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HUNT SUMMARY

Trip Dates:
Oct 3 - Oct 29

Location of Hunt:
Mahenye bordering Gonarezhou National Park and Hammond camp in The SavÃ© Valley Conservancy.

My mission on this hunt was the following animals:
Trophy bull Elephant, Leopard, buffalo, Hyaena, Bushbuck

Animals Successfully Hunted:
Elephant (77 lbs & 68 lbs), 2 Hyaena, Impala, Buffalo (40"), Bushbuck (16.5").

Other Game Seen:
Waterbuck, Bushbuck, Duiker, Baboon, Bushpig, Klippspringer, Hippo, Kudu, Giraffe, Warthog, Crocodile, Sable, Zebra + many other that i dont remember.

Rifles and gear:
Winchester 416 Remington
Krieghoff 500 NE
Swarovski 10x33 EL
A couple of thin shirts and some shorts from www.chevalier.se and 2 shorts borrowed from Alistar from Zambezi Hunters and some shirts.
Camera Canon G9
Ammo:

Outfitter Information:

ZAMBEZI HUNTERS

Email: nina@zambezihunters.com
Landline Phone +263 11 206 206
Website: www.zambezihunters.com
Professional Hunter: Jonathan Hulme
Trackers: Aleose, Amos, Government, Livingstone
PH Apprentice: Peter Kockott
Gamescout: Tobias and Meke
Booked through Adam Clements Safari Trackers (www.safaritrackers.com) Contact: Mark H Young

Travel Summary:

I live in Northern Sweden and had to fly from UmeÃ¥ to Stockholm, i was at the airport 2 hours early just to know that my plane to Stockholm was around 4 hours late that would mean that i had around 15 minutes when i get to Stockholm to get to my flight before it was departure time to Munich. I explained my probelm for the SAS desk in UmeÃ¥ they said that the only thing that i could do was to leave my bags here in UmeÃ¥ and send them later when i got to Africa and try to run to my gate and hope they would let me in (In Sweden we must be checked in 35 minutes before departure). To make a long story short is, i missed the Munich connection rebooked to Frankfurt when i got there the flight was cancelled because of engine problem so i had to sleepover in Frankfurt. The day after my flight to Johannesburg was late so when i got to Jburg my flight to Zim had already lifted so i changed the reservation to Air Zim and got to Zimbabwe only one day late, around 11 at night with No bags, No rifles !
Alistar (Jonnys sisters husband) met me at the airport and took me to hotel nearby. The next morning i had breakfast with Lauri and met up with Jonny and his wife Nina,
Now the only trip left was with a small Cessna plane and that plane flight was interesting.
When we met the pilot Philip he told us that he had gasoline problem he couldnt take us to the Mahenye airstrip we had to land at Senukos airstrip around 20 minutes earlier, we said ok, after one hour in the air one engine STOPS working the plane just starts to dive against the ground - It felt like 8 hours before he had the engine going again but it was more like 8 seconds - the pilot looked back to Jonny in the backseat (i was the copilot) his comment after this was:

- Sorry, i thought that i had 5 minutes left, sorry.

Jonnys eyeballs was big as soccerballs, and he was holding onto the seat

(This was Jonny a couple of minutes before the â€�incidentâ€�).

I dont know what happend with the engine i didnt ask pilot either. Jonny explained that he would rather chase 7 wounded lions in the jess instead of doing that flight again.

(Senuko airstrip, seconds before landing)

(Me and the pilot Philip)

UmeÃ¥ - Stockholm (1 h) SAS
Stockholm - Frankfurt (2.5 h) SAS - BOEING 737-500
Frankfurt - South Africa (11 h) LUFTHANSA/SAA - AIRBUS INDUSTRIE A340-200
South Africa - Harare (1.5 h)
Harare - Senuko (1.5 h)

Background

This was my fourth trip to Africa and it was by far the best one. Mark H. Young did a post on this hunt in February 08 and i almost booked it right away. A chance on a Big elephant from the famous Gona Re Zhou and chance on a Leopard and buffalo + some end of season game, i couldnt say no to that.
My sister lives in Kongo/Kinshasa so she is too blame that i first visited this continent, my first thought was to hunt first and then visit her, but i changed that and only did huntingpart. Last year i was hunting in Namibia and i must say i thought it would be better then it was. Preparation for this hunt was to do some fast walking around 2 hours a day for three months before i left.

