Zim hunt day 5 (May 28, 2017)
View attachment 190332
[Travel map for May 28th, less the 5-7 miles walked while the GPS was in the truck]
Given how close to success we were the previous day, hopes are high. Everybody seems more energized and after a quick breakfast, we head out. As soon as we arrive at the concession, we drive the perimeter of the block we saw the elephant herd the day before. Wayne wants to see if the elephants crossed out of the block overnight. It stands to reason that if they didn’t leave, they should still be there.
View attachment 190336[Warming up by the coals at breakfast. Yes, it was this dark when we started each day. It was also very cold.]
There is a bit of alarm at finding a little bit of toilet paper tied to a bush. Generally, those are left for markers and we did not leave any such marker. We should be the only people hunting here and so the first thing that pops into mind is either poachers or a second hunting party has been allowed here during our hunt. We take it down and move on.
Finding no sign that the elephants have left, we push in to their last known area and spread out looking for any signs of recent activity that we can track. It seems as though our party is just huge – nine in total now. I have not done a lot of safaris, but Henco has been on over 30 of them with many different outfitters and in lots of countries. He has never been in a hunt with so many game scouts. We have four. One, named Trust, is from the Gwayi area, as he always wears a shirt that says Gwayi Ranch on it. Patrick always wears a shirt that says Thokozani safaris. Dumisani does not have any logos on his clothes indicating a company or area. Then, we have Brian from Zim Parks. Add in our two trackers, Cowboy and Sam, and we should be fully staffed on tracking. Brian, however, rarely leaves the truck unless he needs to use the bathroom or we are parked and he wants to rest in the shade. Still, 5 trackers is a lot and we are able to cover many paths at once whenever there is a clearing that offers multiple exits.
We are hoping the elephants did not go out the far side of the ranch and cross the Shangani River, but it isn’t practical for us to check. Nearly the entire party heads into the bush. About 15 minutes in, I realize I forgot my GPS tracker in the car. With 5 scouts, 3 of them locals, I should be OK but I won’t have satellite GPS updates for the people watching online. I need to dedicate a specific spot in my gear to carry it so that I don’t forget it next time.
We find some tracks and some relatively recent dung. Wayne and I lock and load and the race is on. We need to track them faster than they wander away from us. Unfortunately, with the ground so hard, prints are hard to come by. Occasionally, we can see areas where the ground is scuffed and a bit shiny, but those only tell us a place they were and not a direction they are headed. Often times, all we have to go on is a loose leaf on the ground that has fallen from a branch they were eating. Imagine trying to find a leaf on the ground in the forest and determine if it fell naturally, or was dropped off a branch that was being eaten. It is not an easy task and I am impressed with the speed and proficiency of our trackers. Unfortunately, all the skill they possess is not enough to keep us on the elephants and eventually we have to admit that we have lost their trail. We had been hard at it four hours. It is now eleven o’clock and that is time to come up with a plan. The party breaks up into 3 groups – Wayne, Henco, Dumisani and I head back to the bakkie. Trust and Patrick form one tracking duo while Cowboy and Sam form another. They have walkie-talkies to contact us if they find something promising.
View attachment 190365[Given how many trees these elephants destroy, you would think the greenies would not like them so much]
Dumisani takes the lead, followed by Wayne. Henco soon passes me as I seem a bit more interested in just enjoying the views than pushing hard to get back. As long as I don’t slow up the rest, I am going to enjoy the walk in nature. Although I am not in a hurry, I do feel like we are walking an awfully long way to get back. After about 45 minutes, I catch up to Wayne to ask him if we are walking back to Melindi. Before I can speak, he asks me if I have a waypoint set on my GPS. I have to tell him I forgot it in the car. We have a local guide who is supposed to know how to get us back, but I cannot help feeling like I am the one who failed here. We are out of walkie-talkie range and even if we were in range, we don’t know how to tell somebody where we are. I hang my head and notice a free spot next to my binocular case. I know where that tracker is going to be from now on. Eventually, we are able to find out way back and by my calculations, we walked two to three miles just to get back to the car. I would guess we walked at least three miles in the bush on the trail, perhaps four. We will never know, but I will never be in that position again.
