SOUTH AFRICA: ZIMBABWE: 2025 Hunt Report

[Hank2211]

The following is this year's instalment in the continuing series of hunt reports. A little background and explanation is in order to understand why I planned my 2025 hunt as I did. First, though, the usual disclaimers or health warnings:

• I wasn’t after any big or important trophies on this year's hunt, nor was I hunting any bizarre or unusual countries. So it may be less interesting as a result?
• Once I start writing, I do tend to go on, so read at your pleasure – or perhaps peril?
• Unfortunately, no ostriches were hurt during the course of this hunt.

My last hunt was in Ethiopia in 2024. Once I collected the nine spiral horns, I decided a to try to collect all the bushbuck, or at least the eight recognized by SCI. I had gotten the Cape, Limpopo and Chobe on earlier hunts in southern Africa and the harnessed in Benin and Cameroon, but had neglected to get the two bushbuck which roam Ethiopia on my first hunt there. [Pro tip: given the cost of hunting Ethiopia, and the fact it isn’t the most congenial place to hunt, anyone going there might want to make sure they get all the species they may (ever) want on the one hunt. But if you are going to go twice, it would make sense to do the mountain species on one hunt (such as Mountain Nyala and Menelik’s bushbuck) and the desert species (such as lesser kudu and Abyssinian bushbuck) on another. Which is not how I did it. The mountains and the desert are some ways apart!]

The Menelik’s bushbuck – which is found only in Ethiopia, and the Abyssinian, found there and some places further south - were both put in the salt on that most recent hunt. That left me needing only the Nile and the East African bushbucks to complete the eight which SCI recognize. The earliest hunt I could book with permits for both was in Uganda, but, unfortunately, not until 2026. That hunt has been booked with KOS Safaris for March of 2026. That left me a bit at loose ends for 2025.

Idle hands are, as we (or at least our wives) well know, never a good thing. My usual PH/Outfitter, Dean Stobbs, had mentioned that he had a leopard permit in an unusual area - communal land in southern Zimbabwe, upon which was situated Wilberforce Ranch. So I said yes, please.

Having decided that a leopard hunt in Zimbabwe would be the goal for 2025, I decided it would be a good idea to make sure my shooting was up to par. Leopard hunting is always a bit risky. It took me two hunts to get my first leopard, so there was no assurance that this would work. Still, I wanted to be in the best shooting shape I could before pulling the trigger on another leopard. Dean and I had been charged by the one leopard I have shot, and while I found it quite exciting (he didn’t share that view, but then it sort of came at him first), it wasn’t something that either of us wanted to repeat.

So that got me thinking. It had been some years since I’d hunted with John Tinley, the only PH I’ve ever hunted with on my many safaris in South Africa. He tells me that’s because no other PH will hunt with me, but I know he really just wants to keep all the fun to himself. Our last adventure had been a cull hunt during COVID on a sheep farm owned by Niel Schoeman, a true Afrikaner gentleman of the old school (and a PH in his own right) in the Eastern Cape Karoo. My hunt report on that cull hunt is somewhere here, and on that “hunt” I’d shot some 85+ animals in 10 days. My thought was to give this six days and shoot enough animals in that time to make sure my shooting was “on” before I tackled the leopard. I estimated based on what I’d shot in the previous 10-day cull that I was probably good for 35 animals or so, if I shot well and worked reasonably hard.

John now hunts with Wintershoek Safaris, so I booked this through them. Since this was going to be a cull hunt, we had to agree on a price list, which didn’t take long. No one asked that I commit to a minimum number of animals, though there’s at least an unspoken expectation that you’ll shoot a reasonable number. It wouldn’t be fair to expect to be put up at the pretty low South African day rates and then shoot one female springbuck a day. But my history apparently spoke for itself.

A few details before I get into it:

Firearms: Canadians aren’t allowed to take firearms to Zimbabwe, so I borrowed what I needed.

In South Africa, John Tinley lent me his .300 Win Mag. It had both a suppressor and a Leupold scope which went as high as 14x, but which I kept at 10x. The suppressor was a lifesaver, both in terms of the ears and the shoulder. More on that later.

