25 August 2005, 02:52
ErikDHunting tuskless elephant cow in Zim.
HUNT REPORT: Date of Hunt: June 24th to July 10th, 2005. With a total of 8 hunting days.
Location: Zimbabwe. Mainly in Harare, Mana Pools, and Chewore North. All situated in the northeast of the country.
Animals taken: Elephant cow, hippo, waterbuck.
Animals hunted but not taken: Buff cow.
PH/Outfitter: Myles McCallum of Charlton & McCallum Safaris
Email: hunting@cmsafaris.com
Landline: +263 4 870 149
Mobile Phone (Myles): +263 11 219 172
Mobile Phone (Buzz) : +263 91 201 487
Website: Charlton McCallum Safaris
Mana Pools outfitter: Stretch Ferrera
E-mail: stretch@africaonline.co.zw
I flew into Harare on a pleasant saterday morning, and was met by my PH; Myles McCallum. We drove straight to his home, were I would be spending a couple of nights, so I could dump my bags, and have a shower after the long flight. We then went staight off and met up with his lovely fiancé; Olivia, and then continued to that days main event: a Rugby match between Zim and Senegal! It was an interesting experiance. Not that the rugby was of a very high level, but rather because of the fighting that eventually broke out between the two countrys supporters! That is were all the real action was!
We then continued off to dinner with some of Olivia and Myles' friends, and ended up having a great evening. The next morning we met up with most of the same crowd again, as planned, and drove 30 km northeast from Harare to Ngomakurira (Also known as "Mountain of Drums"). It is a huge granite hill that has lots of rock paintings. It's also quite a nice steep hill to climb the day after a flight to get the heart pumping again! As Harare is about 5000ft/1500m above sea level, there is actually a slightly noticable differance from Oslo which is at sea level. Climbing up one of the steep sides of Ngomakurira. Pictured is Myles and his soon to be sister-in-law; Sasha:
A couple of the guys had driven a 4x4 up to the top from the other (non steep) side, with lots of food and drinks. The veiw was as you can see, quite beautiful:
Another side of the hill with lots of rock paintings:
The day after, I continued up to Mana Pools in a an old Land Rover, where I would spend a few days with Stretch Ferrera who has a nice tented camp situated on the Zambezi river bank. The nice thing about Mana Pools is that you can both canoe, and walk inside the national park. And as these animals are not hunted, they are quite easy to get up to while on foot. Thus, the pictures below are all taken on foot, and not from a vehicle. Large amounts of buff, hippo, elephant, waterbuck, lions, etc etc are found here, and I would highly reccomend spending a couple of days here before a hunt, both to "acclimatize", for taking pictures, and for the family if they are with you on the trip.
Andrew "Stretch" Ferrera:
I can recommend Stretch very highly. He is very professional, great fun, and knows more about the bush then most other PHs put together! As an ex-special forces survival instructor from when Zim was called Rhodesia, this comes as no suprise. He also worked many years as a PH, and as a professional croc culler to reduce the croc population once upon a time.
A dead hippo we found that had been killed by another hippo bull. Lions had been feeding on it, as had numerous other animals:
Ele bull feeding:
He eventually got a little pissed off with us, and did a bit of a mock charge, stopping at about 5 meters:
Part of Stretch's tented camp, and the "dinning room" below:
Wounded buff that had been gored by another bull. Notice under his belly:
Some of the uncountable waterbuck we saw in Mana Pools. They were everywhere:
An old buff, which I presume will soon become lion food:
One of the many, many wild dogs we saw. We eventually found a den with pups, and were able to get within 30 meters of them, before they were scared back down into the den by an eagle that flew overhead:
I slid on my butt to within 20 meters from these without them getting agitated:
An elephant bull that didn't stop until he was about 3 meters away. A bit unnerving!:
We had on several occasions rather large ele bulls only 4-5 meters away, that were fully aware of us, but Strech had an interesting way of calming them down by talking to them. A few bulls tried to show off and be pushy, but as he held his ground and continued talking in a calm voice, they quieted down. On the otherhand, if we saw any cows while walking, even 200 meters away, Stretch would take another route as he didn't trust them at all.
