Dates: November 28-December 16, 2018

Place: Sikumi Forest and Gwanda, Zimbabwe

PH: Brian Van Blerk (Brian Van Blerk Safaris)

Rifles: .416 Rigby Dakota 76 (loads were 94 g H4350 with a 400 g Barnes TSX for softs and 92 g H4350 with 370 g North Fork FPS for solids)

.470 NE Merkel 140 (90 g RL 15 with 500g North Fork FPS)



This hunt was kind of a collaboration with Brian after he had gone out on his own and formed his own company. I had shot a good trophy elephant with him about 5 years ago and had told him that I needed to get back over there and hunt elephant again. I was noting that the US was still banning elephant import, and since I had a good bull, and Brian felt the odds were definitely against us getting a better one, he suggested a nontrophy elephant hunt. Essentially we would hunt them the way that you hunt the big bulls, but as these were animals that would be used for meat and hide alone, we would be looking for broken tusked animals or those with poor genetic potential instead of trying to find the biggest bull we could. When Brian told me how much they go for, I said, hell, I could shoot two for that!, and thus the planning started. It initially was going to be done at Amadundumela, where I had hunted before, but since a cyanide poisoning (read poaching) there, the elephant there are now much more seasonal. Brian noted that the hunting operators wanted this to be scheduled after their trophy folks got first pick (I can understand that, but it did play hob scheduling this...) so what was going to be either early season or prime time ended up because of scheduling conflicts (on both sides) to a end of season hunt. As an add on, I would be able to do quota clean up on Gwanda, which is a property owned by Brian's father in law.

Just before I was leaving, Brian had asked if I was interested in a late available leopard. I agreed to that, and since he wanted to get a look at the leopard set up early, we decided to attend the Zimbabwe PH and Guides functions that would start as I got there.

Once again, plans went awry, and Brian's good friend Barry Styles died in an airplane crash. Just before I left for Zimbabwe, I was asked if I would mind too much if we went to his memorial celebration. My response was that he could certainly, but I would probably be in the way. I was told that he would consider it a favor if I went, so I hauled along some decent clothes and we went to both of those events on my arrival.

The flight from Atlanta was rather long, and I could not justify the exorbitant price they wanted for the business class flight (2-3 times, OK, 5 times economy comfort pricing... no. I was told that Emirates was much more manageable, price wise, but would more than double my transit time and getting that much time off work was just not doable this close to the holidays. The flights were long, and packed with folks. I honestly think every seat was taken (both ways) on Delta 200. The SA Airlink flight to Zim was much less crowded, but everything went well.

I arrived in Bulawayo and Brian was out checking on the leopard situation, and got delayed. Carol, his wife, picked me up at the airport, and we got in to town in time for me to have a drink and get a shower before we headed to the memorial. I thought it would be like what we have around here, but that really wasn't the case. Lots of good stories, and memories were shared. In essence, it was an all night event with food and drink. I think everybody from the Zim hunting establishment was there, and frankly I was surprised at the number of folks I knew or knew of who were there.

The next day was the Zim PHGA general meeting and then the hunter's ball. That also was a very well done affair and much more friendly than any professional group meeting I have ever been at over here. Folks went out of their way to make me feel welcome there, and I really appreciated seeing the behind the scenes side of the Zimbabwe hunting profession.

Getting ready to head out to Ngamo Sikumi was a bit of a headache for Brian. The biggest issue was fuel. The government has started down the road again where they were before they "dollarized" their economy. They are issuing somethning called bond notes that are supposed to be 1:1 for USD, but to be used internally. The banks are playing hob with just getting cash, and while the official line is they are "worth" $1, the exchange rate for actual USD is more like 3:1 already. So, things are already in short supply. Gas and diesel are the most obvious ones. The prices on the pumps were all like 1.45/l but most had no fuel, if you saw a unmoving line of cars going for blocks, it was a que for a gas station that had fuel. Per Brian, the prices were going up rapidly for fuel compared to before and while the folks with hard currency were able to get stuff without the lines, it required knowing someone in the business and making a deal in advance. Simple things like soft drinks were becoming spottily available, and a restaurant we went to had very little availability (Brian's son had to go through 3 different preferences before they found one they had, and then that was the last one. Beer and gin were available. I suppose they would have riots if those were not available...

