we were on the way to a waterhole we had put a game camera on the evening before, and came around a corner and caught a glimpse of two huge mature kudu bulls. John brought the car to an abrupt stop and said softly, "Oh, we have to go after that one. He'll go 57 and one half inches."

He saw my eyebrows arch at his statement, and he said, "You must think I'm a bit confident to say that, but I've been hunting this area for 30 years, and I'm confident of the genetics. The good bulls here come in three sizes: fifty-two inches, fifty-seven-and-a-half inches, and occasionally a sixty-incher. This pair was a 52 and a 57-1/2."

I wouldn't know, because we not only didn't get to measure any horns, we never even got to see them again. We stalked them for 3 hours, until they apparently caught sight of us and bolted. Isaac said the tracks said they'd suddenly started to run. They were gone. By this time it was near noon, it was 100 degrees or more, we were hot and thirsty and tired (again), so we trudged back to the car and drove back to camp for lunch and another nap. (Did I mention that naps are one of the best things about safari hunting in Africa?)

That afternoon we were loading up the car and John said he thought we should drive north 30 miles or so to the Bubye River valley, where we would have a good chance of seeing something interesting. Like what? I asked.

"Who knows? We have a very good chance of seeing a kudu, or an eland; the blue bulls tend to be more common there. And who knows? We might stumble across a buffalo."

We didn't see kudu. We didn't see eland. But we did stumble across buffalo.

At about 5pm Isaac tapped on the roof of the car and John stopped. "Buffalo," he said quietly. "Under that big green tree."

The big green tree was 1000 yards away, across the dry bed of the Bubye River at the bottom of the opposite bank/bluff. I looked through my binoculars and thought I could see some black specs under the tree. John said it was a herd of 5 bulls. Isaac had seen them with naked eyes and pronounced two of the bulls to be good shootable ones.

Here's a pic of the big green tree:



It's hard to imagine the scale, but the trunk of this tree was about 25 to 30 feet in diameter. You can't really get that scale from just looking at this pic, which was taken with the zoom on my camera cranked up all the way. I did put my laser rangefinder on a big rock about half way to the big green tree, though, and it said 525 yards.

So, we got out of the car, I loaded my rifle, and we began yet another stalk. I felt quite optimistic, I'm not sure why. For one thing, the Bubye River valley is beautiful. For another, it wasn't really hot, the breeze was good and strong and coming straight at us. The light was good, too. I don't know, I just felt good about it. I wasn't saying to myself, "Yeah, this buffalo is goin' down," or anything like that. I just felt good. It was good to be out and hunting in such a lovely place, with good people whose company I really enjoyed, carrying a good rifle and wearing good boots. It was just good.

We crossed the river and then headed east along the edge of the riverine brush, single file, being vewy, vewy quiiiieeeettt. Elmer Fudd woulda been proud. It was tougher than usual, as the soil is very sandy and loose along the river, and there was a lot of up and down. We came to the green tree, and Isaac scouted the mud at its base where the bulls had been while the rest of us waited in the brush.

"Five good bulls," John told me after Isaac gave his report. "At least 3 shootable ones."

Ten minutes later, we found them, and after several minutes observing through binoculars, we moved upland and skirted the next couple of ravines, then dropped down into the third one and carefully climbed the far side. There was a fallen tree to our front. I couldn't see a damn thing, but John and Isaac, in front of me, could see the bulls feeding their way up through the riverine brush toward the flats to our left. John positioned us behind the fallen tree.

"They're coming up the bank," he whispered. "They should come out right here," and he pointed to the open grassy plain to our front, "But for God's sake do NOT shoot unless I tell you."

"Gotcha," I said, feeling more confidence than I had any right to. John placed the sticks and I rested my rifle in the canvas. Several minutes passed, then suddenly a buffalo bull appeared roughly 50 yards away. Again, the size and color of a railway tanker car. Hay-Zeus!!!

"Steady," John whispered, as the first bull fed slowly out into the open, and we could see the others at the edge of the brush. The first bull was in tall grass, and we couldn't see his horns. He fed past a bush about halfway between us, and then got into shorter grass.

"He's got hard bosses. Do you have a shot?" John asked me in a very soft whisper. I had been asking that same question, and the answer was "no". The bush between us had a single branch on it that mattered, and of course that branch and a dozen leaves were squarely between me and the bull.

"No joy," I said.

"Then don't shoot, just wait," he replied. So we waited. I noticed that the light was fading, and there were no shadows. When had the sun set? Minutes ago, I thought. Still lots of light. Gradually, the other bulls fed out into the grass. There were three bulls now.

"They're all hard, but one on the right is the widest one," John whispered. "Do you have a shot?"

I swivelled my riflescope off the first bull carefully and looked through it at the third bull, both eyes open, the field of view clean and full. He was in the clear, head down. I could see both front legs, his shoulder, could visualize his football-size heart between those massive shoulder. His hindquarters were back in the next county.

