I just returned from a fantastic trip to Zimbabwe, with a stopover in Dubai. But it was far different than a typical hunt where you fly to a destination; hunt for 10, 15 or 21 days and head back home.

This trip was about many things, mainly giving my seriously ill wife a wonderful experience while she’s still able to travel a little bit, taking a friend of 48 years on his last African hunt at 81 years old, representing the Mzuri Wildlife Foundation in meetings with several wildlife focused NGO’s whom Mzuri has been funding with grants and finally getting to do a bit of hunting myself. We were gone nearly four weeks.

As a bit of background, my wife caught the Covid virus in January of 2022. Without going into a long explanation, Covid activated a dormant auto-immune disorder that has been attacking many of her internal organs, especially her liver, ever since early 2022. It has been pretty devastating as she’s extremely fatigued, weak and sick more days than not. She’s in end stage liver disease, unable to work and has a short remaining life expectancy, but has faced her circumstance with grace and a determination to live life as well as she can while she still has life to live. It is what it is and we take things one day at a time. We’re realistic about it and she has a great attitude. She wanted to see Africa one last time. OK, enough about that.

I’d been trying to get my 81 year old friend, Jim, to hunt Africa for about 30 years without success, but a few years ago he called me unexpectedly and said he wanted to go with my son and I to the Selous, so he enjoyed his first African hunt at 79 years old, shooting a nice buffalo and hippo with Alan Vincent’s operation in the Selous. I figured he was a ‘one & done’ African Hunter due to his age, but he called me about 6 or 7 months ago and asked me to set up another hunt with Alan. Due to the very short lead time, Alan found it challenging to put together a quality plan but in the end he was able to find quota for 1 trophy buffalo for my friend, as well as a non-trophy, non-export bull for me. We’d be hunting on Hammond, in the Savé Valley Conservancy. Jim and his 80 year old girlfriend would be vacationing in Portugal before meeting us in Zimbabwe, so I handled all logistical details including bringing my 375 for him to shoot, while I’d be using my 416.

My wife and I flew Emirates from San Francisco to Dubai, where we had a couple days layover and she was about to enjoy some great experiences. Our flight was very comfortable in Biz Class and that enabled her to rest well on the long 15 1/2 hour flight. I had a special treat in store for the next morning, breakfast at Atmosphere Restaurant on the 122nd floor of Burj Khalifa, so we checked into the St. Regis which is near Dubai Mall & Burj Khalifa. The next morning came quickly and we were off to visit The World’d Tallest Building. I found the express elevator ride interesting as it only takes about 45 seconds to go up 122 stories, it’s very smooth and fast! When you step out on the 122nd floor, it’s quite the sight to see, looking way down to the rooftops of skyscrapers far below us. Breakfast was quite nice, but the reason you go is to experience the view from high above Dubai. It’s worth doing!

Edit: I’m having trouble posting pictures.

Well done, Sir...truly well done.

They say that we live our entire lives "in the dash"...that dash between our date of birth and our date of death. How we live in that dash; what we do, how we behave, how we help others really becomes the measure of our lives.

Your attention to your wife's needs and your work to give her the experiences that she'd enjoy most is an absolute gift as most of us won't know when our string is about to run out and may not take the opportunity to live our lives to the fullest. We just returned from Humani in the Save ourselves, and, if my time was short, I can't think of a place I'd rather be.

Likewise, helping your friend enjoy Africa while he can...what a blessing. We had friends in tow this trip on their first African visit, so we got to see them "discover" what they'd only heard about before!

If there truly is a Hunter's Heaven, you're logging massive points to get you there. My hat is off to you and your efforts and my prayers go up for both your wife and your friend.

Mark

Wonderful story that doesn't need any pictures. Well done sir!

quote:

Originally posted by huntfish1963:
Wonderful story that doesn't need any pictures. Well done sir!

Yes it does!

And I have seen him in some rather funny ones too!

Great write up! Thank you for sharing!

Prayers for your wife.

quote:

Originally posted by fairgame:
Prayers for your wife.

