Anybody have any experience hunting in Mali, or hunting the samller savannah buffalo?

Rich

I am not sure that you can legally hunt buffalo in Mali. I know you can hunt buffalo in Burkina Faso, Benin and Cameroon without much trouble and there are many outfitters and PH's specializing in those hunts. But I have never heard of buffalo hunting in Mali.

I've been to Mali back in the 90's and all I remember is sand. Lots and lots of sand. I'm sure that there are plenty of animals there besides camel, but I'll be dad-gummed if I saw any.

Below is a buffalo I took in Burkina Faso. I had a great safari there and also took a very good roan. Rates are very reasonable in Burkina the last time I checked.

Some of the buffalo are red, some black. This old worn out guy was 50 kilo heavier than the largest ever taken on the Nazinga concession (and about 6" taller than the rest of the herd). I opted for him instead of a red one and am happy with the decision!

Mali is poor in all the maters and especially game-wise.
Birds apart, I am almost sure there is no big game hunting possible in Mali.
One can hardly find only one camp, and along Guinea offering wingshooting and warthogs.
hunting in mali

As in Guinea Bissau and Senegal, no big game is hunted, the warthog (like the oribi and the duiker) aren't considered big games.

Burkina Faso is by far more rich and interesting.
Do You know that in Burkina to top off the lion and the buff, the elephant and the croc will be "huntable" next year. That's what Toufic told Wink and me.

Idaho Sharpshooter,

If You remain interested by Mali (nobody's perfect) and You want to know more about the website that I am indicating You, feel free to PM me : the agent is next door for me, in Alsace.

I have experienced the savannah buff 4 times, mostly in Burkina at Toufic's camp
toufic

A really serious an huge outfit. Feel free to ask me or better Wink.

JudgeG:

Do you know who hunts the Nazinga concession?

Antonio

Antonio

here is the link to THE NAZINGA RANCH.
RANCH NAZINGA


Things have changed since Ernest hunted there.
I see no reasons why to hunt the only RANCH in the whole country and a small one.
Ie my friend the respected Toufic has 80 000 ha for big game only (no ecotourism, no birdwatchers, no small game bullshit) and 350 000 ha for small game.

Nazinga ranch is run by Mr Meyer & Mr Trepagny, they call themselves PH but aren't registered as qualified PH, check the ACP PH association Toufic Hanna is one.

my brain cramp, sorreeeeeeeeeeeee to all here. The hunt is actually in Burkina Faso, I just had Mali on the brain. It is a new outfit, and all I know about them is a friend hunted caribou in Alaska two or three years back. They have a deal worked out and the price seemed great...until I found about these midget-horned cousins of the Cape Buffalo. I've waited forty years to go to Africa, and I may never get to go again, diabetic and all that. A totally successful safari would be a 40-44" Cape Buffalo, a Greater Kudu, and a Zebra rug for the floor/wall.

Rich

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
my brain cramp, sorreeeeeeeeeeeee to all here. The hunt is actually in Burkina Faso, I just had Mali on the brain. It is a new outfit, and all I know about them is a friend hunted caribou in Alaska two or three years back. They have a deal worked out and the price seemed great...until I found about these midget-horned cousins of the Cape Buffalo. I've waited forty years to go to Africa, and I may never get to go again, diabetic and all that. A totally successful safari would be a 40-44" Cape Buffalo, a Greater Kudu, and a Zebra rug for the floor/wall.

Rich

Go now while you can. Diabetes is a bitch. Shoot often and shoot well.

I hunted the little Nazinga buffalo quite alot. I think when I was there we shot about 12. I forget the exact number. We weighed them all on scales. The smallest, a young bull, weighed 400 kg and the largest 560 kg.

Most of the old ones were pure black. They started out red, then as they aged they got darker beginning on the shoulders and then became completely black. One old bull, the largest at 560 kg, had retained much of its red color and was in fact reddish brown.

The way you sex them is to look at the horns. On the bulls the small boss comes to the inside of the eye sockets. On the cows the boss just comes as far in as the outside of the eye sockets.

They are the most disciplined buffalo I have ever seen. They always walked into the wind in the day. If the grazing in an area was good they would return at night and then once again start grazing directly into the wind.

They never seemed to go with or across the wind during the day. If you found a place where the tracks were going with or to the side of the wind it meant the wind had changed at that point during the night and they had weather cocked into it.