And I knew. All the thoughts of buffalo I'd ever had coalesced to this moment and my whole mind focused down on the illuminated tip of the post of my reticle and the shoulder and heart of the massive bull. And I knew he was mine.

"I have him," I whispered.

"Then shoot him," John said simply. I flicked the safety forward, placed my thumb on the top of the tang, placed my finger on the trigger then smoothly brought thumb and finger together. The big rifle crashed and bucked up in my hands but I heard the solid whack of the bullet as it hit him and out of my non-scope eye I thought I saw blood blow out his nose and I knew I'd hit him exactly where I'd meant to and I knew he was dead on his feet even though he was trying to run, running and limping with his left shoulder smashed into uselessness, and all the bulls were running, running to our left into the open field.

The first bull, the one I hadn't had a shot at, was roaring; a huge loud bellowing roar--BRRRAAAAAAAAWK!!--unbelievably loud, as he charged up beside my shot and dying running bull and dropped his head and hooked up hard as they ran side by side, and he lifted my bull off his feet and up into the air. Simply unimaginable strength and power: sixteen hundred pounds of buffalo tossed into the air like a rag doll, all four feet off the ground! It was incredible, simply unimaginable.

Both bulls were roaring then, running together and the younger bull trying to hook him again, then my bull stopped and stood there for several seconds, then fell down. The younger bull hit him again, hard, trying to hook him with his left horn again and again, both bulls roaring at each other. (I don't think they were friends, those two bulls. They appeared to have a history.)

The other three bulls stopped and milled around. They seemed confused, unsure of what had happened, looking all around for the source of the loud noise that had startled them, while the dying bull on the ground continued to grunt and blow, trying to rise and failing. The other bull gave up trying to gore him and moved away. Then the four bulls turned and ran off and out of sight.

I watched my bull on the ground for a good five minutes, groaning and grunting, his tail flicking and his head tossing. Then he lifted his head and let out a long loud moaning bellow, the famous death bellow, then his head dropped and he lay still. His tail twitched a few more times, then stopped.

"Hit him again," John said quietly then. "Just below the hump, through the top of the grass. Insurance."

I put the post on him and fired again, just to be sure, but the bull didn't move. I can't describe the feeling I had as I came up on the dead bull. I don't have the right words. I expect if you want to know you'll have to hunt one and kill one yourself.

Anyways, here's some pics of my buffalo on the ground. I think he shrunk quite a bit after I shot him. He's 36 inches across the horns, which is fairly respectable, I think. He's got good hard bosses, a symmetrical head, and in short is a very nice representative specimen. I believe he'll look good on my wall.













The whole process of getting this big guy loaded into the hunting car and back to camp is worthy of a chapter its own self, but I'll likely save that for another day. I like this photo from the skinning shed, though, as it gives a good perspective as to the size of these magnificent creatures:

Doc: already your story has brought back a lot of memories !! I was one of those guys on a 14 day hunt...and killed my bull, the only good one I got a shot at in the thinly populated area I was hunting, in the last 20 minutes of the last day.
And I spent a good deal of time on my belly looking a buffalo ankles 15 yards away....

[Apparently I exceeded the bandwidth limit in my previous post. Here's the last bit with the photos included.]


And here's a photo showing the small tear in his hide where the other bull's horn hooked him. I would have thought there would be a huge slash in the hide, but no... only this little mark. I think it demonstrates extremely well how incredibly tough Cape buffalo bullhide is.



The knife I'm pointing at it with is a special one made for me for this hunt by a patient of mine here in San Angelo. It's Damascus steel, made by the knifemaker by hand, with a polymer-stabilized amber handle.

And here is a pic showing the two entry wounds: the one by my index finger was my original shot, and the one indicated by my pinky is the second "insurance". The killing shot went in through the left humerus, shattering the bone, then through the top of the heart, and ended up in the triceps muscle of the off shoulder.


Finally, a pic of the damage to the heart caused by the Swift A-Frame softpoint in transit across the bull's thorax. The skinner's knife gives some scale, but hadn't been used to open the heart wound yet... all the damage you see is entirely due to the bullet.




Also, a pic of the recovered bullet. I haven't weighed it yet, but it should come in at 280+ grains, I think.


Coming up: Part 4, Poachers; Part 5, Kudu; Part 6, African Rifles.

ingwe, I believe you related that story to me over a glass of amber liquid on the hog hunt this past March... you should write it up for the guys here on the Africa forum!

Oh, and just to give the guy some credit, y'all: the 375 H&H Magnum load I used on this hunt came to me courtesy of the Poobah his ownself. Thanks a bunch, Poobs!!

Doc, you kidding me? he's a good bull with great hooks! marvelous story sir! Very happy for you!

Just too cool. Thanks for the write up.

Thanks. I will be chasing brown bear coming spring and am undecided on what you used or the 270 gr TSX. Six of one, half a dozen of another perhaps. Great story so far. It may have me bump buffalo ahead of goat and Dall...

