Palmer
It's posts like yours and Forrest's and Judge G's and others that make me come back occassionally to read AR.

Enjoyed the post mucho much!Thanks

Alan,

It was a pleasure to meet you at the bush air strip, and I am glad to see you have had a great hunt with my friend Pierre.

I have taken the liberty of adding your hunt to our Hunting Page.

Palmer's hunt report

Great story and great hunt. Way to go!!!

That pic of the hippo is awesome! Looks like an amazing hunt, congratulations on your success.

How big was the buff?

DTH

Palmer

I am glad you had an enjoyable hunt, and I like your lion.

What did the sable measure?

Full grown heyena can go up to 175 lbs...


Mike

500grains

I did not measure the sable. There were bigger ones out there (sheephunter killed a beauty last year) but I was happy with this one since I wasn't expecting it.

I have a little story to go with the sable that with your elephant experience you might appreciate.

It was early in the safari and we had just come upon 3 elephants that we were not expecting to see. They were about 100 yards out and behind some small trees. One was much larger bodied than the other two and when it turned so I could see the tusks I almost fainted. They nearly dragged the ground. I thought for sure I was going to get a shot at a hundred pounder.

Suddenly the trackers got very excited. I thought it odd that they were just now seeing this monster elephant. Twiga set up the sticks. I wondered why were they going to have me shoot from 100 yards but I slid over and then Dominic handed me my 375 and motioned for me to give him the 470. Pierr'e was looking through the glasses then said "Allen shoot that sable". I had not even seen the sable but with that monster elephant right there I couldn't understand why they wanted me to shoot a sable.

I said "Pierr'e it will scare off that big elephant." He said simply "cow". Then I realized that the big elephant was in fact a big cow with some little elephants around it that made it look like a monster. Its tusks were long but quite thin.

It illustrated my difficulty determining scale. The trees in that area of the Selous were not very tall and proportionally the big cow looked like a monster to me especially when compared to the smaller elephants with it.

Palmer, I agree it can be hard to judge elephants. They seem much bigger when they are standing with their ears fanned out than they do when on the ground. And a big old cow can look like a bull, with only some subtle differences in skull shape, girth of the tusks, and the teats giving away the gender of the elephant, and those of us who do not look at elephants all the time have a hard time noticing those differences at a quick glance.

DTH
Sorry I can't answer your question about the width of the buff. I didn't measure it.

He was bigger than any of the previous 4 I shot so he will probably bump the current mount into the garage.

Palmer,

Thanks for the report and photos.



Hamdeni

Truly a great Safari. Nice Lion.

Palmer,
TOTALY AWESOME!!!!!!

Thanks Doc52, bulldog563 and Hamdeni

I was very lucky to be at the right place at the right time.

The trophies were certainly what I was there for but the thing I remember the most is the scenery and general remoteness and wildness of this area.

This place was reported to be one of the favorite haunts of the late George Hoffman who is buried in the state I live in - in fact I brought back some sand from an elephant watering hole to spread on his grave.

I plan on booking a 7 day cape buffalo hunt in september 2007 with pierre von tonder in tanzania hunting the selous. His booking agent is jeff martinell from luxuryhunts.

So PVT doesnt work with Ray anymore?

I really cant answer that because i dont no what i do no is after talking to jeff martinell about a 7 day cape buffalo hunt in the selous in sept. 2007 he explained to me that he is booking hunts for pierre van tonder.