Some of the numerous hippos in Mana Pools. In my opinion, and many others I have understood, this hippo population should be strongly reduced. There was barely a foot of the river without hippos, and the same went for the few pools that still had water. It was really overpopulated:
Young Eagle:
The second evening I was in Mana Pools, everyone except Stretchs camp helper; Analynn and myself had gone to bed early. We sat up talking for a while and looking over on a nearby island with our flashlights. There were quite a few buff over there grazing. Just by chance, she got up to have a look with her flashlight from around the kitchen corner, and saw a pride of lions coming our way from only 40 meters away! She behaved very well, and calmly said "There are a lions right over there coming this way. We have to get to our tents!". This we did, and only seconds after our tent zippers were zipped, the pride walked straight thru camp were we had been sitting less than a minute ago! Not many minutes later, a lot of noise came from the other side of camp, when the pride obviously killed some sort of prey! Next morning, we found the remains of an impala 70 meters away from camp, so Stretch and I went of to see if we could find the pride. We drove quite a few km down from where the lions had been during the night, and then left the Land Cruiser to track up again towards camp, expecting to intersept the lion tracks somewhere along the way. A few hours later, we had come across many animals, but no lions. Finally, only about a kilometer from camp, I spotted a lion laying on the ground 200 meters away. After sneaking up to a tree, and climbing it a bit, I was able to spot the rest. I then left Stretch who hung back in full view of the lions to keep them occupied, and crawled, keeping out of the lions sight, until I was about 75 meters from them behind a anthill. My plan was to slither up to the top of this hill and get some good pictures. The plan unfortunatly failed as the anthill then had another anthill in the way that we hadn't previously seen would be in this position. Moving forward wouldn't work, as it would then be in the lions sight, so I returned to Stretch without the closeups I had hoped for. It was fun anyway, and when back with Stretch, we moved openly closer to the pride, which made them move off.
Some of the lions I tried to sneak up on:
Lion prints that we tracked:
All things come to an end, and the next morning, after tracking some more lion tracks, I left Stretchs camp to meet Myles and his trackers; Choice and Ringo at the crossroad where the track to Chewore NOrth (from here on called: CN) meets the one to Mana Pools. We then drove for some hours more to Big5s main camp where we would be staying for some days, with a quick detour via the Nat. Parks office to pick up our gamescout; Paddington.
Our main goal in CN would be hunting a tuskless cow elephant, and shooting only when i was upclose and personal.
With the whole team now gathered, we installed ourselves in camp, and met a couple of Danes who were flying out the next morning. They had hunted buff, pluss several antilope and had had a good time there with their PHs; Andy Hunter and Dirk Du Plooy. Both Andy and Dirk were very good guys and I'm sure would be fun to hunt with.
As Myles and his trackers had not been in CN before, the camp manager Kathy gave us one of Big5s own trackers. His name was Richard, and it turned out that we couldn't have been luckier. He had been in CN for about 15 years, and knew practically every rock, crevice and tree in the concession! And was also very nice guy with a good sense of humor and a "never give up" attitude. That we got Ricjard was also lucky for another reason; Choice, who is Myles main tracker, got very sick. He was only able to drive the car, as walking was out of the question for him. And after a few days, he had to be left in camp and stay in bed. At that time we were unsure of the cause, but suspected malari. Therefore, I gave him my Malarone pills and perscribed to him the dosage used as a cure. There were next to no mosquito in the area anyway, and we were only going to be there for a weeks time, so I decided it was better to give him the pills, and just take a chance myself.
We drove off into the concession and after a while stopped the Land Cruiser to climb a hill and see if we could spot anything. The hills are plentiful and steep in CN, so being in good shape is very important here. And I was also glad that I brought, and used, my Camelbak so that I could drink water while still moving whenever I felt the need. I found this a better solution than stopping up to get a waterbottle from Ringos backpack.
Myles and I had decided to not shoot an elephant for the first 2 or 3 days. No matter what. I wanted to do it this way to gain as much experiance of hunting elephant as possible. As we only had one on quota, shooting one the first or second day would make it all over too fast!
Tracking elephant, and sneaking up into herds of cows with young is undoubtably some of the most fun I've had hunting. And for those who have not hunted elephant, let there be no mistake; it's the cows that are the evil tempered nasty ones, and are considered by most as much more dangerous than the bulls. During the first 2 days, we saw about 10 shootable cows (shootable since they didn't have young), and spent all day from first light to sunset walking, stalking and sneaking in and out of herds. We were for the most part only 10-15 meters away from the elephant while in, or next to the herds. The wind is of course of great importance, and the wind in CN, as in much of africa, has a nasty habit of changing suddenly and sending your scent straight to the animals. This resulted in numerous hasty extractions were we had to literally sprint away to avoid shooting one of them in self defence.
