Trip report – Dande North Safari Area and adjoining communal lands, Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe

Outfitter: Charlton McCallum Safaris

PH Keith Wall.

Trackers: Gari and Matsika

Dates: July 2 -13 2022

Species hunted (planned): Cape buffalo and plains game as opportunities occurred. I hoped for bushbuck, eland, zebra, hyena.
Species hunted (unplanned): Tuskless elephant. After taking a cape buffalo on the 2nd day of hunting, and giving it some thought, on the 4th day we started hunting for tuskless.
Game species seen but not hunted: : kudu, impala, warthog, baboon
Rifle: At the last minute, Keith was able to arrange the loan of a Sako rifle in 416 Rem Mag.
Travel arrangements: I booked a Qatar Airways economy class ticket, from Stillwater, Oklahoma to DFW (American Airlines) then Doha-Harare with a stay-on-the-plane stop in Lusaka. I chartered a plane into camp, but rode back to Harare with Keith.
As detailed elsewhere Problem transporting rifles on AA connecting to Qatar Airways despite booking the travel with Travel With Guns, filling out a lot of paperwork, and showing up at the Stillwater airport well before any American Airlines personnel were there, American refused to load the rifles, claiming that I needed permission from the Qatar Ministry of the Interior. This was extremely frustrating, but there wasn’t much I could do at that point, so I went and used a borrowed rifle and resolved not to be unhappy about it.


Accommodations: Pedza Pasi Camp with thatched cottages.

Hunting situation: The Dande North Safari Area and adjoining communal lands, were mostly covered with pretty thick jess. Not as thick as it would’ve been during the rainy season, but still pretty thick. Particularly tracking elephants, it could be a struggle to get through it.

Buffalo – After finding fresh tracks, the buffalo were tracked until we found them or they were spooked. (“We” are the trackers, Gary and Matsika, and the PH, Keith – I concentrated on following them!) The first day, we started at a spring some miles from camp, and followed a small herd, which split in two when part of the herd spooked. I got several views through binoculars, including one bull that was not fully hard-bossed. When that bull lay down, we backed out quietly, leaving open the possibility that we might come back later. But one of the local villagers left a message that there were several dugga boys near the village. We tracked them in the afternoon, but never caught up with them.

The 2nd day we started driving roads near camp and then started tracking a larger herd, which I caught sight of through the binoculars, but they spooked several times, so we went on. Further from camp, we found tracks of a single bull, which we followed for some time, finding fresh dung all along the way. After lying down, he caught our wind and bolted.

Mid-afternoon of the 2nd day, we went back to the area near camp where the larger herd had been in the morning, and we started tracking them. After a kilometer and a half, Gari and Keith spotted a lone dugga boy off to our left, perhaps 80 m, across a ravine. When I saw him, only his head was sticking out of the brush. I got on the sticks, waiting for him to take a step forward. This seemed to take a long time as I was swarmed by mopane bees and my neck started to cramp. He finally took a step forward, but in my opinion, there were too many tree branches in the way to risk taking a shot. So, I held my fire, and he took a few steps into the ravine, and disappeared from sight. We waited. A few minutes later, he came out on our side of the ravine, walking more or less toward us. When he was about 35 meters away, he turned part way so that he was quartering towards us, I shot. He dropped at the shot, flipped over on his back, hooves churning. We moved closer and when he righted himself and looked like he might get up and was facing away from us, I shot him again – a “Texas heart shot”, at which he rolled over on his side.



Shooting the buffalo turned out to be relatively simple, compared to recovering it. We had a plan to cut a road in, only the ravine that I mentioned precluded getting all the way in. So, now very late afternoon, we started cutting up the buffalo in place, and as it got later and later, it seemed increasingly improbable that we were going to carry it out that night. So, the meat was put in the trees and recovered the next morning.



