30 August 2015, 17:14
Tim HeraldCAPRIVI:
Day 1 cameraman missed flight and will arrive 2nd day. We lose a hunt day.
Pieter and Uys have a friend, Lindie, in camp. She is a close friend that lives in Windhoek, and she just wanted to come up to their camp and see what the whole hunting thing is all about. The guys told me that with all the anti-hunting social media blowups over the past year, they have invited a number of their non-hunting friends up to experience a hunt, but until Lindie, no one had taken them up on it.
She is a very “high heel” kind of girl (her own words), but she was settled in and seemed to be enjoying the first few days she had been in camp.
This is to be an “own use” hunt where we look for a non-trophy elephant, and it is non-exportable. The communities get all the meat, the skin, and the trophy fee, and the Namibian gov’t retains the ivory. There is also an own use hippo tag available if we are lucky with the elephant and have time to find a river horse.
Day 2 sit around camp all day waiting on cameraman. He shows up in mid afternoon, we go for a drive in evening down by Chobe River. See 2-3 groups of elephants, hundreds of zebra, and a herd of maybe 1,000 buffalo across on Botswana side.
Day 3- we get in elephant tracks after a couple of hours of looking for lone bull tracks. Within 15 minutes we are in various herds in a thick, forested area. We look over many elephants, but the only big bull we see is still somewhat young and has fairly long tusks likely in the high 30-lbs range. He has potential to someday be a trophy bull, so we leave him alone.
We go to river area and talk to locals about hippos. One man takes us to where he says they always sleep during the day, and it is obvious the hippos do lie there in the reeds, but they are not to be found.
We spend the afternoon looking for fresh tracks in a new area, and find almost nothing, so we know not to waste time there again. My cameraman is not feeling well at all, and I am a bit worried that he has malaria as he had been in the swamps of Mozambique for a couple of weeks.
Day 4: We hit another area and they guys decide they only want to follow lone bull or small bull groups- no big herds. My cameraman is much worse off this morning, and we give him malaria medicine and doxy in case he might have tick bite fever.
We find the track of a big old bull and an askari and begin tracking at 7:15AM. After many miles of fast tracking in the sand, the guys feel we have gained on them a good bit. Droppings are fresh, but not steaming, and we find a pan where they took a mud bath during daylight hours.
We continue to follow, through a couple of small villages where we quickly stop to talk to the residents. A couple said they saw the bulls an hour ahead of us, so we continue.
It is getting hot and we expect them to begin slowing down to feed, but they seem to just be walking the whole time. Finally about 11:30 they begin to wander a bit and feed. The trackers say they have picked up another bull, and we are close. Then they tell us the elephants are walking again, they must have heard or smelled us.
This continues for 45 minutes and the wind is not steady from one direction. We are bumping them, they walk, stop, listen and smell, and they move off in front of us again. About noon, Pieter says he wants to sit in the shade and take a 10 minute break to hopefully let the elephants stop and calm down, and maybe we can get lucky and find them resting. After our rest, we get back on the tracks and within 10 minutes the trackers spot the elephants ahead. We are in very thick scrub bush, and the elephants are within 40 yards when we see them.
After we glass them, we see that the closest is a mature old bull that has a broken tusk. He is exactly what we hoped for, and we confirmed with the area game scout that he is OK for an own use bull, and we get the green light.
I can only see two, and they are facing away from us. They are standing under a big shade tree flapping their ears to stay cool, and Pieter and I move in a bit. At 25 yards, I notice the closest bull has turned 90 degrees and he is facing to our left. The wind is good and fairly strong, so Pieter says he wants us to move in a bit closer.
We have to get on our hands and knees to crawl under some brush a couple of times, and we get to 15 yards undetected. The bull is still standing broadside, and Pieter and I talk about the situation. He tells me to stand up, and quickly take the side brain shot before the bulls turns to face us. We agree that if the elephant doesn’t go straight down, we will both shoot immediately for the shoulder- heart/lungs.
So I take a deep breath, come to my feet as I am moving slightly to my right, and Pieter is doing the same just off my left shoulder. The bull doesn’t detect the movement, and I settle the dot a hands width in front of the ear hole, and I pull the front trigger and let the 500-grain CEB solid fly.
The bull looked like someone literally pulled all 4 legs out from under him. He collapsed dead. Pieter and I ran up behind him, I put an insurance shot in the top of his head, and it was complete.
He was exactly what we had hoped for. The guys estimated him around 40 years old, he had a respectable tusk on his right, and his left was broken just a bit out from the lip.
We paid our respects to the old bull, took photos to remember him by, and then we sent our trackers to get a couple of teams of skinners to butcher the elephant to be taken to a couple of villages for distribution.
Not sure how Brett the cameraman made it. He really struggled all day, and he looked just terrible. He hung in there and got it done.
While the elephant was being butchered, We cut up some temple meat and roasted it on a small fire. I have eaten elephant before in more prepared dishes that was OK, but I expected this to be terrible. Surprisingly the meat was very good and tasted much like a beef steak. While we ate I asked Lindie what she thought of the elephant hunt as she made every step with us on the 5 hour tracking journey.
She told me that she hadn’t expected to have to walk so far to catch up with an elephant, especially after we had gotten into them the day before in only 15 minutes, but she did enjoy it and realized it can be a lot of work.