The new president has a real anti corruption campaign going on now. I was shocked- the continual police roadblocks were there, but we were waved through. Brian made the comment that they had been told to stop harassing the white folks, and it was working. I will note that there was a lower level of auto traffic in town than I remember from before, but the highways seem about the same- which was very light by my standards- but I was on more heavily traveled roads than usual. No gas means no driving...



Anyhow, we finally arrived at Hwange National Park to pick up our game scout. It was Sunday. No go. "We open for business at 7 AM on Monday. You need to come then." No amount of reasoning or showing emails about when we were to pick up the scout from the National folks would do. Much cussing, and we started to camp. We stopped at a photo lodge to have lunch, and then went on. Once we got on the dirt roads we promptly ran into a land rover with another PH who was going to be hunting tuskless in one of the little railroad blocks bordering Hwange. He told us that they had told him the same yesterday, but he had "Made a plan" and was heading over to get his game scout this afternoon. (These railroad blocks are where the whole Cecil fiasco happened.) They are called railroad blocks due to the fact that they border the railroad, which shares or demarcates the border of Hwange National Park.



Anyhow, we went to camp, and got settled in and planned on getting up a bit late and then arriving at the Park's office at 7. The Ngamo Sikumi camp is very nice. They had power, so I had a ceiling fan and they also had somewhat limited rate Wifi in camp. The cottage I stayed in had a fireplace (supposedly very nice to have in the early season) as well as all the amenities- it even had a Impala shoulder mount. The staff were all happy and competent folks. I had absolutely no issues at this camp! After getting settled in, we go out and check zero on the rifles. My .416 is dead on, but somehow the .470's RMR is quite off, and I end up shooting it a half dozen times before its OK. Coincidentally, they had the best zeroing target I have ever seen... the skull of the last elephant they had shot out there this year... Makes it a bit more interesting. All of my rounds that hit it went clear through, although a skull is not as tough a target as a living elephant.



The following morning, we headed to the office. On the way there, we saw a passenger train. This is apparently the Cape to Cairo tourist route, and they were looking at the game in Hwange as we went by.



As we waited for them to get their act together on the game scout, a familiar Land Rover came by- he admitted that the "plan" had not come together, and both PH's were mutually comparing the ineptitude of the system. We finally ended up driving to the scout's house, and then taking him to all the places that he needed to go to get his gear together, and we finally left after 10.



Some Storks near Hwange.

After getting back to camp and getting organized, we had lunch and then drove out to look for sign. There was a lot of evidence that elephant were moving from the park to the water holes in Sikumi. We saw a small herd with no males cross in front of us, and lots of spots that we were thinking we would look at the next day when we could track them down and take a look.



At this point, the luck of the hunt hit us. We were checking out a waterhole, and a solitary bull was trying to eat from a tree. He didn't take much notice of us and we pulled off and took a look. I noticed he was a big bull and Brian got out of the cruiser for a closer look. I jumped out and waited for Albert to hand me my double, but didn't expect much until the bull turned and Brian immediately began to discuss the bull with the tracker- while he was a bit larger than we were supposed to target, he was missing a third of his trunk and was in very poor condition. He then said to the trackers that we needed the rifles quick and told me that we were going to kill this bull. The bull initially didn't take much notice of us, but then noted us and started to move into the forest. Quickly, we lost sight of him, and then we started tracking. Needless to say, this was a bit exciting to move on them that fast. We started with playing cat and mouse with him and after bumping him, he decided to move a bit. He was not in good condition, and we only ended up tracking him a couple hours before he found a thick spot that he stopped in. While I could see his ears move at times, or his body at times, it was thick, and we got in really close on him before we had a good look at his head. He had probably heard something because he looked right towards us for a minute then started turning a bit. I had a quick chance at a side brain shot and as soon as the shot was clear I took the shot offhand, from about 12 yards. He dropped, and then we went in and gave the insurance shot before getting a good look at him.





