MOZAMBIQUE: Fantastic Hunt With Legadema Hunting & Safaris

[meigsbucks]

A great report. Moz sounds like a great place to hunt “old Africa”.

 

[neckdeep]

Hopefully you went upstairs and had a drink while waiting for the plane at the airport, its a step back in time!!

 

[DieJager]

Nice report, seems like you had a good time. Following your report!

 

[smokepole]

Nice report, seems like you had a good time. Following your report!

Good report Dave. I am glad my son talked to you and helped convince you it was for real. We had a wonderful hunt and good father/son adventure . I just picked up his taxidermy in Springfield, Mo and delivered to Denver. Keep writing.

 

[Safari Dave]

This was probably the best trip I have ever been on, in spite of the demanding travel.

 

[Safari Dave]

Chapter 9 – Day 5 of the trip (Day 3 of hunting)



Breakfast at 5:00 – French toast, eggs, sausage, potatoes - (I think my wife may have mumbled something about hoping I still enjoyed my Frosted Mini-Wheats when we got home).

Reinhart had informed us that this would be an all-day event, so my partner of 30 years decided this might be a good day to go back to bed for a little more sleep, do a little journaling, take photos of the monitor lizard that had been sunning itself on the 3-foot wide beach outside of our tent, try to get good photos of the hippos and crocodiles in the lake, and of course bait up the birds for more closeups in camp.

Me and the boys left camp at 6:00 AM and caught the tracks of the herd by 7:00. This time it appeared that the herd had taken on a few more members and may have grown closer to 100 animals. Based on the moisture in the droppings it appeared that we were only about an hour behind them.

We followed the trail until noon. Reinhardt didn’t want to approach them while they were lying down chewing their noon-day cud, so we stayed in place until 2:30PM.

Safari Dave on the ground waiting for the buffalo to get up and start moving.

The crew doing the same.

Superficial scratches from pushing away 40 miles of thorny bushes

Dennis our tracker, waiting it out with the rest of us.



The buffalo had stopped for their mid-day rest only about 400 yards from where we had spent the last 2 ½ hours. Dennis, the tracker, spotted a few lying in the woods still chewing their cud.

Reinhardt, Dennis and I moved forward while the rest remained back to keep from spooking the herd. Using binoculars, Reinhardt glassed each visible animal in the herd as we moved from position to position. We saw many cows and calves, a few younger bulls, then, finally, a mature, older herd bull. Reinhardt setup the shooting tripod in a spot where I should be able to get a 50-60 yard shot when he stood to his feet.

I turned my scope up to 5X and put the crosshairs on his eye, his horns, his nose, his ear, anything that I could see for a solid 15 minutes, but I could not get an angle to put a shot into the vitals. His constantly moving lower jaw was as far to his vitals as I was ever able to see. We repositioned several times, but I absolutely could not get a proper angle to make a chest shot. We kept at this until 5:00 PM. The buffalo were apparently not going to get up before the sun went down.

We made one final attempt to get into a position for a chest shot on the bull, when we spooked a cow lying, unseen, in a depression between us and the bull. In an instant, 10 acres of woods turned into a stampeding blur and the entire herd disappeared from our sight.

Another 15 miles this day in the sweltering sun, but we definitely had some heart-pounding excitement!

I didn’t get my buffalo, but my wife did capture a shot of her monitor lizard.

Another beautiful sunset.

Another wonderful dinner. This time, grilled chicken and sausage with a special sauce, mashed potatoes and coleslaw. (We also had a very tasty dessert after every dinner, that I forgot to mention earlier)

 

[Safari Dave]

Yet another aside - My PH's buffalo bullet shooting philosophy

Reinhardt wanted as accurate a shot as you could possibly make to the heart using an expanding bullet for the first shot, trying to break the shoulder and enter the heart, if broadside. On a slightly quartering away shot he wanted you to try to hit the distant shoulder. On a quartering facing shot he wanted you to place the bullet in the heart between the closest shoulder and the chest directly under the neck.

He wanted the next shot to be a solid through the chest, making sure there we no other buffalo that would take the bullet after it exited.

Assuming the animal would eventually be on the ground now or even if it were limping along with the herd, he wanted the next shot to be an expanding bullet to the vitals.

He then wanted a solid to be in the chamber if the buffalo made even the slightest twitch after he approached the animal from behind and poked it with his rifle barrel. This bullet was to be placed into it's spine between it's shoulder blades.

I believe it was solids from then on, if necessary.

