13 October 2014, 00:25
Neil DuckworthElphant hunt ,Coutada 9 Mozambique with Mokore Safaris
John's 23rd elephant bull . Area: Coutada 9 Mozambique .
PH: Neil Duckworth.
Outfitter: Mokore Safaris.
Dates: 1 - 20 August 2014.
John’s first elephant hunt was with my dad in 1986 in Chewore in the Zambezi Valley. Since then John has hunted almost every year with my dad ,Gary or myself. Having shot 23 elephant bulls(largest 87 pounds and many other good tuskers) ,dozen’s of buffalo, 2 lions, lioness ,leopards etc with us he has become part of the family.
Last year John did not hunt with us as he was very ill, having smoked heavily for many years it finally caught up with him which saw him hospitalised for 3 moths , 6 weeks of this unconscious on life support . Thanks to some good treatment and support of his family he pulled through this, when he finally woke up he could hardly sit up let alone walk. Every day he grew stronger and determined that he had not had his last elephant hunt , he pushed himself daily to where he was fitter than before.
John used my back up rifle ,a 458 lott.
Now that he was on the mend we started looking at the different options for good elephant. With the recent increase of poaching in Africa good bull areas that don’t require hunting a park boundary are hard to find and John had hunted most of them. We finally decided to hunt Coutada 9 in Mozambique as I felt this had some of the best potential, the area is a couple million acres and some big bull tracks knocking around.
John has always insisted on a 3 week elephant hunt, having shot many good bulls he only shoots if they are over 50 pounds, if not then he gets to track elephant another day longer. I think in the past he has done three 21 day elephant hunts and not pulled the trigger . As long as there are doves calling and there are elephant to follow he’s a happy man.
John flew into Tete on the 31st of July then drove to our camp in Coutada 9. The plan was to start in the southern part of our concession the make our way up north towards to communal lands where bulls were known to crop raid. The first 5 days in the south we got onto 8 different bulls but the biggest about 35 pounds. During these 5 days we saw 22 different species of game, from elephant all the way down to the grysbok.
From here we moved up north to a fly camp with would allow us better access to our northern block.
From the fly camp we hunted every day, most days leaving before dawn and returning well after dark . The bull tracks in this area were impressive but for a reason. They had gotten old from being clever and walking many miles each day. There were very few roads in this area which also made things a lot harder. The one bull we followed for the first 2 days solid, whilst walking I would periodically turn on my GPS to keep my bearings in miles of jesse ,fields and forests. By the end of the second day I measured how far we’d walked measuring from point to point where I had turned on the GPS. In a straight line we had covered 65 kms ,this is not counting any of the meandering on tracks etc. Luckily we finally found where the bull had stopped for the first time and lay down, the tusk marks were not to impressive so we left him with our tails between our legs and looked for a softer target.
One of the days whilst working some of the dry river beds we picked up a big track which we followed for several hours, he did a big semi circle and then crossed the riverbed going out of our hunting area a few hundred meters from the truck. When we followed his track back to the riverbed my driver said he had watch the bull come down ,then drink for 10 minutes out the sand the crossed out of our hunting area. He said it looked big so we were encouraged.
Riverbeds were the most effective way for us to find tracks as roads in this area were very limited. Sometimes not easy to navigate.
I put up a few trail cameras at drinking spots in the sand where he might drink that next night . The next night he came back into the riverbed and we got some good pictures confirming he was a shooter. Luckily he had a very distinctive track with 2 lines and 2 dots.
We concentrated on this area for the next few days until we finally connected with him on day 14, as we were closing in on him we heard a massive tree being pushed over.
This took us directly to him, he was feeding on the tree in some very noisy,thick panga panga forest. As we approached slowly up behind him through a bed of noisy leaves he turned and walked right past us under 20 yards. Due to the thick cover John put in a couple good body shots with my 458 lott and we could hear him crashing of for about 70 yards then he went down. A perfect heart shot.
This was John’s 23rd bull with us, his fourth 62 pounder that he had taken with me. Needless to say we were all happy campers.
A beautiful bull after some of the longest walks of my career.
John's legs with a few scratches.
From here the cruiser went and brought in a bunch of villagers to take the meat. Slowly but surely more and more appeared out of the woodwork.
Never have I seen african people crave meat so much. They cut up the hide into little squares, all the bones including the entire skull ,leg bones and spine was cut up into manageable pieces for them to take home and cook .
Cutting out the tusks so they could cut up the rest of the skull to take home.
The next day I saw a villager walking down the road about 10 km from the carcass carrying a section of the spine, bone only ,with no meat on it. Presumably he would cut this into small pieces ,then boil to make some sort of gravy.
Note the piece of elephant hide being taken home to eat.
Whilst driving riverbeds etc looking for bull track we would shoot the odd guineafowl for the pot. In the one area we took a local villager as an informer to help us out with information.
Local informers family and huts.
At lunch time we stopped and the trackers cut up the guineafowl to cook leaving the head and neck. The local villager ate the neck , head and feet raw. When you see this kind of thing it feels very rewarding knowing that nothing will go to waste from the elephant and that after many years of raiding their crops they finally got something out of it.
From here we decided to drive 7 hours to Mokore camp in the SVC in Zimbabwe where John could spend some time with my folks and Gary and his family catching up on old times. John is a true hunter and a gentleman. Someone who really appreciates all the small things on a hunt . Hopefully he stays healthy and we get to do it again and again.