Yes.

She is a very brave woman and not letting anything stop her from doing what she likes!

We all wish her the best.

Very well done!

Your graciousness and selfless approach are getting difficult to find in today's world. Thank you for sharing your experience!

Praying for you and your wife.

DLS, you are a wonderful person to your wife and your friends. The world is better place for persons like you.

Dan, your moving report and your wife’s amazingly strong spirit in the face of adversity are an inspiration.

Please know that our thoughts and best wishes are with you and your family.

OK, now that I’m a picture posting expert (all credit and thanks is due to Hannay and his instructional thread) I’ll add some photos to lend ‘color’ to my report.

The view from At.moshere is way up there…


And a fun moment afterward



Once we finished our visit to Burj Khalifa and Dubai Mall, we checked out of the St. Regis and moved to the Hilton Palm Jumeirah. My wife wanted to stay out on the palm and it was very nice, right on the water with a great view of the city.



Saeed had a plan for the next day which really made our stay in Dubai a wonderful time.

We were picked up at 4:00 AM and on our way to enjoy breakfast in the desert. What made it more special was that the entire Vincent family was waiting for us. Roy, Rene, Alan and his wife Simone along with two of their three children, Diana and her daughter. As a bit of background I’ve known Roy & Rene almost as long as Saeed has known them. I first hunted with Roy in 1983, Rene ran the camp and Alan was a barefooted 10-year old running around camp with his little sister. We’ve developed a friendship that has spanned over 40 years so it was great to be able to share time with them again.

My wife wanted to ride a camel, so of course Saeed and Maktoum made that happen. She wasn’t so sure when the herd of camels approached, but Maktoum took her up to the herder and they got her up on his camel and she went for a short ride.



Between the younger ones tearing around on a tricked out side by side UTV, good food and better conversation with friends it was a wonderful morning. We returned back to our hotel in time for Jeannie to get a good long nap to rest up for the evenings plans.

It was a very memorable morning with old friends.

Roy and Dan opted out of riding our Magic Carpet!

5 year old girls were braver than those two!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Roy and Dan opted out of riding our Magic Carpet!

5 year old girls were braver than those two!

With age, comes wisdom!

Thanks for helping out with photos. That was a truly enjoyable morning.

After a great morning in the desert, we headed back to our hotel so my wife could rest before we were taken to Saeed’s home for dinner. This was one of the highlights of the entire trip as Jeannie wanted to see a cheetah up close. She was able to pet one of the cheetahs and I’m not sure if she or the cheetah enjoyed it more!



After that we took a ride around to see some of the other animals before the other guests arrived and we all enjoyed good conversation and dinner by the pool. It ended up being a perfect ending to our time in Dubai, as the next morning we headed to Victoria Falls, via JNB.

For those who haven’t been to Dubai, it’s a really interesting place and each time I pass through I wish I’d stayed longer. I highly recommend it. The best part, of course, is getting to visit with friends.

.

How wonderful that you got to spend a great time in Dubai and do all the things she wanted to do! Special. Great fun pictures and I look forward to more pictures and posts on Vic Falls and then the hunting! Thank you both for sharing with us!

.

After wrapping up a wonderful visit with special friends in Dubai, we headed to Vic Falls via Johannesburg. Shawn Kennedy of Gracy Travel added one important thing to our travel itinerary that I hadn’t thought of…. Airport wheelchair service for my wife. She’s proud and didn’t want to be pushed through the airports, but she quickly realized it’s the only way she can transit large airports any longer. It was a big difference maker for us. Thank you, Shawn!

Our Emirates flight to JNB was comfortable and uneventful. Shawn had arranged meet & greet, and Bruce made the firearms and Airlink aspects a total non-event. We overnighted at City Lodge, then up to Vic Falls the next day.

