quote:

Originally posted by LucaBi:
Location: Gway/Mbembezi forest, Zim
PH: Terry Fenn
Dates: September 2008 (15 days)
Rifles: 416 Rigby
Ammo: Barnes Solid 400 grs.

Dear fiends of the forum
To be honest I wasn’t ready to my 50th birthday. Is the first step before finding some children in the house calling you grandpa…
Anyway to make “sweet” this moment I thought that a special gift to myself was the right thing and I decided to pick up the phone end try to call my friend and PH in Zimbabwe Terry Fenn. We know each other since long time and he understood immediately what it was needed to me.
I landed few months later in Boulawayo (Zimbabwe) and crossing the control area I have seen the smiling face of Terry waiting for me with the young cameraman Scott Jurgens.
After few hours we have reached the Amandundumela camp in the Gway/Mbembezi forest area.
My elephant hunt was started.
Almost every day we were forced to drug a little tree behind our Toyota to clean accurately all the path between the blocks of this huge area (40.000 hectares) in order to discover fresh elephant tracks big enough to start a chase. The first day we had a charge from a young bull as a welcome in the area and we had also a chance to track, one hour later, a herd of 50 elephants, all bulls, in which we couldn’t see nothing better than 40 pounds.
But the second day after a short track on a little herd we found what should have been my bull. A beautiful animal with ivory around 53 pounds : “ Not now Luca” said Terry “ is only the second day, we can find maybe a better one. Don’t forget that we still have 12 days”. I accepted the decision and I leave the magnificent animal with the hope to meet him again in the next hunting days.
After having checked more than 200 ele bull (yes I’m saying two hundred) and having shot a zebra stallion and a nice blue wildebeest ( we prefer to remain focused on the Loxodonta without shooting too much in order to avoid useless noise), at the 8th day we had a chance to meet my bull once again: very easy to recognize him because of his big ivory (the biggest seen in my two hunting weeks except for an one tusk animal estimated around 60) and because one of the tusks was higher than the other one. We had to wait more than two ours for having a constant wind ( as you can imagine in these two hours I have lost a part of my life and I gained extra gray hairs ) and than we start to follow the herd, almost 50 elements, and my bull was in the middle and in the back part of the herd itself. We were surrounded by grey bodies when we reached the right distance to place the shot (between 15 and 20 meters), I aimed the lungs heart/ area ( no way for a brain shot , not in the middle of an herd) and I have sent with my 416 Rigby a 400 grains solid to the first elephant trophy of my life (not the last considering that the elephant fever is not a joke).
Thanks to Chinanga Safaris and to the professionalism of my good friend Terry Fenn I had one of my best hunting experience. I have to thanks also my friend Scott Jurgens that created , with his movie, an unforgettable memory.
Happy birthday Luca !