MOZAMBIQUE: 'Twas The Night Before Safari - Mozambique 2024

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Joe and Dimojo

This would be a good moment to bring up Jaco's tracking team. They are Joe and Dimojo. These two gents are a perfect pair. Joe has been with Jaco for many years going back to before he was hunting in Moz. Dimojo has now been with Jaco for awhile now. He is from Moz and works permanently in the Niassa.

Joe represents the mature, patient and methodical. Dimojo is the younger of the two. He brings the exuberance of youth and charges right in. The love of hunting these two gents share is obvious. Furthermore while the two have different native tongues, they have figured out how to communicate in English at one moment and Portuguese the next.

Their shared enthusiasm for hunting and friendship adds a palpable air of positivity on the truck. If you hunt with Jaco in the L9, you will enjoy the time with these two and come to appreciate their efforts.

 

[matt2H]

Magic stuff and huge congrats to Donna- lovely bull!

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Waterbuck

Suffice to say, the L9 block is chock full of Waterbuck. They're everywhere it seems, just about as common as impala. Finding a mature shooter doesn't just happen all the time, but they are there. Furthermore, there's a large crop of bulls that are within a year or two of being mature solid trophies.

So if you saw the pic above of Donna's kudu, you can see it was getting later in the day. After getting the bull loaded up, we make for camp which is not too far from this pan.

There's one left turn off this path that once you make it, you see you're now at the far east end of the more/less two part landing strip. I say two parts as there is one leg that runs east/west which T's with the part that runs north/south.

As we make this turn, light is fading. As is common, there's a fair amount of game on the strip, the evening feed is on. As we head west toward camp along the north side, Jaco stops the truck. He has spotted a nice bull. Since I have a common and Defassa waterbuck, I offer this one to Donna. For some reason, perhaps still glowing from her kudu from not more than 30 minutes ago, she declines. But Jaco is pretty excited for this bull, so why not.

Off the truck I go. There's no time nor cover to put on a stalk and the sticks are up just as soon as we clear the truck. He's on the south side, uphill just a bit with the safety of the cover of tall thick grass just one step away. And the other animals are starting to get nervous and head out. The bull is offering a hard quartering too shot with his head to the right. Jaco says to put it on the point of the right shoulder. I'm quite steady and let the shot go. I was quite certain I had a good hit, but the bull was into that cover before I had recovered from the recoil so I didn't get any view of his response to the shot. No worries, everyone else is smiling as they felt it was a good shot.

We cover the roughly 75-100 yards up the small incline and find the spot where he was standing. As mentioned he bailed into this area of tall thick grass.

And in we go, we have now entered the realm of Joe and Dimojo. Not only is the standing grass tall and thick, the floor is covered in dead grass. Furthermore the bull was hit on the right shoulder and thus was initially in a meaty section of an animal with thick hair. There was no blood to be found at the impact location nor did we find any along the way.

Again no worries, this is the kind of moment that Joe and Dimojo live for. They pick thru the otherwise indiscernible sign to this dumb American hunter and follow the bulls path in. They stop every so often to peer ahead. After about 100-150 yards into this track, Dimojo with his infectious smile points to the right at the dead bull some 20 yards away.

We've in a span of about 45 minutes put down a very nice Waterbuck and an excellent kudu bull. Lots of smiles to go around.

 

[Mtn_Infantry]

Waterbuck

Suffice to say, the L9 block is chock full of Waterbuck. They're everywhere it seems, just about as common as impala. Finding a mature shooter doesn't just happen all the time, but they are there. Furthermore, there's a large crop of bulls that are within a year or two of being mature solid trophies.

So if you saw the pic above of Donna's kudu, you can see it was getting later in the day. After getting the bull loaded up, we make for camp which is not too far from this pan.

There's one left turn off this path that once you make it, you see you're now at the far east end of the more/less two part landing strip. I say two parts as there is one leg that runs east/west which T's with the part that runs north/south.

As we make this turn, light is fading. As is common, there's a fair amount of game on the strip, the evening feed is on. As we head west toward camp along the north side, Jaco stops the truck. He has spotted a nice bull. Since I have a common and Defassa waterbuck, I offer this one to Donna. For some reason, perhaps still glowing from her kudu from not more than 30 minutes ago, she declines. But Jaco is pretty excited for this bull, so why not.

Off the truck I go. There's no time nor cover to put on a stalk and the sticks are up just as soon as we clear the truck. He's on the south side, uphill just a bit with the safety of the cover of tall thick grass just one step away. And the other animals are starting to get nervous and head out. The bull is offering a hard quartering too shot with his head to the right. Jaco says to put it on the point of the right shoulder. I'm quite steady and let the shot go. I was quite certain I had a good hit, but the bull was into that cover before I had recovered from the recoil so I didn't get any view of his response to the shot. No worries, everyone else is smiling as they felt it was a good shot.