This part of our trip was ‘business’, as I’m a director of the Mzuri Wildlife Foundation and I had meetings scheduled over the next five days with a couple NGO’s whom we’ve been funding with grants. I was there to see first hand how our grants were being used and learned a lot about the work they’re doing. My wife loves old, classic hotels so our ‘camp’ for the next five nights was the Victoria Falls Hotel. It was a stellar experience for her while resting when I was gone for meetings. We took her along for part of most days and she got to enjoy seeing wildlife and meeting some great people along the way. She was also able to get a lot of rest in a pretty special setting.

The Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust (VFWT) does a lot of important wildlife work including mitigating human-wildlife conflicts in the Vic Falls area, anti-poaching support, wildlife veterinary work and a new forensics lab where they are developing a database of animal DNA (especially ivory and rhino horn DNA) to support law enforcement in poaching & smuggling prosecutions. They recently supported law enforcement investigators in a large ivory seizure at Maputo when an ocean freight container full of poached ivory and bound for the orient was seized. They flew to Maputo to analyze the ivory to provide origins of the various tusks. It was determined that much of the ivory had originated from the KAZA region that encompasses western Zimbabwe, northern Botswana, Angola, the Caprivi region of Namibia and some of Zambia. There was also forest elephant ivory but their database isn’t extensive enough yet ro determine which country from which it may have originated.

Roger Parry, the head of Vic Falls Wildlife Trust, has had a long career in wildlife work, originally with Rhodesia Parks & Wildlife, then Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife and now VFWT. Roger, despite his extensive experience, had a close call with a lion a couple weeks before we arrived and he’s fortunate to have survived the encounter. They have collared lions in several prides that live in Zambezi National Park, which is just west of Vic Falls. When the radio collars indicate they’re near some of the villages, they notify the people to be ‘Heads Up’ for their livestock and they also haze the lions to keep them away. One night, two of the collars indicated the lions hadn’t moved in a long time so Roger went to investigate. Both lions had been caught in snares that poachers had set for buffalo. The lioness was already dead and her paws had been cut off as well as other parts, but they found the male lion alive. Roger quickly made a plan to release the lion fron the snare, which was around its neck and through its mouth, but in the semi-darkness they thought it was entirely around its neck. He didn’t have time to go get his darting equipment as they feared the lion would suffocate before he got back, so he had someone drive him up to the lion while he sat on the passenger side of the Landcruiser with a large set of bolt cutters. He was going to cut the cable from the lions neck so it could breath properly, then later would dart it and remove what remained of the snare. The plan sounded better than it proved to be… As I mentioned, the lion actually had the snare running through its mouth and around its head, not entirely around its neck, but they didn’t realize that. As the truck pulled up next to the lion, it suddenly spun and slapped Roger in the head with a paw, pinning his head against the cab. It was trying to grab his head with both paws but the truck cab protected his head from the 2nd paw or it’s likely the lion would have killed him by crushing his skull in its jaws. The driver quickly pulled away, rescuing Roger from the lion’s grasp. While he was being treated for gashes to his head, arm and leg (they’d removed the door so he could more easily cut the lion free, so it worked him over pretty good in just a few seconds) someone ran back to his facility, got the darting equipment, he darted the lion and removed the snare. He suffered a bad concussion and multiple lacerations but was recovering nicely when I met with them.

Roger Parry and his wife, Jessica Dawson. They are the heart & soul of Vic Falls Trust


I also met with the Bhejane Trust, which is led by Trevor Lane. Trevor was a long time member of Rhodesia, then Zimbabwe’s Forestry Department, working most of his time at Ngamo-Sikumi Forest. Any of our members who hunted Ngamo-Sikumi years ago may have met him. Anyway, Bhejane Trust has two primary focuses. One is monitoring the Rhino population in Hwange National Park and helping with anti-poaching activities there. The other main focus is on developing more water sources in drier areas of Hwange Park to help spread out the elephants and reduce their impacts around long established waterholes. Mzuri has been funding them with grants for a few years and it was nice to visit a remote waterhole, Manzinbomvu Pan, fed by a borehole funded by Mzuri and see a sign they’d erected that documented Mzuri’s funding to develop the borehole. It was a very long day spent mostly on rough roads so my wife stayed behind to rest and that proved to be a good decision. There was no way she’d have been able to endure the travel that day. Like VFWT, Bhejane Trust is doing good work for wildlife in western Zimbabwe. I’ll be supporting continued funding from Mzuri to both organizations.