One of my trackers named Beliza saw them kill three people and was scared to death of them. Their horns are designed for fighting and travelling in dense forest and not for display and attracting cows like southern buffalo. Every time the shooting started he would climb a tree. Even if the buffalo ran away. Another named Karim had one put him up a tree but I was never charged by them. If the first shot is good they are no more dangerous to hunt than rabbits.

There are likely buffalo in a park in western Mali because there are or were giant eland of the western race in that park. I think its called Nicolai Koba. Just forget the exact name. I met a Frenchman at Nazinga who came to look at the place to get ideas from Rob and Clark Lungren who created Nazinga.

He was starting a game ranch in Mali near the park and that was in 1988. It may be there are or will soon be a few huntable buffalo in Mali.

I am glad to hear there are still buffalo at Nazinga. I worked there in 1988 and 1989 and there were about 650 buffalo. Then it was taken over by the government. I went back in 1994 and there wqas a terrefic poaching problem (gunshots on evbery horizon) and the buffalo had already disappeared from much of the ranch.

At that time they had leased the place to Serge Poletto and he was supposed to have exclusive rights but in fact they were letting anyone with a few dollars hunt the place at the same time as Serge. So you never knew who you were going to bump into. So I stopped taking people there.


VBR,


Ted Gorsline

jbderunz mentions that you could contact him or "better Wink". jb is being modest here, he has hunted buff in Burkina 4 times I think and knows what he is talking about. I have never hunted buff there. I think that what jb wants to communicate here is that my English is better than his.

As for Western buffalo, you are right, they don't have that deep curl massive boss trophy that most of us dream about. However, don't let dreams of trophies misguide you about hunting the subspecies found in Western Africa, they are considered just as ornery and dangerous (an acquaintance of mine died of a heart attack trying to run away from one when his first shot didn't do the trick) and it may be missplaced to think that you are going to get a big trophy on your first safari, wherever you go. If given the option between a trophy like JudgeG's above or a mediocre Cape Buffalo, I think I would take the former. Besides, the hunt itself should be the goal, the trophy being secondary. And one non-negligible aspect of some of the hunting concessions in Burkina is that you are in open country, not fenced properties (at least at Toufic's camp), the animals are truly wild and not immigrants from a National Park. And you can take a buffalo and a Roan Antelope on a ten day hunt for a much lower price than any other buffalo/antelope hunt. Upgrade to a 14 day lion hunt and I think you have the lowest priced lion hunt in the world. I have no idea of success rates on lions and you shouldn't expect an MGM mane.

No Kudu or Zebra in Burkina. Given your trophy expectations you should probably book in Eastern or Southern Africa, otherwise your safari might not be up to your expectations/desires.

thanks for the information, as you can tell my hunting experience is all on the NA continent; and the biggest game I have even taken were Bison(free ranging herd) and a lot of elk, being here in Idaho. It will (hopefully) be a bi-annual trip if my health continues to be good, but diabetics never take anything for granted. I have been the beneficiary of so much assistance here, this website and the posters (less one) are a tremendous wealth of knowledge.

Thank you all again,


Rich

Someone says Le Campement d'Arly is a good place for hunt.

The town of Arli is in Arli National Park, the extension of the Pendjari National Park in Benin. There is of course no hunting in the National Park. There is a hunting reserve of the same name (Reserve de l'Arli) which borders on the Park and there may well be a hunting camp there but I don't have any specific information on that camp or outfitter, yet.

In about 1989 I did a survey with Clark and Rob Lungren around Arley. We were looking for a place to put a dam, to make a lake so the game would have water at the peak of the dry season.

At that time game was much more common at Nazinga than at Arli but the tropy quality at Arli was better. I don't know what the situation is today.

We did see two korrigum at Arli and there are none at Nazinga. The buffalo had wider sweeping horns and as a result looked slightly different than Nazinga buffalo )(which more closely resemble forest buffalo)and they were larger than Nazinga buffalo. The roan averaged about 1 inch longer in horn length than at Nazinga. Nazinga had better harnessed bush buck and nagor reedbuck.

The very best place to hunt lion in all of Burkina Faso is not far from Arli near the Yeriyanga waterhole near Fada Ngourma but I heard the lion season was recently closed. Rob and I pulled a baby elephant out of the Yeriyanga waterhole. It has gotten stuck in the mud. The mother hovered around but did not charge. There was so much poaching in the area she was terrefied.

