Just got my pictures back from a hunting partner who was kind enough to record my bushbuck hunt on June 25th of this year in the Limpopo River Valley. My son was with a different PH that morning for Kudu and had my digital camera. Viewing the photos he sent helped me remember the details of that morning, especially in light of the news of the hunting accidents recently posted.

We were on the south (RSA) side of the river on a privately owned 5,000 acre orange, potato, maize & melon farm. We had met with the owner's son briefly in the early morning, he was a close college friend of my PH and was giving us the latest on the bushbuck situation. Bottomline, it was lots warmer than usual with still lots of poisonous snakes, crocs, large monitor lizards, hippos and several large baboon troops (olive race) where we would be hunting, plus a few elephant bulls that had been hanging around for a chance at the crops. We actually hunted outside the farm boundaries in dry creek beds and swampy areas in very heavy brush and undergrowth. Typical bushbuck hunting at close range and fast shooting required. PH simply said: "Make the first shot count, this is no place to screw around in the bush." Fortuneatly, I had my ram in under an hour through the shoulders with my lever-action brush gun @ about 50 yards. (Yes, it was a 45-70 Guide Gun with 350 grain jacketed round nose handloads I had brought just for this purpose, but that's not the point of my post.)

Anyway, the ram got about 100 feet before he piled up. It was a nice spot for pictures and I handed my gun to a tracker and started to take off my jacket...

And here's the point of my post : My PH, who I knew real well and had hunted with on numerous other types of antelope, looked at me, yelled for me to get the my jacket and gun and get to the road now! No pictures here! After calling in the cruiser and everything was loaded and we were on our way to an area on the other side of the property near some date palms. On the way, I asked what was up and one of the Zulu tracker I knew well said: "Bad place for picture, we will be much safer where we are going now." I asked the PH and he just said "...too many elephants and crocs...".

I guess I had been too focused on bushbuck or was having an anal attack... After the photo session, we got back to the farm complex and the skinners started to work on my ram, I had a chance to talk to the owner's son a bit. Mentioned all the concern about getting out of the area...he said my PH used to work for him when they came home from college in the summer and knew this area well. The place where I had taken my ram was prime bushbuck habitat, but no place to spend any quality time. "Too many nasty's about."

My question is this: Do you think a PH should advise the client of the potential risks on any given hunt? Or, just keep things cool unless things get dicey? I asked my PH back at camp that night and he just shrugged it off as an occupational hazard. I was never in any danger and it was his and the trackers job to look out for me. Yeah, I knew bushbuck hunting was a bit risky, but not DG, per se.

But in light of Mr. Bob Fontana's tragedy, I am going to be a lot more aware the next time around. AND, make sure my PH is giving me all the skinny on what to expect... Guess I should have listened a lot closer to the local folks.

Any thoughts??

I doubt you would have been in any immeadiate danger after shooting your buck. Most animals, inlcuding DG, will avoid humans. If there would have been any close by they would have heard the shot, the commotion and noise from your voices/vehicle, probably smelt you and cleared away.

Does not mean that something could not have happened just very unlikely.

Methinks you were trespassing, in which case your PH should never be your PH again.

"Too many elephants and crocs" is a dead give-away. Crocs live in water so I can't see how a picture session could provoke a croc attack. Elephants are smart and I have never heard of them being attracted to gunshots. Plus, there are hardly ANY free ranging elephants outside the Parks in SA.

Did you climb through a very high fence with cable for wire by any chance?

When I shot my second elephant [side brain shot] I reloaded and started foward to place the insurance shots. We were in a medium sized herd. Before I had gone a setp and a half the PH was calling for us to back out as the other elephants were comming. I had been told this is to be expected when you shoot a member of the herd.....
However a few days later in a different area [ie different elephant herd] I shot an impala. Just after we walked up to it we heard some elephants trumpet and then heard them comming toward us. We had to "back out" and made sure we had as much an opening between us and the elephants as possible, and had the wind in our favor. There was no doubt they were looking for us.

I had a similar experience while hunting Bushbuck along the Limpopo River in 2002 (on the RSA side of the river). We hunted north of Maasstroom near Koperspruit. (This area is west of Alldays.) We saw Elephants on the SA side that morning up river from us. Apparently, the elephants were coming over from Botswana and doing a little crop raiding in South Africa. We went the opposite direction from the Elephants to hunt Bushbuck! We also saw some crocs sunning on sandbars in the river. (They slipped into the water before we got very close to them.)



I got a nice little Bushbuck that afternoon. After my shot, as soon as we walked up to him, my PH said that we needed to leave the area as soon as possible. So, the trackers packed out the Bushbuck and we hiked back to the truck.



After we got back to the truck, I asked my PH why we had needed to leave so quickly. He told me that the (white) farmers in the area harass the crop raiding Elephants with shotguns using bird shot to try to get them out of the crops. From what I gather, the Elephants don't like it too much! So as a result, I was told, the Elephants are attracted to gun fire. I guess they want some payback. I think I've read before that Elephants can be attracted to gun fire if they have been harassed fairly consistently. I did see several places where the Elephants had pushed over some fences bordering the crop fields.



Now, I don't know if the deal with the Elephants is true or not. I'm just relaying what I was told. As far as trespassing, or being where we shouldn�t have been, we did stop at the farm owner's house both on the way in and on the way out. (The Bushbuck area was not on the main hunting property where we stayed.) I met the owner and his wife. And we showed them the Bushbuck I had taken. So, I don't think it was a case of us being somewhere we weren't supposed to be.



After we got back to camp, we took some photos.



-Bob F.