06 October 2015, 19:01
d.ungerMunyamadzi leopard
Munyamadzi, ZambiaPH: Thor Kirchner
Booking agent: Wendell Reich
Species hunted: Leopard, Buffalo, Hippo, Croc, Impala
September, 2015
Rifles: CZ .416 Rigby w/400 grain North Fork SS, Trijicon 1-4x scope.
CZ .375 H&H w/300 grain North Fork SS, Trijicon 3-9x scope.
Cameras: Lumix FZ1000, Sony RX100
My friend Rick, his daughter Nicole and I booked this hunt with Thor Kirchner through Wendell about a year ago. Rick and Nicole were hunting together for buffalo and plains game, and I was after buffalo, hippo and croc. My hunt had a leopard added to it earlier this year when Zambia re-opened leopard, and Thor offered up the chance to hunt one. Muyamadzi hadn’t had a leopard hunter in the past four years, and we felt the chance of getting a mature tom in the classic fashion, in the tree during daylight, was good.
On August 31, our group, which included Andy MacDonald from Safari Classics who was filming for me, met up with PH Thor Kirchner at the Lusaka airport. Customs was a breeze, easy and stress free. Thor had our rifle permits pre-arranged and everything in order. He has a very good rapport with the customs and police, which helped to move things along quickly. After our paper work was complete, we made our way to the Piper Chieftain waiting for us on the tarmac, and in a little more than an hour, we touched down on Muyamadzi’s grass airstrip.
Arrival at Munyamadzi
Munyamadzi’s main camp sits on the bank of the Luangwa River. Brick and thatched roof chalets and a lone tent set on a raised platform, make up the hunter’s accommodations, with an open air eating area, and fire pit nearby that looks over the river; a very clean, comfortable and scenic camp.
Priority one was to get leopard baits collected and hung. Collecting bait was not a problem. Munyamadzi is filthy with impala, and it was nothing more than going for a quick drive down along the river bottom to pick up a few, whenever we needed. Day one, we added an impala to a bait that Thor had pre-hung, and was being hit by a cat with a good track. We put out three more baits the first day - a time consuming but essential part of the hunt. That first night, we sat the active bait that Thor had pre-set, but nothing came in before dark.
On day two we decided to do some buffalo hunting. We checked water holes in the early hours and found where a small herd of buffalo had drank that morning. We followed the tracks a short distance and found piles of still warm dung, so went on, knowing the herd was close. The trackers did a great job of following the tracks on the hard ground, and by around 09:30 we came on the herd as they were bedding down. The high grass and brush made it difficult to get a good look, and a swirling wind kept us from moving in closer. The wind continued to be unpredictable, so Thor made the call to back out, and return in the afternoon. It was a good call.
On the way back to camp, we checked a bait we had hung the previous day. It was our closest bait to camp, maybe a few kms out, so we called it “camp bait”. It had been hit, and there was a large track on it, so we put up a trail cam.
Thor measuring a leopard track
Back at camp we had a tasty lunch of curried guinea fowl with rice and salad, and a brief rest, before heading back out to the buffalo around 14:30.
That afternoon, we picked up where we had bedded the buffalo in the morning, and were fortunate to have timed it perfectly. The herd was getting out of their beds and beginning to feed as we approached them. A wide bull that had lagged behind the herd was raking up a tree but facing away, so we couldn’t get a look at his bosses to judge his age.
There was an anthill between us and the buffalo that gave us cover to close the distance, and get a clear view of the bull as he rejoined the herd. He was a mature bull, and Thor gave the okay to take him, so I got over the ant hill and took a rest on top. When the bull was clear from the other buffalo, I settled low on the shoulder where I felt the heart was, and squeezed. The bull hunched up and stumbled for a moment, then broke from the running herd over a rise, and disappeared into the high grass.
Our bull only ran a short distance, maybe 60-70 yards and collapsed. Walking up on him, we all realized he was special, by far my largest buffalo.
