Forums.NitroExpress.com

Selous – Tanzania Safari

Location – Selous Area, Tanzania, nearest village – Ngarambe.

Outfitter – Swanepoel & Scandrol

PH – Lance Nesbitt

Dates – July 27th – Aug 3rd.

Game seen: Hardebeest, Impala, Nyasa Wildebeest, Warthog, Elephant, Cape Buffalo, Zebra, Waterbuck, Sable, Hyena, African Spotted Dog, Lion, Duikar

Game Taken: Cape Buffalo (2), Nyasa Wildebeest, Impala

After many years of sitting around the South Texas deer camp listening to my lease members talk about their African safari adventures, I finally went on safari with my best friend and hunting buddy Mike H.. We booked a one week hunt in the Selous for Cape buffalo.

We booked with Swanepoel & Scandrol because we wanted to hunt with Lance Nesbitt – my buddy Mike has hunted four [previous times with Lance in Zimbabwe and really likes him and enjoys hunting with him. This is Lance’s first year in Tanzania, and our trip to this hunting concession would be his first time to see this area.

The concession was an amazing piece of property that included dense forests, woodland forest, scrub brush, and more typical (at least in my mind) Savannah like conditions.

The camp was 1st class, with very nice tents, dining facilities, fire ring, etc. Lance has been in many camps, and he was impressed with the facilities. The cook was outstanding – I think I actually gained weight on the trip – not planned!

On our first day, we started early with Lance working hard to learn the area, and pumping the game scouts for local information. We spotted plenty of buffalo sign, but no groups. The grass was very green and quite high, making following tracks very difficult. Later in the morning, we spotted and shot an Impala much to the delight of the trackers and the game scout as they had requested meat for the camp. Late on the evening we finally spotted a herd of buffalo in the low thorn bush scrub. We set out on stalk and were able to get very close to the herd via a dry creek bed. This was my first ever buff stalk, and getting that close to these massive animals was thrilling, if not a little intimidating! Mike and Lance glassed the group and found an old bull they wanted to take. After what seemed like 30 minutes, the old bull moved to give them a shot. Mike took him at 50 yards with his 470 NE. The herd rumbled off. Once the herd stopped, we could them making their “bbbbrrrrrrrr” calls, which Lance said meant the herd could smell blood on the bull. These calls died down, and we started tracking the blood spoor. About 100 yards later, Mike’s buff lay dead. I probably took a roll of film as this was the first buff I had ever seen up close. While the staff was cleaning the old dagga boy, we got another treat as a lone Hyena showed up and stayed about 40 yards from us, waiting to dine on the gut pile.

That night we had a celebration around the camp fire that included, fresh buff liver and many whiskeys.

While hunting back to camp on the evening of the second day, we jumped a lone dagga boy in a woodland opening. He took off for the thick stuff when he saw the Land Rover. We followed, but due to the high grass, we were just guessing as to his whereabouts. One of the trackers climbed a tree to try and spot him, but he was gone. The image of him in that field was a sight that I dreamed about that night…and for many nights since then.

On the third day, we found a herd early in the morning and tracked them for hours. We got close to this herd many times, but they always got spooked. Finally, Lance decided to call off the stalk as it was getting towards the heat of the day, and the herd wanted to bed down in the thick stuff. We decided to leave them alone so we could find them again that evening or the next day. We had seen sign of this large group the first day, in the same area so we knew they would stick around unless we pushed them to hard. We finally got back the truck exhausted and hot – after a cold orange Fanta (is there anything better?) we started off n the truck to find a shady spot for our lunch. Just then, one of the trackers spotted a group of animals about 1000 yards away. After glassing them, we were able to see that it was a group of Impala with two Nyasa Wildebeest grazing with them. They were on the side of a hill just above a water hole. Between us and them was about 1000 yards of tall grass – this was a perfect set-up for a stalk. It should be mentioned that for the plains game on this trip, I was shooting a Marlin lever action 45-70 with open sights. I killed the Impala on the 1st day at 125 yards, but this was about my comfort zone for shooting. The second day, we had stalked a herd of Wildebeest but could never get closer than about 300 yards. The current situation was my best shot at a Wildebeest (one of the priorities for my trip.) We were able to get within 100 yards of the Impala and the Wildbeest as we had the tall grass and the wind. Luckily, one of the wildebeest was a bull. I was able to take him easily…we now had Wildebeest for dinner!

On the morning of the 4th day, we set out early to go to the area where we had seen the lone dagga boy in the woodlands. Just before we got to that area, we jumped a herd of buff moving on a wooded hill just above us. The herd took off upon seeing the truck, and we started a stalk up hill after them. The wind was not good, but we persisted. We were able to get close to the group twice, but both times they were spooked. We decided to wait a few minutes in hope that the rising sun would get the wind blowing. After about ten minutes we had a better wind in our favor. We resumed the stalk, and were able to spot buff on the hill above us at about 150 yards. At this point, we belly crawled the final 100 yards to get close. Lance was able to spot an older bull in the group in front of us, but he was in the back, so Lance made a distressed animal call to see what would happen. Well, what happened was a cow came running down the hill to about 30 yards of us to investigate – talk about exciting! After a few minutes, she retreated and then Lance told me to take a rest in the small tree right in front of me, that the old bull might get inquisitive and come to investigate. Sure enough, no sooner had I gotten a rest, then the old bull comes walking out and turned broadside at 40 yards from me. I put my sights on his left shoulder and touched off the 470 NE. I saw him lurch and Lance said the shot looked good. We waited 5 minutes, then started following the blood spoor. We found him dead 100 yards up the hill. My bullet at gone thru the top of both lungs and blown out the “pipes” that connected the heart to the lungs. What a thrill! I’m now officially addicted to the rush of hunting Cape buffalo.

The rest of the trip was a blast of mainly game spotting and enjoying our time with good friends. We did have a fly camp on the next to last night, just because we wanted to. What a great experience to camp out on the Savannah and listen to the Hyenas and look at the stars.

Our last night in country was spent at the Sea Cliff Hotel in Dar. This was a very good choice to end the safari, by having roast lobster while overlooking the Indian Ocean. I can’t say enough about Lance Nesbitt. He was very patient with me and answered all my questions no matter how dumb they might have been. He was also good enough to constantly point things out to me about animal behavior, local flora and fauna, East African history, etc. I can’t recommend him enough!

I’m already dreaming about coming back to Africa…and that lone dagga boy.