He had lost about a third of his trunk, and was losing muscle mass rapidly. His tail hair was almost absent, and when we started cutting him up, he had a rather nasty smell- which if you have been around folks in diabetic coma, it was somewhat similar. This bull looked like he did not have long to live, and was put out of his misery caused by poachers at last. He was actually of trophy size, about 45#, with rather symmetric ivory. This caused us to make sure that the game scout's agreement that this bull needed to be put down before he hurt someone or slowly starved to death was on record.





Snake skin in a tree next to the elephant kill.

By the time we had a road cleared to the bull, the sun was pretty much down. We headed in and we needed to plan on spending the next morning recovering the elephant with the camp staff, and had a bit of thunder and lightning on our drive back.



That evening, Brian and I had a chat about our plans here. Brian noted that it looked like we had lucked in to a lot of movement, and the rains had been both late and erratic - so while things were greening up, there was still a need for the animals to migrate to forestry's water holes, and that we were seeing way more movement than he expected. The prospects looked like we would be done very early at Ngamo. He had checked for what was available, and we had the two elephant, but they also had a non trophy buffalo bull available, as well as some other nontrophy plains game (although most of the prices were pretty close to trophy.) They also had a trophy sable left on quota, and Brian said that this was a really good spot for sable.

I had a good night's sleep after that bit of excitement!



The next morning was cool and misting. We got up a bit later than normal so that we could go with the camp folks to help with recovery. On the way out, we saw some zebra and wildebeest over towards Hwange, and then the guys noticed sable. We quickly stopped and I was given my .416 while Brian assessed him. It didn't take long as the sticks were up to rest the binoculars on. I ejected the solid on top of the magazine, and then got in position. The sable took a few steps and then stopped. At that point I shot. He bucked to the shot, and ran. At first everyone was sure he would be dead in a few yards, but pretty shortly he had covered quite a bit of ground. There was blood, but not much. I began to wonder if I had shot him a bit far back, and then we had to go purely by tracking. We had a Forestry game scout, a parks game scout, and Brian's father-son tracking team of Albert (who I have hunted with many times), and Proud, who I hunted with the last time I was in Zimbabwe. I was beginning to wonder how I had screwed up such a simple shot when we found him lying dead. The bullet had gone in just in front of the shoulder, and was lying under the skin in his ham on the opposite side. Somehow, he still ran more than 300 yards!



As we were getting him packed up, Albert showed me a ground root that the animals often eat, although they said it was no good for humans. when chopped open, it releases a red sap that looks like blood. I was told it was commonly called a blood root, but I forget the actual name of the thing.



Of course, after that we ended up seeing sable fairly often in this area. I would think one could reasonable expect to find them during the dry season with regularity.



There are some hippo that migrate in and out here, but they are not on quota, and the water holes are way too small for even a water shoot to have any element of chance.



We also came across a herd crossing in to get to water, but while they had a few bulls with them, we had to get to recovery rather than messing with them. We were asked not to shoot one too quickly as they needed to process the first one!



Egyptian Geese

We then finally arrived at the site from the day before, and somewhat embarrassingly, the tractor had beaten us to the site! We then spent the rest of the morning helping recover the elephant and skinning the sable.





That afternoon, we drive around and get the lay of the land (more for me than the rest of the team, as they have all been here before. We do end up seeing a pretty good herd of buffalo, some of which have some trophy potential. We eventually spot an older hard bossed but narrow Buffalo bull. This small group is a dagga boy and a couple soft bossed askari bulls. Since I had expressed an interest in shooting another buffalo (I hadn't shot a cape buff in a while) we target him. He stares at us like some of them do, and I get to a reasonably short shot- one shot and he runs maybe 50 yards, then stands there for a bit and while I was going to shoot again, I was told not to as he was done, and the camp wants meat, so less damage the better. He falls and is dead within a minute or so. Kind of anticlimactic, really, given my usual buffalo experience.



