28 July 2008, 15:19
Ahmed Sultan21 Days in Masailand with Luke Samaras (Pics added)
Hunter: Ahmed & Mahmood Sultan
Observer: Shoaib Sultan (2 days)
Area of Hunt: Simanjiro Kitangare (Massailand, Tanzania)
Outfitter: Luke Samaras Safaris.
Booking Agent: Wendell Reich.
PH: Piet Fouri
Rifles: 375 H&H Mag and 7MM Rem Mag
Bullets: 300 gr. Swift A Frame and PMP Solids for 375, 160 gr. PMP Soft for 7MM.
Date of Hunt: 1st July to 21st July 2008
Animals Successfully Hunted: Lion, Buffalo (Four), Lesser Kudu, Thomson Gazelle, Grant Gazelle, Coke’s Hartebeest, Dikdik, Oryx, Wildebeest (Three), Zebra (Two).
Animals Hunted but not Taken: Gerenuk.
Background: This was our fifth African Safari and for my father the third attempt for his long desired African Lion trophy. He had previously hunted Lion in Luangwa in 2006, where we could not find any shootable male in 21 days of hunting and in Zambezi valley where he missed his chance on a good lion due to scope failure. For me, having shot good trophies of both lion and leopard, the main draw was big buffalo and EA plains game. We decided not to hunt leopard this time with an understanding that should an opportunity present itself, we would not say no.
This hunt was booked through Wendell Reich, who went out of his way to cater for some of our rather unusual requests and helped us in making this hunt more enjoyable. We found everything as we were told by Wendell.
A special thanks to Mr.Aziz (AR member) who very kindly suggested Wendell’s name to me when I was looking for a Lion hunt last year.
Travel: Emirates Airline’s flight as always was a joy. The stopover in Dubai was 3 hours and from duty free shop we bought some candies for Masai Children and cigarette for our camp staff. No problems in getting through customs upon arrival in Dar-es-salam but the Dar-Arusha connecting Precision Air flight was delayed three hours, which was unnecessarily tiring on us.
We arrived in Arusha on 28th June 2008 the plan was to spend two days in Ngorongoro Crater before the start of hunt. The trip was arranged through Mark Young with Taganyika Trekkers. Our photo safari guide picked us from Kilimanjaro Airport for transfer to Mount Meru Lodge for overnight. We briefly met Adam Clements at the airport who was there to receive his hunting clients. In the morning our photo guide came to pick us for the trip to crater, the road is newly built and in good condition. We made it to the crater before midday and checked into Serena hotel that neatly blends into its surrounding with a very good ambiance. The crater is neat on National Geographic channel and simply awesome in actual. We saw four of the big five with the exception of Leopard and a whole bunch of other animals during the two four hour sessions in crater. On 30th morning we headed back to Arusha for our transfer to the Hunting camp. We arranged for our PH to meet us at Monduli Junction, the place on Arusha-Crater road from where we turn for our hunting camp. From Monduli junction it took us 2½ hours on dirt road which went through Lokasali area to reach our hunting camp. After lunch and settling into camp, we went for sighting our rifle which shot perfectly.
Area and Camp: Our hunting area was Simanjiro Game Controlled Area, which is east of both Lokasali and Lobo area and a tiny part of it touches the Trangire National park. The camp Simanjiro Kitangare is a classic traditional tented East African safari hunting camp, it was simple but comfortable. The food was excellent and the staff was the very courteous and took great care of us.
View of Kilimanjiro from Camp
Note on the PH: Piet Fouri is a South African and has been hunting in Tanzania for more than 10 years. We found him to be an excellent PH with great hunting abilities and the best thing about him is that he was always thinking of our comfort and how to make the experience more enjoyable for us, he is an excellent human being. He has his plan but was always open to our ideas and we always discussed our strategy. He is easily the best PH that we have ever hunted with and it is worth mentioning that we have hunted with some really good PHs on our previous hunts.
Hunting
Our main objective on this safari was to hunt lion, we had a discussion with our PH about the strategy and it was simple, we would shoot Zebra and Wildebeest for baits and once our baits are up we would check them and hunt for good quality trophies of Buffalos and EA Plains game.
