"30 Hunting Days, 9 Elephants"
by JPK

continued ...

Oct 12 Rich Tabor and I begin looking for a tuskless or two. The elephants at Humani are very tall, large, and nasty and the brush is typically thick to very thick. You need to be careful here, and same as last year, Richard is much more cautious with the Humani elephants than with Chewore elephants.

We see many elephants on Day 1 and 2, but only a young and a younger tuskless. Typically we track in the morning and then patrol. The elephants are feeding on Lala (sp?) palm nuts and will grab a palm tree and shake it, knocking down the nuts. We listen while patroling for this and when we hear it we go take a look. We are seeing plenty of bulls, plenty of cows but no suitable tuskless. We need to do some quick but orderly withdrawals.

On day three we have more of the same, but are charged by a bull from thirty yards. We make an orderly run of thirty more yards but the bull still comes on. Richard pulls up and fires a warning over his head. I'm on the other side of a large bush and can't see either the elephant or Richard. At his shot I pulled up and stand by. When I hear a second shot, and don't hear the elephant fall i expect Richard to come around the bush at pace, reloading since he carries a 470 double. I move to see both Richard and the bull and finally the bull moves off. As I discover, Richard's first warning shot checks the bull and Rich reloaded, so he could fire a secnd shot over the bull's head. There was a ten yard standoff til the bull went his way. These elephants are nasty!

We continue with our efforts Day 4 and are on our afternoon patrol when we hear palms shaking. We bypass a bull and find some cows feeding. The wind isn't steady but its not too bad. We are in the corner of a rectangular clearing looking over some brush at the cows when the decide to head our way. We retreat twenty yards to give way. The first cow goes to cross a corner of the clearing and senses us. She pauses and looks, and is clearly thinking of giving us a rush. We back another five yards, til our backs are against some really thick bush that has pretty cornered. Richard wispers that if she comes we will need to stand our ground. Finally she turns and ambles on, with two youngsters behind. Its a relief, but brief.

The next cow in line is bigger, and alone. She takes one look at us and she comes from twenty five yards. Try to imagine a rectangular clearing twenty five yards by ten yards. The long sides of the rectangle run from either side of our party toward the elephant. She came into the rectangle on the far right hand corner, angling tightly across the corner, as had the other cow and her calves. But she had turned to come. There was a downed palm that stood directly between the elephant and Richard on the left, me next to Richard, Dave Hulme, along for the fun and for some photos is two steps behind me and two stepps to my right, Oria, one of Richard's trackers, is just to the right of Dave.

The cow comes barreling down the right side of the rectangle, and at twelve yards or so, Richard fires a warning over her head. She slowed a bit but then accelerated, put her head down and came on. When she cleared a tree at about nine or ten yards she swung toward us and Richard told me to shoot her. She seemed to have picked out Dave to squash, again, he is two, maybe three paces to my right and about the same behind. (Note: Dave was the only one of the four of us wearing a khaki colored shirt. Richard and I wore olive green shirts and Oria was in green coveralls. Coincidence?) From the emphatic words, "Shoot her!", til I mounted my rifle and pulled the trigger she covered two yards, and I wasn't slow! My first shot stopped her in her tracks, but didn't drop her, it was too low. My second was also too low but had her wheeling to get out of Dodge. Richard fired his remaining shot as she was turning and he too was low. I reloaded, just my right barrel and gave her a heart shot before she reached the far end of the rectangle, Richard did likewise. I managed to reload my right barrel again and got off a hard raking shot.

PWEW! THAT WAS CLOSE!

None of our party bolted. Dave got an amazing series of photos by using the five shot burst feature on his camera. Hope he emails them soon!

We all just stood there for a moment, and Dave got that on film too, til he cracked a joke which got us smiling and turning to him. I recall standing there with the butt of my rifle on the ground holding the end of the barrels. I took my hand away and it was shaking. I looked at Richard and he did the same and his hand too was shaking.

The whole episode seemed to be no particular rush to me, but when we looked at the five photos from the burst of the camera it amazing how fast it all happened.

We went over our final shots and both Richard and I were confident that our heart shots were good, but...

My final shot was a prayer more than anything, taken at a grey shape disapearing in the thick.

After a short break, we began following the cow.At first there was no blood so it was a matter of winding our way through some really thick bush, then going back and trying a different route. Very, very tense. Dave got good photos of this too. Finally we found blood and alot of it. Another five yards and she was there, dead. She wasn't thirty yards from the far end of the clearing but the bush was so thick it took near a half hour of slow careful, rifles ready looking. Wow, what a relief.

With that we cut the tail and went for a beer and to report the self defense kill. Next morning we recovered the elephant and headed back to Harare. Hopefully, I will receive Dave's photos and post them here.

This was a trip of a lifetime. I would highly recomend both Richard Tabor and Buzz Charlton. They both love to hunt for elephants and will give you a fantastic experience. Not mentioned but great company and a great cameraman is Ryan who films for Buzz.

JPK