In Zimbabwe, I had bought a couple of rifles many years ago when the UN first put its embargo on arms to Zimbabwe, and Canada (among other countries) took that to apply to hunting rifles as well as tanks and RPGs. I bought two Rugers, one in .375 H&H and the other in .300 Win Mag, both with decent 3-9x Leupold scopes. Dean (legally owns and) keeps the rifles when I’m not using them and rents them to hunters (and keeps an eye on them). When I’m there, he always seems to have enough ammo for me, likely left over or bought from previous hunters. This arrangement works well for both of us.

Binos: I brought an old pair of Leica Ultravid 10x42 binos. I have a newer, Geovid HB, pair, which incorporate a rangefinder, but they’re heavier, and I prefer the lighter ones. I also find you don’t need binos at all for leopard hunting.

Boots: I only include this because I’ve had issues before. This was the last trip for my leather crocs. I did wear them for one day of hunting, just for the nostalgia (see Cameroon savannah hunt report). But they’re wearing out and crocs doesn’t seem to make them anymore. On every other day I wore a very comfortable pair of New Balance hiking boots. I’ve tried Courtney’s, Jim Greens, and Russell’s, among others. I’ve ended up giving them away to various trackers – just can’t get the comfort I look for in my advancing (declining?) years. The only downsides of the New Balance are that they last at most a couple of trips – fabric doesn’t stand up well to rocks, thorns and the brush – and the fact that the soles aren’t thornproof. I had ordered a pair of thornproof insoles from Amazon before the hunt, but they cancelled my order too late for me to find another pair. These insoles would have helped a lot – I needed a Leatherman to remove thorns which had penetrated to my feet!

With that lengthy introduction, here we go:

South Africa

Day 1: June 23

I finally arrived in Port Elizabeth after about 40 hours of travel. Unbelievable. I flew Calgary to Frankfurt, then to JNB, and then to Port Elizabeth. A 12-hour layover in Frankfurt and a 5-hour layover in Jo’burg were responsible for much of that time, but still, way too long on airplanes.

John Tinley was at the airport to meet me, and we immediately headed out to Niel Schoeman’s farm, with a brief stop at Steers, so I could revitalize myself with a Prince burger. The burger was good, but the fries weren’t as good as I remembered.

A few hours later we arrived at Niel’s. We were greeted by Niel, and I quickly settled into the same bedroom I’d had on two previous visits. Familiarity breed contentment (at least in this case). A couple from Pennsylvania were also staying at the house for the first few days, which added an air of conviviality to mornings and evenings.

Note that "Gqeberha" is what used to be called Port Elizabeth. It's still called that by just about everyone I met. The Gq is the click sound in the local Xhosa language, which is pretty hard for speakers of other languages to master. I assume it's only a matter of time before more names are changed.

Not long after we arrived, John and I went outside to check the rifle. The ‘range’ is right in front of Niel’s house, shooting into a hill. There is a 100m target and I think a 200m or 250m target. I’d be aming at the 100m target. As I mentioned, I was using John’s .300 Win Mag. The scope was a good one, but the reticle was very fine. That’s useful if you’re shooting at long distances, particularly at small animals, when you don’t want a reticle covering the entire beast, but it would take me some getting used to. My eyes aren’t bad, but they aren’t what they once were (I’m 67).

John loads his own bullets, and for this hunt I’d be using mostly Nosler partitions. My first two shots were fine, so we decided we were good to go the next day. At that moment, a lone springbuck appeared on the hill, near the farther target. John took a look through his binos and asked if I wanted to shoot it. I wasn’t sure – it seemed like a long way away – and while I didn’t want to embarrass myself with a miss on my first shot at an animal, I didn’t want to let fatigue or nerves ruin my confidence before we’d even started. So I said sure and lined up the shot from the bench. One and done (it was from a bench after all) on a male non-trophy springbok. Still, I was quite pleased that I’d got it at that distance in front of an audience which had grown over time.