It was also a bit of a sad experience for me, as my very first visit to Africa was in 1983, when I hunted with Roy Vincent, who then PH’ed for Peter Johnstone’s Rosslyn Safaris. We drove right past Peter’s old base at Tshowe (sp?) on Matetsi #3. It was nothing like I’d remembered it, now heavily overgrown with bush and very little wildlife seen while traveling through the Matetsi District, other than a few herds of impala. I learned that the sable are really in decline across Matetsi due to changes in the habitat caused by elephants and increased predator populations, especially lions. We didn’t see a single sable during my entire time in Zimbabwe.

Our time in the Vic Falls area was drawing to a close as I’d spent five days meeting with people, seeing how Mzuri Wildlife Foundation’s funding is being used as well as meeting another group who aspire to obtain funding for an ambitious project they’re starting to rehabilitate a depleted area, Charara, in northwestern Zimbabwe. My friends whom we’d be sharing the rest of our trip with had arrived and we were off to spend a couple days meeting more old friends and looking at another possible alliance for Mzuri. The next day we drove to Cawston, Peter Johnstone’s ranch just west of Bulawayo.

Sounds like a wonderful and memorable safari Dan! Prayers for your wife my friend...

My wife’s idea of roughing it.





The falls were in full flood, the highest (and wettest) I’ve ever seen them.

We next spent 2 nights at Cawston, as I wanted to visit one last time with Peter Johnstone. Peter was the first African I ever met, way back in 1982 when he was in the USA. Our first hunt together was actually when I took him duck hunting in California, he did pretty good for a fellow not used to shooting birds. Peter is now 91 and suffering from dementia. It was good to see him again, but also sad as he’s near the end of an incredible life.


Me, Peter & Vernon Booth. Vernon was the Matetsi District Biologist for many years

It was interesting that since I was in Zimbabwe on behalf of the Mzuri Wildlife Foundation, that the first thing I saw upon entering the dining room at Cawston was a plaque awarded to Peter by Mzuri back in 1986 for his contributions to our foundation

My time at Cawston, other than visiting with Peter, was mainly spent with Vernon Booth discussing a children’s conservation camp project he and Juliet Johnstone (Peter’s Daughter) are trying to get established and seeking a Mzuri grant to help them. While I was doing that, Jeannie and my friends went horseback riding for a bit. I was sure she’d fall off the horse and suffer serious injuries as she has no balance and falls a lot, but she managed to stay in the saddle and enjoy a nice game ride through the bush. It was an effort getting her up on the horse but with some help we got her saddled up. Thankfully, the horses were very gentle and steady.


She also got to enjoy a memorable experience that evening with some elephants that Cawston has resident on the ranch

Up to this point, we’d enjoyed a fantastic trip. We enjoyed a wonderful time with dear friends in Dubai, I got to achieve important oversight for Mzuri, my wife got to enjoy some very special experiences that neither of us believed she’d be well enough to endure, I got to visit Peter one last time and now we were finally heading to Hammond for the last part of our trip. My friend Jim and I were going buffalo hunting at last.

Many of our members have hunted on the Savé Valley Conservancy, including Hammond; but it was my first time on the Savé even though I’d hunted a couple previous times in Zimbabwe. I thought the camp at Hammond was very nice, comfortable with a great resident staff and good meals. I’d happily hunt there again.

Jim wanted to hunt buffalo one last time, as well as shoot a few plains game animals such as kudu, eland, zebra. I was mainly there to make sure Jim enjoyed a great time, but I was also going to hunt for a Non-Trophy, Non-Export bull after we got Jim a buffalo.

Zimbabwe had a great and late rainy season, so the bush was very thick. On the one hand, this made for great ‘up close & personal’ hunting. But it also made it a bit difficult for Jim as he doesn’t walk as well as he used to.

