Hi Al - below is some of our early hunts for your enjoyment!

Dear friends,

2014 is now in full swing now! The rains were exceptional and late meaning that we have had to deal with very thick bush and long grass. Normally we burn at this time of year but with the late rains that is even proving hard!! As a result the dangerous game hunting where we rely on the brilliant trackers and the cats where we have baits have been very good but the plains game tough. We are just starting to see and shoot some good plains game now though.

The buff hunting has mainly been in herds as the Dugga boys early season are chasing the cows. The herds have varied from 200 strong to 30 odd with average herd sizes been about 60. We have shot some great old buff so far and have started to see that the old bulls are now leaving the herds!







The ele hunting has been successful but hard! There have been huge herds of cows in especially in the East which has complicated the bull hunting as with the grass and the fact that the bulls are in and out of the herds the whole time tracking has been hard. Credit to the trackers they have stuck to their task and we have shot several good bulls.







One of the advantages of long grass and thick cover is that the cats have been travelling the roads a lot making it easier to identify and bait for good males. We have done 3 leopard hunts and 2 lion hunts all of which have not only been successful with excellent trophies but have come easily which as many of you now is a blessing as with the leopards we have averaged less then 2 blind sessions per cat and the two lions (one of which was shot yesterday) were both shot on the second sitting also!












Dande Anti Poaching Unit – DAPU
The highlight of the year for me, apart from all the happy clients, is seeing DAPU develop into a well run and effective anti-poaching team. With the generous donations to date we were able to employ Siraaj Gardner to run DAPU. A born and bred Zimbabwean, loves the bush and is passionate in all he does, making him the right man to take on this huge task. He has successfully trained 24 scouts and has them on rotation basis patrolling all the areas. He also has a “hit squad” on standby. If any hunters see poachers tracks we call Siraaj with a GPS co-ordinates and he is there immediately to track the poachers. We have found that this has been a very successful way of catching poachers, as before we had to drive 3 hours to get a National Parks Stick - which invariably meant that they only started on the poachers tracks the following day which was too late.



What I like about Siraaj is that he leads from the front. One finds him going out on patrol with his scouts – excellent for moral! Through the donations the DAPU teams are now relatively well equipped and we have managed to rebuild a landcruiser that is dedicated to DAPU alone!



This year DAPU has removed 150 snares in the Dande North area and 50 in the Dande East area. They have arrested 13 poachers for varying offences; snaring, fish poaching and poisoning. DAPU killed 3 dogs and apart from the snares have confiscated lots of axes and spares - a fantastic job all round!! Only one poached elephant has been discovered so our efforts are clearly working. On the negative side we have found that despite the hard work in arresting poachers, which is time consuming and expensive, we then need to take them to the police, then court to find that they get very lenient or punitive sentences. CMS will be participating in an exercise to train the judges and police later this year! CMS is also helping Tashinga Initiative and John Stevens Safaris to get a helicopter up in the Dande area to drop off the DAPU and National Parks Scouts into the more remote and inaccessible areas of the concession. All DAPUs successes and future exercises are possible through your very generous donations for which CMS extends our heartfelt thanks. If you would like any further information on our continued efforts, please visit the DAPU section of our website: http://www.cmsafaris.com/afric...esearch/updates.html


All the best, do keep in touch
Buzz, Myles and the CMS team



SET YOUR SIGHTS ON CMS!!!!!

Congratulations on a great start to the season, love the cats.....

Buzz Myles and team, well done on the first half of the season! Looking forward to
August!!

Cheers Guys

Nick

Great trophies and great news on the success of the anti poaching unit

Buzz incredible season!
I hope someday to do a safari like this.

Great stuff Buzz. As usual, CMS is doing an incredible job...

Well done gents. Good to see that DAPU is producing results and working well.

Looking good....can't wait until August!

Best regards, D. Nelson

Great start to the season Buzz and the rest of the CMS gang!

Nicely done!

Chris

well done Buzz, my congratulations on the anti-poaching efforts and will pass the word on and will make the effort to obtain some additional funds.

Well done as usual Buzzer! Look forward to catching up next week. Leave a dugga boy for two for our crew!

Congrats Buzz, you guys do things right.
It's good to here good news from Zim on the elephant
Thanks for update

Good stuff Buzz, great to see DAPU working, many guys could learn a lot from you guys in the anti poaching department.

DAPU and The Tashinga Initiative

Awesome animals and DAPU is doing an EXCELLENT job...good for you folks Buzz

Some super stuff Buzz. Congrats to CMS for all the hard work. Save a big cat for me. See y'all in July.

Nice to see so much success. Congratulations!

Buzz, Myles and Rich - well done so far in season. Good to hear that old buff bulls are leaving the herds and PG are more visible now. Save an old ugly one and some PG for Sander and me. Keep up the good work with Dapu and looking very much to meet in late September

As always, great trophies and happy hunters! Great work CMS and DAPU Teamss!

Is Zdenek standing on a step stool, or maybe the trackers shrank?

Well done CMS - you guys are a fine example of what all operators should be doing with their concessions, throughout Africa. Hats off!!!!

Love the lion!
Thanks for sharing, all the best for the rest of the season

Thanks Guys for the comments! In the last week since doing this post we have taken 2 beautiful leopard in broad day light and 2 more ele bulls and a couple of buff so it is indeed going well.

DAPU has also just arrested another poacher for spearing a big male leopard. We hope that with the new hand books that we have distributed to National Parks the Police and Judges that cover all the sentences that we will get a good conviction on this one- will keep you up dated.

Any Zim operator that would be interested in these hand books to help them in their effort to get just sentences for poaching incidences please contact me and will make a plan to get them to you.

Great catalogue of trophies there. Well done and good luck on the rest of your season.

Sent you an email about hunt info. Hope to hear back very interested!