I was asked by John to post this Report on his behalf. Like many folks, John reads the forum on a regular basis but does not post. I'll add some pictures as soon as they are available from the video of the hunt. Make sure to check out the "other cool stuff" they did while in the Zambezi Valley. Bill


HUNT SUMMARY

Date of Hunt: September 2005

Location: Dande North Safari Area, Zimbabwe

Animals Taken: Buffalo Bull (Dagga Boy); Bushbuck

PH/Outfitter: Buzz Charlton of Charlton & McCallum Safaris
Email: buzz@cmsafaris.com
Mobile Phone (from US): 011 263 4 91201487
Website: CM Safaris Website


REPORT

Travel:
My hunt with Buzz was absolutely fantastic! I booked the flight through Dawn at Custom Travel and she really went above and beyond for me this time as I experienced a delay just before my trip. Custom Travel furnishes a great deal of info for those going to Africa, including firearm permits, and with people like Dawn looking out for you one can rest assured that getting to and from Africa will be very easy and there will be no surprises that you’re unprepared for. As usual, South African Airways provided excellent service. There was no trouble at all getting a visa or firearm permit in Harare, but hunters going to Zim should take three copies of the Temporary Import Permit, I had only one and none were available there. The officers were very helpful and hand copied the pertinent info from the permit I had, stamped my copy, and I walked outside to find Buzz and Shaun waiting for me.

What a great pleasure it was meeting both of them and what an extremely good experience it was to hunt with both of them. Buzz and appy PH Shaun are truly the epitome of Professional Hunter, being expert at the many and varied facets of their work and proved to be honorable gentlemen of the highest integrity. It is my very great fortune to know Buzz and highly recommend him to anybody looking to book a first rate hunt with an excellent outfit. Buzz is the type of guy who will do anything possible to make sure his clients have exactly the type of hunting experience they came for. I stayed the night in Buzz’s guesthouse, very comfortable and kept spotless by Latwin, Buzz’s maid and Royal’s wife.

We got to Prince Charles Airport early the next morning to find Leigh and Simone, two lovely pilots, meticulously checking their planes in preparation for their first flights of the day and what a bonus our hop to Dande was! A bird’s-eye view of Zim mountain ranges, river beds, and farmlands illuminated in the early morning sunlight was truly a sight to behold. I’ve never felt safer in a small plane than with Leigh at the controls and when we touched down on the bush strip I wished that the flight had lasted longer than an hour or so.

Camp & Related:
We were met by Royal, Buzz’s driver extraordinaire, in the trusty Cruiser and took off to pick up trackers Cryton and Tino and Oscar, the Zim Parks Ranger for our hunt. Mukanga camp is very nice, situated in a perfect setting and complemented by a full staff overseen by Muno, camp manager. Quite a bit more luxury than I’m used to at home with staff doing all laundry, cleaning, and preparing fantastic meals; Muno runs a tight ship!

We sighted my .375 right away, had a quick lunch then set out for our first walk. I’d told Buzz that I was as much interested in seeing the land as hunting and boy did he deliver! We did no diesel stalking and due to the abundance of buffalo did not have to spend much time riding around looking for tracks. We covered a lot of ground on foot and for me that is the purest way to experience the splendor of nature. Dande is an absolutely spectacular, rugged area with lots of exposed rock ridges, ancient baobab trees, some areas of thick jess, numerous river beds, and dotted with picturesque springs. The water from these springs is I think the purest I’ve ever drunk with absolutely no hint of minerals or other taste. Fortunately the temperature was moderate, there were no mosquitoes and the tsetses were not problematic. I did treat my clothes with permethrin, covered exposed skin with Avon SSS Bug Guard SPF 30 and had no problem with insects or sunburn.

Hunting:
We saw several large herds of buffalo but spent our time concentrating on dagga boys as there were plenty to follow plus there was more plainsgame than I expected and we frequently came across leopard, lion, and elephant tracks. It was a great pleasure to hunt with the whole party, Cryton and Tino being expert and enthusiastic trackers, Buzz the consummate PH, Shaun getting everything on film and Oscar bringing up the rear so as not to interfere with the hunting but being the first to step up to pitch in a hand whenever there was work to do. Royal kept the Cruiser in perfect order and was always waiting for us when we finally made our way out to a road.