Gona Re Zhou " Home of elephants"

Zambezi Hunters has new luxury tented camp, Chumene Camp, in the Mahenye hunting concession. The primary focus of the Mahenye concession is elephant but it also offer good hippo. crocodile and waterbuck, all the game we saw was of really good quality. The camp consists of two east Africa style tents with en-suite bathroom and a thatched dining room with lounge. Chumene camp is set under magnificent riverine trees high on the bank of the Save River looking over the Nyachumene island and across to Gonarezhou National Park, i really liked this place. ( CAMPFIRE AREA)

The SavÃ© Valley Conservancy - Hammond camp

Hammond Safari Camp is on the banks of the Nyerezi River in the south of the Save Valley Conservancy. It has four large lodges, each subdivided into two units. The rooms are spacious and have an ensuite shower, toilet and basin with hot and cold water. 220V electrical outlets can be found in each room and in the main lodge. The main lodge is tastefully decorated and contains the dining room, a large fire place and plenty of seating. I think that many guys here on AR already made some reports just from this camp. (Fivestar camp, almost too nice)

The Osprey Filming Company

Last year when i hunted in Nambia i had some parts of my hunt filmed but with very low quality, this year i was looking at some of all the professionals that are out there. Adam Clements send me his LDE hunt with Faro West and i liked it - the cameraman Adam had was Lauri Alantwaite and he was also available so i booked him ! I must say money well spent, i think this DVD is gonna be great - he filmed around 10 hours with some really nice "shots", cant wait to see the whole DVD in January.

]

The Hunt

Day 1

Missed this day because of cancellations of flights. We borrowed some ammo to my "rent rifle" of a friend to Jonny, borrowed some clothes of Alistar ( He is married to Jonnys sister Jenna, both of them work at Zambezi Hunters office with bookings and logistic. After the perfect planeflight from Harare we had to drive some hours beacause he had to land at Senuko, anyway around 17:00 we arrived at Mahenye.

Jonny and Lauris tent

My tent

We had a nice dinner, and i got to meet the whole "gang" it felt nice to be here and start hunting tomorrow morning.

Day 2

Wake up 03:30 - Finally !!

This was standard all mornings, a nice "bush tv" and a cup of tea

We went out in the cruiser just "feeling" the area. Jonny explained how the hunt would be conducted the next coming weeks:

* Try to find a nice footprint to follow
* Go to lookout points and try spot & approach
* Try to see the elephants over The SavÃ© River ( we couldnt hunt there it was Gona Re Zhou park) and try to get into their minds, so we could be one step ahead of them if they decided to go across the river.

After some driving around we went and tried the rifle that i borrowed, it felt nice (I have 416 Rigby at home and this was 416 Remington so it was basically the same).

A baobab tree at the shooting range
After that we went down to the river and tried to find some fresh good footprints in the sand from last night - we found a couple in the 22" range with very nice cracks, all of them went back into the river though and that meant that they had crossed back to Gona Re Zhou park, anway one of theese spoors was really interesting for the trackers and Jonny they had seen this elephant and his tracks many times before but they never had a chance too shoot him by different circumstances but it was great bull with very nice ivory. They called him "bent foot" beacause one of his feet was deformed.

BENT FOOT

After that we went up to a mountain to do some glassing in the valleys. When we got to the point wich had the best view we spotted some elephants just below us - i must say it was a nice feeling to see thoose big ladies walking around it was one young bull in the group also - this spot we went to every morning. I think that Dudley Rogers,TSHABEZI SAFARIS the former owner of this property took a 80 pounder at this very spot.

ELEPHANT ENCOUNTER

Jonathan looking, you could see a long way here

We went back to camp and had lunch, around 14:30 we was out in the bush again.

Nice sunset

Day 3

This morning it was planned that we should start to put out baits for the leopard, Mahenye isnt crawling with plains game so we decided that we should shoot some cattles - Peter Kockott the apprentice was given the job to sort that out. ( He accidentally wounded the cow with the first shot, so for the next coming weeks when we had the chance to talk about that, we did)

Peter with his "Trophy Cow" ( You should have heard all the laughing from the camp staff and trackers when this picture was taken)

This day was almost all about finding good trees for leopard and hanging baits.

