Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Hunt report: Sungulwane / Zululand Rhino Reserve!

Day 4:

We traveled to Zululand Rhino Reserve in search of Warthog!

The Reserve lies within the Msunduzi valley in northern Zululand. It was established in 2004 when 17 landowners dropped their fences to create a big 5, endangered species reserve. It's 22,000 hectares (over 54K square acres), and contained thick bush as well as open savannah.



We had a lucky morning and saw a white rhino, two black rhinos, blue wildebeest, impala, kudu ewes, giraffe, ostrich, a small herd of young nyala, monkeys, yellow hornbill, zebras and warthog. Most of the warthogs were young, or female, or bolted so quickly into the grass and out of sight with only their tails showing that it made for quite a challenge!

And then we found a lone male Warthog sunning himself in a controlled burn area, where he had dug a little burrow into the ash. He was old, and crusty, and lifted his head to see what we were up to. We expected him to bolt, but he stayed and I managed to place a careful shot straight through his heart. He rolled over, kicked his legs, and lay still, not even moving a foot.



Murray got a kick out of how long his mane was, which showed his age. It looked just like the grass he inhabited and made for a perfect camouflage. I'm glad I didn't accidentally hit his beautiful tusks.



We later recovered the TSX bullet, which as a quartering shot had travelled diagonally across the body after hitting the heart. Its shaft was slightly bent and it had lost a petal. It performed very well!



We heard elephants breaking branches in the distance as we loaded the Warthog onto the truck.

We started to drive off when we noticed a black rhino in the distance, perhaps 500m away. It stood watching us. It casually started walking towards us, picked up a trot, and then charged! Black rhinos are very aggressive as compared to the whites, and command respect. It got within 50m of our truck as Murray yelled to our tracker in Zulu to move out. This is the only shot I was able to take (at a distance) before things got dicey.



We saw a ton of impala on the way out.



We drove to the skinning shed where we had the skull fleshed and the meat hung up.

That evening we drove to the Natal midlands to hunt Bushbuck. We saw a brilliant shooting star while driving, with clear skies and 8 C (45 F) reading on the dash. What a day!