On the morning of the second day, we came across the tracks of a large buff herd, near the Zambezi river, and decided to see if we could catch up to them. I had also wanted to hunt a buff cow if available while in CN. After an hour or so we did catch up to them, and I got into a nice position on top of an anthill where I could see most of the herd. Eventually, I had a nice old, worn out cow in my sights, but ended up not shooting. The whole situation had been a bit too easy in my opinion, so we decided to retreat and let the herd go. I wanted to do more hunting, and not just shooting. So it was back to elephant stalking for the rest of the day, and as I mentioned we saw several shootable cows that we had fun with sneaking up on.
Day three started with the same tracking of elephant as the previous two days, and this day we decided that I would take a shot if we came across a nice cow. Unfortunatly, we spent the morning and midday sneaking in and out of herds where all the cows had young... Thus, none of them were shootable. in the early afternoon, we went into yet another herd, and that is when the trouble started. In this herd, there was as far as we could see about 6 adults, all with calves that were too young to loose their mothers. As we were then about to withdraw, the wind changed direction a little and they became aware of our presence. At that time the herd was spread in front of us in a semi-circle 20-40 meters away. They began to squeal and trumpet, and then took off to our right at high speed. We had then begun to move away to our rear when we saw that one tuskless cow broke away from the herd and decided that we needed to be scared a bit more, even though we were withdrawing. Paddington (game scout) and Big5 tracker Richard were by then quite far ahead, running as fast as they could, while Ringo; Myles "second" tracker said I must follow him. As if it needed saying! Myles was about 10 meters behind at the time, and running full out by then too. The jesse was very dense and green there, so we were running bent forward, thru little maze like corridors in the vegitation. It was next to impossible to see much more than 10 meters ahead actually. As Ringo and I rounded a bend in the bush, coming up to where the trackers were, we heard a shot behind us. Stopping for 2 seconds to listen, I then ran back with my gun held high at the ready. A second shot came, and as I rounded the turn in the bushes, I saw Myles standing there very excited. The tuskless cow was laying there only a few meters away! It turned out that as Myles was coming around one of the turns in the "labyrinth", the cow had decided to take a shortcut straight thru, and cut him off. When Myles rounded the turn, he saw the cow out of the corner of his eye, only meters away, reaching for him with her trunk! He didn't even have time to fully shoulder the gun, but was able to hit it near enough the brain to stun it and make it fall. He then shot the second shot in the brain the kill it. We were of course very alert in case some of the other cows came back after hearing the shot. And the game scout fired a few AK47 rounds in the air to scare them off. Right next to my ear... He wasn't happy as his rifle kept malfunctioning, and later switched it for a better one back at the Nat. Parks office.
So, although only about 10-15 meters in front of Myles, the bush was too dense for me to even see the event. Much less fire off a shot. The rest of the afternoon was spent going to the Nat. Parks office and then skinning the elephant and cutting up the meat. Even though I didn't get any shooting action, it was still an intersting experiance, and it is actually lucky that Myles didn't get squashed! Or any other of us for that matter, had more than one cow decided to charge. Obviously, no more hunting was done that day.