While all have heard about "Cecil" and Jericho" most probably have not heard about what all is going on in the area as far as lion. In essence, pretty much all the lion in the area are collared, which makes selling lion hunts in the area a bit of a chore, as anything that is shootable is likely already collared. We ran into this guy about 5 miles inside the Ngamo Sikumi concession. He's probably about 5 years old, and would be a shooter, except for one little thing. Brian stated that the research groups, if they want to collar these guys should be paying a trophy fee for each one they collar, given that the collar removes it from the huntable population, but does not remove him from the population dynamics of the concession. I'd tend to agree with him, as it would make the photo guys and "researchers" trying to prevent having the lion shot pay for protecting and feeding the lions.







After that, we start to develop a routine of going out, looking for tracks (or actually seeing the elephant), and following them. We have one long fruitless walk that we don't catch up with them at all, a couple of situations were the wind makes it not work, and a time where we find only cows. A couple days of this occur before we finally have another shot opportunity. This time, it is a proper non trophy bull. He is very large in body, and from his feet and teeth is quite old, but maybe 15 or so pounds of ivory a side. He is in musth and travelling with a group of cows with a couple calves in the herd. The wind has not been all that friendly since the first day, with frequent swirling patterns and per Brian, not coming out of the expected direction. We start working this group and get close enough to see what is going on, but the bull apparently hears us and they all run. Fortunately, we are close to the cow group's path and we start following them, as the bull has shown repeatedly that he wants to stay around them, hoping to mate. This allows us to cut the chord on the path and get in front of him. I had hoped to shoot one with each rifle, so I had the scoped .416 in my hands at this point. We see him coming and get into a good spot to ambush him, but at the last moment he notices something is wrong, and his ears go out and he is facing us. Brian had told me that he did not like the frontal brain shot, as too many folks screw it up, PH's included; but at this point he tells me to take him with a frontal brain shot. Well, I screw it up. I shoot a bit low. Close enough that he is stunned, but not dropped. I empty my rifle into his head and he falls over finally. Then, he gets up! Brian shoots him in the shoulder and I end up putting a few finishers into him. A bit of a firefight, so to speak, but he didn't move 10 feet from beginning to end. He was copiously leaking from his temporal glands and I had thought it was supposed to be a really smelly substance. At this point, I can say it doesn't have that terribly strong a scent from a human perspective, but apparently it lets other elephant know that he is ready and wants what he wants...




I am asked if I want to stay with the elephant or go and get the crew... I elect to stay, thinking I would be able to contemplate the beast and think a bit. Nope. Proud and the game scout stay as well, and we start the job of recovery. This is a much more personally involved one... we get a couple panels of hide and the head off before the rest of the folks get back.



That evening, we plan on packing up to head back to Bulawayo. Brian had heard the first night that the leopard had attacked another calf, but no kill. He had not heard anything more, and was wondering if we just were not getting phone signal or what regarding the leopard. The plan was to go to Bulawayo, get the Sable to the trophy agent, and get things organized at Gwanda and then head over there the following day, unless something was going on with the leopard.



We got on the road fairly late and arrive in Bulawayo at Brian's about noon. We head to a restaurant for lunch after dropping off the sable and getting the cruiser unpacked. Cullen, Brian's son was so pleased to see his dad again, and we took him with to get lunch. Cullen constantly was asking his dad about hunting and wanted to go with in the worst way. Since we had taken all the major animals, and we would have a lot of down time, I thought it would be neat if he came with, and Carol was happy to have him come along with Brian and I, so we had a bit of a family outing. The next day, we headed out after getting more diesel and the supplies organized for Gwanda. I recall how I was at Cullen's age, and he was much better behaved than my siblings and I were at that age! Having his dad away hunting all the time, it was neat to see him get some serious dad time in the bush. He was so happy do be going along, I think he would have flown next to the car if we had let him.