Bushbuck – We hunted bushbuck several evenings, walking along a mostly dry riverbed. We saw bushbuck, but only females and one immature male. Several of them ran with the baboons, which entertained us, or at least me. The very nice bushbuck below came into the camp pan some evenings.





Tuskless elephant – I did not leave for Zimbabwe with plans to hunt elephant, but after shooting the buff, recovering the meat, and looking for plains game, I decided to go ahead and hunt for tuskless elephants. I reasoned that while my chances might not be that great, it would certainly be interesting to get close to some elephants. And that is exactly how it worked out. We tracked elephants on five mornings, closing twice with groups of elephants that all had tusks, and getting particularly close, less than 20 m, one time. No photos though – I was much too busy trying to stay undetected at close range!

Zebra – We saw zebra on several occasions, and on the very last morning, spotted some from the road and were able to execute a successful stalk on a stallion.



Hyena – For inexplicable reasons, I was interested in hunting hyenas and we baited them, but a couple days later, they had not found the bait. When, on the next to last day, we pulled the bait down, there were male and female leopard tracks at the bait and a significant portion had been consumed.


Other plains game – We saw some impala, with one very nice impala ram; kudu, grysbok, duiker, and warthogs, mainly running across the road. But check out these kudu horns from a lion-kill.





Visit to Matombo Camp:
After five days of elephant hunting, we decided that on the last day, we would drive to Matombo Camp on the Zambezi, hunting on the way. While there, we took a short boat tour of the Zambezi, seeing crocs, hippos, and elephants.







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Miscellaneous:
There are a lot of baobab trees and I tried eating the fruit, which has a slightly sweet, citrusy taste.





The camp has satellite internet, and during the day, I could also get a cell phone signal. After earlier telling my wife that we had hyenas right in camp, I had sent her a picture of the biltong drying. She asked me “Don’t the hyenas grab the biltong?” I assumed not, or surely the staff wouldn’t hang it that low. Ummmm… that night, the hyenas got about half of it!



There is an amazing amount of petrified wood in the valley; on one of the elephant-tracking mornings, I must have seen a 1000 pieces, some quite a bit larger than this piece.



Conclusion – I had talked to Keith at the DSC convention in January, where he explained quite clearly that plains game opportunities were limited and one had to take advantage of what plains game you saw. So I had low expectations for plains game, but didn’t expect to kill a buff on the second day. The tuskless hunting turned out to be quite interesting, and very exciting at times; also exhausting at times! I’m glad I went and hope I have the opportunity to go back, though I think I might try Nyakasanga next time. I'd be glad to have Keith as a PH again.

Thanks for the report. Better luck on tuskless the next time.

Will

Tuskless hunting is a kick in the pants, did it for the first time in 2020. Being that close to such a large animal really makes the rifle seem small. Thank you for the report, sounds like a solid hunt.
John

Well done on some tuff hunting in the Jess.
Matombo camp looks spectacular now!
When I hunted out of it it was pretty sparse, a couple of tents and not much else!
Good to see Buzz and Myles making it so nice and functional with pool and internet.
One of my favourite camps!

Glad to hear your hunt turned out well after starting of poorly. Well done.

Congrats on your success in Dande North!

Congrats and thanks for posting! Matombo Camp is one of my favorites.

Nice report! Some nice animals. Congratulations!

Congratulations to you.

I'll be there in 4 weeks hunting out of Mururu camp and then hopefully heading to Matombo for a few days fishing.

"Hannay" Thanks so much for coming out with us and well done on a great old dugga boy. It was a pleasure seeing you, all be it very short, in the valley! Thanks again Buzz

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Great report and pictures! Congrats on the solid buff! No tiger fishing ?

Thanks for posting!

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Thanks Charlie and all - no tiger fishing - I stuck with the tuskless hunting until the next to last day, and so we weren't on the river very long.

Before he was a PH, Keith was a fly fishing guide for tiger fish on the Zambezi in Zambia. So we talked about 9 wt fly rods with fast-sinking shooting heads, flies, etc.