The 2nd morning, we came on a large herd crossing the road between Hammond & ARDA so we walked Jim down the road a few hundred yards and after a bit of time he was set up on the sticks waiting for a big bull we’d noticed to walk into the road for an easy shot. Just as the bull was approaching the road, we could see a Landcruiser coming toward us but still a few hundred yards down the road. So much for shooting this buffalo as he spooked. The truck continued toward us and it turned out to be one of the anti-poaching team trucks. A game ranger had called in a suspicious rifle shot near where they knew a Black Rhino was located. Pretty soon, we also had an airplane flying overhead and they were all looking for the source of the ‘shot’. As it turned out, what the game ranger had heard was nothing more than an elephant breaking a mopane branch from a tree.

Our buffalo hunt for the morning was over and a nice bull had lived for another day. We were a bit disappointed but it was only the 2nd morning. As it turned out, not getting this bull turned out to be a very good thing.

Fantastic experience, thanks for sharing.
That is everything real hunting is about.
Thank you for all that you did and Best wishes and prayers for you wife.

Best regards

thank you for sharing the whole travel. and prayers to your wife and you.

Hammond has a good network of roads and waterholes, some of which are only seasonal but a good number of year-round pans that are fed by boreholes or springs. We would drive the roads, looking for tracks while we went from water point to water point. I think we saw more elephant sign than anything but also a lot of buffalo sign as well.

Late in the afternoon we found where a nice sized group had crossed the road, but the wind was wrong so instead of tracking we paralleled their direction of travel from downwind. We hoped to get ahead of the herd and let them come to us. We walked about a half-mile and then cut toward where we thought the buffalo would intersect with us. It was a bit of an effort for Jim as we were pushing at a brisk pace and he was having difficulty keeping up; but in the end he was where he needed to be when he needed to be there.

We could hear the buffalo approaching and we were set up on the edge of a clearing where they should come into any moment. Alan had Jim on the sticks and I was standing right behind them, hoping to get some good photos.



Less than a minute after Jim settled on the sticks buffalo appeared in front of us at about 60 yards. There was a nice bull leading the group and Alan was explaining to Jim which one to shoot. All of a sudden Alan whispered “wait” as a bigger bull was coming up quickly from the far side of the herd. That bull took the lead and was broadside, so Alan told Jim to shoot as soon as he was ready. Jim may walk slowly these days but he’s been a lifelong hardcore elk hunter, having taken about 25-30 big 6x6 bulls as well as quite a few smaller bulls through the years. When he has a rifle in hand and it’s ’go time’ he doesn’t take a back seat to very many people.

Jim quickly got on the bull and sent a 300 grain A-Frame into the bull just above the point of the elbow. The bull spun and started to run back in the direction he’d come from, but Jim hit him with another shot, this one a 300 grain TSX and the buff was down. From first shot to last the buffalo only made it about 30 yards.

We quickly approached the bull, ready to shoot again but he was graveyard dead, so no insurance shots were necessary. As I walked up to the bull I noticed something on the ground near the bull. It was a perfectly mushroomed TSX, laying a few yards beyond the bull. I picked up the bullet and told them “look at what I just found”. The more we examined the bull, the bigger he seemed. We knew he was good as soon as we saw him, good enough that nobody had to think about it, but now that we were looking closely we realized Jim had shot a really good bull. Lots of length, nice drop, wide, tips broomed some but still long, but those bosses! Big bosses!!!


Jim’s bull has it all. He was a shade over 42” wide with 16” bosses and great shape to boot.

.375 300 grain A-Frame. It performed perfectly

With Jim’s buffalo in the salt, it was now my turn. Like the rest of Savé, Hammond has a lot of buffalo bulls that’ll never be Trohpy caliber. They’re mature but only 32-35” wide and that’s as big as they’ll ever be. Graham, Hammond’s manager, suggested we should shoot a younger bull, but Alan reminded him that there are many older inferior bulls that are still in herds and breeding cows. For my pat, I wanted to shoot an old, broken and worn down bull. Something nobody would want as a trophy bull but as old as possible.