Day 1: We started at first light from camp after a heartily breakfast and headed to Red dam, a water reservoir about ½ hour drive away from camp. We found fresh tracks of a buffalo herd that has drank from the dam in night. We followed the tracks on vehicle and ten minutes later saw part of the herd on a small hill about 600 yards away. We disembarked the vehicle and 20 minutes later after a careful stalk, using trees for cover, made it to 60 yards of eight bulls which were all sitting down in the grass. There were some really wide bulls the widest being 46†but with soft bosses. The hard boss ones were only 38-40†range, we decided to leave them and head back to the truck. As we proceeded further into the concession, we were seeing game everywhere, Zebra and Wildebeest in their hundreds, Grants, Giraffe, Impala and Dikdik abundant, also saw Eland, oryx and Hartebeest. We decided to shoot a Zebra, which was a simple matter and our 7MM Mag roared and brought its first animal down in Massailand without any drama. We now had our first lion bait, which our PH decided to put in one of more productive area of the concession.
Day 2: My uncle who had been observer on this trip was scheduled to leave today in the afternoon to head back to Arusha. We decided to go to Simanjiro plains (a very open grass land) to shoot Wildebeest. It was very easy with wildebeest scattered throughout the plains, we ended up shooting 2 bulls.
On the way back to camp Piet decided to take a short cut which goes through a plateau, we saw Hartebeest there and decided to give them a try. It was a hard stalk, which was busted at 250 Yards and the Kangoni ran away. We made another attempt but it was not possible to get any closer than 340 yards. My father decided to take a shot from there but Piet was not sure if it was a good idea, anyways he let him take the shot and the Kangoni ran 40 Yards before falling dead.
We had plenty of bait on the cruiser but first we head back to camp for lunch and to say my uncle goodbye. After lunch we put up two more baits, one of the bait was about 600 yards from Red dam near where we had seen buffalo bulls on the first morning. After setting the baits we were heading back when we saw two Buffalo Bulls, Ninjas as our PH called them, trot away from the vehicle. We got off and stalked them but found them to be in 38-40†class and decided to head back but our tracker saw a herd of buffalos further 300 yards away, we decided to have a look. We went up to 200 Yards and spotted a good bull in between them, which we decided to take but the light was fading away, we had little time. Piet opted to walk directly up to them and see how close we can get. As soon as we broke cover the buffalos got aware of us and formed a line facing us ready for flight. At 160 yards I told Piet that it was good enough and took a shot at the bull. They all ran away with the shot leaving us guessing what has happened, we went up to the place where the bull was standing and found blood 15 yards away. We followed and 200 yards away found the bull standing beside a bush, he was sick, I had to shoot two more time before he gave up. He was a hard bossed 42â€, my first above forty inch buffalo and I was pleased.
Day 3: We started early as we have to check existing baits and put more baits. The first was the Zebra bait, we found a Hyena standing on the side of road about 600 yards away from the bait, I wanted to shoot it but Piet said that there could be Lion on the bait and we must check it first. He was right, there were 14 lionesses and 1 young lion lying scattered around the bait tree. They have completely decimated the Zebra bait, Piet was not happy. There was nothing left of the Zebra to speak of and we decided to leave it as it is. One of the other lion bait was hit by Leopard, we figured that it was a male and female feeding together. We build a blind and sat for an hour when the Leopard climbed the tree in broad day light. It was a huge female and her adult size cub, which we mistook for a male and female. We got some excellent footage though.
Day 4: We checked Baits and hunted buffalo along the way. Because of the open terrain and Massai population the Buffalos were limited to Red dam area and the different Korongos that frequented the concession.
The Red Dam
Day 5: The bait near the Red dam was hit, the pug marks and the 8 to 9†long hairs left on the bait indicated that it was a good male.
We were in business, our PH quickly built what I would say as the best natural blind I have ever seen. We went back to camp for lunch and found that the other hunters in camp have four male lions on their bait too and they actually saw them when they went in the morning to check bait. They said one was definitely shootable. We sat in blind that evening, it was very interesting as there were francolin everywhere and they were calling. The lion didn’t turned up, we decided to come early next morning and try our luck.
Day 6: We woke up 3:45 a.m. and drove to the blind, on the way in we didn’t saw the lion. By 5:00 a.m. we were in blind waiting to hear any noise. It was a no show again but in the morning on bait inspection the unmistakable long mane hairs told us that he has been there when we were at camp and probably ran away hearing the vehicle come in this morning.
We were seeing lots of Grants Gazelles all over the concession but we asked our PH to only let us shoot a very good trophy and at times it was very difficult to pass all those good ones. Piet finally saw the right one, after a careful stalk in open area I shot him from 240 yards and it drop dead. The PMP 7MM bullets are loaded very hot and they do knock the animal straight down on impact.
