What's the hunting like in Chewore south now? I'm looking at a tuskless and buffalo hunt. On the buf I just want to hunt a mature hard boss so they don't have to be 40". Barry, the last name slips my memory, has the area now from what I understand. I like the Valley and thought it is worth a shot.

One thing I can say is that Chewore South is full of Elephant. Well at least it was in 2013 when my father and I hunted one each. We followed and caught up with at least 4 different herds a day plus bonus herds you see from the road.

In my opinion the Buffalo and Plainsgame were taking a hammering from all the Lions. From what we were told as well there are way to many Lions in Chewore South. I understand they were trying to push getting Lioness back onto quota but I don't know if that ever happened. Saying all that you will find and good solid bossed bull.

I did a bit of work for Roger Whittall in 2005 when Roger Whittall Safaris had Chewore South so I like to think I know the area pretty well. It's a nice area to hunt and vast. You will have a great hunt there. Truly wild.

Hope this helps
Mike

Randy
Hunted there 18 mths ago on a buff/tuskless end of season deal.
There were 3 of us.
Plenty of ele, we ended up with 5 tuskless including one self defence but only one of the team
Found a good hard bossed bull, a brute at 42.5”!!!
I didn’t see one hardbossed bull myself, even though putting in the miles.
The concession was run down a little since I had last hunted it in 2014 when Chifuti had it.
The camp was fine, but access roads overgrown, and signs of poaching were obvious .
No anti poaching going on up to last year I believe.

I’ll drop you an email to go into detail.
The Barry whom is running it now is Barry VanHeerden.......
Don’t know the guy, you may want to do some due diligence.......

Saw a few buff and took a great one. Hardly any bull ele but lots of cows. Not much else there except a pangolin in 2012. My personal preference is that I would not return. Had a great PH though as well as camp.

Over in Dande two weeks ago on the border of Chewore south. Saw herds of 150 to 200 in Dande and saw sign of buff traveling back and forth.
Elephant seen every day in Dande and on the boundary. While I like Dande and there are a number of large herds of buff there. Chewore could be an acceptable choice.

Plenty of tuskless in Chewore.
I took mine on the third day. That was the longest it took my PH that year to get one. I looked at quite a few and shot a tuskless bull.

I saw quite a few buffalo while there.
Not much plains game there. Only saw a few Impala

Thanks for the reports, sounds like there is a bases to build on and with the proper management it can respond.

quote:

Barry, the last name slips my memory, has the area now from what I understand.

Barry Van Heerden (sp?)

I have many fond memories of hunting Chewore South. Its a beautiful wilderness. At night we had jumbos, lion, and hippos in and around camp. Real wilderness experience. Hunted there in 2009 and 2011. Multiple buffalo, lioness, and tuskless. I've heard that poaching has now become a big issue.

Greetings Ladies & Gents
Just to follow on from the above posts, Chewore Wildlife Safaris purchased the Chewore south concession at auction last year from Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Authority. We are here for the next 10 years (5 years, with a further 5 year renewal). We have invested a lot of time and money in the past few months rebuilding camps and infrastructure, we have just completed grading and repairing around 600 odd kms of roads within the concession.

Chewore south like a lot of concessions within Zimbabwe and other African countries poaching has been an ongoing problem, and on the rise over the past few years, with the elephant been targeted especially. Thankfully since early January this year when we took occupation of the concession we have only recovered / found 1 poached elephant. We are working closely with our concession Parks staff on anti-poaching operations, We also have a full time vehicle dedicated to anti poaching and wildlife conservation within the concession, as well as an aircraft for regular aerial patrols / flights which will begin to take place now that the bush is thinning with the onset of the dry season. We are fortunate to have had a state of the art digital radio network and anti-poaching operations centre funded by the Japanese Government through a local NGO The Tashinga Initiative, at Mkanga Parks Station in Chewore south.

We have reduced quota's on some species where we felt numbers were higher than they should be, combined with a good road network and intensive anti-poaching efforts we are confident that the area will once again be restored to its former status of being a truly wild 2000sq/km's of Zambezi valley big game hunting paradise.

We are focusing on running quality, rather than quantity big game hunting safaris in the first few years of operation. The area has excellent populations of elephant, buffalo and both Lion and Leopard. However the quality of Zambezi valley elephant over the last decade had decreased alarmingly. We do offer and promote tuskless / Non trophy elephant hunts, which can be just as and sometimes even more exciting the trophy bull hunting. Our plains game populations are healthy for the most part, but as with truly wild concession areas numbers cannot compare to ranch or fenced concessions, early season hunters are always disadvantaged by the thick bush and abundant surface water, however mid season onwards the concession still produces some great plains game trophies.

Our cat hunts we are marketing slightly differently from other operators, in that we offer a low daily rate and a high trophy fee for when a cat is killed or wounded. basically if you take your cat it works out much the same price as a regular hunt, but it also works in favour of the client should you not be successful on your hunt, be it that the cats did not meet ours / Industry / Parks age criteria, only females came to bait, and in the case of a government concession like ours, were feeding out of legal hunting hours etc.

We will be offering some great value big game hunts for the remainder of this year , details of which we shall post shortly.

kind regards

Barry Van Heerden
Managing Director / Professional Hunter

Thanks for responding, good to hear that there is a long term investment and a reduction in some quotas. Wildlife will respond very quickly if managed properly. Anxious to watch how things improve.