Our next morning we were walking down a road and got into a good sized group. We had buffalo in front, beside and behind us. Jim was enjoying watching all the buffalo, some of which were only 30-40 yards from us. A non-trophy bull wandered into sight and I was on the sticks. He was about 50 yards, broadside and a really easy shot in the open. But he was fairly young and not what I wanted so I mentally shot him in the shoulder, took my 416 off the sticks and told Alan “Let’s keep hunting”. Alan loves to hunt buffalo, as do I, so we let them walk away and then headed for the truck to go look for more buffalo. I was in no hurry as I wanted to enjoy buffalo hunting more than I did Buffalo shooting.

Over the next 2 1/2 days we were in among buffalo several times each day. The bush was still very green and thick, so it was pretty easy to get real close, 10-40 yards much of the time. Besides, we had to get that close to be able to see more than bits and pieces of animals. Jim would usually stay in the truck while we were following buffalo as it was more walking than he cared to do.

Our 3rd day for me (fifth overall) was especially enjoyable as we got to about 10 yards from several bulls, one of which was the kind of bull we wanted. I was trying to slowly & carefully get my gun up to shoot the bull offhand, but he caught my movement and they bolted. When multiple buffalo are that close and they go thundering of it’s pretty exhilarating, especially before you realize they’re not coming down on top of you. We did have a couple occasions where we all were scrambling for trees to get behind before we realized which way they were running. Good fun!

That 5th day was also good for Jim as we found a small group of zebras and Jim’s lady friend really wanted him to shoot one for the hide. We parked the truck and Jim dismounted while I got his rifle ready. Alan told me to stay with the truck as they were very spooky and the fewer people the better, so as soon as they took off I took a nap up on top of the truck. A while later I woke to the sound of a shot and only then did I realize they’d been gone over a half hour. I wasn’t sure which direction the shot had come from so instead of wandering off on a guess, I waited at the truck. Alan eventually showed up and explained it had turned into quite an extended stalk and Jim eventually got a longish shot of about 150 yards and had taken a very nice stallion. He also told me that they’d found another TSX laying on the ground just beyond the zebra. What are the odds of shooting 2 animals with TSX’s and finding the bullet from each laying on the ground near the animal?

The next morning dawned nice and cool and we were out early. It didn’t take long to find tracks, so we parked the truck in good shade so that Jim would be comfortable, then we took off on the tracks. It didn’t take long before we could hear buffalo grunting ahead of us. We snuck forward and after a bit there were buffalo moving through thick bush about 30-35 yards in front of us. Pretty soon we realized there were also buffalo on our left flank. A bit later we saw buffalo on our right. We’d literally snuck into a large herd that was scattered around. Every once in a while a few of them would catch our scent and run a short distance but they always settled down and we just kept engaging them for several hours. We were enjoying looking at quite a few different bulls and I was in no hurry to pull the trigger and end my fun. Finally it got to be that time of morning when the breeze gets erratic, so we snuck out and headed back to camp for lunch and a nap. We intended to get back on this same group in the afternoon.

We enjoyed another nice lunch, watching impala feeding around the dining area, then headed off for a nap before going back out in the afternoon. The buffalo hadn’t moved from where we left them in the morning, so we quickly got back on them. After a bit they started traveling toward water so we stayed tight to the herd and kept looking for a suitable bull.

At one point Alan was about to duck under a branch but suddenly stepped back and reached into his pocket for his phone. I whispered to ask him “What the hell are you doing?” And he whispered back “Look at that Vine Snake!” As he was about to go under that branch he noticed that the branch was a bit different color and realized his face was about 2 feet from a highly venomous Vine Snake. Thankfully, vine snakes are pretty docile, not very big and if they bite their fangs are at the back of their jaws. But, they’re also deadly.



Blends in pretty well, doesn’t it!?!?

