Our first day consisted of driving the two track roads, looking for eland tracks. Alan uses the GAIA GPS app, which shows the track we were driving and walking. Alan marked each location where we found eland tracks and noted the direction of travel. We did not see any eland the first day, but did find tracks of several groups as well as a pair that we thought were bulls. Three of the sets of tracks were all heading into the same large block, while one group was headed out of the block. Other than a lone Western Hartebeest bull we saw and tried to shoot that crossed the main road that runs through Mayo Nduel, we didn’t see much game of interest. We did see a Western Kob ram that was of interest but it was in the same block the eland were heading into, so there was no way I was going to fire a shot unless it was at an eland.
At the end of the day we had a good graphic that showed where we drove, each point where we saw tracks and direction of travel. The plan for the next day was to drive around that one block to see if we found any tracks leading out of the block and follow them or; if no tracks left the block, to start walking into the wind inside that block trying to find some of the eland we believed were inside.
We started out early the next morning, driving directly to the block and started looking for tracks leading out of the block to follow. About halfway around, Gumna our lead tracker, stopped us and had a quick discussion with Alan. It was decided that the two trackers would walk across the block to look for eland while we continued to drive the perimeter looking for tracks. We drove the balance of the road and were waiting in a shady area for a short while when the trackers showed up. Gumna and Alan had a short discussion, after which Alan asked if I wanted to go back to camp for lunch… or, would I rather go shoot one of the big eland bulls they’d seen not far away!
We all sucked down some water and took off on foot in the direction of the eland herd. We didn’t have to go far, maybe a half mile and suddenly we were glassing a herd of eland drifting through the trees a couple hundred yards away. The first thing I saw in my binoculars was an eland bull with wide spread horns. For someone who’d never hunted Giant Eland before, it was a a sight I’ll never forget. The bull had long and heavily ridged horns and an unusually wide spread, easily upper 40’s in length. But, he was one of two satellite bulls hovering around the perimeter of the herd. The herd bull, probably 11 or 12 years old, was a huge bodied bull with heavily broomed horns, both the ridges that run around the spirals as well as his tips broomed down by several inches. He was covered with mud on his face and neck, clearly the dominant bull.
The wind was bad, so we had to make a large circle to get the wind right. Once downwind we found a creek bed that allowed us to sneak back near the herd which numbered around 30 eland. We were sneaking along the creek bed through thick grass when Alan nearly stepped on a large water mongoose! It was probably 2 1/2 feet long and came blasting out of the grass to get out of the way. Thank God it wasn’t a mamba or cobra!
As we came up from the creek bed the closest eland was the big herd bull. He was standing broadside in the shade of some trees. We snuck as close as necessary to get a shooting lane and Alan set the Gunstix up. Alan studied the bull, turned to me and simply said “I think you should shoot this bull. He’s old, big and if you pass on him we both may regret it in a week.” That was all I needed to hear.
The bull was about 225 yards away and there were some tree branches about halfway to the bull that covered the lower part of his chest. I was shooting my .375 H&H which I’d had built recently on a pre-64 Model 70 express action I had. It was topped with a Leupold VX5HD scope in 2-10 magnification, with illuminated Firedot reticle. I settled the gun on the sticks and turned the scope up to 10x to better see the vegetation between me and the bull. I had to hold high on the shoulder to clear the obstructions, the red Firedot made aiming easy and I touched off my shot, sending a 300 grain Bearclaw on its way. The bullet hit with a loud ‘whop’ and the bull collapsed on the spot, never taking a step.
At noon on the 2nd day we had a grand, old Lord Derby Bull! We were both relieved to have success so early in the hunt.