Doc, awesome hunt, awesome narrative. Can't wait for the next chapter.

Yep Doc, thats a good Zimbabwe bull by any standard!

No matter, now you know what I meant when I told you that you hunt buffalo, in order to have hunted buffalo.....

Nice bull and a storyteller you are. Looking forward to the rest.

Great story, Doc, about getting in amongst hard-bossed bulls and doing everything right. Congratulations.

Congratulations Doc., I thought I was going to have to wait till next months magazine came for the conclusion on the Buff.. Glad you got your first choice on your trip. I Look forward to reading the rest of the story and seeing the excellent photo's of your hunt.

Well done Sir.

I've enjoyed every word and photo! Great report and a good representative bull. Buffalo aren't a free lunch, served up on a platter.

Guys, thanks a lot for the kind words. I gotta admit I'm being a bit selfish writing these reports up. I should be getting my gear all put away, catching up on the chores left undone for 2 weeks of travel plus the frantic week prior to travel that I spent getting ready to travel, but I've got a strong feeling I need to get these stories laid down before the memories start to fade.

A couple observations in response to questions/comments:

1. Jorge, ingwe, guys... you're right, I believe my Cape buffalo bull is a magnificent specimen. I downplayed him a bit just to be funnin' myself for y'all's benefit... but yes, he is truly a wonderful head.

2. EdM, re. your plan to use your .375 H&H on a big bear: I've studied the ballistics of this cartridge and its best bullets (as I'm sure you have as well), and IMHO you can pretty much use whatever softpoint/expanding bullet you want. Bear are not thick-skinned or heavy-boned game as buff are, so the deep bulldozer penetration of a 300 gr A-Frame really isn't required. You can easily launch a 270 gr bullet at 2700 fps, and that will give you trajectory similar to a 30-06 caliber 180 gr bullet, which means point-blank range out to 250 yards or so with a 200 yard zero (but you'll have 4400 lb-ft of impact energy rather than the 2900 lb-ft of the 30-06). Myself, I'm looking hard at developing a 240 gr bullet load for this caliber, which ballistically would be a monster and highly useful for game such as big hogs at night, or big bears next spring in Alberta.
3. Mule Deer, badger, knivesforme... guys, again thanks for your praises and kind words. Sorry it's taking so long to get this all down in pixels.
4. I have to confess I'm using you guys as guinea pigs. I'm planning to write this stuff up for a couple of gun rags, but I need to get some kind of drafts together and down on paper/pixels so I can organize my thoughts & narrative.

Congratulations! What a great hunt so far! I look forward to hearing the rest. Not sure if Buff will ever be on the agenda, but reading this, and others, sure makes me think about it. I went to SA last year, and I think another trip is in order. Now, back to waiting for the rest of the story!

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.

Apparently I've exceeded single-post bandwidth limits again. Here's a pic of the big jumbo properly displayed:



If you look closely, you'll notice significant differences between this bull and the little guys I posted about earlier. For one thing, longer tusks (40-pound class, John told me). For another, look how thick the base of his trunk is. This elephant is over 14 feet tall, to give some scale. His trunk was close to 4 feet in diameter, I would estimate. An elephant that big could roll up a Toyota Land Cruiser like an empty can of Bud Lite.

Cool beans Doc!!

The poaching thing got my attention. The last Working Dog Consult I did was for Conservation Dogs...they wanted advice on training them to track poachers in Zambia. Since I have a good background in K9 tracking for bad guys, and good knowledge of what takes place in the bush...I seem to be uniquely qualified.
It was an interesting session, and I hope the dog folks got enough out of it to keep most dogs/handlers alive.
Here is a dog from my program the Conservation people snapped up, he is not a tracker, but a scent dog, trained to work road check points for Ivory, Rhino horn, and any type of weaponry. He is kicking ass finding guns mostly, has two armed guards 24/7 and a price on his head.
Because of the complicit nature of it all,I had to tell the folks involved to never let even the handler know where and when the checkpoints would be set. Your post reminded me of that.

Awesome, Poobs!

Yes, dogs are a big part of the good work being done there. John and I had a good laugh at the campfire one night as I described to him my "close encounter" with Arrow, the Belgian Malinois I shared a long night's stakeout with back in my SWAT days. He says they use Mals exclusively for enforcement purposes in the BVC.

Great Great read! Thank you for sharing you story and the photos. Damn what a hunt. Congratulations on a true adventure!

OBTW San Angelo is my home town, still have some family there and I go back several times a year! Baker

Yeah the ones we just sent over were a German Shepherd/Dutch Shepherd cross.High drive man-eaters with a bit more coat than a Mal- requested because the tsetse already killed one short coated dog with Tryps, and it seems the longer coats are harder to get through.
Anyway,back to YOUR story!

Great story, Doc. When I was there with Dawna the patrols had just caught a poacher and they had him sitting on the ground, hands tied behind his back. He was unarmed, so he lived....