On day three, we checked camp bait which had been hit again, and the trail camera showed us a very mature male leopard. He had a large scar down his left shoulder, a thick neck with sagging skin, and ears that seemingly came out the side of his head. This was the cat we would focus on.
By the end of day three, all but the two baits we put out that day were active with multiple cats on them. We soon had five mature males, and multiple females or smaller males feeding. Muyamadzi was loaded with them.
Andy took me to school in the bird shooting.
The daily routine stayed much the same, sitting a blind in the morning followed by a breakfast back at camp, then off to collect, check, and hang baits. We would always get back to camp for a good lunch and a rest before heading out for the evening sit.
38C in the shade.
Over the next week we sat morning and evening on camp bait, and never had our cat come in during daylight. Thor had the idea to put a bucket of water at the bait so the leopard wouldn’t have to travel all the way to the river to drink. This worked! We caught him drinking on the trail cam a number of times, but it didn’t help in getting him in the tree during daylight. He continued to feed and drink after dark and before first light, and then one day he disappeared. We assumed he was full of warthog and impala and had gone off looking for a girl.
It was slightly discouraging because we had put in a lot of time and effort hunting this guy. Long sits, chased out of our blind by elephants, bumping lion in the dark - we even tried changing the blind set up but nothing was working. It seemed it wasn’t meant to be.
Thor and I making a plan around a morning fire.
The trackers collecting the sand where a female leopard urinated to put on a bait in a different location.
Blind building
We didn’t have all our eggs in this one basket, and our attention then focused on another cat we had on bait. This too was a large male, but it was feeding with a female. The female was the first cat we had in the tree before dark. She came in as the sun was on the horizon and shining full on the tree. She was beautiful.
We were certain the male would jump in the tree after her, but she fed until after dark with no sight of the male. The trail cam pictures showed he didn’t come in until three hours after we left. That same evening as we were getting ready to leave the blind, a male lion roared a couple hundred yards away. No other sound can raise the hair my neck like that. We also saw a young leopard on the road on the drive out. He didn’t run off, and gave us a good look with the torches. It was a very good evening.
Doing a drag along a road.
Plenty of lions on Munyamadzi.
Rick and Nicole hunted hard the first four days with their PH, Davon. They followed different buffalo tracks that didn’t work out and a few tracks that ended in close encounters with bulls that didn’t fit the bill. On day five, they did something that probably hasn’t been done many times. They connected on a father/daughter double on two great buffalo bulls. This was Nicole’s first buffalo hunt, and she got herself a great old bull, more important than the size of the bull was she did it with her dad. A special moment for both of them. The rest of the hunt they connected on a couple spectacular bushbuck, puku, and Nicole got herself a big hyena.
A father/daughter double.
Late one morning after doing our bait run, we stopped near the river to have a look at some hippos. Along with a few dozen croc there were quite a few hippo in the water to look over, but one bull stood out. Only the top of his head was showing, but below the water you could see his non-typical tusks that stuck out on the sides of his mouth. He looked like a good bull and was very different, so we decided to try for him. We got up on a rise on the river bank and I laid out my pack for a rest to shoot from a prone position. I got on the bull and as he turned to face me I settled the post on his forehead and squeezed off a shot from my .416 Rigby.
It was near to a 90 yard shot and it felt good, but I heard the sound of a ricochet and immediately thought the bullet bounced off the hippo’s forehead. Nobody else heard the ricochet, but Thor assured me the shot was perfect and the hippo was dead. Andy played back the footage and everything looked good. We could see the bullet impact and the hippo sink away. The sound of the ricochet could be heard on the video, but the bullet was later found in the skull, so I’m not sure what the sound of the ricochet came from. A piece of skull maybe??
Fisherman from across the river came over to lend a hand, and we paddled out in their dugout canoes to the hippo which was in about eight feet of water. We went down and tied a rope to it’s leg, and pulled the hippo to shore, where we took photos and butchered him. The fisherman who helped, got a share of the meat for their efforts.
