Hunt Dates: November 7th - November 16th, 2003
Location: Masailand, Tanzania
Camps: Lolkisaile and Lobo, next to Tarangire National Park
Facilities: Excellent tented camps, attentive staff (at Lolkisaile they met the cruiser no matter what time with cold drinks on a tray), good food.
Conditions: Hot, dusty and dry! Nighttime temps in the mid to low 60s, daytime temps in the mid 80's.
Game hunted: Buffalo, Cokes Hartebeest, Zebra, Impala, Grants Gazelle, White Bearded Wildebeest, Warthog
Game taken: 1 buffalo, Zebra, Cokes Hartebeest, Grants Gazelle, Impala
Rifle & Ammo: Fisher Custom Brno .375 H&H shooting 300 grain Failsafes and Barnes Solids
PH: Cash Taylor
Trackers: Rafael, Lelia and Abdulli

I knew things were going to be tough on this hunt when we met Ridge and Cash Taylor, Jim Scwender and Ronnie Blackbeard at the Impala Hotel bar after my party of four decamped the plane, made it through customs and the taxi ride to the hotel in Arusha. It was close to eleven o'clock at night when we ordered our first Killi of the evening. After three beers we had a good assessment of things. The rains hadn't come, there was precious little permanent water in Lolkisaile and the buff and wildebeest were in the Park. Lobo Camp had a river running through it so there were buff there but the Masai and their cattle herds were also there. The buff in Lobo were in the thick stuff, watering at night.

The plan was to split our party up with two hunters to start in Lolkisaile and the other two in Lobo. Guy Fish from Houston and I started our hunt in Lolkisaile. We hunted hard every day trying to cut buffalo spoor. On day two, I shot my zebra and had a great stalk on a kongoni after trekking through the bush for a five mile recon along a karongo looking for buff tracks. I took my hartebeest off the sticks at about 80 yards. He fell so fast after the shot, Cash thought I had missed and he ran with the others. We saw alot of East African game on this hunt, Lesser Kudu, Masailand Bushbuck, Chandler Mt. Reedbuck, hundreds of elephant, kongoni, impala, thousands of zebra, Greater Kudu, Leopard, Cheetah, Grant's Gazelle, Giraffe, steenbok, Dik Dik, genets, baboons, vervet monkeys, hyenas, one lost wildebeest calf with a herd of zebra, but never saw one buffalo at Lolkisaile.

After five days of no buff tracks, no fresh buff dung much less real, live buffalo, I was pretty discouraged. We had heard one of the hunters in the other camp had shot a 45 inch buffalo bull at Lobo. The other still hadn't shot his bull. That afternoon, we got word Guy would be moving to Lobo Camp. While I was happy for him, it looked like another day for me with no opportunity for buff.

On the sixth day at noon we left for Lobo camp. It took us three hours to drive the two track from one camp to the other. We arrived and I killed my buff that evening. I'll post details and pix later. The seventh day we hunted Grant's and impala. I shot a nice Grant's around noon that day and we never found an impala Cash liked.

The next three days we hunted buff, but never found a bull in the thick stuff that presented a shot. I did see a 44" to 45" bull one evening but we could never get a good look at his boss to judge age.

The last day of the hunt at 5:05, I took my impala.

This was one of those bittersweet hunts. I took a great old kakuli bull that posed some problems to a village. I saw the fabled Masai and hunted some species only available in their land. I hunted hard and fair and shot well. But in the end I felt I had paid for a ten day, two buff hunt and only got to hunt buff three days. I understand mother nature sometimes works against us and that is what I chalked this hunt up to.

I would recommend that hunters going to Tanzania in October and November understand what they are in for if the rains come late! If I ever go again it will be earlier in the season OR I will ask about permanent water sources for buffalo. I know there have been some MONSTER buff taken at Lolkisaile but they are not there if the water isn't.

In the end all four hunters shot a buff each with one hunter going down to the wire and shooting a bull on the last day. A couple of the hunters had an opportunity to shoot another bull but didn't because the buff wasn't as big as what they had shot earlier.

Ridge has excellent camps and staff. We had a good time. When we rated the hunt on the trip home we rated it a seven out of a possible ten.

Welcome home bwanamrm. Sounds like a tough hunt. I'm glad you at least got a buffalo and some of the plains game. When I hunted there in August, it was a totaly different story. I never got to Lokasali and didn't see as many different species as you, but we were into buffalo every day. Look forward to your photos and details of the buff you did take.