I'm looking into a hunt with Greg Michelson in Zambia for Leopard/Sable/Buffalo/Croc in 2018. I was wondering if anyone here has experience hunting with Greg. Also any information on his hunting areas (Nkala and Namwala) would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I have not personally hunted in gregs areas but have heard very good things about them. Fantastic game and great camps. I know Greg personally and he is a very reliable and genuine operator.

Lin

Greg is a very experienced and reputable hunter and outfitter. I have not personally hunted his areas but from what I know very good areas.

I worked in both areas as an appy in 2012. Please feel free to PM me. Here's the short of it:

Namwala is a very pretty area, with big hills and some beautiful frontage on the Kafue River. It has big leopards and sable. There are buffalo there, but not a lot. The plains game were definitely feeling the effects of poaching and villager encroachment when I was there, but we still managed to take decent to good trophies of most species. You can shoot a very nice croc there, too (the Kafue crocs tend to be fatter/heavier than the Luangwa ones). The tsetse flies are very bad in places.

Nkala is very close to the town of Iteshi-Teshi, which is a bit of a two-edged sword. There are more people (and cattle) around than in some of the remote areas, but you can get cell phone coverage in places. The buffalo hunting is fantastic, with a huge herd that comes into the area between May and August. You should be tracking buffalo every day that you're there. When the herd leaves around August/September (at least it used to leave then, due to resident hunters harassing them), there are still dugga boys to hunt in the thickets. Livingstone's eland migrate in around August and present a fun opportunity for a tracking hunt. Nkala has good general plains game hunting (better than Namwala), though the sable hunting isn't as good as in Namwala. You should be able to shoot a leopard there, too. We took one lion when I was there, but I would be cautious about going there and expecting success on lion. When I was there, it was a crap shoot whether a lone male would wander into the GMA and find a bait. I do understand, though, that the GMA, quite tiny back in 2012, has been enlarged since the reopening, which could change things. The main water in Nkala is Lake Iteshi-Teshi, a manmade reservoir. You can shoot a hippo there, but I never saw a single croc (though they have to be around somewhere). Oh, and you can go to Lochinvar National Park from Nkala if you want to shoot a Kafue flats lechwe. It's an awful drive on crappy roads, but it can be done in a single day and gives you a chance to see a very interesting part of Africa.

Again, all of my information is a bit dated, as I haven't been to either GMA since 2012. Things like poaching and encroachment can change for the better or the worse, and I don't know what the current status of the resident hunting situation is. But I think you can have a great safari in either area or both (they're something like six hours apart).

Both areas will require a charter, though you could theoretically take a car to either one if you'd rather put your risk on the road than in the air. I would stick with the charter for those areas, though.

If you're at all interested in other areas in the Kafue, just let me know, as I spent a lot of time working in the Lunga Luswishi GMA and have a decent understanding of the other GMAs in that region. But I think you're already looking at good places, and I'm certainly not trying to steer you otherwise.

I don't know much about Greg, though I can tell you that I heard his name mentioned a few times, and nothing negative was ever said. Given the gossipy nature of the industry, that's worth something.

To be clear, I'm not a Zambian but an American who worked as an appy in Zambia in the 2011 and 2012 seasons. Before then, I was a client just like you. The closure derailed my dream of being a PH, and by the time hunting reopened, I had already returned to my real world job in Texas and started a family.