Zimbabwe Bound

[BRICKBURN]

Well done.

 

[Fatback]

Sept 4th

I’m up at 4:00 am, get ready and am in the hunting truck at 4:30. As we are getting situated on the truck, lions begin roaring about 200 yards from us. I’ve heard them on other trips but I always get excited hearing them. What a great start to the morning. We make our way towards the hyena bait site under a blanket of brilliant stars. I have under estimated how cold the ride was going to be so I’m a bit chilled when we park. As soon as we stop we can hear hyenas calling but they don’t sound like they are at the bait but closer to where we parked. Me and Tristan begin making our way towards the bait and when we get to the path to turn off the road headed toward the bait we stop and listen. We can hear something crunching bones at the bait site. All of a sudden we can hear an animal running up the road straight towards us. We can’t see excatly what it is but just before running into us it veers off to the right. Talk about a rush. Tristan says that was either a lioness or hyena, he isn’t sure. After getting our heart rates back out of the danger zone we ease into the blind and get settled. Just after sitting down we can see a hyena but it’s too dark to get a shot and it buggers off before it gets light enough to shoot. We give it another 15 minutes and walk back to the truck. The guys in the truck say it was a hyena that ran past. We load up and head out to look for bushbuck and kudu.

After about 2 hours we are at a spot known to have some bushbuck around. We decide to eat our breakfast sandwiches before heading out up the dry riverbed hunting. Just as I finish my sandwich, I look up the riverbed and there are a make and female bushbuck standing there. Tristan glasses them up and says the male is a good one so off we go. We get in the brush on the side of the riverbed and ease up to where we think they should be just in time to see them slip into the brush on the other side. We cross over after them. About 5 minutes later Tristan stops and he is looking through his binos. He asks me if I want a warthog as we have come upon 2 nice males. I decline and we continue after the bushbuck. We find them a few minutes later and the sticks go up. I am able to find the make hiding in the shadows and make the shot. He runs about 20 yards and is done. I have taken a nice old ram. Gald I passed in the warthogs. Pictures aren’t loading now. I’ll try again later. Headed out now to look for kudu.

 

[Fatback]

Here is a pic of the bushbuck from the morning of the 4th. Just got back in from our benign hunt. Made some more great memories today but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I will just say that this evening was the first time I’ve ever had a stalk busted by a herd of elephants….

 

[Mark Biggerstaff]

Awesome Bushbuck! Congrats, you are having a great hunt!!

 

[Fatback]

Sept 5th. Is a pretty quiet day. We had an uneventful walk into the hyena blind and didn’t see anything from the blind. Afterwards we spend the rest of the morning looking for kudu then back to the camp for lunch. The food here is very good. The afternoon/evening is also spent in the truck covering ground. We see lots of game to include impala, Sharp’s Grysbok, zebra, giraffe, roan, sable, reedbuck, warthog, duiker, steinbok and the ever present elephant. We get back to the camp, I am treated to a special dinner of ox tail(made from my buffalo), rice and veggies. All quite delicious. I am once again off to bed early as these 4:00 am wake ups are wearing me out.