The game guard took us to a place near Arli where a French couple got out of their hunting car to stalk some antelope and disappeared off the face of the earth. Their tracks stopped in the bush and they were never seen again. No tracks, clothes, blood, nothing and there was an excellent tracker nick-named "Formidable" in the park at the time to look for them. Alot of strange stories in this part of the world. Alot of witchcraft and odd natural phenomena like spontaneously burning bushes and stories about litle men on the edge of the desert. Neat stuff.


VBR,


Ted Gorsline

I started looking into hunts, but they seem to be limited for booking in the states. I spoke with a gentleman from Alaska Bush Sports, and I called another lead that was posted and they hadn't heard from the outfitter in months. Can you get by without having a working knowledge of French? Would anyone recommend the experience of hunting in Burkina?

Try John LaSala at www.africanhuntingadventures.com

He used to book some hunts into Burkina Faso and has been himself. He's the guy who does custom handloads at www.safariarms.com

I believe he's a neighbor of Nickudo???

Would I hunt again in Burkina Faso. You betcha.
It is a very primitive country, perhaps one of the 10 poorest in the world in per capita income. I don't think anything can compare with the traffic of bodies and mopeds in the capital. It is always hot and dry during the hunting season that is Jan-March, I think.

Do you need French. Mine helped me some, but also hindered when I though I had ordered a brochette of lamb, beef, chicken and pork. I got a kidney, a spleen, a blatter and something that looked like a popped eyeball.

I remember well sitting on the patio of a hotel "downtown" in the capital and watching vultures picking at the "leavings" on the grill on which my supper was barbequed the evening before. Waiters walked by them without a second look. I guess vulture poop was the additonal flavor the dinner had. Damn!

Burkina certainly isn't Tanzania and wonderful tent camps or the "country club" lodges of RSA. With the right "concession" it can be more than comfortable, but posh wasn't even close in the 90's. Thank you Lord for Baby-Wipes. Most places still had that wax-paper-like stuff and just holes in the floor.

I did see several hundred roan, a zillion orbi and diker, waterbuck, bushbuck, hartebeest, kob, reedbuck, leopard and elephant (non-huntable)...

It wasn't just a good safari. It was a true adventure.

EBG

Wink, Ted,

Ted, you have had the privilege to shoot 12 buffs. Imagine that now on Toufic's territory, one of the very best in Burkina, the allotment is 8 bulls per annum, not more.
The success rate on lion is almost 100% at Toufic's outfit.
Speaking of Arly!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????!!!!!!!!!
3 years ago we visited the camp d'Arly, a pity, dirty, untidy????????? and the Arly reserve?????????????????? we saw game only in a large waterhole (may be dammed thanks to Ted) a ridiculous hippo pod. The Arly reserve is empty, indecently poached and breaking the heart of my friend René who 18 years ago was in charge of Burkina game department, before he was exfiltered, risking his life for telling the crude truth. In fact he was in charge of the inquiry to find the very two disappeared fat hunters Ted is evoking. Sure he got clues of what happened but when all his trackers mysteriously have died, the french gov brought him back in Paris to be the boss of the Paris Museum. The 2 fat cats were killed by poachers in Arly, armed by a Burkinabe minister (Bracicourt) to provide bush meat. But it was 21 years ago.
That's this professor, René, who lead me in Africa for the first time 4 years ago.

Kurik and Idahosharpshooter,

Wink and me are doing our best (for free) to find the best offers in Burkina for people who don't speak french. I agree with Wink, no place is beating the Burkina to obtain cheap lion, buff and roan hunting, without any fence, only FAIR CHASE, spooring first and eventually stalking. Add possible ele and croc next year.
That's really fair hunting for a sensible price.

If elephant hunting is legal next year in Burkina Faso, someone please kill the sucker pictured. The toothless bitch caused me to ruin a fine pair of britches!

Judge, the gentleman from African Hunting adventures said he hadn't spoken to his outfitter for several months. I thank you gentlemen in France for the help in advance. This looks like a trip down a road less traveled. My goal was to hunt Cape buff before I turn 40, but going to a place most would never think of going is much more attractive. The political climate seems more stable than some areas from some of what I've read so far. What a unique adventure might await.... My buddy has hunted south and east Africa and his ears perked up when I started talking about Burkina Faso.