We cover the roughly 75-100 yards up the small incline and find the spot where he was standing. As mentioned he bailed into this area of tall thick grass.

And in we go, we have now entered the realm of Joe and Dimojo. Not only is the standing grass tall and thick, the floor is covered in dead grass. Furthermore the bull was hit on the right shoulder and thus was initially in a meaty section of an animal with thick hair. There was no blood to be found at the impact location nor did we find any along the way.

Again no worries, this is the kind of moment that Joe and Dimojo live for. They pick thru the otherwise indiscernible sign to this dumb American hunter and follow the bulls path in. They stop every so often to peer ahead. After about 100-150 yards into this track, Dimojo with his infectious smile points to the right at the dead bull some 20 yards away.

We've in a span of about 45 minutes put down a very nice Waterbuck and an excellent kudu bull. Lots of smiles to go around.

View attachment 619584

Beautiful Waterbuck. I personally think they’re one of the most underrated Plains Game trophies and are often overlooked or not even considered by first or second time African Hunters

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Beautiful Waterbuck. I personally think they’re one of the most underrated Plains Game trophies and are often overlooked or not even considered by first or second time African Hunters

I agree. As Jaco described them, they are a regal animal. When they stand tall and proud, those horns give them a majestic look.

And it may just be me, but of the 3 waterbuck I've taken, none has dropped at the shot despite solid hits with very good bullets. They all have ran an appreciable distance considering the mortal wounds they received. The blue wildebeest enjoys a well earned reputation for being tough, but I believe the waterbuck is right there with them.

 

[cpr0312]

That's a great start to the hunt! Congrats to both! Look forward to more!

 

[buck wild]

Great start! Welcome back

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Block L9 Niassa Reserve

So it's 4:30am and I've been awake for an hour or so now losing the jet lag battle once again. So a cold drink, a cigar and from my deck here a bit before sunrise over the Lake of Fire comes this next post. I thought I'd give a bit of a description of the block.

The first thing to know is that the block is over 700K acres big. And if I remember correctly Jaco says they're not even hunting half of that. The fact is the part that remains not hunted has no roads. There simply is no access. But you're still hunting on over 300K acres.

What intrigued me to hunt the Niassa first was to go to an area that was as devoid of humans as I could find and fit within a reasonable budget. By comparison, I find most Tanzania hunts to be well out of my budget. Hunting here is not cheap, but I do believe it's attainable with some planning and discipline.

Regarding human presence, I was not disappointed. Excluding the camp staff, PHs, trackers we saw very few people. Most of those are associated with the game scouts. There are two groups of scouts in the block, those paid for my Kwalata Safaris and those paid for by the government. Their job as scouts is to enforce anti-poaching. The gov't group is fairly well armed, carrying AK-47s as well as AR-15 type rifles.

There is also one very small village that we passed thru one day, seemed like 20 people there or so. The rest of our human encounters were typically 1-2 fisherman and one group of honey collectors.

I've got nothing against people, I was just searching for an experience that goes back in time and was as close to truly wild Africa that I could find. This hunt provided that.

Regarding the terrain. It is a mix of miambo woodlands, thick jess, not so terribly thick brush, open meadows and water pans. The one feature that I found quite interesting was the flora, much if not most of it did NOT have thorns. There are certainly thorn bushes present, but I'm pretty used to everything having thorns, so this was a nice surprise.

The topography of the area would be lots of rolling but relatively small hills with small canyons in between. I don't think I'd even call them canyons, more like just low lying drainages or as Jaco calls them, "seeps". These seeps were no long flowing water when I got there, but hadn't been that way for long. And many of those seeps contained pools of water that were still providing enough that the critters need not search or travel far for water. Again not to worry @ACM or @AZDAVE, these pools are drying up. In a couple of weeks I'd expect them to be dry except for those few that have springs in them. Animal movement will completely change as this happens combined with the reduction in graze.

All of these seeps head drain into the most prominent feature of the area, the Lugenda river. The river flows north in this part of the country and makes up the western boundary of the block. Camp is set on a bluff about 20-30 feet above the river (well at least at this point it is, flood stage is a different matter). The camp setting is like a scene from a movie, the views just scream Africa. Wildlife regularly passes thru the south end of camp on their way to water at the river. Crocs can be scene from camp. We did not see hippos from camp, but did hear them calling one late afternoon just a bit north.