This is as good a place as any to discuss pictures. If I had taken (posed) pictures of every animal I shot, it would quickly have become boring, and I would have equally quickly found it a pain in the butt. Since these aren't (supposed to be) trophies, I didn't take those pictures. I did take a few pictures of some of the animals as we found them, and others as we took them off the truck. Since we didn't clean any of the animals up, and we removed the stomachs in the field, these pictures can be quite messy (not to say gory). So I will post one, with apologies, and then you will have to use your imagination.

Day 2: June 24

My hunt reports are generally done a day at a time. In this case, that might quickly get boring (or more boring?). So I’ll just give the numbers for each day, and a few comments if something unusual happened.

On this first full day of shooting, with one springbuck already in the salt, I told John that we only had seven more to go to meet my previous daily average. John replied that he’d loaded way more bullets than would be needed, if we were going to set our sights so low. My response was, well, find the animals and I’ll try to do my bit. Game on.

We had planned to return to the house every day for lunch and to drop off any animals we might find, so these days are broken up into mornings and afternoons. And note that all of the animals will be non-trophy unless I specify otherwise. That generally means either females or males with crappy horns that could and should be taken out of the gene pool. I might also point out that Niel mentioned when we left that he had well over a thousand blesbok on the place, which was far too many, and any efforts we could make towards reducing that number would be appreciated. Happy to be of service.

This lovely (but cold) Tuesday morning, I shot one warthog, 2 male springbok and 5 female blesbok. Oh, and one trophy male white blesbok. That was a bit of a miscommunication between John and me. We were looking at a group of blesbok, John with his binos and me through the scope. John said “shoot the brown one on the left.” Well, they were all brown except one, which was on the left and while it looked like a white one to me, it was also pretty dirty, so I assumed if he’d mentioned the colour, it had to be the one which was not the same colour as the others. So I shot the white one. John: “Why did you shoot that one?” Me: “Because you told me to shoot the brown one.” John: “That was a white one.” Me: “All the rest were brown then, so how was I supposed to know which one you meant? I figured since you mentioned the colour, it had to be the one which was different.” John: “We need to talk.” Me: “Nice shot though, right?”

We drove to the skinning shed, dropped off our haul, and went in for a delicious lunch. Did I mention that Niel has a wonderful cook? Superb food, with a main course every night of game meat taken on the farm and cooked over a wood fire in Niel’s lounge.

The afternoon took us to a different part of the farm, and one warthog, six blesbok, one black wildebeest, one fallow deer and one springbok.

Daily total: 19 animals

Running total: 20 animals

I should also add at this point that all of these animals are skinned and stored in a cold room until they are picked up by a butcher. Nothing is wasted.

Day 2: June 25

It was cold in the mornings (around -2 deg. C), and while I had impressed upon John the need to warm up the truck before I got into it, he seemed intent on having me share, for at least a while, the difficulties of life on the back of the vehicle. We had two trackers with us, who really were more recovery men, and both more than earned their wages and a healthy tip on this exercise.

This morning we took two lechwe, two kudu, five blesbok, and one springbok.

The afternoon was more of the same: two springbok, two warthog, and six fallow deer.

We did have an interesting incident in the afternoon. John and I were walking very slowly through some thick bush, with a sloot on our right. At one point John stops, puts his fingers to his lips and points down. I can see three warthogs rooting around below us, about 15 yards away, completely unaware of our presence – a big boar, what looked like a female and a younger one. John motioned me to get down and we very slowly and quietly duck-crawled down a game trail leading into the sloot. John turned a bit and mouthed “shoot the female, not the big male. Use my shoulder as a rest.” So I put the rifle on his shoulder and lined up the female. Took the shot and she was down. The other two were looking around panicked – not sure where the noise came from. John whispered – “take the small one” which I did. At that point the boar takes off – straight towards us, up the game trail. Now I’m on the ground, and I’m not as supple as I once was, so getting up quickly is a bit of a challenge. John though, being a bit younger and lot more agile, is up quickly and – to my horror – moves aside, leaving me staring at this thing coming at me at full speed. I will allow that he began to make some noise and wave his arms (he says to stop the warthog, but who knows!). At the last second, the boar turned aside and ran off the path. If he’d gone another couple of yards, he’d have had no choice but to keep going straight ahead, and right over me.