It seems there is a difference in the writing of a person who is an experienced, or veteran hunter of Africa, and the person who is experiencing Africa for the first time.

What makes your account of this safari so enjoyable for me to read, is that you seemed to be taking in all the details that I might have noticed, having never been there myself.

Not that I do not enjoy reading stories from PH types and veterans of several african safaris, but the connection for me has to do with your enjoyment of watching the young elephant's interaction with one another.

Great story, well written. I have enjoyed it very much.

Joel, you got that right! Nothing like seeing it the first time, and Doc has the talent to put it into words....

All I can muster is a "Wow"......awesome story and pics Doc.

Joel, I confess I made a conscious decision prior to leaving for Zim to chronicle my experiences on a daily basis. I took my laptop and spent a lot of time tapping at the keyboard every day, trying to preserve the experience while it was still fresh in my mind. And I also had a notepad with me every day, so I could jot down random thoughts as they occurred to me during the hunt.

It helps to have a camera on you at all times, and to remember to take photos of everything.

As I said earlier, my only real regret is that I didn't spring for a videographer. I hadn't realized just how much detail I COULD have had footage of, stuff that you never would imagine happening. If there'd been video footage of the big elephant standoff, or the rhino charge at the end of that buffalo stalk, what a thing that would have been!!! Not to mention the events immediately after I shot my buffalo... John and Isaac were shouting and laughing in amazement when the second buff gored and tossed my bull, because it's such a rare event that neither of them has ever seen it! If I could have had that on video, it would have been amazing.

Note to all other prospective hunters: hire the videographer. You'll regret it if you don't.

Damn Doc you could be a writer, very eloquent,makes me feel as if I was right alongside of you! Great pictures and story can't wait for the next chapter

Just an excellent read and formatted to be a very polished piece here DR, thank you for sharing.

You are certainly putting the reader "there", which is always the hallmark of a good outdoor writer.

Couple of questions if you don't mind.

How did your body adapt to the local food and water?
What did you bring that you did not use (and wouldn't take along next time)?
And conversely, besides the videographer, anything else you wished to have packed into your gear bags?



Did they give a reason or venture a guess as to that behavior?

Thanks!

Your a dam fine story teller! Africa was a dream of mine, but I know now ill only be able to live it, thu, posts like this one! keep it going, for us that will never be able to make the trip!

This could be the #1 safari write up in Campfire History. Good work, Doc. I can't tell how it makes my Africa Jones act up. Your recount takes me right there.

Buffalo hunting is really a favorite of mine. Track, stalk, spot, walk-walk-walk. You earn a good bull and you earned that one.
Fantastic!

I think we could make this a little better if we were all gathered around this bar with a cold one in hand listening to days events. What do you think?

Great story Doc...thanks for sharing...

Bob

Thanks, add... I didn't have any problems with food/water. It was all very clean, and other than my intense dislike for curry, I don't have any fussy's.

I used pretty much everything I packed, and I packed only stuff that veteran hunters agreed needs to come along. As for anything I wish I'd brought... I really need a better camera. The little Kodak point-and-shoot I brought is old and has seen better days. I'd bring one with a slightly better zoom than my current camera.

As for the buff behavior, the goring, etc... we surmised that the bull I killed was the dominant one of that herd of dagga boys, and the next guy in line saw that his nemesis was vulnerable and so took his opportunity to do his best to finish the old boy off. But that's speculation, of course.

hatari... I think my best decision on this trip was to hunt alone. Just me, one to one with my PH. It was also my worst decision. I missed having good friends to sit with back at camp at the end of each day. It would've been awesome to have some of you guys there to sip a sundowner with each evening, to share pics and stories with.

My favorite hunting camp of all time is the one I share almost every fall with a bunch of 24HCF members out in Wyoming, hosted by eh76. It's the end-of-day comraderie. It would've been nice to have that on this trip. And I have to say that I missed two people very, very much while I was in Africa: The Redhead, and my youngest daughter. It would have been wonderful to have them there to share this trip with.

However, if they or any of y'all had been there, social obligations would have interfered with writing, and I wouldn't have got my daily diary entries down as I did, and this hunting story/travelogue would never have come about. So there's that side to it.

Bottom line, it happened the way it happened, and the way it was supposed to have happened.

A couple of folks have asked about the boots I was wearing on this hunt. They are Courteneys, made in Zimbabwe but available here in America. My PH has been a spokesmodel for these boots for years, which, if you know John Sharp, says a helluva lot. John is the real deal and he will endorse nothing if he isn't satisfied that it's the best product you can get. Now, sometimes that means he's a bit slow to accept new stuff (like TSX bullets, f'rinstance), but that's small beer.