One of the many reasonably permanant pools found in CN, which is why there is so much elephant there:
Myles and Paddington standing next to the elephant cow that tried to flatten him:
The enterance hole from Myles 416 Woodleigh solid:
Myles cutting off the tail:
Ringo cutting off the trunk:
Ringo, myself and a Big5 worker skinning:
On the morning of the 4th day we came across buff tracks almost right away, and decided to follow them. We found them shortly, but in the thick jesse, were unable to get in a shot thru the vegitation. They would then get wind of us, run off, and we would jog and track after them. This went on for a few hours. Finally, one time when we were a bit ahead of them, some passed by us to the right, 40 meters away thru a small opening in the jesse with the terrain sloping up behind them. I was leaning against a small bush, waiting for the "right one", and on Myles order squeezed the trigger as the buff cow passed thru the opening. It jumped uphill and to the left where it had come from, and I was about to put a second shot in her when Myles shouted "Don't shoot again. She's hit hard!". I held back. Unfortunatly, as we were soon to find out. Neither of us were worked up, as we had been standing still at that position for several minute, and we calmly decided to wait 15-20 minutes to let her die. Then, while talking, I began to wonder if things were not quite as rosy as we thought they were. Myles went on about how he saw her stumble while she ran after the herd, while I knew that I had seen her turn back to where she came from, together with quite a few other buff. And I had not seen any stumbling! But, as it was a "perfect" shot from only 40 meters thru the jesse, with a good sight picture and trigger pull, and a pulse no higher than 80 I convinced myself that he was right, and that I had not seen correctly. When we went up to where she was when I shot, we began to worry when we found no blood in the direction Myles said she ran. We spread out and moved after the herd, looking for blood. With no luck. after 150 meters, I said that I was going to take Ringo back with me, and have a look where I was sure I had seen her run. And of course, Ringo and I found a bit of blood shortly afterwards in that direction... We waved the others over, and then began tracking. There was a bit of blood to begin with, and we tracked the herd for about 8 hours to veiw them from every angle, trying to find the "damaged" one. Without luck. The blood quickly dried up, and we observed the herd from left, right, front and back over and over again in the hope to see which one had a nick in it, and shoot it for good. I was quite irritated (and sad!) as it was the first time I've ever shot at something that didn't die as it was supposed to. And an expensive "mistake" too... The only reason we could see for this mishap was that a twig or branch got on the way of the bullet. At least it was so insignificantly hit that it will continue to walk around for years, fit and healthy, mocking me.
The day after, we continued after elephant, tracking and stalking all day until the late afternoon. All the countless cows we saw that day had calves that were too young to be on their own, but would be mature next year! So 2006 will be a good year for tuskless cows in CN!
When we eventually did come across a tuskless cow without a calf, in the last half hour of light, things went pretty fast. There were numerous elephant around our vicinity, some alone and other in small groups, and after I decided that I'd shoot the cow (which was actually all alone and not in herd), Paddington (gamescout), Richard and Ringo (trackers) did a quick retreat to keep their distance, while Myles then went about 10-15 meters behind and off to my right, facing the other nearest elephant to keep an eye on them incase they decided to come for us at the shot and try anything funny. Myles had set up the shooting sticks, but I moved a bit to the side as I didn't want to use them. I had to let the elephant in rather close, about 12 steps/10 meters to let it clear some bushes, and then gave it a frontal brainshot while she was coming towards me. As she cleared the bush and saw me, she quickly lowered her head quite a bit actually, making it harder for me in that split second to calculate in regards to the cheek bones/earholes. Being a rather small cow (compaired to many monsters we had seen the first few days) her cheekbones were not very pronounced either. The shot was thus a little high, but it went down after staggering to the side for a step, and I then fired a shot in the heart/lungs incase she suddenly got up and ran, followed a millisecond later by a side brainshot that turned off her lights like a switch. Myles then turned and came back to me from his position 10-15 meters away. After quickly cutting of her tail, we made a hasty retreat out of the area and eventually back to the truck, as there were many elephants still around, and it was then getting kind of dark. There wasn't even time for pictures! We returned the next morning to skin/debone her etc. which we did as quickly as possible, so that we could get back to hunting again.
I have to admit that the shooting of the elephant itself was a little bit of a let down for me. Mainly because it meant that the elephant hunting was over, and it was the tracking, stalking and sneaking that I enjoyed the most. In retrospect, I would have made sure that I had at least 2 cows on quota so that the ele hunting could last longer!
My Ele, taken the next morning as it was too late in the evening to take pictures when I shot it. Due to all the other irritated elephant close by, we had to make a hasty retreat! :
On the day of the 6th, after skinning and deboning my elephant, we threw our bags onto a small speedboat, and went down the Zambezi to Big5s flycamp in the far northeast of their concession. On the way down we kept our eyes open for any hippo bulls on land. I wanted to hunt a hippo while there, but did not want to shoot one in the water. Luckliy, we spotted a nice bull grazing on the Zim sid of the riverbank, and after beaching the boat upstream, we stalked down along the bank to where we had seen the him. As hippo have good eyesight, hearing and smell, they are not always easy to get out of the water before they make their escape back into the river. And in many hunting areas, they don't venture out of the water during the day time.
As we got closer, Myles and Richard stayed behind while I belly crawled the last 50 meters across some sand to a point where I could get a shot. I had put on my scope for the hippo, and as it was only 30 meters away from me from where I had had slithered up to, the side brain shot was quite easy. He dropped like a sack of potatos, and never moved again.