He wanted rifles to be carried without a cartridge in the chamber when just walking with no buffalo expected, because of a negligent discharge that occurred with him and a client a while back.

My CZ holds 5 (4 in the magazine and one in the chamber), so we loaded it:

solid on bottom
expanding next
solid next
expanding last (which would be the first shot when a round was chambered)

PH Seba, was suffering from what seemed like a sinus infection on hunt day 4 and didn't feel like another day-long march through the sun, so we switched things up a little bit, since I no longer had my "big hammer" at arm's length away.

So for day 4, I loaded the magazine :

solid
solid
expanding
solid
and carried the expanding bullet, which would be the first shot, "Barney Fife" style in my shirt pocket.

 

[thi9elsp]

I'm enjoying the story and look forward to the rest. And, thanks for prompting some of my own fond memories of Mozambique.

My wife and I connected through Tete on our way from Maputo to Lichinga to hunt the Niassa area in 2016. Your photo brought back the memory of watching the large jet leave, full of passengers and ourselves the only ones in the gate waiting for our smaller jet.

 

[Safari Dave]

Chapter 9 – Day 7 of the trip (Day 4 of hunting)

(I just noticed that I said it was day 5 of the trip twice earlier – sorry, I need an editor)



It was going to be another all-dayer, so the lady of the camp decided to pass on today’s Baaton Death March. She actually enjoyed staying in camp, taking it easy, reading, making pictures of nature, talking with Kingsley and the other camp staff and writing in her journal.

This day started at 4:45 – Breakfast – a 3-egg omelet – “western-style” comes as close as I can do to describing it – delicious, nonetheless.

The crew, less Seba because of a bad cold, crawled into the green, diesel, 4-door Series 70 Landcruiser pickup and made our way back to the same area we had left the night before.

(Sorry if I’m a little too much into Toyota Landcruisers. I’ve owned one continuously since I was a Junior in high school, when I bought a 10 year old FJ40 in back in 1982 (with the exception of a 2-year stint in college when I thought a Jeep might be cool)).

We were on the trail of the buffalo herd by 8:00 AM. By now, after seeing tracks where they crossed bare sand since we last saw them, the herd had grown to between 125-150 animals.

We caught up with the herd from behind within an hour, thanks to a favorable wind direction and expert tracking.

Reinhardt motioned for me to chamber a round, so the “Barney” bullet went from my shirt pocket into the chamber without fully opening the action. I closed the bolt and engaged the safety.

The trouble now was that the herd bull was closely surrounded by cows and calves, leaving me with no shot.

The rest of the crew intentionally lagged behind while Reinhardt, Dennis and I went to the downwind side of the herd and made a 500-yard dash to get to a gap in the trees that would allow us to see the herd as they passed through. The herd came through, but the biggest bull was surrounded by cows, leaving no possible shot.

This scenario repeated itself 6 more times with 6 more 500-yard dashes! (The cows would simply not leave the bull’s side).

At gap #8, the bull came quartering towards us with three quarters of his body length ahead of the nearest cow. I had the .416 on the tripod when the bull stopped and looked in our direction from about 80 yards away. I settled the crosshairs of the Leupold VX-3 1.5-5X scope on a spot halfway between his right shoulder and center of his chest, squeezed the trigger, and the bull and all the rest of the herd spun around and went thundering in the opposite direction.

Reinhardt, Dennis and I went tearing off to the spot where the bull was last standing.

Before we could travel the first 20 yards, a loud guttural bellow erupted. Reinhardt stopped and turned to me and said what I had hopefully suspected, “You have a dead buffalo”.

When we first saw the bull on the ground with his head still held up, Reinhardt instructed me to put a shot though it’s chest. I fired the solid and the bull’s head rolled over and came to rest upside down on the ground. We got into a position where I could see the bottom of the bull’s chest and he directed me to put another directly between it’s front legs, I hit him there with a soft point and the bull showed no reaction. We walked around the backside of the animal and when Reinhardt saw that I had a bead on the spine between the bull’s shoulder blades, he gave it a stiff poke with his rifle barrel. It didn’t respond and I reengaged the safety on the rifle.

A dream I have had since I was in middle school had just come true - I had taken a Cape Buffalo Bull.

I knew there was no need to contact Rowland Ward, but I also knew I had just taken exactly what I wanted.

Me and me buff

PH Reinhardt Fourie, me, and my buffalo

Camp Manager - Mr. Smart, Game Scout – Bernard, Tracker – Kenurita? aka “Dennis” or maybe “Denys”, if he was given the nickname as the result of something to do with Mr. Fitch Hatton, and Village Chief-in-Waiting, Interpreter, and all-around nice guy – Wellington, myself and my Buffalo.