She said when I shot (she was about 10 yards behind us with the trackers and taking photos) and the elephant went down, she almost came to tears, but then she was OK with the whole thing as she knew what was to happen to the meat, etc. I explained that for me to there is sadness when you shoot an animal as grand as an elephant, and that is a sign of how much we respect them. I do believe a proper tracking elephant hunt is the purest form of hunting, and I think it was a great thing for her to experience first hand. She said she definitely understood why we love hunting big game, and it was not what she expected. This was a really cool added aspect to our hunt.
In Caprivi there is a list of villages on a roster and meat distribution is rotated between villages so everyone gets a share and the system is fair.
After dark we took the trunk to a local Induna and presented it to him since the areas big chief was gone. He was a very nice old guy and told us that he and the community appreciate hunters and the meat and the money that they bring in to the locals. After that we arrived back at camp very late, had dinner and stayed up way too late celebrating the successful day.
Day 4 we got up and took a trailer of meat to one of the small local villages for distribution. The headman there was very friendly as were the rest of the people gathered and waiting. We talked for a while and they too expressed appreciation for the meat from hunters, and they told us they understood that they must take care of the animals and especially the elephants for the own use program to work, and it certainly seems to be working.
On another good note, Brett is feeling much better, but still isn’t 100%. He eats some breakfast, and that is first meal he has had in a day and a half.
In the afternoon we took some meat to a tiny village we had passed through and talked to some ladies while we were tracking the elephants. We had promised them if we killed one, we would bring them some nyama.
We spent the afternoon with the 2 old ladies and their families. One lady cooked some elephant meat with some tubers from water lilies, and we all visited. They showed us how they were making baskets and plates from reeds and grass, and generally welcomed us into their homes. There were 3 little girls all under 3 years old, and when they saw the meat they came running.
They grabbed a handful each and sat in the dirt and ate like there was no tomorrow. That is a few minutes of my life that I will never forget. There was no doubt that we had done a good thing by taking that elephant and providing meat for hundreds of people that are literally starved for protein. We shared some of the meat and ate with them, but I felt guilty eating meat that they could have used.
That afternoon was a true lifetime experience.
[url=http://s612.photobucket.com/user/Tim_Herald/media/IMG_9234_zps5mcwew3n.jpg.html]
We all talked to Lindie about the elephant hunt an dother hunting, and we could tell she was warming up to it all. It was obvious she was having fun on the safari, so MORNING OF DAY 5- I asked her if she wanted to hunt something herself. We had own use permits for warthog, impala, wildebeest and kudu. She told me with a big smile that shoe thought she would like to give it a try, so we all decided to try to get her an animal at the first opportunity.
We left camp about 7AM to drive to an area to look for hippo in the backwaters of the Chobe River. On the way, we say a group of 7 impala rams, so Pieter and I took Lindie after them. We played cat and mouse for over a half hour, but they were in fairly thick cover, and every time one stopped in the open, it was a trophy. We were supposed to take non-trophies for own use.
A half hour or so later was eased up to a big open area that had been wet recently and had some green grass sprouting. There was a warthog feeding, so we thought this would be a perfect scenario. Angel the tracker, Pieter and I again set out with Lindie, and after a short stalk, we got just inside 100 yards.
She put Pieter’s .375 on the sticks, waited for the big to turn, and she promptly dropped it with a perfect shoulder shot. We were all ecstatic, and Lindie ad a huge smile and an immediate case of the giggles. You could tell she was truly pleased and enjoyed the experience, and right then a new hunter was born. (The only negative was that my cameraman double punched record and the actual kill shot was not on video.) We will try to get her another animal or two before we leave.
No hippos that morning, and that afternoon
The next morning we started out for hippos, and since she did such a good job on the warthog and seemed to really enjoy it, I asked Lindie if she wanted to shoot my hippo if we got in the right situation?
She didn’t take me seriously, but finally I convinced her that I was and would be more than happy to let her have the tag. She was basically speechless, and then she got really excited.
We found two pods of hippos in different pools, but we couldn’t find any out of the water. Things didn’t look good for that scenario to play out, and since this was also an own use tag, we decided to go on and try to shoot one in the water because after all it was about providing meat to the locals.
We decided to go for the biggest pod as we figured that would give us a better chance at finding an old bull. There were probably a 12-15 hippos in the pod. Pieter, Lindie and I crawled up to the edge of the river pool, and the pod was between 50-75 yards in front of us. Pieter and I studied them for a long time trying to decide on a bull. There was one hippo we both were sure was a big bull but he stayed submerged except for eyes and nose most of the time. There was another that we finally decided was a shooter, and he had a recent cut behind his right ear. This made him easy to identify.
Some of the hippos made their way out on the far bank, and the one we wanted got about half way out but before Lindie could shoot, two others walked in front of the bull. Then they all went back down.
This went on for almost 2 hours, and finally the bull gave her a broadside view of his head. Pieter told Lindie to shoot when she was ready, and she made the perfect shot and the bull died instantly. Lindie was very excited and incredibly happy, and no doubt that was more fun than me shooting the bull.
I could see it just under the surface in the shallow water. The trackers took a makoro over and tied onto the hippo and we were able to pull it out with the Land Cruiser for photos. All of this meat also went o villages to feed many more locals.
The final day we went out and filmed some bits and pieces we needed in the morning, and decided to do a game drive the last couple hours of the afternoon down by the Chobe River. Wonderful trip all around. I made new friends, shared new experiences, and visited a new area of Africa. I feel blessed and can't wait to go back...
And yes, to the lucky beans! 