I bought my Courteneys about 6 weeks before my hunt, on the internet. They sent along a great pair of arch supports that they said would bring their European size more in line with my American size 11 feet, and the combination was superb for comfort and support. I did a lot of walking in these boots prior to my hunt to make sure they fit and were well broken-in, but truthfully they needed very little breaking to fit me perfectly. The boots are VERY quiet in the bush, BTW, something you absolutely MUST have when stalking buffalo.

Have heard that about Courteneys...my pard bought and wore some on our trip and said they were by far the most comfortable footwear ever...

Wise move, my friend.

This where I quit reading. Good curry is like manna from heaven, and about any rank flesh can make a good curry.

OK, I'll forgive this...please continue.

Heck of a good tale Doc thanks for the effort writing it up.

Terrific story Doc, congratulations on your buff.

tag for later reading

I was just thinking out loud while daydreaming looking at the camp photos.....

Hunting with John is like hunting with a mate, which he is now. Great story to enjoy vicariously through the words and pictures.

Doc; awesome write up. Thank you so much for putting in the effort to share with us here on the 'fire.

GRF

Great report. I feel like I was right there with you.
Many thanks for sharing with us. Anxious to read the next entry.

Thank you for posring your story. It has made for an enjoyable read.

I offered Doc

Part 5: Kudu

Now, I know kudu is something like the freakin' Holy Grail to a lot of hunters, but I'm just not one of them. Yes, I think they're handsome animals, but they don't make me drool all over my rifle magazines the way they seem to make a lot of hunters do.

That being said, when I first contemplated this safari, it came down to 3 species: Cape buffalo, with kudu and eland on the back burner. I didn't care much for any of the other plains game, one way or another, and of the two spiral horn antelope available at the BVC, I'd have to say the eland was more of my kind of critter.

But we don't always get our druthers, and in this case I didn't exactly get mine, either. Not that I'm complaining.

On my first hunting day in the BVC, we saw every species of game the place had to offer, including both kudu and eland. We were hunting in the flat bushveld east of Chamalaya camp, for the most part. Heavy mopane bush, lots of waterholes, lots of game, but not much topographic relief.

Kudu and eland cow were present in abundance, but it was past lunchtime when I saw my first kudu bulls, and I have to say that their appearance was startling and gratifying. A pair of immature bulls materialized out of the bush by the side of the road ahead and I was astonished at what large animals they were, and how gracefully they move... next to impala, they are possibly the antelope species that seems to move with the most grace. They are the size of bull elk, too, which was a bit of a surprise to my eye. It's one thing to know a thing in your head, but entirely another to learn it in your eye and your occipital cortex.

In any event, my first sight of live kudu bulls changed my priorities unexpectedly. These two boys were immature males with shallow-curling horns of about 50 inches, narrow bases, and no ivory on the tips.

"We'll let them grow up for another year or two," said my PH. "And then they should be ready for shooting. They may push 60 inches, although the genetics here don't usually go that big."

"Sixty inches, hell," I breathed. "I'll take one of those just as they are right now!"

"Nonononono," John laughed. "We can do better. MUCH better."

Right, thinks I. We shall see, shan't we?

Well, a couple of mornings later we did see. We did see very well indeed. We were north of camp in the Nengo area, which is more hilly and rocky. Ancient eroded volcanic cores called kopjes (pronounced midway between "copy" and "copay", in a southern African accent, just FYI) dot the countryside and provide scenic relief as well as topographic diversity that is very pretty to look at.

Here's a couple of pics of some kopje's:





The second pic shows some kopjes in the distance, and is taken from the top of a kopje as well. I'm no geologist, but I found them damn interesting to look at and to crawl around on. Most of them are in the range of 300 feet higher than the surrounding bushveld, so you can actually see pretty well from on top of them.

Anyways, we came around a corner on the morning in question and moving into the bush to our left was the pair of kudu bulls I described earlier. John immediately stopped the car and we got out to have a go at them. As it happens, stalking kudu is a lot like stalking buffalo, in that you spend most of your time in thick bush that offers you sight ranges of 20 yards or less. It's different than stalking buffalo in that kudu move really fast, and you have to move quickly to catch them.

We trailed this pair up into the saddle between two kopjes, and at about that time the kudu either saw us or winded us and took off. Isaac read the tracks that told the story 10 minutes later, and he said we probably skylined ourselves in the saddle. Here's another pic to show the saddle in the middle background.



As I said previously, John knows the bulls in this particular area can be good sized (57-60 inches), and we saw good mature bulls both that morning and the next afternoon. Kudu are primarily browsers, and as this is late winter, there is little green browsing to be had in the bushveld... except at the bases of the kopjes, which have thick green belts due to the runoff from the domes of rock. We reasoned that since the kudu were hanging around these green belts, it would be smart to hunt them there.

So after the evening we collected my buff, we spent a couple of mornings sitting up on kopjes glassing the bushveld and hoping for kudu or eland to appear. Which they didn't. So we scoured the bushveld, looking for kudu tracks by the roadside and by waterholes, and we put up game cameras at waterholes, and we saw exactly zero kudu bulls.

