03 October 2012, 05:32
David WNgamo Sikumi Elephant Bull
Hunt Dates: September 12-27, 2012Area: Ngamo Sikumi, Forestry Commission, Zimbabwe
Outfitter/PH: Brent Hein Safaris - www.brentheinsafaris.com
Trackers: William, Friday and Boniface
Hardware: Roger Ferrell custom .458 Lott on Brno ZKK-602, Woodleigh 500 grain solids
Whitworth .375 H&H, FailSafe 300 grain softs
Travel: Steve Turner at Travel with Guns - www.travelwithguns.com
Game Taken: Elephant bull, tuskless elephant cow, buffalo cow, reedbuck, hyena, impala, zebra, duiker, guinea fowl, francolin
I brought along a friend on his first safari to hunt with me on a 2X1 basis. In addition to the animals I took, he shot buffalo, sable, kudu, eland, impala, zebra, duiker, steenbuck, warthog and baboon.
Game Seen: Elephant, buffalo, lion, sable, roan, wildebeest, zebra, kudu, eland, giraffe, impala, reedbuck, duiker, steenbuck, warthog, honey badger, baboon, hyena
Brent and I had been planning this hunt for the past couple of years and finally got it booked with Ngamo Safaris last January at the SCI show in Vegas. This was our eighth safari together since 2001 and my eleventh in total.
My hunting partner and I set out from San Antonio on September 9. We flew Delta via Atlanta to Joberg in economy comfort, which is a step up from standard coach and well worth the $300.00 or so in additional expense. On arrival, we were met by Godfrey from Africa Sky Guest House, who helped us through the SAPS process with our pre-approved rifle permits and then took us to the house for dinner and a night's rest. The flight to Bulawayo the next day was on time and Brent was there to meet us as we exited the "hot box" hangar terminal for the 3.5 hour drive to the area.
After an uneventful drive, we turned off the Bulawayo-Vic Falls main road at Halfway House and went a couple of miles on the sandy track toward Intundla Camp when Brent got a call on his cell from the Ngamo office in Bulawayo. Seems that despite thorough communication on our part, including a visit by Brent to their office prior to our arrival that day and a signed contract in hand that indicated our dates of arrival and departure, Ngamo was only expecting us two days hence and there was no staff in camp. We turned around and went back to Halfway House, a bar/restaurant/motel that serves as a community gathering place for the area. As we pulled in, we noticed a cruiser with Ngamo placards on the doors in the parking area. The driver turned out to be Jackson Metashu, camp manager at Intudla and our host for the next 15 days. After introductions and Brent giving Jackson a good-natured hard time about not being ready for us, Jackson let us know that he'd made a plan for us to stay at one of Ngamo's photo lodges, Ganda Lodge, near the entrance to the park. Jackson also advised us that we would need to go to park headquarters the next morning to get the TR2's stamped, so we knew that a good part of our first hunting day was shot. TIA. The good news is that the staff at Ganda dusted the place off for us, as we were the only guests, cooked us dinner and breakfast the next morning and we had a nice evening watching elephants parade in to the camp watering hole. I went to bed that night to the sound of trumpeting elephants splashing in the mud and despite the slight pause in our plans had a good feeling and was happy to be back in Zimbabwe among friends.
The next morning, after spending some quality time with Parks staff at headquarters, we were off to camp with freshly stamped permits. The drive to camp from the park headquarters is around 35 kms, most of which follows the railway line that forms the boundary between the park and the hunting area. Along the way, you pass the farms Malindi, Kennedy/Antoinette and Marara, which have been taken but which are still being hunted by the successor "owners".
The area itself is flat sandveld with prevailing tree cover of teak, interspersed with among others, rain tree, ilala palm, leadwood, mukwa and terminalia. There was good grass in much of the hunting area compared to what we could see in the park, which appeared pretty well depleted from grazing. At one time, Ngamo kept eight boreholes pumping, but there were four in operation while we were there. According to the Ngamo tracker, Boniface, who was assigned to hunt with us, the area was once a paradise, particularly for sable, when they were able to sustain a quota of 25 due to the availability of water. Parts of the area had been burned earlier in the season which made tracking a fast proposition across the bare sand. The burned areas were also greening up nicely attracting and holding game. There is a good road network that carves the area into large blocks.