An easy shot on a nice warthog presented the first opportunity for me to demonstrate my shooting skills and I managed to miss him quite cleanly in front of the full audience. I was actually happy to get this out of the way because I usually pull off at least one spectacular stunt like this on any hunt and it reinforces in my mind that it’s not the rifle that places the bullet, only the nut that actuates the trigger! Next up was a fantastic bushbuck we came upon while walking a river bed and everyone was very happy and congratulatory that the shot was good this time. This bushbuck was a real prize being a very ancient old man that everyone thought would not see another season. I can’t express how wonderful it is to take such an animal in such a setting with such a great group of companions.

These days were among the best in my life spent wandering up, down, across and through ridges, valleys, river beds and stopping at springs to analyze the tracks from buff, and identifying zebra, kudu, hyena, grysbok, duiker, genets and even a few sable. We saw plenty of impala including two nice trophies and a very nice waterbuck but I wasn’t too interested in any more plainsgame; it’s nice to have plenty of “new†animals available for subsequent trips.

Buffalo:
Buffalo was of course the object of the hunt and let me stress what a great hunt this was. We caught up with several groups of dagga boys and saw a number of very good trophies, Buzz insisting that we would not settle for a mediocre bull. The first opportunity I had was actually foiled by a charging tick bird! We found a great bull that Buzz was happy with and after some quick careful and expert strategizing by Buzz, Cryton, and Tino, we carefully stalked the group of 4 or 5 bulls and ended up situated behind an anthill about 20 yards from them. Making sure all seemed right Buzz made sure I knew which buff to shoot and set the sticks but as soon as I tried to ease my rifle up an ox pecker that was perched on the target buff’s back flew straight at us making a heck of a racket which caused all eyes to focus immediately upon us.

These old boys were not too happy that we had disturbed their siesta and took off seeking a quieter place to nap. Since we’d bumped this group a few times already Buzz decided we would seek greener pastures ourselves. The next day found us traversing a ridge trying to catch up to a group of bulls whose tracks we’d seen on a road. It turned out to be fortunate that I did not get to take the bull on the previous day because this group contained 16 dagga boys! What a sight especially since there was one old bull that was just the sort of trophy I was after.

We were carefully positioned on a ridge top just above the group when the target bull presented a shot and Buzz set the sticks giving me the go-ahead to shoot. I made two mistakes on shot placement in the heat of the moment: holding on the shoulder instead of just behind and misjudging the downward angle. My shot was too high and too far forward but the bullet passed just above the heart and did a good job of tearing open the major blood vessels; the buff ran about 60 yards and flopped down to never so much as twitch again, no death bellow.

From our vantage point on the ridge we waited about 10 minutes or so after the buff was down, being able to see one horn sticking up, then made a cautious approach. After determining that he was indeed stone dead the realization of what a magnificent trophy this animal was began to sink in. This was a very old bull in great physical condition but showing many scars from his long life in the African bush. Buzz said the long healed over scratches on his upper body were from lion encounters, his right front knee was disfigured from being caught in a snare and he was blind in his right eye; he had one other recent wound that is too private to mention. This buffalo is by far the most magnificent animal I have ever taken and is a real pinnacle in my hunting career. Everyone was as happy for me as could be and could not stop admiring the heavy, rock hard bosses and well worn down horn tips. It will be hard for me to top this one!

Rifles & Loads:
The Federal factory 300 gr. Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer solid zinged right through the shoulder hitting no heavy bone and ricocheted off of a rock behind the buff. The bullet made a nice cleanly cut entrance wound and a credible exit wound for a solid. I had taken Remington factory 300gr. SAF and the TBS loads, keeping my magazine full of solids and chambering a soft or solid at Buzz’s discretion depending on the density of the bush we were hunting. I don’t know if it’s due to the flat meplat or cutting shoulder features of the TBS or a combo of the two but I’m very happy with the performance of this load on the two animals I’ve taken with it. I shot a whitetail deer at home before this hunt and the TBS caused a great deal of tissue damage, you definitely could not “eat right up to the bullet hole†and this leads me to believe that this style of bullet would work just fine for plainsgame along with the big animals.

