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.

 

[Mtn_Infantry]

Congratulations on a great hunt thus far. Love the character and all the scaring on your buff.

 

[Fatback]

Sept 6th. No joy again at the hyena bait. After that it’s off to look for kudu and whatever else the bush might provide. It is a great morning with lots of game seen, just nothing mature enough to go after that intrested me. We get back to the lodge for a wonderful meal of pork ribs and sides.

After lunch and a nap we head back out. we find a real nice kudu bull and make a plan for a stalk. After an hour of creeping through the brush, just as we are getting ready to set up the sticks on the kudu, a herd of elephants decide to make an appearance between us and the kudu. The wind is in our favor so they don’t know we are there. The elephants get as close as 25 yards from us. That was too cool but I am feeling way under gunned with the 30-06. Eventually the elephants move off but they have buggered out kudu in the process, so it’s back to the truck and keep on looking.

About an hour before dark we spot a group of impala and Tristan asks me if I’d like to take a crack at one. I’ve shot several impala over the years and they were not really on my radar for this trip but there is a dandy ram in the bunch so off we go. After a short stalk and repositioning a couple of times I am able to get lined up for the shot and I make it count on my best impala ram ever.

 

[Fatback]

Sept 7,

Still no luck on the hyena blind. So we decide to pull it and move the bait to a different location a couple of miles away. We get that taken care of and start making our way back to camp looking for a kudu. We see lots of game and quite a few young kudu bulls but nothing I was wanting to hunt. The afternoon hunt goes similar to the morning's hunt, lots of animals seen just not mature kudu bulls. We are still seeing multiple elephants every time out along with giraffe, impala, reedbuck, waterbuck, roan, warthogs and sable. It is great to be able to see so much game moving about and slung their respective thing.

With the move of the hyena blind we have further to drive and the walk into the blind so now we will leave at 4:00 am instead of 4:30. So with a 3:30 am wake up call looming I make my way to bed after dinner to try and get some much needed sleep.

 

[thi9elsp]

Congratulations on a great hunt and adventure. Being that close to the elephants had to be fun and exciting! Good luck on the hyena. The one time I did it, no luck, but one morning we had a lion leave the bait site and walk by about 20 yards away through the woods while we were walking into the blind. It gets the heart rate going for sure.