I should mention that at this point the weather had turned unseasonably hot... our game camera recorded an ambient temp of 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees F) on Day 2 of my safari, and it got hotter every day. The bulls were clearly hiding in the deep bush, and damn if we could find them. But we kept looking, and as John said to me on the afternoon of Day 6, sometimes you just have to take what Africa offers. It might be a kudu, it might be an eland, it might be neither. Would I like a warthog, by chance? Why yes, I would! But Africa wasn't offering any of the above, including warthog.

It was very late in the afternoon on Day 6 when Africa Offered. The sun had dipped down into the haze, and it was perhaps 15 minutes before actual sunset. It was very hot, I'm guessing 120 degrees F. We were all hot and sweaty and dirty and tired. Time to go home, really, that was all any of us had our minds on. The light was getting very dim. Then suddenly the car came to a jerky stop, and John breathed, "Good God, he's a monster!"

I couldn't see a monster of any description, but I got out my side of the car, the side away from the monster, and John exited with me. "Load your rifle," says he in a hoarse whisper. I pulled back the bolt and chambered a round, except it stuck partway out of the magazine (which had never happened before; I attribute it to the omnipresent fine African dust), so I hit it with the ball of my hand and the bolt shot forward with a loud metallic bolt-closing sort of sound. Everyone--John, Isaac, Lovemore, even the game scout--glared at me like I was someone's idiot brother about to spoil everyone's fun.

"Sorry," I whispered, chagrined.

We crept around the back of the vehicle, and I finally saw the monster. Actually, all I saw was one massive curly horn, sticking out of the mopane scrub about 50 yards off the road. I put my rifle on the sticks and looked down my scope, and followed the horn down until I found the head it was attached to, and then piece by piece the rest of the kudu revealed itself to me, standing broadside in the thick brush. There was no heart-lung shot, but it looked like I might exploit a tiny opening in the bush to take a spine-shoulder shot.

"Quickly, quickly!" John whispered hoarsely. It sounded like he was gonna pee himself. I steadied the tip of the post on his shoulder and fired. The kudu disappeared, and I was sure I'd missed him. Isaac shook his head, made a "Zeezeezeeezeeezeee" sound and waved his hand, indicating a ricochet, which is of course what happened to my bullet when it hit one of the branches I was trying to force it between.

"Do you think you hit it?" John asked.

"Not a chance," I said, glumly. I just couldn't see well enough in the fading light.

"The guys all think you missed, too," he said. "But let's go take a look just in case."

So we marched off into the bush. Isaac found the broken branch my bullet had hit, a 3/4-inch stick of mopane, hard as iron. Lovemore found the kudu's hoofprints where he'd jumped at the sound of the shot.

"He's gone," I said, resignedly.

"SSSSSSssssstt!!" Said Isaac, pointing. And there, by God, was the kudu bull, standing broadside again, not 40 yards away.

"I don't believe it," breathed John. "They never stand for a second shot." But he put the sticks up and as I settled my rifle down the kudu bolted again. Again, we went to the spot, and Isaac said "He's not running, he's walking," which puzzled us all. So we followed.

"And he's limping," John said ominously. "The guys think you might have hit him with that ricochet. There's no blood, but he's probably wounded."

My heart sank. A wounded kudu bull, minutes before sunset, in heavily lion-infested bushveld. I knew I would be responsible for the trophy fee on him whether we collected him or not, but more importantly, I felt awful to have possibly crippled an animal and sentenced him to death by lion.

So we followed, and we all felt very bad about this situation. Me especially. Suddenly Lovemore, off to the left, turned and came running back to us, eyes bugging out of his head. "Rhino!" he whispered urgently. We craned our necks, and sure enough, there was a rhino dozing in the mopane, 30 yards ahead. But it was a white rhino, and we all breathed a sigh of relief because white rhino aren't nearly as aggressive as the more common (in the BVC, anyway) endangered black rhino. Also, there were NO trees to climb in that vicinity, which is bad juju if you're close to a rhino.

So we skirted the rhino, well off to the east of the Kudu's tracks, and we had about given up on finding tracks again when Isaac froze and then John put up the sticks again, and there to my front stood the kudu, broadside, 40 yards away. But the light was fading fast, and I couldn't pick him out in the scope from the tangle of grey-brown kudu-colored branches all around him.

"I can't see him!" I whispered miserably.

"What do you mean you can't see him?" John whispered incredulously. "He's right THERE!!!" And he was. I could see him clearly with my open left eye, but the illuminated green aiming point of the Trijicon reticle washed out all the other color in the scope, and I couldn't see where I was aiming to hit him.

The kudu turned and started to walk away.

"Put your rifle on safe," John said, unhappily. And I started to do so when suddenly the dying sun broke through the brush and illuminated the kudu beautifully. I could see him perfectly through the scope, left shoulder and chest and flank in brilliant relief against the mopane.