I grilled Buzz extensively on the suitability of this load for elephant and he assured me it would be just fine for a client for even the biggest of bulls. It seems a bolt-action .375 H&H with properly regulated iron sights and an easily removable 1.5-5 Leupold is the perfect client rifle. I find such a rifle easy to shoot with fairly flat trajectory plus there is plenty of relatively inexpensive practice ammo and premium ammo available.

Site-Seeing & Other Cool Stuff:
We spent the remainder of our hunting time walking through some of the gorgeous river beds and marveling at the power of erosion on the rock formations and enjoying breathtaking views of the rock walls and cliffs that are found well off the beaten path. A stick and vine ladder and scaffolding were found on one of the rock walls which had been left by someone gathering honey. Cryton found a bee hive in a tree one afternoon with some assistance from a honey guide bird and what a treat it was to watch him go about harvesting the wild honey, smoking the bees using a smoldering ball of elephant dung and shaving a patch of bark from the tree to package up the combs. Breakfast was certainly much more of a memorable event with some of this wild honey for my toast!

Everyone seemed eager to go on a short side trip to a local park to view dinosaur footprints in an exposed rock bank of a river. Mr. Weiss, a Zim Parks Ranger escorted us and he is a real gentleman, I’m much honored to meet such people. It’s quite an experience to be looking down on dinosaur tracks while Cryton and Tino demonstrate how to start a fire using two sticks from the fire tree; talk about ancient cultures, this is first hand experience!

Leaving these wonders behind we headed for a camp on the Zambezi and hopped in a boat to take a quick evening trip up to the gorge and down to a small town in Mozambique. It was my great pleasure to meet Mr. Rocky of Zumbo, another true gentleman of the highest order, and to have a look at the ruins of a slave prison and a 2,000 year old fig tree whose shade once served as an auction market.

Our last day was spent on the Zambezi catching a few tiger fish, traveling up the gorge a way to have a look at The Gate and a few other breathtaking natural formations plus getting to see two different species of monkeys on the Zambian side along with an elephant bull, some impala and waterbuck, bushbuck, baboons, dassies on the rock walls and of course lots of hippos and crocodiles. This is probably the most serene place I’ve ever been, drifting around the marsh islands just inside the Mozambique border trying to catch a fish while never hearing another boat, airplane, etc. and the peace and quiet broken only by a snorting hippo or a few fishermen in a canoe laden with their catch on their way to market.

We took a lunch break at a nearby fishing camp where we got to see some artifacts including a set of manacles from the slaving days and a cache of muskets confiscated from poachers. These homemade weapons displayed an impressive amount of ingenuity and some showed an amazing amount of detail and artistry. It did get a bit warm on the river that morning and I didn’t know quite what to think when Buzz jumped into the Zambezi to cool off! He is certainly a brave and fearless PH, but this may have been a bit overboard with all the crocs and hippos!

Closing:
The end of my stay came much too soon and I certainly regretted having to get in the charter plane to leave. Mr. Pete, another of CATS excellent pilots, flew us right to Harare International where lovely Charmain was waiting for Buzz and the departure terminal was waiting for me. Again it was a pleasant experience to clear customs and get checked in for my flight. I encountered no problems of any sort and found everyone I met to be polite and helpful. One certainly needs to bone up on one’s etiquette before going to southern Africa as I find everyone I deal with there to be very polished in that regard.

In all I had an absolutely fantastic over-the-top experience with Buzz and co. for which I am very grateful, they deserve a tremendous amount of credit for all the effort they put into making sure their clients have a great hunt. I simply can’t wait to go back and remember that I’m serving as a reference for Buzz and am happy to answer any questions and such that anyone may have in regards to Charlton McCallum Safaris. Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you.

John Kalinowsky
vasily@hargray.com

Wow, that was a great report. A pleasure to read, and a true testimonail to Buzz and crew. Wish I had more time and more money.

Fine report John, and sounds like a fabulous hunt. Any chance we'll see a photo of your dagga boy?

Bill and John,

Is there any reason to take a water purifier (MSR pump) w me to Dande North?

Id rather pack light but it will be hot!

Andy

Andy,

The drinking water in Dande North is very good, it's from boreholes. No need to take a water purifier.

I would suggest that you take some Gatorade powder, Nalgene bottles and some rehydration salts.

Regards,

Terry