When I managed to get up and certain parts of my anatomy resumed their normal position, I asked John – “what was all that about?” “What?” “Getting up and leaving me to face the thing on my own?” “I had to protect us.” “Us? More like you! You’d have left me to die from the tusks of an angry warthog.” “You wouldn’t have died.” Great. I decided he deserved a pout, for at least a few minutes, so I stopped speaking to him. In hindsight, that might not have delivered the message I wanted.

Daily total: 20 animals

Running total: 40 animals

The Karoo is a magical place . . .

Day 3: June 26

I should say something about the shooting we’re doing. Because we’re culling and not hunting, we’re taking all sorts of shots from all sorts of positions, many of which I wouldn’t do if I were hunting. I’m taking shots off sticks (of various kinds), from bipods (rarely, because we don’t usually put them on), using the truck hood as a rest, and using just about whatever was handy as a rest. The easy multiples are where John has glassed a group of animals and says shoot any of those and shoot as many as you can. In those circumstances I can often get a couple or even three before they all run away. A better and faster shot could get a few more than that, but I’m not taking shots on running animals, unless it’s a follow up shot.

This morning is a bit slower than usual – two impala, one kudu, one black wildebeest, two fallow deer and two springbok.

A non-trophy fallow deer which identified as male . . .

Again, the afternoon is a bit slower than my average so far. Five fallow deer, one warthog and one springbok.

The warthog was interesting. John spotted it in another sloot. He pointed it out to me, but I couldn’t make it out for some time. All I saw was what looked like a rock. He said that was it. It’s sleeping, and you can only see the back and side, so shoot as far forward as you can. So while I don’t normally try to kill boulders, I took the shot and killed a warthog. As it turns out, the warthog had previously been shot through the brisket, and the wound had turned gangrenous. The stink was overpowering. I did the poor guy a favour, without a doubt. Niel said he’d probably already been paid for it, so a freebie for me.

Daily total: 15

Running total: 55

Day 4: June 27

John decided we had to make up for taking it easy yesterday. Today’s morning consisted of one blue wildebeest, ten springbok, two fallow deer and one waterbuck.

I had shot the waterbuck at about 100 yards, and it hadn’t gone far before lying down, but its head was still up, looking around. John suggested I turn my scope down and get to where I could take a head shot on it. I began to move slowly towards where I though it was, but I immediately lost sight of it due to the terrain. John, though, could see it, and I could see him, so he was giving me hand directions as I moved forward. Eventually, he made it clear that I was very close and if I came around a boulder, I would be in sight of it. So be ready. I moved slowly and saw the head. Mounted the rifle and a quick shot as it turned towards me.

The shot was perfect. The impact, though, blew both eyeballs out of its skull. It died immediately, but it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Niel has a decent herd of buffalo on the property, and we ran into them this morning. They kept an eye on us, but they don’t seem as aggressive as Zimbabwe buffalo – something I’ve noticed elsewhere in South Africa. John thinks this may be result of not having any natural predators. Having said that, whenever we were in the same area as buffalo, he carried his rifle (.375 H&H on this hunt) with him.

The afternoon found us bringing back five fallow deer, three springbok and two blesbok.

Daily total: 24 animals

Running total: 79 animals

Day 5: June 28

Cold again, with frost on the ground. I’m glad I have warm clothes. The morning was a busy one, with five springbok, four fallow deer, one blesbok and three impala taken.

Not every animal was shot in a convenient place . . .

After lunch we quickly shot a pair of warthogs, and then I mentioned to John that I might like a zebra, since I wanted to make some gun bags. I then had a bit of a brain wave (always an indicator of trouble to come). I asked John if I could use his .375 on the zebra. He said sure, but you noticed it has no scope? I said yes, but I think I can make that work. My thought was that since I’d been using a .300 on “small” game for the last five days, I needed something bigger for a tough animal like a zebra. Not, of course, the case, but that was my thinking. I seemed to have forgotten that every zebra I’ve ever shot (a dozen or more maybe?) was with a .300. Anyway, John gave me a quick lesson on how his open sights worked, and I felt ready.