We arrived around noon at Gwanda, and went up to Mr. Clark's (Brian's Father in Law's) old farm house, which is now more or less a guest house. This was very nice, and had a separate guest bedroom that was assigned to me, while Brian and Cullen stayed in the main house. On arrival, Cullen immediately started insisting he needed to get his rifle ready, and Brian let him sight in with his .22. I don't know how the kid can hit anything with his form, but he is very accurate. We find eland tracks and Brian has Cullen stay in the truck, and we follow them for a couple hours. It starts having a thunderstorm, and we call it off and head back. On the way, Cullen gets to shoot some doves and does really well.



The next day we try to find Eland, Kudu, and Klipspringer, and while I get a long shot at a Klippy, I miss. Cullen on the other hand is shooting up a storm on the birds, and gets his first guinea fowl, his first francolin and his first dassie. The enthusiasm of a new hunter is just contagious, and a delight to see. In the afternoon, I get a wildebeest. I've been trying to get a big blue wildebeest for some time, and this is the biggest one I've managed to kill.



The next few days see us looking over a lot of country, and getting a few animals. I shoot a Klipspringer, then Cullen shoots his first solo impala. Brian shoots a Kudu, as he wants to and also needs a cape for a previous client who's cape was bad. I end up shooting a very nice Eland, and a zebra, as well as a Kudu, and an African Wild cat, with the last animal I shoot there being a second kudu. Cullen pretty much uses up all his dad's .22 ammo shooting a bunch of birds and dassies with an occasional rabbit thrown in.



Cullen's Impala



Klipspringer



Eland



Kudu in the hills



Zebra



Wild Cat



Forest Kudu

When we get back, Cullen is already discussing what he wants to shoot next!



We end up not getting any chances to sit for the leopard. Apparently, he disappeared after he was unsuccessful on killing the last calf.

I have to admit, that this was definitely a different paced hunt than my usual, where we are trying to get a bunch of new (to me) animals. The ability to just go with the flow, and watch a kid start his hunting was really a change of pace. The early success with the bigger species allowed this to be a much more relaxed hunt. We had a grand time, and I really enjoyed this one.



Please note all rights are reserved on the photos.

Congratulations on a real fun hunt.

Arjun

Great report and Trophies, Congrats!!!

Congrats on a great hunt. By letting Cullen go along you, I am sure, you made his dreams come true! As you know Dad/ Kid time when you are a PH are in short supply so I am sure it was MUCH appreciated by Brian!

Nice report and some excellent animals Doc. Well done!

Great report!

Well done Doc!

Meeting folks at the hunters ball, seeing different country and sharing your time with Brian's young son... good stuff.

Looks like a great trip! Congratulations!

Great report, thanks for posting this.

Lovely report. Very enjoyable reading, especially about the young lad. Thank you

Great report! Thanks for posting it.

Congratulations on a nice hunt.Thanks for the report.

Well done. Congratulations and thanks for sharing your report, enjoyed reading it.

Charles,

Good stuff. See you in Reno.

Mark

Great hunting and story Doc. I am really envious of you mate! I love those mixed bag hunts with a kid for company! That kid will never forget you for the rest of his life!

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Charlie congrats on yet another great safari and great ele hunting.

Out of interest on the lion pics I for one cannot see any collar on him at all in the first or second pictures and just in the third!? Easy to see how mistakes could happen. Makes it tougher for PHs and teams.

Again congrats and look forward to the next one.

Charlie

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Great read. Thanks for posting.

Great write up. Looks like it was a great trip.

Great hunt! Great report!

What a great trip and report. Your prior experience and relaxed attitude allowed you to go with the flow and let the safari take on a life of its own, to everbody’s benefit.
Great photos and a nice read. Thanks for sharing it with us.

crbutler: Great hunt and great animals. I have hunted that very same area of Gwanda and stayed in the very same guest bedroom. In fact, I met the Clark's one time, as they are very good friends with my PH John Hunt and his wife Debbie, who also own a farm in that area by the name of Georgia. And yes, there are some BIG Leopard in that area of Zim.

Nice report, thanks for sharing. You had a heck of a good hunt, congrats!