The river becomes the most important feature in the area as the hunting season progresses and that right soon. Where there is water, there is life and the river will be the only source of water for the wildlife. Everything will soon be moving to the Lugenda on a daily basis concentrating the game more and more. This is true of prey species as well as the predators them.

It was just our bad luck that the rain fell as it did this year. Rainfall was actually low and the river was lower than normal for this time of year. But the rain that did fall was late coming and led to a late bloom in the bush as well as normally dried up water holes. Oh well, that's hunting.

The easy thing to do for those considering this hunt is to not schedule in July. Push your dates out to no earlier than the first of August and/or as late as you can. But beware, the later you go, the hotter it gets. I'm quite certain I would not want to be hunting here come October much less November. The hunting may be great, but I would hate the heat. Best I can say is do your own research on the weather and decide for yourself what makes sense for you if you're considering this hunt.

Speaking of weather, we were there in what is arguably the coolest month of the year. When the sun went down, the area cooled off nicely and with the ceiling fans in the tents, we could sleep quite comfortably. But by noon, the day is warming up and the afternoon highs were in the 85-90 degree Farenheit range. Those temps are only going to start increasing from this point forward.

 

[AZDAVE]

The kudu and waterbuck are both impressive. Thank you for the description of the area. My wife and I selected Jaco and the L9 block for much of the same reasons you did

Look forward to hearing about more of your adventure.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Block L9 Niassa Reserve
............

Speaking of weather, we were there in what is arguably the coolest month of the year. When the sun went down, the area cooled off nicely and with the ceiling fans in the tents, we could sleep quite comfortably. But by noon, the day is warming up and the afternoon highs were in the 85-90 degree Farenheit range. Those temps are only going to start increasing from this point forward.

That would already be melting me. Coolest month, yeesh.

Glad you are having a good hunt Phil.

 

[Tucketed]

Excellent report, congratulations. Looking for more

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Bushpig

Ok, so I was able to get a few more Z's and will hopefully make it thru the rest of the day with no nap and be ready for the #%^&ing job tomorrow.

At this point I've lost track of the days. I tell myself to keep a journal while on safari each trip. But I never seem to find the time to do so properly. So the rest of this report is in no particular order.

We find ourselves now concentrating on buffalo which is not coming easy. We have had some close calls and we have several water holes where judging by the tracks, both size and number, that we have likely dagga boys in the area. Jaco only hunts small bachelor herds and those with bigger tracks, targeting the old boys. Herds are not hunted, not even followed and are left alone.

As we head out and approach the now very familiar Presidential Pan, both Joe and Dimojo get very excited and call for Jaco to stop the truck. There is a distinct difference in how they react to spotted animals. There's the very relaxed "waterbuck" or "impala" or "warthog", no excitement, meaning they're just calling them out for us to view as we ride along. And then there's the next step up, a bit more excitement, pointing to the animals for Jaco's sake and just a little more elevated excitement in their voices.

And there's this call. A no doubt about it moment in their mind that we must stop and consider what is out there and they call out bushpig. It is first light but clear enough to me to see the group of 4 pigs as they're making their way out of the pan on the near side.

We quickly stop and make a stalk. There is a fair amount of bush the pigs have to clear before they'll break out into the open and we use that to conceal our approach which thankfully the wind doesn't betray. The pigs are in no hurry, they are relaxed as they make their way more/less in our direction.

At one point I see the boar and can shoot, but Jaco wants to evaluate one more time to ensure we have the right one. We close the distance just a little more and position ourselves to catch them as they clear some small trees. I see exactly where the pigs should clear and get setup on the sticks.

The big boar approaches and for a moment pauses with a tree in the way. I setup the crosshairs with the horizontal hair even with his shoulder and the vertical cross hair in the open gap between the tree he's at and the next set of brush. Sure enough he steps forward into the intersection of the cross hairs and I let a bullet fly. He's down flat with just a kick or two.

Now beyond it's physical size which was obvious he was the biggest of the group, I've no idea what a good trophy bushpig is. Jaco however declares hit's a big bore as his lower daggers are well visible.

All I know is I really hadn't planned until not long before the trip to take one of these. But the enablers on this fine forum convinced me a daytime bushpig was something to take if possible. I was glad I did, it is a unique trophy.

Jaco makes a call in on the radio to camp to have a retrieval team come get the animal. We place the old boar right next to the road with a big tarp over him and some toilet paper on a bush to mark the spot and off we go to continue the buff hunt.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Wild Dogs

We had an unexpected treat, viewing of African Wild Dogs. The first two videos are from the same location. We had made a turn down that road and spotted the dogs off to the left of the truck as we passed by. For whatever reason, the dogs decided to follow us down the hill and eventually passed us as we stopped to watch. The third video is once again from Presidential Pan, the pack had grown. Once again they chased almost as if they wanted us to come out and play with them.