We stalked a group of three zebra, one of which was obviously larger than the others. John had an idea where they might go, given the wind, and if we placed ourselves properly, we’d get a shot at what he thought would be a decent range. He was right and when the group came around some trees, they saw us, but the wind was in our favour. I was ready and took the shot. It was a hit, but unfortunately not a good one. The zebra took off at full speed. We chased them for the rest of the day until we lost the light and had to give up. John was confident we’d find the wounded one the next day.

This was the first time in all my hunting trips that I’d left a wounded animal out overnight. I wasn’t happy about it, but there wasn’t anything to be done. The reality is that I should have stuck to the rifle I knew, with the scope, and not used open sights for the first time on a zebra (or any animal). John had mentioned something about that, but my success with so many animals over the last few days had given me a sense of confidence which frankly wasn’t deserved, at least not with unfamiliar equipment. Rookie mistake.

Daily total: 15 animals

Running total: 94 animals

Day 6: June 29

First on the agenda was, of course, finding the zebra. We set out early, and Niel came along in his own truck. With two trucks and lots of trackers we quickly found the zebra, but he was in a pretty in accessible place, and I couldn’t get a shot at him. It took a few hours but by sending some trackers up a mountain, we got him to come down to a meadow where I could get a decent shot. This time I was using the .300 again and got a shot at about 150 yards. A good sound and the zebra quickly dropped. We’d been at this for about 3 hours, so it was a huge relief to get him down. It turns out my first shot had cut the brisket and the skin on one front leg. The only good thing about that shot is that it bled enough that we could see the stain on him, allowing us to easily identify him this morning.

That took the morning. After lunch we set again for the last time. I was feeling a bit guilty about the sheer number of animals, but as John said, it was good practice and we were doing the landowner a favour. So we took another pair of warthogs, a lechwe, two fallow deer and six springbok.

Three of the springbok were the last shots of the cull, and taken from the side of a mountain, within seconds of each other. The first was about 150 yards, the second a bit farther and the last one at about 200 yards.

Daily total: 12 animals

Running total: 106 animals

By animal:

26 springbok females

7 springbok males

17 fallow deer females

11 fallow deer males

19 blesbok females

1 blesbok male (the white one!)

8 warthog females

1 warthog male

1 zebra male

1 blue wildebeest female

2 black wildebeest females

3 lechwe females

3 kudu females

5 impala females

1 waterbuck female

It had been quite a six-day cull. I had been worried about reaching my previous average of eight a day, but ended up more than doubling that number. John was pleased, Niel was happy and I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. I had to remind myself not to get too high on my horse, and to avoid thinking I was Selous (who I assume was a pretty good shot), but if I did those things, I actually shot pretty well. The shots ranged from somewhat under 100 yards to approaching 300 in some cases. My average was probably pretty close to 180 – 200 yards overall, which is longer than I like for hunting, but is fine for culling.

John had said “good shot” often enough that at one point I asked him if he didn’t have other adjectives he could use to describe my shooting. Like what, he asked? Like, maybe, ‘great, or fabulous, or fantastic, or gobsmacking, etc.” I promised to write him out a list of words, in addition to good, that he could keep in the truck and practice with. I’d have thought he’d be pleased, but his reaction seemed a bit muted . . .

I practiced shooting from lots of different positions, I practised trigger control, and I practiced aiming for the right part of the animal, rather than shooting quickly and just trying to put a bullet into the animal. I missed a few shots, but given the number I took, I didn’t see that as a problem – more of a cautionary tale to slow down and do what I know I need to do. All good stuff, and all stuff that’s easy to do at a range without any pressure, but a lot harder to do in the field.

I also had lots of time to talk to John and Niel about life in South Africa, how much people earn, who can live on what, the market for game animals (wholesale and retail) and just about every subject under the sun. You don’t typically get into anything in great depth on the first hunt with anyone, but once you’ve hunted three, four or five times with someone, you get to know them pretty well, and the conversation tends to be at a higher level. All good.