Judge or others was it a very difficult hunt, something that you wouldn't take a 64 year old gentleman on? Any difference in the excitement factor over cape buff?

Jean,

Would you please PM or email me at btrimble@integra-ls.com regarding how to book a hunt in Berkina?

Best regards;
Brett

The hunting in Burkina not easy, but if you will walk three or four miles a day for a couple of months before the safari (which one probably should do anyway) you will have no trouble. It is very much taboo to shoot from near your vehicle.

Most of the hunting (even lions) is by tracking. The trackers I saw were every bit as competent as those in South or East Africa.

I believe that flights are available through Paris on Air France and go three or four times a week.

Make sure to take lots of pictures if you go and share them with us.

As to the thrill of hunting the "smaller" subspecies... J.A. Hunter said that they were (and this is a remembered quote?), "... are as mean and as deadly as any of the buffalo."

I'm guessing, but I'll bet you can include daily rates, trophy fees, etc. and get a lion, buffalo, roan, waterbuck, warthog and a kob for less than $25K.

Let us know your plans.

I spoke to Toufic Hanna today about his hunting concession. A few facts: he operates 1 December until 30 April, he has two lion tags per year (none taken yet this season) he figures about 60% success rate on lion, he already has one reserved lion hunt for 2006/2007 so there is one left, he estimates 80% success rate on buffalo, 90% on Roan Antelope. In his camp he sometimes accommodates small game hunters in large numbers but when you book a big game hunt it is limited. He can only use three vehicles by law so he prefers to limit big game hunts to a maximum of two groups of 2 on 1, ie 4 hunters in camp maximum. He speaks English well enough to accept telephone calls from prospective clients. He has an apprentice PH (ex Foreign Legion) who also gets by well in English. Toufic's wife is from Ghana so in camp English is no problem either. A hunter is only allowed to take 3 big game animals per week maximum by law. A lion hunt requires a 14 day reservation at a base price of 6,850 Euros for a two on one hunt. Add 100 Euros per day if you want to hunt alone. Success fee and animal tax if a lion is taken will add 3,000 Euros. Count around 600 Euros each of animal tax on a buffalo or a Roan Antelope. Smallest Roan trophy taken this year is 65cm, largest this year is 76cm. There is an 80cm Roan out there but a couple of hunters are working hard to find it as this is being written. He has excellent oribi density. Reservation requires a 30% deposit of the fixed rate. For a ten day hunt the fixed rate is 5250 Euros for two on one and as stated above 6850 Euros for a 14 day 2 on 1 hunt. Please PM me if you would like his telephone number. I think I will have to go back to my day job so, other than passing on Toufic's telephone number to those who PM me, I'm not going to be able to devote any more time to digging up details, which would best be answered by Toufic himself in any event.

As you can see, you can do this for alot less than the $25K JudgeG mentions, not counting air fare.

Wehn I was at Nazinga it was being financed by CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, an aid organization. It had also been financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and various church groups.

It was classified as a game ranch (it was unfenced) for legal reasons and the ranch was then able to set its own quotas and season. Our season was about 6 months long compared to the hunting blocks which were 3 months or so I think and we could shoot many species on one safari and not just 3 as in the hunting block.

Robert and Clark Lungren started with an empty area and protected it for 20 years. They built seven dams that provided 27 km of standing water at the peak of the dry seaso n. Those two guys and no one else created the place. It was a paradise. There was no poaching at all and there were 20,000 surveyed head of big game in 1989 when we started hunting.

We had a research station there that was run by George Frame, a PHd from the Serengetti Research Institute. We had students from 12 universities there doing game counts, populations studies etc. We had 500 elephnats expanding at the rate of about 7% a year. It was the only expanding heard of elephants in West Africa.

The place started to work and make money and the government immediately took it over. They made it illegal for Clark and Robert to set foot on the property. They had done all the anti-poaching and had built all the roads and dams. They had raised all their children there.

After they left things went downhill very quickly and the Canadian government pulled out. CIDA had spent $6 million trying to make the place work before they withdrew their support.


VBR,


Ted Gorsline

quote:

they are considered just as ornery and dangerous (an acquaintance of mine died of a heart attack trying to run away from one when his first shot didn't do the trick) and it may be missplaced to think that you are going to get a big trophy on your first safari, wherever you go.

I mentioned this incident to Toufic during our telephone conversation. It turns out it was his first cousin who died in that incident.