We went into blind at 4 p.m. but before going in we marked a path from Red dam to blind so that we can walk in the morning to avoid being detected by the lion. He didn’t turned up in the evening and we left for camp ½ hour after sunset.
Day 7: We woke up 3:30 a.m. and drove to the Red dam, from there we walked as quietly as possible in to the blind, we didn’t hear any noise. It was a no show again but in the morning on bait inspection again the unmistakable long mane hairs told us that he has been there. We also found his track at Red dam where he went for a drink. We decided that if the lion doesn’t show up in the evening, we will spend the whole night in blind to give ourselves the best chance for shooting him in the morning. We headed for buffalo hunting but soon found Vultures circling in the air about 1 KM away. We thought that the lion might have caught something and we may be in with a chance, we moved in for a closer inspection and found a dead buffalo killed by poachers with its head chopped off and the rest of the body left behind to rot, what a sorry sight.
The other hunter in camp shot a good black maned lion in the morning and they were very pleased, it was the oldest of the four males that were on their bait, the other three being young lions were not an option for us. It is worth mentioning that usually Masailand lions have a full mane coaler at the age of 4 years and they are very hard to resist as they look gorgeous.
At 5:00 pm we were sitting in blind again.
Day 8: The Lion didn’t showed the whole night and it left us wondering if he knows that we were there. We sat as quite as possible, it was very cold and sitting motionless for 15 hours does take its toll, especially at my father’s age.
We headed back to camp tired and went to sleep soon after hitting the bed. I was awoken by a commotion outside my tent, on inquiry I found that the attendant was coming to our tent to wake us up for lunch when he saw a Black Mamba, he called for help and they actually managed to kill it.
PH Francois Loubser
After shower and lunch we again went to the blind for another night. Though the lion didn’t showed up but we had many Hyenas visiting our bait during the night which kept us interested.
Day 9: We decided not to sit in the blind today to give ourselves a rest and to see if the lion comes in night when we are not there.
We were not seeing Tommies in our concession so we asked Piet about them and he told us that there are very few present in the concession but we would go to the very open plains to look for them. We decided to go hunt Tommy today and headed towards the open plains. We were very lucky as we found a herd of Tommy with three shotable males. They were about 500 yards away but due to their small size looked extremely far. We stalked them to 200 yards but they ran away as there was no cover just the grassland. My father decided that the occasion calls for a long shot, we stalked them again to 225 yards but due to the small size of the animal they looked further than that. My father was amazed when I told him the yardage after checking through the built in range finder on my bino, he thought that they were at least 350 yards. Anyways the tommy drop dead on the shot much to the delight of everyone.
Day 10: We checked baits, the lion didn’t hit the Red dam bait again. Piet concluded that the lion is not clever but just being lucky and he may be coming to Red dam from a long way away, that is why he comes late at night and leaves early. There is lots of open areas and Masai villages near red dam and the Korongos, where the lion usually spend their day time, were quite far away.
We were seeing Oryx through out the concession with the biggest herd that we saw being about fifty animals, it was an impressive sight with all those spear like horns. However, they were very spooky and would start running on seeing the vehicle. This particular group was standing in a fairly open area and we spotted them from a KM away without them noticing us, a careful stalk to 250 yards and my father shot the bull perfectly, he ran about fifty yards before falling.
Day 11: We again checked baits in the morning, the lion of Red dam was on a walk about and no where to be found. We shot a Dikdik in the morning.
One of the bait in a different part of concession had been hit and the mane hair on bait promised a good male. We built a blind and went back to camp for lunch. At 4:30 we were in the blind and the lion came 15 minutes before dark. Piet had a look at the lion and said that he is marginal, he is a lion that we would not be too proud of when we see him on the ground. It was a difficult decision for my father but he decided not to shoot and to continue hunting for the Red dam lion.
Day 12: We checked baits but nothing new. We decided to ask Masai about the lion at the Red dam. We went from village to village trying to figure where he lives. After four enquires at different villages, one Masai told us of a spring where he saw big lion tracks yesterday. We went up to that spring and found the lion tracks, we measured it and found it to be exactly the same size as Red dam lion. We followed the tracks, it was difficult going with all that grass and eventually lost them. There was a very big Korongo in the direction of where the tracks were heading and there was also another small Masai village near by. When we asked about lion at the village, they told us that they often see a lioness with a cub near the Korongo but they have not seen any male recently. We went in the Korongo to have a look but found nothing. Later that day we saw a very big herd of buffalos and decided to have look, we found a decent old bull which my father shot and for him it was his first above 40†bull. We decided to put the buffalo as bait about 300 yards away from the Korongo in a fairly open area.