The next day we had a full breakfast and headed back to Port Elizabeth for my flight to Jo’burg, where I’d spend the night before my flight to Bulawayo the next morning.

I want to thank Strauss Jordaan of Wintershoek Safaris, who put this together (and seems to take my abuse in stride), Niel Schoeman, for his wonderful hospitality and beautiful property, and, of course, John Tinley, who is both a great PH and a very patient man, and who puts up with me without (too much) complaining.

Part 2 on the way . . .

 

[DieJager]

Always enjoying your writings. Waidmannsheil! That was some good shooting and some impressive numbers.

Keep the installments coming

 

[Firebird]

I too enjoy your posts. Thanks for the write up and the pictures!-love it
I took care of the ostrich for you on my hunt

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

Enjoyed the report on your cull hunt. You were definitely wack’n and stack’n them.

 

[UpNorthMI]

What an action packed cull hunt, that is my sort of trip. Excellent shooting with a strange rifle. What's next?

 

[gillettehunter]

Lots of trigger time. Well done. Thanks for the write up.
Bruce

 

[LivingTheDream]

I always enjoy your reports. Thank you for the added humor.

 

[FlyGuy]

Great Trip!

Thanks for the good writing.

 

[PARA45]

Man, talk about shooting. Well done and thank you for taking us along. Did you keep any horns? That Fallow Deer looks great.

 

[Brandon.Gleason]

Great first installment! Looking forward to part 2. After all of that shooting, I'd be grateful to the suppressor, as well.

 

[Nyati]

Great shooting, congrats !

 

[Hank2211]

Man, talk about shooting. Well done and thank you for taking us along. Did you keep any horns? That Fallow Deer looks great.

Thanks. No, I didn't keep any of the horns - part of the deal, I take nothing. I'm sure I could've taken them if I'd asked though, but fallow deer come much better than that on Niel's place - this guy was a cull!

I did keep the zebra skin, since I paid a trophy fee on that one.

Great first installment! Looking forward to part 2. After all of that shooting, I'd be grateful to the suppressor, as well.

I can't imagine pulling the trigger that many times on a .300 win mag over six days without the suppressor. Apart from some serious bruising, I'd probably have developed a flinch. Supressors are illegal in Canada, and I didn't have much experience with them before this. I was surprised at how much they (or at least this one) reduced felt recoil.

 

[Uncharted_NT]

Great write up! Thanks for sharing

 

[rinehart0050]

Great report so far! Looking forward to more!

 

[BRICKBURN]

That was some kind of trigger time. I trust it will have helped in Zimbabwe.

 

[Hank2211]

The Southern Cross . . .

Zimbabwe

I spent a pleasant night at the City Lodge Hotel at JNB (it’s actually in the airport complex and is the less expensive of the two hotels in that complex). I typically like to stay at AfricaSky Guesthouse, but I arrived at JNB at around 4 pm and I was flying out at 10 am the next day, so being close was a stress reliever. City Lodge is just fine – rooms are adequate and clean, and the water is hot.

I mentioned that I wasn’t overly keen on hunting a leopard - I killed one many years ago in the Matetsi area of Northern Zimbabwe, and I will be the first to admit that I find the daily task of checking and refreshing baits to be a bit of a grind and sitting in blinds to be boring (I’m not known for patience). But I was intrigued by the thought of seeing and hunting on Wilberforce Ranch. Plus I’ve known (and hunted with) Guav Johnson for many years, so I was also intrigued by what he might be doing down there. So I said yes, please, when Dean proposed the hunt.

This requires some background on Wilberforce Ranch, and what’s going on there. A good and easy – if somewhat lengthy – summary can be found at https://www.africahunting.com/threads/wire-and-water-documentary.82885/, which should take you to YouTube video done by Blood Origins, a podcaster based in Africa.