Once we both finished taking pictures of the vine snake, we passed under the branches on THE OTHER SIDE of the bush and got back in contact with the buffalo. As we came into a small clearing we could see legs moving in the brush ahead of us and our attention was focused in that direction. Suddenly one of the trackers hissed that we needed to look to our right. Buffalo were coming out of thick bush from behind us and passing on our right. Alan quickly threw up the sticks and I settled my 416 and watched as buffalo kept coming out. Finally I saw the perfect buffalo to shoot. He was very old, broomed down and his bosses were broken. He was about 33” wide. He was what we’d been looking for. I watched as he disappeared behind a large bush about 30 yards from me and when he cleared the bush he stopped and looked directly at me.

I’m a big believer in Leupold’s Firedot reticle as it makes aiming precise and effortless. As soon as the Firedot settled on the point of the buffalo’s shoulder I fired and the 400 grain Bearclaw smashed through the end of the humerus and continued into the offside shoulder. If you were looking at The Perfect Shot, I hit at the forward point of Kevin Robertson’s ‘Vital Triangle’. The buffalo stumbled but was quickly gone from sight before I could work the bolt and fire again.

Alan and I agreed that the shot looked good but there was very little blood (no bullet exit) so we proceeded cautiously as visibility was very limited. We never heard a bellow or any other sound from the bull, but found him down and dead about 50 yards from where I’d shot him.



To my mind, this was a perfect bull to take as a NON-trophy bull. He was very old, broomed, broken, narrow…

The Bearclaw had done massive damage. The bull’s left leg flopped loosely and when we opened the bull up several gallons of blood flowed out as the aorta had been hit. But, if you were to look at the bullet you might think it was a failure as it probably weights less than 300 grains now. But remember it came from a very dead buffalo!



The TSX was a 400 grain insurance shot into an already dead buffalo. Not much left of the Bearclaw ahead of the solid shank but it did destroy one of the biggest bones in a buffalo so I was very pleased with its performance. IIRC, the last seven buffalo I’ve shot have all been with 416, 400 grain Bearclaws.

Once I was done hunting Jim decided that he’d like to hunt for an elephant if Alan could quickly secure a permit somewhere. Alan got on the phone and after a bit had found a bull permit available on one of the communal areas that borders Gonarezhou. We had to make a quick trip to Chiredzi as Alan had to send his PH license to Harare to get the permit, so my wife went with us. Alan was inside an office with us all sitting outside on the truck. My wife was having fun chatting with the guys, and at some point she asked them what kind of animal she would be if she was an African animal. The guys looked at me as we all knew it was a dangerous question. The smart answer would have been something like Shumba (lion) or Ingwe (leopard) or especially Twila (giraffe) but hell we are all guys so after discussing it we told her she was an Nyati. She asked what an Nyati was but nobody was falling on that sword. Nobody would tell her what an Nyati was but she thought it sounded cool.

Alan finally came out and we headed back toward Hammond. Jeannie was riding in the cab with Alan while the game scout, trackers and I were all up top. About halfway back my wife suddenly turns around and through the window loudly proclaims I AM NOT A BUFFALO We had a good laugh, at least until we got back and she was still muttering about us calling her a buffalo. We thought it was a lot funnier than she did. It was a good time for us guys to head toward Gonarezhou for a few days of elephant hunting.

The next morning we woke up to RAIN! Jim was ready to go but we still had an hour till it’d start getting light and I had no desire to ride up on top for a couple hours in the rain. And I was sure the trackers felt the same. So, we waited. After it got light the rain had mostly tapered off so I agreed to ‘take one for the team’ and we loaded up for the 90 minute ride to Gonarezhou where we had to pick up a game ranger. We didn’t get very far out of the conservancy gate and the rain had nearly stopped. By the time we got to Malilangwe, which is Paul Tudor Jones’ private holding on the north side of Gonarezhou, it was dusty. There’d been no rain at all down where we were going to be hunting.