Day 13: We checked Baits, the lioness had been near our buffalo bait but didn’t touch it. We decided to shoot a Zebra and put it 1 mile further up than the Buffalo bait. This bait was about 8 miles away from the Red dam.
Day 14: We went to check our buffalo bait near the Korongo nothing there, we went further to the Zebra bait and the lioness had fed on Zebra but no male. At least we had hope that the lioness will call the lion in. We shot a third wildebeest to replenish our other baits.
Day 15: We were running out of lion bait and decided to shoot a buffalo. We started really early in dark from camp and it was just light enough to see when our tracker saw three Ninjas standing 80 yards from the road. They had been eating in corn field at night and were returning to their day time hiding place in the korongo but we caught them in fairly open ground. Piet stopped the car behind a bush, we all got off the truck and walked behind Piet with no cover between us and the buffalos. The buffalos just stood there not sure what we were, we could clearly see two of them but the third was behind a bush. We walked ten paces to the right and we could see the third one, who was the biggest, Piet said that he is mature and above 40â€, we decided to take him but my father couldn’t see the shoulder, so we walked 10 paces further to the right and now the shot was available which my father took. On the shot all three ran and we followed, it was fairly open area. We saw the three bulls going in a depression about 250 yards away and out of our sight. When we reached there we saw a large bush in the depression and a Buffalo sitting about 50 yards ahead of the bush in the open facing the other direction, Piet said that this must be our injured buffalo and his friends must have left him, we will try to get closer using the bush and shoot him again. We made it to the side of bush and my father shot the sitting buffalo that jumped up on the shot and turned to face us, my father reloaded and shot him again this time in the head which put him straight down. We were about to congratulate my father when we heard a rumble in the bush 10 yards away from us and all of a sudden two buffalo bull went crashing away (lucky for us). We saw them go 100 yards away then they stopped and turned to look back. We thought OK, now all three buffalos are accounted for and we will walk up to the dead buffalo but once again there was a rumble in the bush beside us. Piet immediately put himself between us and the bush and asked us to fall back. We went back 30 yards behind a tree and Piet followed walking back ward facing the bush with his 500 Nitro Express double at ready. The situation was: the first buffalo that we fired on was in the bush, we didn’t know weather he was dead or alive the second buffalo (which we thought was the buffalo that we initially shot) was dead about 80 yards from us. We waited 10 minutes but heard nothing more from the bush. The ground around the bush was all open, so we made a circle but couldn’t see buffalo. Piet asked us to stay behind as he taught that it would be best if he could sneak in the bush and shoot the buffalo if he is alive. My father didn’t approved of piet going alone but I convinced him that it is the best option for everyone’s sake, We watched Piet slowly go alone into the bush (our hat off to his courage and professionalism), after a while he returned and said the bull is lying on the other end of the bush and he thinks that it is dead. He asked my father to walk with him and they were 10 yards from the bush when he showed my father the bull which was lying, my father shot him again but the bull didn’t reacted, he was already dead. What excitement we had, our PH showed his worth and proved what a great professional he is. The icing on the cake was that the first buffalo was a massive 44†hard bossed buffalo, he was so big in body size that it made his horns look small. The second bull was a normal 38†bull with similar shape horns as the first one but he was a dwarf in every aspect when compared to the first bull. I managed to get some excellent footage of the whole hunt.
With two buffalos, we had enough bait. We put two more baits in another part of the concession and added half of one buffalo to the Zebra bait where we had lioness feeding and decided to head to Landanai, another of Luke’s concession that he uses to hunt Gerenuk and Lesser Kudu.
Day 16: We started 4 o’clock in the morning and reached Landanai at 7 am. We saw 2 Lesser Kudu males on the road just before camp, the rifle came out but Piet said that they were young. The place was just stunning, there was a fly camp setup for the hunt otherwise Luke doesn’t have any presence in this area, a reason for a lot more poaching activity in this area.
