I just arrived back from an 11 day hunt with my sons, wife and daughter arranged by HHK with Swainson's Safari's. We hunted buff, croc, bushbuck, and sable at Dande, then moved to Lemco. The Dande hunt was on a Swainson's concession with Lemco being a plains game hunt on a consevancey managed by HHK. Had the services of 3 PH's that worked primarily for Swainson's.

This was our first experience with DG after a successful trip to RSA in 2003. In summary, you cannot compare RSA and concession hunting in Zimbabwe. It is apples and oranges. They are vastly different undertakings with a different set of expectations. Overall, we had a great trip. The details and logistics were well managed with minor glitches. The hunting was very good by any standard.

I will prepare a detailed report later but here is a summary -

Three inexperienced DG hunters after buff for the first time. My oldest son (17yrs) killed a good, hard boss buff on his first day and after a 2 hr stalk. Younger son (15yrs) took a slightly bigger buff with a 15" boss on the second day after 8 to 10 stalks. Both were one shot kills. I managed to get busted 28 times over 4 1/2 days before connecting on a good buff. We saw, collectively about 500 + or - animals with about 10 being good bulls that we stalked at different times. The PH's all said the boys were lucky in the stalks but claimed responsibilty for the success. My PH said that a 4 1/2 day successful buff hunt was about average for the area in the Dande concession. We saw a lot of animals and a lot of tracks. All three hunt the area and are nearly 100% on hard bossed buff.

Oldest son then spent 7 days after sable before seeing one that was a shooter. I connected after 2 days of stalking and glassing. Both sable were mature and had good horns for the area. We did not measure anything but these were in the 37" to 39" range according to the PH's.

Younger son took a 14'+ croc with brain shot. There is no problem locating crocs or hippo's in this concession. Plenty to go around.

We also took out several baboons - 5 total - all old males. This was a lot of fun.

We hunted bushbuck very hard in the evenings then full time the last two days in Dande. I took a nice one on the trip out of camp to head to Lemco.

Overall, Dande is a DG concession. There were lions, leopards and elephants as well as buff. We saw elephants daily and heard lions. Leopard tracks were seen many times. Poachers are present as my older son saw first hand what poachers do - he and his PH came up on a group of poachers with the game dept. scout. The poachers fled but were seen at a distance, shots were fired to let the poachers know they were being watched. Later the game scouts tracked down a couple of them and hauled them to the slammer. The game on the borders of this area gets hammered by poachers, so the plainsgame is skittish and not in large numbers.

Accomodations were fine and the food was good - well run camp.

At Lemco, a plainsgame consevancy of 800,000 acres (King Ranch in size), we hunted zebra, giraffe, wildebeast, klipspringer, impala, warthog, bushpig, steenbuck, eland, waterbuck and kudu. We had the most trouble with zebra as they ran with the giraffes and we consistently were busted by the giraffes. My youngest son took a very nice waterbuck with his older brother taking an old eland. I took my favorite - warthog and impala as well. We took several other animals as well. Older sister got into the act with a zebra as well, after 10 busted stalks (giraffes being spies).
In summary, we saw hundreds of animals at Lemco, much like you would see in the RSA, but much wilder and harder to hunt. We had the good luck to see black rhinos and aardvarks as well - quite a site for these hard to find animals.

Accomodations were top notch and the food was excellent - this is a longer term operation than a typical concession area that has a 5 year life. Lemco was permanently with HHK, so the camp was more lavish.

Overall, I would recommend Dande for buff and other DG and Lemco for plainsgame.

As an avid birder, I picked up 82 new species that I had never seen before - a great add on for me on this trip.

Again, I will send a complete, detailed report and pics later.

Congratulations on a what sounds like a truly great trip -- even better that you shared it with your family.

I look forward to pictures and full details.

Will you please list some of the birds as I too am an avid birder.

Dogcat- What was the buff situation at Lemco? I hear it sells out early but am interested as to your thoughts after tramping around a bit....