The hippo. Dead where it stood grazing:
It's easy to see how these jaws are potentially dangerous:
Ringo skinning a "wide load":
I was suprised over how thick and stiff the hippo skin was.
The "barge" getting loaded with hippo meat, which was very tasty! :
Ringo (tracker) on the left, and Paddington (Gamescout) on the right:
Stalking thru the hills near the flycamp:
A hotspring that was hot enough to make you not hold your hand directly where the water came up:
A catfish I caught while trying to catch some baitfish for tigerfishing:
Paddington, Ringo, myself and Richard in the hills near the flycamp:
We spent the next few days stalking around the steep hills trying to find a nice waterbuck. Generally, waterbuck are of course found near water. But in this area, they have become wise to the hunting, and thus are also found hiding up in the steep hills and mountains! I guess you could call them "MountainWaterbuck".
Beside a few hours of fishing, where I caught a catfish and Chessa, but no Tigerfish, we spent the time walking the hills, and looking at various waterbuck and other antilope. We also came across a lion that bolted away only seconds after being spotted, and a couple of leopard!
However, we did not see many waterbuck that we felt were big enough to shoot. And the few that we did gave us the slip after numerous attempts to sneak in on them.
On the last morning, after stalking for some hours, we decided to go fishing for an hour until lunch. Amazingly, we then spotted a nice herd of waterbuck with a decent male. Right next to the river where they belonged! We sped back to camp to pick up our rifles and Paddington (the gamescout) and set off again upriver from where we had seen the waterbuck. While stalking down towards where we had seen them, we came across a young kudu bull that made a lot of noise when we bumped into it. This then scared off a large group of impala that also made a lot of noise. We were sure that waterbuck had heard this commotion, and dissappeared. Thankfully, we were wrong! As we came near to where we had seen them, we could still spot them thru the dense vegitation on the steep riverbank. Once again I left the other behind, and slid on my belly on the thorn covered ground towards the edge of the riverbank. I was actually thankful for the small areas covered in elephant dung that I crawled over, as it made it softer and covered the thorns! As I came up to where I could take a shot, the herd had started moving away towards the bush, and the buck was about to move off behind the females. I saw that it was now or never. I chose now!
The waterbuck:
And that was the end of hunting on this trip. We quickly gutted the waterbuck, lifted it onboard the boat, sped off to the flycamp for a quick lunch, and then had to head back upriver to the main camp.
The flycamp on the bank of the Zambezi river, in the far northeast of CN:
The Big5 maincamp is very nice. A bit too nice for me actually!
When we arrived at the maincamp, we found that Choice (Myles head tracker) was sicker than ever. Our plan had been to drive to Sapi that afternoon to meet Buzz (Myles partner) and his client Bill Campell. This plan went out the window, as we had to throw our gear into the Land Cruiser, making a bed in the back for Chioce and speed off to Harare with him. Everyone wa certain he was about to die. Himself included. He even had to be lifted up into the back since he was so weak. Eventually, shortly after midnight, we arrived in Harare, and dropped Ringo and Choice off where they were staying. Choice didn't want to go to the hospital in Harare, but preferred to go down to his village further south with the help of Ringo, so Myles drove them to the bus station early the next morning. I found out a while later after returning home that Choice had luckly survived, and is now feeling better.
The rest of our day was spent with Myles "soon-to-be Parents-in-law",and family. It was a great day, as they are fantastic people, but I was beginning to feel something not quite right in my stomage. I visited the bathroom quite a few times that day... Shortly after going to bed, the stomage illness really hit me, and I threw up so violently that it was like that possessed little girl in the film "Excorsist"! It continued like that thruout the night, and I was totally worn out when I had to catch my flight home that day. I had started an antibiotic cure of Ciproxcin that morning, and stuffed myself with Imodium so that I didn't have to run to the toilet while flying for the next 24 hours. It helped a little, but I had to up the Imodium dosage quite a bit more than is recommended...
All I can say is Thank God I didn't get sick until the hunt was over! As it didn't go over for several days after I returned, I went to the hospitals tropical infection ward to get tested. They found "unknown" bacteria, and recommended to continue the Cipro cure I was on. After a week of Cipro it went over, although I felt rather weakened.
To sum it up, all I can say now is that I can highly recommend hunting tuskless elephant with Charlton-McCallum Safaris, and that I will surely return to Zim for more elephant hunting myself! It was a great adventure!
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