The game was spooky, Grants who never run in Kitangare area were running from miles away and all you could see was dust left behind by them. We started hunting after a cup of coffee and saw a Lesser Kudu 10 minutes in the hunt a careful stalk and I shot him in the neck as he peeped through a bush looking at us.
Later we hunted the whole day for Gerenuk but could only see four animals: 2 females, a baby and a young male. My father decided that considering the scarce population in the area he didn’t wanted to hunt Gerenuk any further and would like to return to Kitangare camp after dinner. Piet was very tired but never objected to my father’s wish and we drove back the same day.
Day 17: We drove straight to our Zebra / Buffalo bait where the lioness has earlier fed, as we were driving in, I could see the mane hair on the partially eaten Buffalo. The tracks and hair suggested that this was the same lion that had earlier fed on Red dam, only this time the area was lot closer to a really thick Korongo and we knew that he would be lot more comfortable coming on this bait. We quickly built a blind and head back to camp for lunch.
My father at the bait you can also see the blind at the back.
We were back in blind at 5 pm. My father sitting on right side of the blind with his rifle ready and on a makeshift rest pointing at the bait. It was very quite and unlike the Red dam there were no francolins in this area. At 6:30 the silence was broken by a roar 100 yards behind the blind. Only those who have heard a lion roar at close quarters can appreciate the depth and loudness of male lion roar, his call was answered by the lioness who roared from the Korongo beyond the bait. It was surprising that the lion was coming from behind the blind as we expected him to come from completely the opposite direction. Piet took his double in his hand. Few minutes passed by and we heard another roar, this time closer, then we could hear him approach the blind, I had left my movie camera on to record the roar and in silence, the slight noise of the motor of camera, which I never noticed before, was making me regret that decision. Then I heard him right next to me, may be three feet away, my rifle which I kept with me just in case was resting in the corner of blind, the lion took a sniff at the blind right where my rifle was and then I could hear him claiming territory on the blind, he passed the blind and sat out of our sight behind a small ant hill and again started roaring. His every roar was answered by the lioness from a distance. Just before dark he walked to the bait and that was the first time we saw him, Piet said to my father “he is a beauty take himâ€. The light was very bad, my father rested the illuminated dot of Swarovski scope on the crease just behind the shoulder and I could see the lion summersault with the shot, he spinned around trying to bite the area where the bullet hit him then he dashed towards the blind. We thought that he was coming for us that got Piet standing with his double ready, I also picked my rifle and bolted a round but the lion swayed to right halfway to the blind and started heading away. I and Piet stepped on the chair to get a better view but couldn’t see the lion in bad light, I tried to put the powerful surefire torch on him but we couldn’t see him. The lion gave a few growls, he was not more than 75 yards away from us, after that there was silence. We waited for the truck which took 10 minutes to arrive, it was completely dark by than. The area had very few bushes but the grass was knee high, we decided to go on the back of cruiser and found the lion dead where we heard him last 75 yards from the blind. He was a beauty, one that my father can be proud of. He was very happy, moments like those are hard to come by in life, I am lucky to witness such joy. After pictures we loaded him and headed back to camp for a grand Kabubi, which will remain with us for ever.
Day 18: We hunted for buffalo looking for that magical hard boss 45 incher but the best we could see was 42-43 inchers. In the evening we decided to end our hunt early and took our PH and the whole vehicle staff along the game scout for a two day visit to the Trangire National park and stayed in Sopa lodge. We saw lots of elephant in the park with few very close encounter but the other game concentration was not more than our hunting area. After spending two days in park we headed back to our hunting camp where we stayed one last night. What a great time we had, the only complain: it was over too quickly.
Downside of the hunt: We saw many resident hunters, which at time was very annoying. Once we were just settling into our lion blind when we heard a car approaching and found out that they were resident hunters coming in following our tracks to investigate if we were poachers! The other time we saw a Land Cruiser on the Simanjiro plains and we went in to investigate and found a European couple with some locals, they were hunting on residents permit and when our game scout searched their vehicle he found a female Oryx and two babies of Grants Gazelle that were shot by them. When the game scout told them that as resident hunters they are not allowed to hunt Oryx and they have shot a female Oryx which is prohibited in any case, their reply was: they didn’t knew about it. We first took them to camp and later our game scout took them to Arusha where they were formally arrested. We also found a buffalo carcass with its head chopped off by poachers. The Samaras runs a great operation in their area but perhaps a bit more attention / efforts on anti poaching activity is needed in the area.
Some Pics from the Parks:
Free 500grains 