Congratulations on a great hunt! I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures.

Dogcat,
Looking forward to the pictures. We will be hunting Lemco this September with HHK. Glad to hear a good report.
KB1

quote:

Originally posted by crane:
Dogcat- What was the buff situation at Lemco? I hear it sells out early but am interested as to your thoughts after tramping around a bit....

We did not see buff in the Ripple Creek area. We saw tracks but no animals. The Ripple Creek area is near the headquarters and in a large separate block within Lemco. I wish I could tell you more, but we saw everything except buff there.

Dogcat,

Congratulations on a great hunt. Looking forward to seeing your photos. We are going with KB1 in September to Lemco and staying in the Samanyanga camp. Did you stay at the Ripple Creek camp?

After just returning from Dande (north) myself, I can attest to the great area it is, although I had a much tougher tme ( 5 days) in getting my buffalo. Looking forward to pictures. Which camp did you use in Dande? jorge

Kathi - we were at Ripple Creek. I understand all of the areas are comparative in facilities and game. You will have a lot of fun. We saw hundreds of impala and warthogs. We saw a lot of nice waterbuck bulls and cows. They are interested in culling 200 giraffes out of there as well - my son took one.

Jorge - We were 5 days at the Pedza Camp and 3 days at the Masau camp on the river. We hunted buff out of Pedza and croc/sable/bushbuck out of Masau.

As an additional note - we used .375 H&H's with Federal factory 300 gr. Trophy Bonded Bearclaw's and Sledgehammers. On the sable and others we used .300 Win Mag with 180 gr. Federal factory ammo with Barnes Triple Shock bullets. We took a couple of .22 win mags for birds and fun - the scouts and trackers shot a lot of .22 mag ammo for fun.

To answer a couple of more private questions-

We flew South Africa Airways from Atlanta to Jo-berg then to Harare. We had no problems and the flights were tolerable. Apparently, they made a little more leg room on the Airbus. I have no complaints about the service or the plane. Cramped and a little worn out on each flight, but I was flying coach.

We had less hassle in Harare from customs than in Atlanta. In Zim, we used a meet/greet service from a local bed and breakfast. They ushered us right in with no check of the guns. US customs on the return flight were a pain as was Delta Airlines.

There are fuel, food and sugar shortages in Zim and I fear the food situation will get worse by next year. Flying over the country, I saw no winter wheat planted and the ex-farmers, now PH's and camp bosses, all said that the war veterans are not planting or growing any food. I suspect the place will continue to go downhill.

DG: Thanks for the info. We stayed at Mururu. Both my wife and I loved it and concur that Dande is best suited as a DG area. On your HHK part of the hunt, was that down in the Lowveldt? I hunted Malangani, which borders on an HHK concession. Also you were spot on with US Customs and Delta. As to why I had to reopen my gun cases to TSA after clearing customs even though I was still in a sanitized area I'll never know. Also, when the TSA idiot asked me for my 4457, I said I gave it to the Customs agent . She just shrugged her shoulders and moved on. morons. SAA was a nightmare for us though. We still had the older configuration Airbus. jorge

Dogcat,
Congratulations on not only a great hunt but taking the family along as well! You must be very proud of your boys...two buff with two shots...hell, us older guys can't pull that one off! Look forward to your pictures. Cheers!

quote:

Originally posted by cats:
Will you please list some of the birds as I too am an avid birder.

Of the 82 different species we saw, the following are the ones of note or rarity

Saddlebill Stork
Marabou Stork
Pel's Fishing Owl
Western Banded Snake Eagle carrying a snake
4 species of hornbill including the Ground Hornbill
4 species of Francolin - Crested, Swainsons, Couqui, Natal
Arnott's Chat
Several of the babblers
Scarlet Crested Sunbird
European Roller
Hammerkop - very unusual
White Front Bee-eater
Yellow Spotted Nicator
Golden Breasted Bunting
4 different Shrikes

A bunch more - all were amazing to see.