I have unofficially named them the Presidential Pack, Jaco agreed with that name.

 

[Edge]

Dagga Kudu

So it was on the truck a bit after daylight to go ensure the rifles were sighted in on our first morning. The .375 was right on and needed no adjustment. My .470 double however needed a bit of adjustment. Not sure why, but perhaps because I had changed the battery in the Trijicon RMR sight just before leaving.

After that we were off to scout for buffalo. It is a brand new season and a bit of research was needed to find tracks of buffalo near known water holes. With daylight actually working against us in the morning, we were behind the buffalo. However a number of tracks of suspected duggaboys were found and gave us options to work with for day 2. The evening hunt was much the same result.

On our way out in the morning, about 20 minutes from camp is a very large pan, holding lots of water and lots of feed. It is an oasis and there's lots of wildlife that stay in this area of what they have named the Presidential Pan. Impala, waterbuck, kudu, warthogs were seen there.

A brief pause here to describe wildlife sightings. Hunting pressure in the L9 block is quite limited. Quota is pretty tight and as such the animals are fairly calm at the sight of a truck. Not all, but most of the time the animals will move away from the truck if fairly close, but usually don't run off for the next block. As such, if you can see the animals, you can usually get a fair idea of age and trophy quality. And so it was early evening as we came back by the Presidential Pan.

On the other side of the pan were 3 kudu bulls. One of which immediately caught mine and Jaco's eye. I had told Jaco I was looking for a 55" bull or better. I could see he was deep curled and thought he might make that number.

Jaco was guessing him to be 53-54 inches, perhaps better, but not likely. We decided to circle around to the other side of the pan to get a closer look at the bull as well as the other animals that were further away.

As we came around, the kudu came into closer view of course. Again I was thinking this bull was pretty good, but again Jaco wasn't sure it would make that 55" mark. Well.....I may not want to take the bull.....but my wife Donna has not taken a kudu......and this one would make a fine first I thought. I shared the thought with Jaco and he agreed and so did Donna.

So off we went on a stalk. Now in this area the cover isn't so thick and in fact it was a bit too open. We were able to get within 200 yards of the bulls, but no closer. Jaco looked back at me to ask if that was good, I waved it off. I got Donna shooting my .375, but I was keeping her to 100 yard or less. She's still quite new to hunting and I didn't want to push her past that distance.

Well the kudu make us and head out. But again, they don't head off for parts unknown. We are able to shortly get back on them and now are within 100 yards. The bull is facing us head on with a bit of brush in front of him. I'm wanting to wait until he turns broadside to give a better shot for Donna but Jaco is concerned now with us bumping him a 2nd time that his next move will be to bolt much further.

So Jaco coaches Donna on where to place the shot, on the neck where it connects to the body. Donna confirms she's got it and lets a bullet fly. Damn if she didn't drop him in his tracks. The bull is kicking still and a finishing shot was taken. But that first shot was a killing shot.

It was quite fun for me to watch Donna's reaction to all of this, she was quite proud of herself.

Now the kudu rut is on and there's no doubt this old boy still thinks he's the boss bull around. Somewhere along the line he'd bin thrashing his face and horns in the mud. As such I've nicknamed him Dagga Kudu. He was quite old, turning almost blue like an old Eland. His mane was nearly gone.

View attachment 619503

For some reason I can't get the pic to show within the post, but if you click on the URL, you'll see it in a new window. Perhaps @BRICKBURN you could fix it to show within the post?

Now the funny part. A little later after we are back at camp and have showered and get settled in for dinner, Jaco is grimacing. It seems while we were getting ready for dinner he measured the kudu. It came in unofficially of course at 55 3/8". He is apologizing, but I don't know why. Sure it was what I was after, but I was just as happy that my wife took him and will enjoy the trophy on the wall just the same.

Great Kudu, well done Donna!

 

[PARA45]

Wow, some fine animals taken, congratulations! Anxiously waiting for more.

 

[Ryan Brown]

I’m 97 days away from hunting next door with Kambako. This report is adding fuel to the fire. I can’t wait to get there.

 

[ACM]

Greatly enjoying the report!

 

[Mark Biggerstaff]

Enjoying the report! Congrats on some fine animals. Looking forward to more!

 

[thi9elsp]

What a treat to see the wild dogs. Wonderful Waterbuck.

 

[Wheels]

Loving the report and looking forward for more!