We picked up the game scout and headed across the river in the direction of the communal area where we would be hunting. The river was wide and the crossing was all medium to large rocks that had been dumped to form something of a weir over which we could slowly drive. There were half a dozen crocodiles laying on a sand bar just upstream of us as we crawled slowly over the rocks in Alan’s Landcruiser. Suddenly, the drivers side front tire found a hole and the truck dropped down into that hole and stalled. We took a couple minutes to assess our situation before deciding how to proceed. The water was fairly deep on each side of the rock weir we were driving on, and with a couple of the crocs sliding off the sandbar into the water and gliding toward us, getting out and wading the rest of the way across seemed like a dumb idea. So we sat. Finally one of the trackers, Albert, climbed down carefully and surveyed the situation. He told Alan to try to back up and if he could get just a bit to the right we could miss the hole. It took a bit of rocking back and forth in low range but we finally got out of the hole and took a slightly different path and were able to cross uneventfully from that point onward.


Flat dogs by where we got stuck.



We drove to the boundary of the park and exited. There was a local villager waiting for us and he explained that two good bulls had come out of the park a couple days earlier and with any luck we’d find them. He jumped onto the truck and off we went. We followed the park boundary all day and never saw sign of them. After seeing no elephants that day, we spent the night at Jannie Meyers’s old camp which was right on the river.

Driving all over the communal area the next morning we only found one bull track, so followed it a short way and found the bull. His ivory wasn’t anything worth considering but Alan wanted to get Jim a bit of experience around elephants so we stalked in on the bull. It was fairly thick mopane forest and a lot drier than Hammond even though they were probably just 40 or 50 miles apart. As we approached the bull he became aware of us when we were about 50 yards away. Instantly he flared his ears out wide and started coming toward us. Jim had never been around an elephant before so didn’t realize how aggressive it was acting until everyone turned and started running back the way we’d come. At that point Jim proved he could still move pretty well with proper motivation. After looking around a bit more it was apparent that there were no other bulls on this small communal block so we headed back to find Jim a kudu or eland with the few remaining days we had.

Love it!!!! Thank you.

Ski+3
Whitefish, MT

Once we got back to Hammond our focus was on getting Jim a kudu and/or eland. As thick as the bush was, kudu sightings were tough and we hadn’t seen any eland yet. We went over to the road that separates Hammond from Nyangombe, which is one of the communal areas established when part of the Savé was taken for resettlement. We talked to a few farmers and learned that one had chased a group of eland out of their field the night before.
We found where their tracks led back into Hammond and took off. It was a warm day and going to be a fairly long walk so we took extra water and I carried Jim’s rifle.

After going about 3/4 mile we knew the eland were close, but Jim was fading in the heat. We stopped to rest in some shade and when we started back on the tracks we quickly caught up to the herd. Unfortunately it was in a very thick spot and they took off before we got much of a look. Jim was about done so we turned back for the truck and headed to camp for lunch. That was our only eland encounter.

The last few days we started seeing a lot more kudu and had a couple chances where he almost got a shot, but he was just a bit too slow to get on on target and he never did shoot a kudu. The last kudu bull we saw was by far the best one, and upper fifties bull who was more interested in the cow he was following than in survival. We had several encounters with this bull and really should have gotten him shot but he was leading a charmed life. Jim was very happy with his hunt so we headed back to Bulawayo on a high note.

Going into this trip there were many concerns with my wife’s ability to make the trip. I was advised that I had to understand that I might be bringing her home in the cargo hold of the plane, and she was good with that as she told me “If I die over there, at least it’d be while I was living”. She did pretty well over the length of the trip, having a few rough days but never as bad as some she’s had before. Lots of rest, a moderate pace when she was out and she came home with many great memories, thanks in no small part to both Saeed and Alan. She got to see a lot of wildlife, including what she wanted to see the most - giraffes. She got to see lots of giraffes!





While I’m hoping to take her on one more trip, this was probably the last one. If so, it was a damn good one upon which to finish.

I love the picture with you and Alan and the buffalo.

You two make the buffalo look handsome!

Awesome, and that would be a trophy bull in my book.

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I take my hat off to your wife and her attitude! Strength. Happy that you guys had a great time and did the things that you, she, wanted to do. Memories.

Thank you for sharing.

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