17 September 2009, 00:19
JudgeGThe Elephant, et al.
Before I begin, I have some advice for some of the folks who read here about planning your upcoming safari. Consider some other African stuff beside hunting. I particularly love the Victoria Falls area and the activities and sightseeing available there, so at the beginning of this trip I stayed at Gorges Lodge which is about 20 minutes down the Zambezi from the Falls. I visited the Falls for the umpteenth time, went on the booze cruise, did a helicopter again, etc. You just can't enjoy Victoria Falls, too much.
The dining area, the bar and your private laupa all hang out over the Zambezi and the views are simply amazing. Wives and Girlfriends will certainly enjoy this fine place with its great food, wonderful chalets and professional staff.
Some pictures from the Lodge and Vic Falls:
While my primary focus on my hunt to Deka this September was leopard, I dearly love to hunt elephants. I am not nearly as experienced as a myriad of folks who post here, but I’ve done my share of up and down hills on Tembo’s track.
There is no thrill in the world better than slipping among a bunch of animals dozens of times bigger than you and getting positioned for an ethical shot (and not one that will get you killed by the surrounding elephants which are inevitably pissed).
I wrote here sometime ago, getting amongst a few hundred thousands of pounds of powerful flesh and tusks makes me think how German U-Boat captains must have felt when fighting surfaced... darting in and out of convoys during the World Wars. Come to think of it, neither people nor submarines handle being counted coup very well. Hunting elephants has to be the ultimate thrill! It makes you feel as alive as you'll ever experience.
Deka has way, way too many elephants. Almost every tree carries scars from over-abuse from them. Most trees are reduced to stumps that spout suckers and remain only as high as a man’s head. In some places, the whole terrain looks like a battlefield where aerial bursts of artillery have denuded a forest. Add in that my safari was in the dry season and most of the leaves had fallen, made seeing elephant in the rolling hills just darn easy.
Besides leopard, when I booked the hunt, I reserved a quota for a tuskless cow. Upon my arrival, Lou Hallamore, my professional hunter, told me that he had seen dozens of elephants every day while setting up a few baits for me. His past experience turned out to be a good predictor of what we’d see. I don’t think a day passed that 60 elephants weren't glassed.
On the first morning, our first task was to get three impala for bait and hang them, resulting in a total of six baits, including the three that Lou had already hung. We took our time at breakfast that morning, I shot my leopard rifle a few more times for confidence and off we went shooting an occasional impala.
We started seeing elephants within a mile of camp. There was so much poop in the road that you wondered if someone sprinkled Ex-Lax on the mopane trees. Of course, we checked every bunch for a tuskless lady, but we had no luck the early part of that morning.
As I explained elsewhere Buffalo Hunt, we interrupted reconnaissance of our leopard baits through lunchtime to hunt a a great dagga boy.
That afternoon, after trying stalks on several kudu and wary zebras, I took the below stallion with a pretty good shot from 200 yards, particularly, since I was using a 9.3x74 double, albeit scoped.
The next morning we saw the far side of 100 elephants as we rode around checking baits.
On the road to Hwange Park, both coming and going from camp, we must have seen 15 groups. Among them was my first tuskless sighting, but she had a wee calf with her. I took another impala to replace a slightly ripe one and we finally started discovering leopard tracks… lots of leopard tracks. Four of the six baits were hit with two of the tracks indicating males.
That afternoon we had a few more good stalks on kudu, but they were smarter than we.
On the third morning, in the dark, we climbed a pretty high and steep hill to overlook a leopard bait about 80' lower than where we had built a blind on the first afternoon. Any shot would be about 60 yards, so the angle was rather acute.
It was cold, particularly since I’d worked up a good sweat climbing the backside of the rocky cliff. As the sun just began to change the black of the eastern sky to violet, Lou tensed and whispered that he thought he saw an extra rock at the base of the bait tree. I looked through my scope and saw nothing distinguishable in the valley below and dismissed his comment as wishful thinking.
Oh, me of such little confidence. Right at that moment, the new shape at the bottom of the tree decided to tell the world that the bait in the tree above was his and he’d kick anyone’s butt if they challenged him. RRRRRRRRRAAAAAHHHH! RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAHHH! Twice was his declaration and both times, chills went up and down my spine. But, as leopards do, after vocally making his claim, he just dissolved into the pre-dawn shadows, to leave many a spoor and eat two whole impala, but never giving us a chance in sufficient light for a shot.
On the way back to camp, we again saw several bunches of elephants, but no tuskless. Lou indicated that after eating breakfast, we’d get serious about taking one, so my eggs, bacon and toast tasted particularly good that morning.
As promised, by 9:00 a.m. we were in the Land Cruiser and headed back out. We took a path that paralleled the river that runs (if dry sand runs?) in front of the camp, progressing all the way to the Hwanke border, then turned north along the line and back to the main road. I’d guess that we glassed 10 groups of elephants, ranging from 3 to 12 in number. Most all were cows and calves, but we did see a couple of 35 lb. bulls among them.
Reaching the Hwange road, we reversed our course and backtracked. We all agreed that the elephants were coming and going to water so we'd probably would see a different set of elephants on our return. Such proved to be the case.
A mile or so past our “best” leopard bait, Alfred signaled that game was in sight. We had been seeing lots of kudu in this particular little valley and I thought that was his indication. When I raised my binoculars to my eyes, I discovered that I was quite wrong.
Three elephants, two being grown and a calf were about 500 yards from us and slowly walking away towards some hills. We could clearly see that a cow with tusks was mommy to the half-grown calf. Wunderbar! It was evident that the other cow had no tusk on the left side.
Encouraged, we “un-trucked” and grabbed our rifles. Yet, having been through this drill several times this trip, only to find that one tusk had been broken off and the off-side had ivory, I still had a wee doubt that this old lady was to be my trophy.
