08 May 2012, 02:47
LeonKomkovCMS Chewore North Elephant Bull/Tuskless Cow (April 2012)
Outfitter: Charlton McCallum Safaris
Dates: April 17 – May 1, 2012
Area Hunted: Chewore North
Species: Elephant bull/tuskless cow
PH: Alan Shearing
Rifle: Ruger .458 Lott
Bullet: Barnes Banded Solid; 500 gr.
This hunt initially was booked as an elephant/buffalo hunt by me and my hunting buddy Paul C., and was scheduled to take place in late May, 2012 in the Dande North area. Buzz Charlton and Myles McCallum were scheduled to act as PH’s. Subsequently, when we met Buzz and Myles at the Dallas Safari Club show in January, 2011, Buzz suggested that if buffalo was not of primary importance and our real focus was elephant, he would propose that we move the hunt forward to April. My impression is that in April the grass and jess has not yet burned off, so while plains game is more difficult, the chance of seeing a big bull tusker is greater. We agreed that buffalo were not the focus of our hunt.
Facilities. Two months before the hunt was to commence, Buzz contacted us to advise that he was moving the hunt from the Dande Safari Area to Mwanja Camp on the western side of Chewore North, near Sapi area. Buzz believed that this area would be superior for big tuskers, and communicated that after the first night, the camp would empty except for us. As it turned out, Chifuti Safaris had a group of two Salvadoran hunters in camp the entire time we were there. This turned into an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, as the two hunters (Carlos Escobar and Salvador Vilanova) were among the most interesting and amiable hunting companions one could ask for. The Mwanja Camp is comfortable and situated in a very scenic part of the Zambesi River valley, with fishing boats available for tiger fishing. Because it took me a while to locate and shoot a decent bull, I didn’t get to avail myself of as much relaxation in camp and fishing as I would have hoped for, but then I wasn’t there to fish.
PH Alan Shearing. The expectation was that we would be hunting with Buzz and Myles. In January, 2012, we were informed that Myles had a conflicting commitment, so my PH would be Alan Shearing. Alan was a great addition to the party. He’s good-natured, has a calm demeanor and is exceedingly knowledgeable about the bush. As detailed further below in the hunt report, Alan is the consummate professional hunter; perfectly affable but serious when he needs to be.
Trackers and Driver. Those who have done any serious hunting in Africa know that the crew of trackers and drivers are critical. To my mind this is especially true of an elephant hunt where, truth be told, the client is largely superfluous to the hunt --- except for those final couple of seconds when he is called upon to place the shot properly. Elephant hunting largely consists of getting on a promising track and then following that track for hours over every imaginable terrain until one gets a good look at the beast making the track. Alan’s tracking crew of Martin and Meplan (phonetic spelling) were top notch and relentless to a fault (the fault being that sometimes after 7-8 hours of meticulous and exhausting tracking, I was ready to call it quits and head back for an icy cold beer, while they simply did not want to give up as long as there was a shred of a hope of regaining a faint track). Along with Bernard the driver, I have nothing but highest praise for Alan’s team. I’ll also mention here that Alan is a superb tracker himself. On occasions when we lost a track, I estimate that about a third of the time, it was Alan himself that picked up the often faint spoor. As for me, I just followed along behind him feeling like a fool for being unable to see any of what my team was seeing.
Game Scout. You don’t get a choice in game scouts, and the scout assigned to us was regrettable. Nelson was cordial, and he generally pulled his weight in trying to pick up lost tracks and performing the physical tasks associated with the hunt. However, he insisted on walking around with a cocked and locked AK-47 behind my back. Alan warned him off loudly, but I know what the cocking indicator looks like on an AK, and this guy obviously kept sneaking a round into the chamber. True he had the safety on, but I have little regard for the safety of safeties. The game scout is the sole serious negative I have to report about this hunt. My impression is that this was Nelson’s first dangerous game hunt and he frankly was scared about having an unloaded gun as we walked into close proximity with the ellies. With him carrying a loaded automatic weapon pointed at my kidneys, that made two of us on this hunt who were scared.
The Hunt. I will not bore you with repetitive details of the first six days of the hunt. “Famba” is the Shona word for “walk.” And boy did we ever famba the pads off of our feet. My estimate is that we walked on average about 12-15 kilometers per day. Temparatures during the day were high. The thermometer in camp showed 94 fahrenheit at 5:30 pm one evening, so the first couple of days I was fairly dehydrated. By the third day, I was reminding myself to drink a pint of water approximately every 90 minutes, and that worked well.
Much of the countryside in Chewore is steep and the footing loose and unsure. I had thought I’d trained for the hunt by hiking 3-5 miles per day in the months leading up to the hunt. I should have at least doubled that training load. Likewise, the elephant are not usually found on paths --- they are holed up in the deep jess brush, so my training on nicely groomed hiking trails hadn’t readied me for the brush busting, stooping, frogwalking and scrambling that the hunting involved. I’d told Buzz that I hoped for a good, hard hunt, and that wish was delivered in spades. By the end of the first day, I radically reconfigured my equipment to get rid of my rifle sling, all shirts with epaulette tabs, all shorts with protruding fabric loops --- in other words, everything that could snag itself on the brush.