The Ranch is found in west-central Zimbabwe, south of Plumtree and Bulawayo and close to the Botswana border. The land is government owned but under the control of the local district council. Something the Zimbos call the ‘three tier’ system. What I call “Wilberforce proper” and much of the land surrounding it are in the same system, but different “beneficiaries” have the rights to access different lands. The nearest protected wildlife area is some distance away, in Matopos National Park, just outside Bulawayo (which is well worth a visit by the way – a large number of rhinos are there, as well as Cecil Rhodes’ grave).

The bush varies from relatively thick to very thick and the density of game three years ago was low to non-existent. Poaching in the area and surrounding areas had been rampant – people had the (common and correct) view that if they didn’t eat the animal, their neighbors would – and there was no anti-poaching efforts at all, so nothing lived for very long. In addition, because of a lack of fences, cattle grazed wherever, and lots of cattle which didn’t belong also grazed in the area. The result was over-grazing, with consequences like lack of food for grazing game and serious soil erosion during the rainy season.

Wilberforce Ranch has been pulled into the Classic African Hunting portfolio, which is the company Guav and Courtney Johnson use for their hunting properties (the other properties currently being Matetsi Unit 2 and Kazuma).

The Wilberforce area itself is about 12,000 acres, with the electric fenced area being about 4,000 acres. There are no cattle allowed in the electric fenced portion, and cattle co-exist with game on the balance of the land. We didn’t find that to be a problem, with game being reasonably visible, but this is a result of the grazing being limited to those who have a right to it, as well as rotation of the land.

Given that the Johnson’s are re-stocking the area with game, they currently restrict what can be shot and where. Leopard are present all year and elephant migrate through later in the year. I believe that these are the only animals for which you can currently book a hunt. Some plains game can be shot, but the numbers and variety are currently so limited that I don’t believe they offer plains game hunts. Leopard hunters can take a modest number of certain plains game for bait and gut bucket purposes. We supplemented a couple of plains game animals with sides of (condemned) beef and blood which we got from a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Bulawayo.

The accommodations at Wilberforce are more than adequate, without being over the top. There is an abandoned farmhouse, missing most of its roof and many of its walls, which serves as the eating area and cooking facilities, at the top of a hill, with impressive views of the surrounding land. There is an area which is occupied by three or four tents for each of the PH, the Johnson’s, and the cook, and they have their own bathroom and shower area. The client gets a newly built brick “cottage,” with bathroom and shower facilities attached, but outside (though surrounded by a brick wall). There is plenty of hot water and overall I was very comfortable (on windy days it can get cold, though, if you step out of the hot water while having a shower!). The cook was excellent, and the food was provided in far more ample quantities than we could do justice to. Overall, I was very well taken care of. I have nothing against the “luxury” lodges often found in South Africa, but I feel more like I’m hunting when I’m in a place like Wilberforce.

There’s a fair number of staff around, particularly when you consider that there’s only one hunter, but creating employment is part of the deal with the local community. In addition, you now must have a National Parks scout on every leopard hunt (in the past if was only on hunts on Parks land), and the local community had a scout. Dean had his two trackers and we also had Guav’s tracker, who knew his way around the place. So we were seven in total on the truck when we went out!

Sunrise from the hilltop . . .

Our days played out as they normally do on baiting leopard hunts. We were up reasonably early, breakfasted, and headed out initially to put up baits and later to check baits. In the early days our afternoons were spent looking for a zebra or two to shoot for additional baits, but once those were taken care of, the days played out as described, and we had some spare time in the afternoons.

Dragging bait to the tree . . .

I will eliminate the suspense and say that we didn’t get a leopard, but it wasn’t for lack of trying (we had eight baits going at one point) and lack of feeding the local non-shootable leopard population. We had several baits hit regularly by females, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by younger leopards. In one case we had three leopards feeding off one bait. I can’t say what the current population of shootable adult males is, but I can say that the future population of leopards looks bright! I should say that while some of the males could probably have been shot, Dean judged them all too young – and I was only interested in shooting an old male.

The track of a female on top of our tire track . . .

Three leopards . . .

I did shoot an interesting impala. This fellow’s right horn must have been bent young, because it wasn’t broken when we got him. His horn just grew that way. I’m not sure he would have known that he was sticking his own horn into himself if he turned his head a particular way, or if doing that scared him.