The mopane was rather sparse between us and the elephants. We could clearly see them while we hustled directly towards the slowly retreating group. For some reason, the suspected tuskless lady became interested in one of the few trees about and since the other two elephants continued their march, a gap of 200 yards or so widened between them. We got in that space, figuring that big mama would certainly come our way.
Now in front our quarry, it was plain that the approaching cow had no tusks. She was obviously mature, had no calf and therefore was a shooter. I took deeper and deeper breaths and prayed to not screw this up.
Lou stood behind me with his .470 Wilkes at the ready. The cow chose to pass on our left at 20 yards. We weren’t hidden at all and were just remaining as still as we could be.
I really didn’t want to botch the shot and starting wavering about whether I wanted to take the perfect side-brain shot that the elephant was going to offer in three or four seconds. Brain like a loaf of bread, lung and heart like a Volkswagon, I thought.
I slowly raised my .458 Win. Mag. and looked at the crease by the shoulder. Lou said, “Side-Brain”, and I took one more breath and complied.
BOOM!
Immediately the elephant’s rear legs gave way, then the front and she landed, stone dead, still vertical on her four knees. Of course I’ve seen it happen before, both on videos and once by my hand, but never right out in the open with nothing to obscure the view. Damn, it is instant and almost surprising.
I worked the bolt and looked for the other two elephants to see them having spun around and flapping their ears, deciding whether to come investigate or flee. Lou whooped a couple of time while I put two insurance shots in the heart of the lady, sure of my first shot, but heck, more than one elephant has done a Lazarus trick.
After the second pop to the chest, the old lady just seemed to ooze over onto her left side. The other two elephants climbed the hill to the north, occasionally grumbling a toot or two on the way out of sight.
I walked around her body and touched her eye with my rifle. I felt really strange. I’ve killed elephants before and it is always the same. They are so damn big. I empathize with great elephants. They are old and regal.
I am a hunter to my bones and killing seems to be a necessary part of me, but I can’t help having some regret upon the death of such a wonderful creature, even though I can justify it as game management and the use of a renewable resource, providing thousands of pounds of protein. Heck, there are obviously too many elephant in Deka and they need to be managed, but still, killing an elephant shouldn’t be a casual act, at least in my humble mind.
With these emotions and my adrenalin having been exhausted, I sat down on a fallen tree by the elephant and gathered my thoughts.
By the time that Alfred, Clement (the trackers) and Alexander (the game scout) arrived, I was just fine. I’d played my role as I was born to do. An amazing creature and been taken cleanly and with no suffering. The camp staff and their families were going to have plenty of food for a while and with the crocodile farm using the remainder, nothing was going to waste... For sure, nothing goes to waste in Africa.
Lou and me with the Grande Dame:
Above: The Hornady 500 grain DGS entered at eye level on the other side and obviously exited where the blood bubbles indicate. I'm really not sure where the bullet hole in the ear came from unless her ears were folded forward when I shot?
Below is a picture of one of the DGS's that were shot for insurance. It fell out of the skin between the far shoulder and the ribs and was not deformed at all. The other insurance shot exited (maybe through the ear?):
The rest of the safari was wonderful, to say the least. After the usable meat was taken from the elephant the next day, we prepared a blind up on a hillside 100 yards away, being careful that we could sneak to it without being seen from the remaining carcass with the assurance that a hyena or two would be there until the sunrise ran them away.
We awoke well before light and stopped the vehicle one-half mile from the blind and pretty much felt our way to it. As the night began to leave the east, Lou whispered to me that lions were on the elephant. I took his place and observed a lioness and two grown cubs grabbing stringy pieces of gristle and eating it.
I don’t think I, or anyone else moved, but the lioness saw something she didn’t like. She put her ears forward, turned toward me and stared intently. Folks, even at 100 yards, through 8X binoculars, a pissed lioness will get your attention. She crouched and began to purposefully slide towards us as if on a greased track. I whispered to Lou that she was coming towards us and he acknowledged my concern. A cub voiced something in lion-talk that must mean “What’s up Mom?”, and she turned away after only 10 yards or so towards us, gathering up her cubs and disappearing into the murk.
Lou whispered, “Good! Now the hyenas will come!”.
Sure enough, at that lope that looks like Quasimoto running a wind sprint, from the left, two hyenas appeared, intent on nothing but getting a bite before, vampire-like, they had to be back in their graves before they could see their shadows.
Both ran behind the remains of the elephant and whooped and ate for a bit, but I had no shot. Finally, the bigger of the two decided that he wanted some meat from the back of the skull and scampered around to pull and tug at the meat.
With the cross-hairs steady on his shoulder, I lightly touched the set trigger on the little 9.3x74 Merkel double.
I rolled the sucker to the cheers of the Black crew, but he was up in a flash and running right to left at a good clip. I shot again and hit him just above the brisket, breaking his left leg and ending the event, right then.
The hyena was an old dude with worn teeth and a hide full of scars. I will make a wall rug out of the hide and look forward to looking at it and remembering that satanic giggle he made just as my first gunshot sounded.
Before the safari ended, I took a good kudu after a rewarding stalk down a dry creek bed and then up the banks to make a 60 yard shot. As usual, the little Merkel killed dead.
The leopards were never very cooperative again with all the lion activity and lots and lots of hyenas about, but believe it or not, I enjoyed shooting sand grouse and guinea foul to my hearts content. I don’t regret not getting Mr. Spots... It is just an excuse to go back.
And, my smile says everything.
I noticed that you used the word "tembo". I had heard the name for elephant in Zimbabwe as "mzou". (Guess yours is Swahili and the other may be Zulu because the trackers I knew were Zulu)
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