On day 7, we left camp promptly at 6 a.m. On the airstrip located about 300 yards out of camp, we found a fresh track of what appeared to be a large bull with very worn pads. By 6:10, we were following the track along the edge of the concession, and keeping our fingers crossed that the elephant did not veer a few hundred yards right, into a no-hunting zone. Luckily, the bull began veering southwesterly, deeper into the concession. After about an hour of tracking, we caught up with him. Alan got excited when he first took a look: an old bull with remarkably even tusks, which Alan estimated were about 17 inches in girth at the lip and likely to go about 45 pounds apiece. Alan advised that I take a side brain shot at approximately 20 yards, but I frankly couldn’t see any feature of the elephant except for a wall of gray flesh. As we quietly discussed the elephant’s orientation through the screen of jess, he apparently got wind of us and began to move off at a reasonably brisk pace. At this point, Alan said he figured we were in for an all day stalk.
However, after half an hour of additional tracking, we were walking into a shallow gully, when we saw the bull standing in the jess, uphill from us about 25 yards. It turned toward us and lifted its head above the brush. Alan said “take the shot.” My first shot looked to me dead-on for a frontal brain shot --- it wasn’t. Apparently it hit high, as the elephant staggered, spun around and began to take off. At this stage, I believe I set a new record for emptying a bolt action magazine, as I put one shot behind its left ear and two more shots “into the gray” as the bull careened into the jess. Alan also took a follow up shot with his .416. (5 shots taken so far in the first 4-5 seconds of encounter). Some of the hurried follow-on shots must have had effect, as the elephant slowed noticeably from a run to a walk after about 75 yards. Alan and I sprinted over the ridge in the gully, with me attempting a running reload (two rounds made it into the rifle; one spilled onto the ground), and saw it again. I placed one shot in its right rear hip, anchoring it, and one more that was intended to be in its right ear, but actually went into the neck just behind the ear. The elephant came to a halt and fell on its right side. Final insurance shot into the brain. So, all told, eight bullets were shot, of which we recovered six Barnes Banded Solids. No one is mistaking me for Karamojo Bell at this point. All the recovered bullets were in effectively “reloadable condition,” with no visible distortion. The shot that I placed behind the left ear went through the skull and lodged in the opposite ear, wherethe Barnes bullet was clearly visible just under the skin.
No final weight on the ivory yet, but informal estimate is that it will weigh between 45-50 pounds. He was an old bull, just coming into his sixth set of molars.
Days 8, 9 and 10: With the bull elephant down, we commenced the buffalo hunt. This also involved a significant amount of famba. Alan noted that the buffalo herds in the Chewore area appeared to be under intense pressure from abundant lionesses, and we saw much evidence of this. The groups we followed were quite small, and they tended to be moving with no particular pattern (corkscrew circles, perhaps? I’m no tracker, but I know I walked over my own tracks a couple of time during one afternoon). After three fruitless days of buffalo hunting, I suggested that instead of an elephant /buffalo hunt, what seemed to make the most sense in this area, under its current conditions, was a bull elephant, tuskless cow hunt. Buzz said that if I was serious, he thought that was an excellent idea. From a personal perspective, I was highly interested in hunting another elephant immediately, as 1) seven shots into the first elephant was not the kind of shooting I wanted to advertise at home, and 2) the experience of bringing down the first elephant had sped by so quickly that I scarcely could recall the details, and was ready to try my hand again at hunting Nzou.
Days 11, 12 and 13: Famba, famba, famba. And then some more famba. But by now, I’m an old hand at it, and frankly am enjoying the long distance walking. The blisters are gone (as are my two full length rolls of Dr. Scholes moleskin), and the bottoms of my feet are nice and leathery. I’m also about 10 pounds lighter, so the hills have gotten easier. Alan Shearing is a fine naturalist, and during the walks he passed the time by pointing out, among other things: 4 honey badgers, a pangolin, a caracal, a black mamba, an anaconda, a pack of 14 wild dogs.
The tuskless cow hunt was actually more exciting than hunting a lone bull, as one often finds oneself trying to be small and unnoticed in the midst of a herd of feeding cows with calves. We walked into two herds that had no tuskless females, before finally finding our tuskless. I found myself often wishing for a much quieter set of footwear.
Finally, on the last day of active hunting, day 13, we got on the track of a small herd of cows about eight a.m. and Alan determined there was a tuskless cow in the herd. We bumped them once and they moved off, but came to a rest about half a mile away where we caught up with them around 9:15. The tuskless cow had the decency to stand alone, and I took the shot which, as best we could tell later passed from the front right quarter of the head to the back left ear, but travelled just beneath the brain pan the whole way. It didn’t matter much, though, as she was completely stunned and didn’t move more than about two feet from the spot where she was first hit. One more shot just forward of her right earhole and she fell.
This was far and away the finest hunt of my life. CMS handled every aspect of the hunt exceedingly well, and I could not ask for a better PH than Alan Shearing. The camp was very comfortable and well run, with plenty of good cold beer and good food. I’m currently checking the bank balance and trying to determine how quickly I can return. Cheers!