I also shot a zebra which, as you can see, is missing a tail. Likely a run in with a hyena when it was younger (there are no lions in the area – I think if one showed up, it wouldn’t last long). The zebra gave us plenty of blood and guts for dragging and generally stinking up the place.

Because we had some free afternoons, I could spend some time with Courtney Johnson, Guav’s brother and partner in this endeavour. Courtney - who I would describe as the saner of the two Johnson brothers – has an encyclopedic knowledge of Zimbabwean history as well as the history of the Ranch and the local area. The area around the Ranch was heavily involved in the First Matabele War (1893-1894), which was the war which effectively ended the Matabele Kingdom led by Lobengula. The Battle of the Singuesi River was fought near the camp, and involved what was known as the Southern Column, the chief intelligence officer for which was one Frederick Courtney Selous. Selous was wounded in this battle, as he related in a letter to his mother, but told her it wasn’t serious (!). You can see where most of this took place from the camp.

For those who have an interest in such things, the First Matabele War was the first war in which the British used the new Maxim gun, and used it to great effect, on the Matabeles.

If you know where to find it, there is a plaque commemorating the battle near the dam which is found at the top of the map above.

Another interesting aspect of the local history relates to religious groups, and particularly the Jesuits. In the late 19th century, before the First Matabele War, the Jesuits received permission from Lobengula to set up missions in various parts of his realm. One such area is near the dam shown on the map above, which was, and still is, called Embakwe. Embakwe was set up as a school and general mission by the Jesuits, and was transferred to the Mariannhill order in 1935 when the Jesuits traded the southern portion of Rhodesia for the northern portion of Rhodesia. The mission continues to this day, and has made its land accessible for hunting as part of the Ranch area.

I was really very impressed by what the Johnsons are trying to achieve at Wilberforce. This is what the future of conservation will look like. It’s not enough to conserve spaces for wild animals, although that’s critical. That’s a necessary but not a sufficient condition for success. Local people must benefit from the wildlife or they will want to use that land in ways which do benefit them. If you find that it’s easy to be critical of this attitude, ask yourself what you would do if land you needed to feed your family was set aside, made inaccessible to you, and accessible to rich (mostly white) guys from around the world to come and play? That’s not a sustainable vision for people and still less for wildlife.

What is sustainable is some measure of shared and exclusive use, with the shared use being approached in a rational manner. It’s clear that the local people who run cattle on this land know they are benefitting from fences, year-round water and a more rational grazing program. The cows we saw were among the healthiest looking I’ve seen in Africa, and the cow herders were happy to see us and to help with our hunting.

It should be said that the Johnsons are going about this the right way. Instead of building a fence, for example, they are providing the wire, posts, etc. and the community are building the fences. They have something invested in the fences as a result. The Johnsons have also drilled and equipped two wells with solar pumps and holding tanks for water. This has enabled two community gardens to be put in, each with forty trees (banana, guava (of course), lemon, orange, mango, avocados and more) and vegetables including spinach, tomatoes, beets, carrots, cabbages and other things I’ve never heard of (I’m not aware of any okra being gown there, which is lucky, since they might end up at camp).

People will do what they need to do (or think they need to do) to preserve their livelihoods. The solution is to work with those whose lives depend on the land, rather than trying to tell them what to do or what’s best for them, and it’s this that the Johnsons are doing. Efficient it may not be (talking takes time), but effective it certainly is.

There is something I find hard to define or describe about Wilberforce Ranch. But it’s certainly caught my imagination. So much so that I’m booking an elephant hunt there for 2026.

Sunset from camp . . .

I want to thank Dean Stobbs, who arranged all of this, and Courtney Johnson for taking the time to take me through what they’ve accomplished, and what is still to come, in this area. I’m looking forward to seeing the area again and the improvements they’ve made in a year.

I think my PH is trying to kill me . . .

 

[Uncharted_NT]

Fascinating read. Thanks!

 

[Firebird]

Thanks for the pictures and stories, enjoying them a great deal. Also “This is Africa”Podcast has some good interviews with Guav and his father. Very much worth the listen-