"I've got him!" I hissed, and I fired.

John and the trackers were taken by surprise. "Why did you shoot?" John asked, wide-eyed.

"I saw him perfectly," I answered. "I had a raking shot, and since he's wounded, I really had to take a chance on it."

John nodded. "I dont' think you hit him," he said. "We didn't hear the bullet hit."

Lovemore said he thought I'd hit it in the hind leg. Not good, thinks I. My stomach sank.

But then Isaac called out loudly, "He's down! He's down!" and we all looked, and by God he was down, lying behind another bush 30 yards away, on his right side, his massive horns swaying as the bull tried to keep his head upright. We circled around him and saw the blood on his left flank where the raking shot had taken him, high on the flank, and I could see the angle of him in my mind's eye, and knew the bullet had plowed through him, all the way through his upper belly, above his paunch, perhaps clipping his aorta as it tore into his chest and lungs. He had blood on his muzzle, and he couldn't keep his head up; but his eyes were clear as he looked at us, and he didn't seem at all disturbed or afraid. We were 15 feet from him, John and I, and he looked at us with complete calm.

I raised my rifle and put a finishing shot into his chest. He erupted to his feet and crashed out of the brush into an open place, and the last light of the setting sun glinted on his horns for a moment as he swayed on his feet. Then his eyes rolled back and he fell, kicked once, twice, and then again, and then subsided and lay still.

Once he was down, we looked him over to see if I'd hit him with that first shot, to see if I'd crippled him initially, but there was no bullet wound except the raking shot in his left flank and the finishing shot in his left shoulder. Both bullets were found under the skin later.






Over drinks at the fire later, John and I tried to puzzle it out. We couldn't understand why this kudu stood for me to shoot him; not just one, not twice, but three times, when kudu normally take off into the next county at the sound of a rifle being clicked off-safe,and I'd been slamming my bolt and stumbling over my unlaced boots and generally bumbling like a half-drunk lunatic. And why had he been limping, if he wasn't wounded? The problems with light in the Trijicon scope in the low light were understandable, but why was I the only one to see the kudu suddenly flare into vivid color as he turned? All the trackers confirmed John's assessment, that the kudu was invisible to everyone when I shot him. Invisible to everyone but me.

"Well, that's Africa, James," John finally said, simply. "I can't understand it, but there he is, in the skinning shed. You took what was offered. It wasn't classic, but you took what was offered, and you have a helluva bull."

"Not classic?" said I. "Hell it was downright ugly!" But I couldn't argue the fact that he was down, all 52 inches of heavy old deep-curling horn. And despite the less than classic circumstances, I couldn't stop seeing how his left side had suddenly flared into bright color and relief as he turned, and the vision of him at that moment in my mind's eye, the moment when I saw him perfectly clearly and the shot broke crisply and cleanly, the vision at that moment had been and still was indescribably and hauntingly beautiful. And I couldn't shake the sense that the old bull had given himself to me; or someone had given him to me, anyway.

It was spooky, in its own way, and I'm still puzzled by it today as I write this down. But I guess they don't call the kudu bull the Grey Ghost for nothing, now, do they?

Outstanding Doc!!!

Doc: Ive done kudu a number of times.

They are ALWAYS interesting......


Anytime somebody is late for meals, or doesn't come back till long after dark, or is glum in a place where everyone smiles...theres kudu involved....

What kind of rifles were the game scouts carrying? They look like Galils.

well done, and well told, Doc.

Great story Doc! Regarding the Trijicon and the "washout" I learned that lesson too, but it can be fixed by merely tuning the covering shroud over the tritium bands all the way down as the dusk approaches. Worked great for me. Very nice WIDE horns!

Absolutely! My thoughts exactly.

I'm somewhat addicted to hunting kudu bulls. I'm betting you'll come around! Way to go Doc...great bull there, and one I'm sure you'll remember forever.

260... I don't know what those rifles were. John told me, but I'm a complete doofus when it comes to military rifles other than the Stoner and the FN, so I've forgotten the name. I believe he called them a P-something... I want to say P90X, but that's ridiculous, of course...

I do know that they are mil-surp rifles purchased from the South African government. Full auto, and 5.56 NATO, I believe. But don't quote me.

Absolutely, Jorge, right you are. I foolishly took the Trijicon off my rifle the next day and put the little Nikon backup scope I'd brought because I didn't trust the Trijicon to fade out on me again if I got a shot at eland in the brush, whereas I should have just turned the shroud around, which of course turns the post reticle with an illuminated point into a simple post reticle.

There's no doubt in my mind that the illuminated point on the Trijicon was key to nailing my buffalo as I did. It was past sundown. The buffalo was black as the ace of spades, and my riflescope reticle post was the same color. Precise shot placement would have been much more difficult if I hadn't had the green triangle to place my shot precisely where I knew his heart was.

