Just returned from a simply amazing 10 days in North Central Namibia and the Caprivi Strip with Jamy Traut and Eden Safaris. I was on Eden for plains game and the Caprivi concession for buffalo.
The first morning in the Caprivi indicated pretty clearly I wasn't in Northern Virginia any longer. As I emerged from my tent for what was expected to be a 45 minute run by boat to the area we would hunt, my young PH, Dries Alberts looked at my cased rifle and suggested in his clipped Afrikaans accent that I leave the rifle case behind. He went on to recommend that I ride with a round chambered. "The hippo can be a bother" he shrugged as we climbed into the aluminum skiff.
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The Caprivi camp was beautiful, situated on one of the many branches of the Kwando River, it is an area of vast marshes, low ridges and islands, and clear running channels. Hippo rumbled and grunted all night, and big crocs were regularly seen sunning themselves by the larger lagoons. We were constantly dodging elephant, and on the first morning a huge bull, which Dries estimated at nearly sixty a side, walked up within fifty feet of us (to have had a permit for him!)
We caught our buffalo in the very late afternoon. We were standing on the edge of a marsh across which were sprinkled several tiny islands. From the center of one of them some 400 meters away, a buffalo's boss suddenly emerged. The old dugga boy was bedded on the island and was obviously stirring as he prepared for a night of feeding. We ducked, backed away, and put another of the little islands between us and him. We then waded out through the marsh which was covered in about a foot of water and six inches of muck. The saw grass was chest high. Walking wasn't too bad until one of us would step into an elephant track. I only managed to sit down for a cold dunk once, and felt a little better about it when Dries went down on one knee. Derek, our tracker, may have been able to walk across the water.
Upon reaching the island, we crawled through a dense bit of acacia and rose thorn (realy nasty little hooks). All three of us were cut up pretty good getting to an ant hill from which I could ease into a sitting position. When asked later by Jamy how long we had to wait for a shot once we were in position, Dries replied dryly, "about a liter's worth." We were about a hundred meters from the bedded bull and both of us were slightly above the intervening marsh grass. I was wrapped into my sling and the green dot from my Trijicon scope was locked on the little I could see of him. The only question was whether or not he would stand with enough light left to shoot.
After a half hour, and as the sun was dipping below the horizon, he finally stood. He was facing three-quarters toward me with his forequarters much higher than his rear. As he turned his head to the left opening the junction of neck and shoulder, I touched off a 300 gr TSX from my .375. The bull collapsed in his tracks as if the ground had been taken out from under him. I immediately worked the bolt ready to shoot again, but other than shaking his head a couple of times, the old dugga boy never moved again. We were all estatic. None more so than Derek who wouldn't have to track a hard hit bull in the fading light through a marsh!
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We splashed over to huge old bull, later measuring a tad over 42 inches back at the skinning shed, to touch him and to take a couple of quick pictures. We would return in the morning with skinners and packers to get him out and take formal pictures. We were nearly six miles from the boat and could only get within about four the next day which made for quite an old school operation getting him out. The night hike out with one flashlight among the four of us (me, PH, tracker, and conservancy scout) was an adventure in itself. I did learn the hard way during that trek that an elephant's eyes do not reflect light! We stumbled into camp around 10:00 pm to quite a celebration. Upon butchering the bull to carry him out the next morning, we discovered that the TSX had taken him through the heart, passed between the lungs and lodged in his spine behind the shoulders. That explained the nearly instant kill.
I spent the remainder of my time on Eden hunting plains game. A 38 inch eland, 31 inch waterbuck, and 54 inch kudu were highlights of that hunting. I also took hartebeest, inpala, and wildebeest.
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The eland hunt was particularly interesting. We cut tracks of a small herd of bulls at dawn and stayed on them most of the day. I am not sure how many miles we covered, but we dogged them for about six hours before finally being blown by a couple of cows which were satellited off of them. We never saw the bulls, but their meandering tracks straightened out instantly and looked like they intended to reach Botswana before they stopped. The next morning we did the same thing, picking up three bulls where they had left a water hole during the night. We caught them in about three hours and I took the huge old bull when he materialized out of his bed not forty yards away. Again the 300 gr TSX performed flawlessly.
Couln't recomend an area or operation more highly. Eden lives up to its name as a plains game paradise, and the Caprivi is an Africa that would have looked familiar to Hemingway or Ruark. Am booked for a plains game hunt elsewhere for next summer, but will be back in the Caprivi for buffalo (and maybe that bull elephant) just as soon as I can.