Because I felt like I had just won the Daytona 500, I decided on the spot to do the NASCAR winner thing with baseball caps:

For my friends at Legadema Safaris and Hunting

For the folks I know and work with occasionally with the Georgia and Greater Atlanta Chapters of SCI

I'll sign off for the evening, then get into some other things involving the buffalo, other animals, the concession, and finish out the trip over the next few days.

 

[Tra3]

Awesome!!!!!

 

[gillettehunter]

Nice buffalo. Congrats on a great hunt.
Bruce

 

[Jota Efe]

Thks for the trip report ! I have spent some time in cahora bassa ; going tiger fishing in the day saw plenty of crocs and heard some shots ; Tete weather is very hot ! Great hunt ! Congratulations !

 

[buck wild]

Great write up

 

[Gemsbok45]

Perhaps now legally legitimate (whatever that means in Mozambique) because someone perhaps sucked up to and perhaps paid or promised to pay the local chief or other local “authorities” who then in turn perhaps convinced the provincial and national authorities to follow through?

The previous long-standing operator had done a lot for the locals over many years but they always want more, more and more and perhaps the locals found a new sucker. If you want to hunt with someone with these morals, go ahead but don’t try to preach about how “legitimate” everything is in this case. Thankfully, this kind of corruption cannot happen in the Untied States to operators/outfitters on public land.

You have hunted Africa enough,there is nothing that is more legitimate than the next US dollar. Your last comment about this not being able to happen in the US. C’mon man!!!

 

[cls]

Congratulations on a fine buffalo

 

[Safari Dave]

Chapter 9 – Day 7 of the trip (Day 4 of hunting) – continued



I made the shot at almost exactly 1:00 PM. After pictures, everyone left but me and the Game Scout to go get the Landcruiser. They showed up about an hour later after cutting a 450 yard long trail form the closest concession road to the place where the buffalo lay.



When the bull was turned into the field dressing position, I could see what looked like 2 old, healed- over bullet holes in the bull’s abdomen. Reinhardt speculated that it may have had a run in with a poacher in the past who tried to kill it with and AK.

After Andreas, our skinner, started on field dressing he found a 1 ½ inch long, .50 caliber lead projectile in the bull’s stomach. He later found another 1-inch-long similar projectile inside the animal. These seemed to be crude muzzle loader bullets, that had been fired into the animal a long time ago. I would have liked to have kept them, but Bernard, the Game Scout needed to keep them for his report.

Andreas (who’s picture I haven’t posted yet) also dug out the first bullet that centered the heart (I would like to show my hunting comrades a picture of the heart, but I try to keep pictures like that away from the anti-hunters).

This will stay on my office shelf from now on:

Reinhardt asked me if he could use my Swiss Army knife to remove the tenderloins, I handed him my tactical folder, to which he replied, “even better”. He took those muscles for camp meet. The rest of the crew were more interested in organ meat, so they collected and rinsed a substantial pile of that. (I wouldn’t have minded trying the liver, but that’s about it when it comes to offal).

After field dressing, the bull was cut into, and each half was loaded separately by hand into the truck. I saw why the didn’t use the winch, because the carcass was just too large to fit in the bed of the truck in one piece.

After the bull was all loaded for the trip back to camp, a comical adventure of its own began…

Within seconds of beginning the drive out, we punctured what looked like a new right front tire on a sharp stick. The “pit crew” immediately jumped out and went into action. The lugs nuts on the flat were loosened, as the spare was deployed, while the high-life jack was being put to into use. This must be common occurrence, since every truck in camp carried at least one spare tire in the bed, a tire plugging kit and an air compressor.

The pot-holed paved road out of Tete, and some of the rocky creek crossing roads in the concession had to take their toll on tires.

We were on the road within a few minutes.

A couple more miles down the road, we punctured the spare on a sharp rock while coming out of dry creek bed. We limped to a flat spot in the sandy road and Reinhardt whipped out a tire plugging kit from the toolbox. The size of the puncture stretched the limits of the plugs in the patch kit, but the tire was reinflated and seemed to be holding air. The journey back to camp continued…

There was another rocky spot in the road ahead and Reinhardt said that he hoped the plugs held. Just as were about to finish with the rocky spot, we all heard the telltale hiss of the tire losing air again. We got a few hundred more yards, when the tire became flat.

