12 June 2014, 15:57
Neil DuckworthDenny Adelung's Buff/ leopard hunt in SVC with Mokore Safaris, PH Neil Duckworth
This hunt was scheduled from 15-29 May on Umkondo out of the Mokore camp . This was Denny's 3rd hunt with me and his wife's second. Their first hunt was with me in Mozambique where Denny shot Sable, Nyala, Eland, Hartebeest, 2 x 56 "plus kudu, 2 warthog , oribi ,impala etc. His second hunt was with me in Sengwa early lasy year where Denny shot a beautiful 62 pound elephant plus a few plainsgame. This year he and Louisa had come out to try for a leopard and a buffalo.
On the afternoon of the 14th Denny and Louisa flew down on a charter plane to the Mokore strip. Unfortunately Denny's guns had missed a connection so would only arrive a couple days later so we decided he should start the hunt using one of our company 375's until his arrived. After getting settled at the camp we went off to the range and had a few shots to familiarise him with the new gun.
Early he next morning we set out to get bait. By mid morning we were back in camp after Denny had taken a zebra an impala.
The idea was to get the zebra skinned, have a quick lunch and set out to hang leopard steaks..
This we did and by late afternoon we had hung 5 baits. Whilst we were driving to our last bait site we saw a massive herd of buffalo and could not help notice a massive bull standing looking at us. My initial thought was to leave it as I've never shot at a buffalo from the truck before and also wanted Denny to get the real experience but this was no ordinary bull. He was definitely over 40 with very heavy bosses and even his horns all the way out were heavy with good drops. After a little deliberating I told Denny to get out he truck and grab the 375 as chances of getting onto him again in a herd of several hundred in really thick bush were not good. With the 375 in hand he loaded it and got a decent rest. The bull was standing facing us , I told him to aim low in the chest and squeeze the trigger. The gun went off and the bull spun and disappeared into a sea of buffalo and thick bush. It was getting near last light so we spent about 20 minutes searching for the bull but found nothing. Early the next morning we were back at the site to look once more. After searching back and forth all morning we did not find a single drop of blood and unfortunately there were so many buffalo in that one block going in different directions it was impossible for us to tell which group he was in with no blood.
After a painful day of searching for the bull in very thick cover we gave up as it was hopeless.
Early on day 3 we set out to check our baits and we had 2 big toms on bait, both with very similar length strides, pad widths and length of back feet.
Both were on trail cameras but one camera was set up to close to the bait and the other to far. We reset the cameras and decided to get blinds built etc
With trail cams set up again we decided to re examine the footage the next day and make a more educated decision on which cat was bigger. On the afternoon of day 3 3 shot some more bait and added to our existing baits that were being fed on and put out a couple more baits .
This we did so on day 4 we checked the baits and both cats had fed, the one cat had fed on and off for most of the night and the other had arrived late and fed from 3:30 am to 4:45am so we chose this one as I suspected him to come in early the next night , they both looked similar in size .
We did the final touch ups to the blind ,rheostat light and listening device. By 4 :30 pm we were in the blind and set to go. On this bait there was also a female and cub feeding which I needed to pay attention to when feeding. Shortly after 6pm I heard a cat climb the tree but the feeding was light so suspected it was a cub. This went on for a while then went silent for about 30 minutes. At about 7:15 pm I heard a bigger cat jump into the tree and it was not long before distinct crunching on bones could be heard. I told Denny to get ready as I was going to turn on the light. I slowly turned the light up ,the cat totally unaware carried on feeding, straight away we could see the golden pouch so knew it was him. I told Denny to wait for the cat to stop feeding and stand still. This took a couple minutes which seemed like an eternity, eventually he stopped and gave Denny a nice broadside quartering shot. Denny hit him good and he jumped out the tree and came boiling towards the blind growling and crashed several meters in front of us. All of a sudden there was a massive commotion in front of us where another leopard started attacking him whilst he was dying a few yards away. As the rheostat light was still on the bait I could see the outline of this other leopard. I decided to put the flashlight on to see what was going on, it was the female, she was totally uninterested in usand kept hissing and attacking the male. Even when I shouted at her she wouldn't back off, she disappeared shortly and we could hear her just behind us in the pop up blind. She then came back around a proceeded to hiss at the male. I eventually called the truck and only then did she move off.
What an exciting cat hunt, and we got it all on film which was a bonus with all the growling etc at 6 or 7 paces.
After this we went back to concentrating on buffalo ,as there was no blood on the first one we thought to work the herds to try see if we could find the bull from the first day. This proved to be nearly impossible and after several days of the we got onto another very good bull. This bull was a little over 40 ,had big shiny bosses and tips slightly worn down. A true dagga boy in every sense. He was trailing near the back of the herd ,as he was going through a gap I caught his attention so he would stop ,with Denny on the sticks at 50 yards he stepped forward towards us for a better look. Another frontal shot ,when the shot went off the bull reared into the air then took off, definitely hit but I was worried it may have been too low. As it was late afternoon we only had an hour of daylight left, during this time we only found 2 tiny drops of blood. So early next morning we were back for another look. After trailing the herd for several hours we finally got to where they had bedded, here we found one more drop of blood which was good in that we knew he was still with the herd and hadn't peeled off. We ended up following this herd over the next few days ,but eventually it had split into several groups so we had no idea on which group to follow. Eventually we had to give it up after several days of searching.
From here we hunted some plainsgame, on top of the list was a wildebeest which had eluded us early in the hunt and a Hyeana. We also spent a day fishing at the Chishakwe dam just north of Mokore where we caught about 40 pound -2 pound sized bream which served as great table fare. Denny also got to fish with my dad which was a treat for him.
On the first morning driving out of camp we came over a rise in the road to see a pack of 5 wild dogs having a face off with 3 hyeanas. This was pretty cool and it was after this the thought of a hyeana trophy became more appealing to Denny. As we now had time on our hand we set up a couple of our old leopard baits for hyeana, again trail cams were set up to help us see how many what times etc. The one morning driving towards the one waterhole to check our hyeana bait I saw plenty of elephant tracks and feared the worst. Sure enough they had ripped it of the tree carried it about 300 meters then trampled it. The second one I'd lost to elephant plus one to lions..
On the second last evening Denny got a beautiful hyeana which he was very pleased with.
Lastly we kept concentrating on the one group of wildebeest bulls for the one with Denny's name on it. Finally we found the group of bulls and after a couple hours of the dreaded butt crawl Denny hit him breaking the front shoulder, an hour later after some fantastic tracking we managed to get a couple more shots into him and he was down.
After this some game viewing .
All in all it was another great hunt for Denny and Louisa, unfortunately we lost the buffalo.
On numerous days we saw 3 or 4 of the big 5. A truly magical place. Elephants and buffalo every day.
Out of the last 2 leopard hunts I've done there both cats were shot on first night in the blind before 7:30 pm ,one on the second day and this on the 4th day. On 9 baits we had 13 different leopard feeding in a week,of them 3 big males.
Below are a couple clips of the other males still out there.
Denny has booked to come for his 4th hunt with me in 2016 for Lion and hopefully a buffalo..