Alouese is an amazing tracker and he is phenomenal at climbing trees

At lunch time we had 5 baits up and running

After lunch we started to look for elephants again, tracks and signs was all over the place.

Elephant destruction

4 times a day Jonny would show me how a big tusker would look like, he also did the "angry buffalo" and "sneaking leopard" - You must understand the animals you are hunting was his comment( i was always laughing)

Just before sunset we got really close to some cows and calves at our " favourite" lookout place - As a first time elephant hunter i find this very learning to sneak up close to them and looking exact where to aim, looking at the earhole and try to visualize the brain in different angles, where to shoot on a frontal or heart/lung shot. I think this helped me very much.

Elephant that was walking close to us
Back to camp had a nice dinner and dont forget about the pudding dessert.

Day 4

We went back to our favourite glassing place, on our way there we spotted som waterbucks from the road and one was in the 30" range - we tried to do a nice approach on him but spooked him and they all ran away. We then decided that if we "bump" into some good plains game i could shoot it ( If we not was in elephant area) or else we would just leave it, we didnt have the time to be chasing plains game all day - we wanted an elephant ! 10 minutes later The Grey Ghost of Africa stands around 250 meter in front of me, i already have a nice kudu, but this was to big to let go we tried to get closer to him. At around 140 meters he had spotted us ! It was now or never, i switched the safety off and tried to get in position but i couldnt lay on the ground because of the high grass - i couldnt stand up because then he would have start running, and he was only showing me his head and frontal chest, anyway i got in som funny position and pulled the trigger to the 416 and MISSED ! I dont even think it was close - i hate missing, and with a new rifle - i can say to you my self-confidence at this time was very low.
We all started to get back to the car when we spotted small group of impalas, it was a nice ram there and we needed some more bait to the leopard. They where walking away from us at around 140 meters, the big impala was walking last in the group. Jonny put up the sticks and did some sound so he stopped, before i had time too shoot he had start moving again - i took the shot anyway, straight through his neck. A crazy shot. When i saw what Lauri filmed later i started to laugh - it almost looked like the lightning had struck him !

First African kill 2008
That evening we went out to an "island" in The SavÃ© river. It was very low water so we waded over to the island - from this point we had a perfect view over to Gona Re Zhou park the only trouble we had on this location was the constant shifting winds, and that they always liked to cross the river when it was dark. Neither me, Jonny or Lauri wanted it to be a night hunt, Lauri couldnt film at night and Jonny and i wanted to take him in a fair way. This was also a place that we would look from almost every day.

Government on the island looking over to Gona Re Zhou park

Day 5

Checked all the baits as usual. No hits, many of the baits was already rotten so we had to change them and we also put up 5 new ones - so now we had 10 fresh baits up and running.

Switching baits is time-consuming
That evening we went out to the island, but beacause of the constant swirling winds we spooked of some bulls that were standing on the other side. No one of them was any intersting, thank god.

Disappointed after we spooked some bulls

Day 6

Took the cruiser to the river to check some baits, and when we got there we saw 10 poachers sitting on some rocks in the river trying to catch fish with nets - before i even had to think Tobias (our gamescout) was running - and after him came Peter, Amos and Alouese. The poachers throwed all their bags and nets in the water, Peter jumped in to take it up but then Jonny started shouting that there are many crocs in the water ! (Jonnny had seen many crocs here just a couple of days ago) Peter got up from the water. A couple of minutes later Lauri was filming and he zoomed in where Peter had been bathing and now a croc was just laying under the surface at the same spot ! Tobias got one of the poachers, a teenage girl.

Livingstone, Alouese and Amos with the poachers nets and fish

The poacher with a fish

When we were heading back to camp i asked what the punishment would be ? Tobias said they would just drop her of near our camp so she had to walk back to the river.It probably would take her half a day or so. (Without shoes).

After lunch we went to the mountain to spot some bulls. We stopped at some hyaena tracks that we had been seeing here every day. I asked Jonny if he had any hyaenas left to shoot this season - he said he could shoot 4 every year and he had 4 left, we agreed if we have some time over we would try to shoot a hyaena.