It was pumped up again and was good for a few hundred more yards.

I remembered that I had a pair of nitrile gloves in my daypack before the tire was flat again. When it was time to repump, I got a glove and gave it to Reinhardt, he used it as a makeshift plug.

This worked for about half a mile, then blew out.

Two more tire reinflations and we were rolling into camp at 4:30 PM.

Andreas started his work at the skinning pole and had the whole thing skinned and caped in an hour.

Another glorious sunset, to closeout a glorious day!

It took 50 miles of walking, jogging, full speed running and crawling to get that buffalo, but I would gladly do it again.

Dinner was Beef Potjie over rice, it was superb, and somehow, I managed to choke it down.

Lions roared in the distance that evening to join the constant sound of hippo grunts we heard every night while in camp.

Life sure is tough out in the bush!

 

[thi9elsp]

Congratulations!

 

[Safari Dave]

Chapter 10 – Day 8 of the trip (Day 5 of hunting)



With the pressure to get the buffalo behind us now, the pace of hunting slowed down considerably (I’m not complaining, by the way).


(Legadema owner, Willie had e-mailed me two weeks before the trip started to give me a final opportunity to get permits to hunt more animals. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided why not, if I get a buffalo early in the hunt, am not going to have much to do except nature tours for the rest of the time I’m over there. He e-mailed me the list of possibilities. Sable – a little more than I wanted to pay for a permit that I might not have a chance to use, Waterbuck? – Sold Out, Bushbuck? – Sold Out, Reedbuck? – Sold out. I finally decided on a baboon and a hyena – they weren’t very expensive, and skull mounts of each would be neat, I thought. (Willie got a baboon and hyena permit for me)).



A breakfast of omelets, prepared in different manner that last time was served at 5:30 AM.

The Mrs. was ready to go again, so the whole crew loaded up in the truck to go looking for a baboon troop at 6:30. We were in the middle of a troop just as we left camp, but they made themselves disappear into the thick stuff ASAP.

We saw all kinds of other things as we drove around looking for baboons, hundreds of impalas, kudu cows and bulls (including a monster bull that would easily make any record book!), bushbuck males and females, four sable, hippos, crocodiles, fresh elephant tracks, monkeys, you name it.

Reinhardt had suggested that I shoot a baboon with a solid to minimize pelt damage.

At approximately 9:00 AM, we spotted another baboon troop fairly close to the road. I bailed out to make an offhand shot but had somehow lost sight of the largest male that was just sitting on a tree limb seconds before when we stopped the Cruiser.

Reinhardt whispered to me loudly “it’s at the base of the tree”. I had the scope turned up to 5X but needed much less for this critter that was only 30-40 yards away. I finally found him sitting up, facing to his right and looking away. I sent him a solid to the side that crashed through his left humerus, ribs and more ribs. (So much for trying to minimize pelt damage…)

Me and the baboon

PH Sebastiaan “Seba” Leltha, me, and the baboon

PH Reinhardt Fourie, me and the baboon.

(For some strange reason, my ex-science teacher wife, who likes to read books about deadly African diseases that have primates mixed somewhere in the vector/host progression along their way to becoming global pandemics, didn’t want to have a picture made with Rafiki. Oh well, her loss.)


We made it back to camp within the hour.

Andreas started on the knifework.

We sat for a while and admired the landscape, then had lunch of what I would call “sloppy joes” and fries. The sloppy joes were made with buns that Kingsley had made in a Dutch oven.



After lunch we loaded up a truckload of buffalo meat and headed to the nearest village. The meat was given to the village chief to be distributed to the residents.

It took no time to at all to make many kids happy with 200 lollipops!

We went back to camp to watch the sunset.



Dinner was fresh buffalo tenderloin, sauce and mashed potato and carrots.

The meat tasted just like beef and was tender.

(Kingsley asked my wife if the buffalo was wounded, because it's meat had a slightly different texture when he was cutting it than normal. I guess I’ll need to lay off the old reef fish for a while and refresh my memory on lead bioaccumulation)

No lions roaring tonight, only hippos grunting.

I forgot to mention that 3 nights before there was a commotion in a village that we could hear from over a mile away over the lake. Elephants had wandered into the village to eat some type of fruit that had ripened. The villagers shouted and banged on things to run them off. (and I think I have problems when Japanese beetles get on my apple trees)

 

[Red Leg]

Great report and that is a bull worthy of your dreams. Congratulations.

 

[Safari Dave]

Thanks!