View attachment 190515
[After miles of walking looking for the truck, even the cameraman is worn out]
Once back at the car, we break for lunch and wait for Sam and Cowboy to report back. I ask Brian why we need to have a game scout. He tells me that a lion was shot that should not have been shot, so now they have game scouts to prevent that from happening and he is there to make sure we follow all their laws. I wonder how he can accomplish that while sitting in the back of the truck. He is a very nice fellow, but given how slow he moves, and obviously not in the best of health, he should be at a desk job and not in the bush. Although I feel bad for him, I am not going to dial it down a notch on the hunt – that is like teaching a class to the lowest common denominator and a recipe for failure.
We drive around looking for tracks. Finding some, we send out a scouting party to check it out and see if it looks promising. Nothing good, so we pile into the truck and hit the road again, hoping to find a good lead. Finally, there is a nice fresh track and we send the guys out once more to see if it disappears or is something we can follow. Henco comes over and wants to do an interview on how the hunt is progressing. I am part way through when I see half our scouting party coming back – running! They heard the elephants and left Cowboy there to keep an eye on them while we catch up to him.
We grab the guns, load and head into the bush hot. The trackers get us to where they left Cowboy, but he is not there and there is no sigh of the elephants. We move towards the area where Sam and the others heard the sounds of elephants feeding, pick up a track and follow. Most of the areas, the ground is too hard to leave a print, but we see an occasional broken branch or often times, just a leaf on the ground that is fresh and came off the branches the elephants had been eating. Soon, we can hear the elephants as well. We are getting close, but not on top of them yet. Still no sign of Cowboy.
Then, nothing. Total silence. We wait to see if the elephants have just stopped eating for a while, but soon decide that the elephants have moved away from us. We continue to track them and push hard, eventually catching back up to a point that the elephants can be heard again off in the distance but again, they are able to evade us. We try and pick up their trail to chase them down, but there is some confusion because it sounds like some of the trackers want to look for Cowboy, figuring that will get us closer to the elephants. If we cannot track elephants, there is no way we are going to track a single native bushman – especially one who is on a stalk and trying to make no noise or leave any evidence of him being here. There is a discussion and Wayne elects to follow the locals over following his own tracker, Sam.
Unfortunately, the local, Patrick, hunts not only by tracking but also by instinct and that means he believes he knows where the elephants are going to go and heads there. That form of hunting works well sometimes – especially for hunts using a blind, but in reality, it is just getting lucky that your quarry happened to be there when you were there. Luck is not a strategy and this one roll of the dice does not pay off. I like Patrick and think he has shown some good tracking ability, but Wayne is not too pleased and explains that we need to follow the spoor and the tracks, not our gut instincts.
We head back on the trail from the last known point and eventually, realizing that light is fading fast, we have to make a hard decision. Wayne asks if I Henco or I have flashlights. I have one… in the truck. Henco’s is in camp. All we have is the flashlight app on our iPhones. Although that might be enough to see the trees, it isn’t going to be much help in navigating thick bush. I wouldn’t want to be out here in the dark with potential predators around. Wayne is more concerned about running into a cow elephant. Given the recent deadly interaction, I think Wayne’s example is much more likely and just as deadly, if not even more so. We call the hunt and head back.
As soon as we step out from the thick tree cover, we have more light and are in an overgrown riverbed. Wayne realizes we can navigate this during the dark and that we should have another 30 minutes or so if light left if we need it. We turn away from the car and follow the riverbed along the brush to try and hear the elephants in the brush if they went down this side of the hill. We eventually run out of light and have to head home empty handed again. We didn’t get beat – we just ran out of time.
At dinner, we sat around the fire and discussed the events of the day, swapped jokes and watched as our jackal came into the camp. It was time to play fetch, so I went into my room to fetch my bow but when I got back he was gone. I will have to bring my bow to dinner in the future.
I retire for the evening. It is nice to relax in the tub and I have taken to bathing over showering given that there is nothing to contain the over spray from the shower head. The tub is also long enough for me to stretch out completely and unwind. As I look at my legs and arms, I can see the myriad of scrapes, scabs and bruises from pushing through brush. The thorns here are wicked and if it wasn’t for the adrenaline of a good hunt, I probably would notice it a lot more when I get them.
I do a quick check of my email, try and keep up on my journal and look on Africa Hunting online, seeing there are a lot of people interested in the hunt. I wish I could give them real time updates, but between the limited bandwidth for photo uploads and the 14-15 hour days every day, ending in an exhausted person, both physically and mentally, I am finding it hard enough to keep up with the journal alone.