Doc,

Interesting that you caught “kudu fever” even after thinking you weren’t susceptible. But that happens with many African animals, some when we least expect it. I never expected to be affected by my first sight of a gemsbok, but I was, and deeply—and getting one required another safari.

A PH I’ve hunted with a couple of times, late in the evening after a few beers, looked at me very seriously and said, “Some African animals you may hunt and never want another, but you’ll always hunt kudu.”

Doc & John, I will add warthogs to that mix as well. To me they are just so damned, well, "African" I always have them as a priority and will again!

It's bushbuck for me.

Yeah, JB, I was more than a bit surprised by that myself. "Kudu fever"... I'll have to remember that term!

It's funny how some beasts just grab your imagination. For me, buffalo and eland have always been in that class, and seeing them and hunting them in their element was exactly as I'd expected it to be, only better. Kudu fever was a real surprise to me, and nothing else really grabbed me like kudu did, except for, well, lion.

I had no desire whatever to hunt lion before I went on this trip. Now, after seeing big male lions up close in the bush, and hearing them roar as I drift off to sleep at night, I'm wondering how/when/if I'll ever be able to afford to hunt them.

Doc, of course you realize that you really do Double Plus Ludicrous Suck Don't ya? Well at least you ain't a dentist so you can hunt lions!!

I agree on Warthog!

Nyala for me.

There's nothing like hunting in Africa. I've really enjoyed reading your report, Doc! Congrats on an awesome experience!

Eric

Doc amazing report, pictures and storyline! A big S Texas YEEEHA to you, John, Isaac and the rest of the team! I take it that Khevin, an excellent young tracker who was with John when I was in BVC, is no longer with John? Very nice buff and kudu! Good on you for staying focused in what could have easily become traumatic on both your buff and kudu experiences. Thanks so much for sharing your safari with all of us. John is for certain the consummate PH.

Well DocRocket, I truly hated to read your hunting report and I'll tell you why. I hunted the BVC in 2013 when my scheduled hunt in another area of Zimbabwe was screwed by some government official. My hunt was rescued by the BVC manager, whom I will be indebted to forever. And it is amazing how similar your hunt was to mine and that's why I hated reading about it. I can't get back there and you've just reminded me how incredible it was.

So many things came up as I read your experience with a charging elephant, for example:

"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."

Same thing happened to me with my PH. I got a photo as the bull changed his direction after he stopped his charge, didn't think about filming it while it was happening.

You know, there is absolutely no way to describe these hunts accurately, it's like describing the Grand Canyon. Got to see/do it.

I also got an education on the rigors of poaching and the consequences if you get caught. I was introduced to the man in charge of the anti-poaching program but I won't tell you what was said about him. It actually scared me and I've been worked with some really scary men in my work.

I looked at your photos and recognized landmarks. The vegetation, the mopane and the baobob trees, and the dead leaves on the ground make it like stalking on giant corn flakes.

And the numbers and variety of plains game, birds, reptiles, and the baboons. And the kudu were, as you described, incredible.

No, please don't post any more, I'll just lay awake tonight remembering it.

Muygrande: I believe Khevin (whom I hunted with twice, has fallen to the standard African malady and my no longer be with us). DOc?

muygrande, Jorge... Sadly, Khevin passed away earlier this year. Like many (most?) Africans of his race and age, he had HIV. He succumbed to AIDS after the stress of being mauled by a leopard.

uptonogood... wow, that's really something! If the man who saved your hunt is the man I think it was/is, he's truly an amazing individual. And I agree on the anti-poaching guys... I have met several men of that type and class, and they are indeed scary men.

But FWIW, a couple of the PH's I've met, including John Sharp and Lou Halloran as well as a couple others are men unlike anyone you'll meet in America or Europe. These guys are modern-day Alan Quatermains, larger than life. I wouldn't call someone like John scary, exactly, but I know that I would never, ever want to get on his bad side or fight him!

Wow, I did not know about the cat incident, Doc!

[quote=DocRocket]muygrande... Sadly, Kevin passed away earlier this year. Like many (most?) Africans of his race and age, he had HIV. He succumbed to AIDS after the stress of being mauled by a leopard.


Are most of the young men in that area HIV positive and if so is it do to drug use?

My understanding is that HIV is epidemic in black Africans in much of sub-Sahara Africa, and that cheap anti-retroviral drugs are the only thing preventing a massive die-off. Prevalence is almost entirely due to sexual transmission. The sexual promiscuity of these people is well-documented in the public health literature; it's quite an interesting story, medically speaking...

It's written up by one of John's colleague PH's in the latest edition of African Hunting Gazette. Client gut-shot the leopard, PH called John to ask for help, so John and his trackers went into the thick stuff with the first PH and his trackers. Too many people, really. The first PH killed the leopard with a load of buckshot just as it was about to hit Khevin, but the leopard got his claws into the tracker as he died... tore his cheek open, but no serious damage. Despite the relatively minor injuries, he just went steadily downhill after that, I'm told.