While the hippo was being cut up, Thor had radio’d camp to bring lunch out to us. Camp staff brought a table and chairs, umbrella, a cooler filled with ice and drinks, as well as fishing tackle. We fished while the cook prepared burgers that we ate on still warm freshly baked buns. We were also treated to hippo heart kabobs. I preferred the burgers.
Cooking up some hippo heart.
Making bangles from hippo skin.
Drying a bangle on a bottle.
We kept up the daily routine, and then late in the hunt our old cat showed back up on camp bait. We decided it was this cat or nothing, and put our full efforts toward him for the remaining days, but he still never came into the bait during daylight.
Nicole and I checking out a bait set up.
A typical afternoon view of the Lunagwa from camp.
On the final morning we made our way into the blind about an hour before first light. In the pitch dark as we made the long walk along the road we bumped into a group of lions. It was a tense few minutes but we eventually got quietly settled into the grass blind.
After a morning sit with nothing showing, Thor called the truck to come and fetch us. We could hear the hum of the truck off in the distance, so we began to get our gear together. I took one last look through the shooting hole at the tiring scene; hopeful. Just then, our cat jumped into the tree. I couldn’t believe what I saw, and whispered in a panic “leopard Leopard LEOPARD!” to the guys. Everybody came to immediate attention, and Thor quickly radioed the truck to stop.
I knew it was the male, but had to get the okay from Thor. The cat was looking in our direction, and I had the cross hairs on the point of his left shoulder as he quartered on steeply toward us. In one sequence, I heard Thor say, “smoke ‘em’!” The cat lowered his head to feed, and I touched off the shot. The 300 grain bullet from the .375 hit him on the point of the shoulder, traveled the length of his body, shattered the rear right leg, and stopped under the skin. The cat dropped with a thud. He was dead before he hit the ground.
In the span of less than one minute, we went from getting ready to leave the blind, to a dead leopard under the bait. It was a sudden and dramatic swing of events; the way hunting ought to be.
Croc was a key species for us, and that last afternoon after the leopard was taken care of, Thor asked if I wanted to go have a look at a large crocodile we had been seeing. I was flying high about the leopard and didn’t want anything to interfere with that. Although I’m sure we could have collected that croc, we decided to take the last afternoon off and spend it in camp. Everyone deserved the break, so we hung out in camp, sat around the fire, had a few cold drinks and visited.
Later, Rick, Nicole and I walked up to the staff’s camp and crashed their leopard celebrations that had obviously been going on for a while. The trackers insisted Rick and I share some of there homemade ‘beer’, and poured us some in a glass from what looked like a gas can. I hesitantly, but graciously, took the soiled glass and had swig. It didn’t make me throw-up or go blind which I was relieved about so it got points for that. It was milky looking and similar to regular beer but was slightly sweet and had a taste of yeast. Had it been cold and void of mopane flies, it may have been palatable.
Drying leopard meat over mopane coals, nothing goes to waste.
Later that evening, we enjoyed wood oven pizzas of our own creations, and tried a worlds first; wood oven leopard pizza. (Leopard pizza is about on par with the hippo heart kabobs.)
Munyamadzi gets high marks from me, not only because I took some incredible animals, but for the many other things that make a hunt. The food, memorable camp, incredible staff, trackers, and of course a great PH. Thor knows his stuff, and manages Munyamadzi like a mother cares for a baby. Thor lives on Munyamadzi managing it year round and takes special care of the animals and land. The poaching patrol is a year round effort, and they do an effective job. One thing I noticed most on Muyamadzi was how tame the animals were. They get hunted, but not heavily, and that shows up as you drive along the river bottoms and baboons watch without care and impala, kudu, puku, roan, warthogs and other animals take little notice as you drive by. I’ve never been in a place with so many kudu, and we saw our share of big bulls and up-and-comers. The areas mopane woodland and river bottoms covered with massive mahoganies and other mature trees - screams classic wild Africa. Throw in lions roaring at night, plenty of elephant, and it doesn’t get much better for a true wild African experience.
Munyamadzi is a jewel.