We spent the first couple of days getting acquainted with the area and checking out the pans for activity. My friend shot a 41" sable on the second afternoon and followed up on successive days with buffalo, kudu, impala and eland. As the days progressed, it became clear that we were seeing more elephants in the Ngamo, or southern part of the hunting area. This development suited me fine as it felt more "comfortable" to me and we weren't bothered by having to skirt the boundaries of the farms on the Sikumi end. The hunting was excellent, with good tracking for the buffalo which resulted in a nice bull for my buddy.
We awoke each morning at 4:30 and were out of camp, still in the dark, by 5:30. On the seventh day, we were driving along the boundary road at dawn when an insistent tap came through the cruiser's roof. Brent and I piled out and climbed on top to glass a nice bull moving along a tree line about three hundred yards away. He was moving slowly to our right, paralleling the boundary road with another bull that had a broken tusk.. After a quick assessment, we decided to see if we could get onto the bull. We grabbed rifles and extra ammo and water and started off. It didn't take long for the bull to sense that we were after him. The wind was in our favor. But he was canny enough to know something was up and he increased his gait and started to put distance between us. We started to jog, hoping to close the gap. For a while we seemed to be pacing the bull and as we ran along, the sun rose as a giant orange ball over the bush. The new light illuminated the elephant and I'll never forget seeing his outline with ivory jutting out as he crossed in front of the rising sun.
We ran on for a kilometer or so until the bull and his buddy turned into the heavier bush, going deeper into the hunting area where they started to run. At that point, we knew we had lost him and that it was time to let him settle. At least he had stayed on our side of the boundary. Despite the outcome, I was content to have once again chased a big bull with a rifle in my hands. Few people can say the same. After driving the miles of perimeter roads in the immediate area, Brent and the trackers were convinced that the bull and his partner were still inside. We spent the remainder of that day, until dark, looking for him. It was a wonderful day, as we walked for several miles among herds and small groups resting in the shade. We looked at over 100 elephants that day, including a few lone bulls, but our guy wasn't among them.
The next morning, the trackers told us that they wanted to try Sikumi. Brent asked me what I thought and we agreed to overrule them and head back to the Ngamo end because we were seeing more elephants there. Around 6:30, Brent and the trackers began intently studying a track that proceeded down the road in front of us. We got out and taped it - 24". We were on one of the interior roads, some distance from the boundary. We continued to follow until the track veered off to our left into the bush. Brent stopped and William, his tracker, left a marker in the road. We drove on to an intersection and continued left, to see if we could isolate the bull. After a mile or so, the track crossed the road. We reconfirmed by measuring it, but there wasn't much discussion. We loaded up and started tracking at 7:20.
At first, the tracking was easy, as the elephant had passed through one of the burned areas and the sand was bare of grass. He was travelling with another bull, which also helped. As the morning progressed we had a few slowdowns in sections of thick matted grass, but Brent and the trackers stayed with it and never gave up. Along the way, the two bulls joined with a third and we had to skirt a group of cows.
At about 9:30, William came to a stop and pointed ahead through the bush to the outlines of elephants under a shade tree. William immediately began checking the wind, which was beginning to swirl with the rising heat of the day. The three bulls shifted several yards from one shade tree to another. Leaving the rest of the group behind, Brent and William and I circled to keep the wind in our favor and crept to within 40 yards of the elephants. The big bull seemed to be dozing. He was facing us. Most of his face was obscured by bush, but I could see the sun reflecting off his round head. The other two bulls were restless and moved about slowly. Through my binoculars I could see the bull's left tusk. It was stained black and looked decently heavy to me, with good length. After a few moments the right tusk came into view and it was a match for the left. After a brief whispered discussion, I told Brent I wanted to take the bull. We had hunted him the real way and whatever extra weight he carried in ivory was a bonus for me at that point. I looked at William and he agreed with a thumbs up and a big smile.
William continued to check the wind. At one point, the lazy drift of ash turned toward the elephants. Brent quietly slipped his shoes off and nodded to me. The bull had turned broadside. We slowly slid up several yards to close to within 26 paces. We had to wait a moment for one bull to clear from behind the big one. "Can you see the ear slit?" I nodded and bore down onto my sights. At the shot, the big bull collapsed straight down onto his belly and remained there.
After a couple of insurance shots, we approached the downed bull. If anything, he was better than we'd thought. Beautiful stained matching tusks. His temples were sunken and his skin was baggy and wrinkled along his back and hips. His tail hairs were long gone. A true old man and a wonderful trophy. Humbling indeed to reflect that he may have walked this earth longer than I have.
After lots of photos and an all day recovery, we were back in camp for some celebrating and preparing to go hard again the next day. In addition to the elephant bull, I was fortunate enough to take a tuskless cow, a buffalo cow and some plains game, including a long sought after reedbuck, which leaves me lacking an oribi and honey badger for my slam of big game species in Zimbabwe while hunting with Brent Hein. We also shot a big hyena at 2:00AM one morning from a blind we built behind camp, along the old airstrip.
A few days later we spotted the bull we had chased. He was on the park side with his partner, feeding along in the twilight not far from where we had seen him the first time.
Some Observations:
It seems that elephant hunting at Ngamo has benefitted for many years from the fact that the Forestry Commission has pumped water into its area when the pumps across the boundary in Hwange were not operating at peak levels. This advantage may be slipping away. The park is pumping water and we noticed several new windmills situated along the boundary, which have the potential to hold game on the park side. At the same time, we talked to the camp manager, Jackson, about Ngamo's plans to add new pans or to rehab old wells. After lots of discussion around the fire, I'm still not convinced that there is a plan. One plus for the hunting area is the availability of grazing and browse, which seemed more depleted in the park, at least from one day's observation while driving around from Main Camp.
If you decide to hunt with Ngamo, be forewarned that the camp will probably be double booked. The hunting season in the area is effectively compressed with everyone wanting to come from August to November to catch the dry hot weather for elephant. At that point, there literally are not enough days left in the year to accommodate the hunting days booked. When we arrived, we learned that we would have had to share the area with another operator and his client for nine of our fifteen days, except that they connected on elephant early and decided to leave. We had the area to ourselves, but I believe that is the exception.
For some reason, Ngamo assigns hunting parties both a tracker and a game scout. Our assigned tracker on this hunt was Boniface. He is 60 years old and has hunted at Ngamo Sikumi for 27 years. He was a wealth of information on the area and was a hard worker and a pleasure to have around. I don't know who made who laugh more - us or him.
The camp was comfortable and the food was plentiful and good. Phineas, the cook has been with Ngamo for 18 years. It seemed that most of the camp staff had been there for many years.
Ngamo is a bureaucracy and doesn't move very fast. Not the greatest at client relations or positive communications. They couldn't even remember when we were arriving. If you are a stickler for details and punctuality, save yourself the aggravation and book elsewhere.
They have some funny rules, especially for a safari operator. Here's the craziest one: Hunting vehicles are limited to an allocation of no more than 20 liters of fuel per day!! Most days we were driving more than 200 kms on sand roads. Jackson was powerless to circumvent the rule, even when confronted with logic and with the dollars we were spending to hunt there! If you go, be prepared for that one.
There are lots of elephants at Ngamo Sikumi. We shot the 115th bull we looked at. We stopped counting after that, but I'm confident we saw well over 200 bulls. Not many tuskless cows compared to the valley, but they are there, if you have some time to look.
Conclusion:
I had a blast. I wish I could go back and do it all again tomorrow. I absolutely enjoyed my time at Ngamo Sikumi and would return in a heartbeat. The hunting is hard and honest and I never get tired of being around elephants. I am indebted to my friend Brent Hein and to his team of Friday and William for all of the hard miles we've covered over the past eleven years. We have had some bleak moments and we have shared some wonderful times that when mashed together over the years serve to remind me that I’ve really lived. I'm looking forward to the next one.