Hyaena spoor and a 416 Remington

Amos Magungu (his surname means thick bush in the shona language) has been a tracker with Jonathan and Zambezi Hunters for over 23 years, a great tracker, very good at English and the best of all he is funny, he said that one of the hyaenas spoor was strange, it probably had a clubfoot(He was right about that, but more on that later) Also a Hippo swimming in the background

When we got to our point Alouese spotted a nice elephant bull + some others walking in the valley he looked very old (in my eyes anyway) Jonathan and Lauri estimated his ivory to 40 pounds - Jonathan wasnt so excited, it was to early in the hunt to start to look at 40 pounders. If this grey giant had been carrying 10 more pounds of Africas white gold he had been in the salt now. It sounds ridiculous but it is the truth. But we had a perfect hard wind to our favour and perfect visibility so it was not easy to see him go, it could had been the perfect approach.
And i must add that Lauri didnt just film the hunt he was like another PH - estimated ivory, looking at tracks, estimated distance etc he was a really focused cameraman.

Me and some elephants

Lauri and Jonny discusses

Day 7

Went out checking and switching baits, at one of our baits we had a LEOPARD SIGN ! It was both a female and male that had been laying under the tree but no one had touched the bait. They were mating and this heat didnt do it any easier. Shit.
We put up new meat in that tree and hoped that the male would come back when he was hungry.

When even the trackers complain that its hot, then you now its HOT

That evening we went out to the island, it was almost fullmoon so we decided to stay out a little bit longer and try so see some elephants crossing after the sunset.
30 minutes after the sun was gone the elephants started to move across the river, and it wasnt just one elephant we counted over 150 elephants ! Totally amazing, not far from us more then 150 elephants crossed almost in a straight line walking in the elephant in front them footsteps. It was mixed cows, calves and bulls they almost seem to float over the water and thick sand, you could barely hear them. Their ivory was glowing in the dark with the help of the white sand and the big moon, that gives me shiver when i think about it.

One of the cows got our wind and she suddenly turned to us at thirty meters and started to run against us, she stopped at around twenty meters and lifted her trunk to smell us after that she raised her head and showed us her ivory. My safety was now off ! Jonny was whispering be ready, be ready and waving hi double so she could se us in the dark ! After that the cow unfolded her ears in a explosion ! (I Like that) after that she just turned and ran away into the forest. She was probably more curious then angry, anyway it got my adrenalin pumping.

We went home and had a late dinner.

Day 8

We went out to the same place we found some leopard spoors yesterday, but today nothing ! We also looked at some places we hadnt been to before.

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It is amazing where you can find elephant tracks

A klippspringer we saw just before lunch

After lunch we spotted som nice birds

B]That is a big owl

Day 9

Leopard sign again ! At the same tree we found the same female tracks, but she hadnt been eating , hmm..The male was not with her this time. We put out fresh meat on several baits.
Today was a "bug" day - all incects was on me today, i dont now if it was the higher humidity today or what !

Spider in my tent

Frog invasion

Some of the bugs in my tent that night

We was moving some rocks out of the way for the truck, and found this one under a rock

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Having a rest

When i got back to camp i took his picture of two boys "riding" som cattle.

Day 10

We went out to our leopard bait that we changed yesterday and was hopeing that the male had been hungry, sorry to say we didnt see any tracks or signs of leopard we checked all the other baits too = nothing. We went back to camp for an early lunch and a nap.
We woke up around 14:00. At 14:30 we were on the way to the island. We dropped of 2 trackers (Livingstone and Tobias) a couple of kilometers earlier so we could have a wider view.
As i wrote earlier you had to wade in some small streams to get to this island, so i just took my shoes of and tied the shoelaces together and hanged them over my shoulder. Our group now consisted of 6 people (Me, Jonny, Lauri, Peter, Aleose and Government). When we got to the island we spotted 3 bulls right away, and one of them was a giant with long thick tusks, one of his tusk had a broken tip, but still he was true montster. We had a perfect wind so we just sat down in the sand and watched them a couple of hundred meters away drinking water, but suddenly the big bull turn his ass against us and diappears into the forest. None of us figured out what spooked him the other two were standing still and drinking water. Another bull comes out from the forest and this one has perfect symmetrical tusks, quite long and thick not as big as the one that ran away but this one has nicer tusks and he had a monster head and body. Everyone realized that this was the elephant we had been looking for - all of us had a big grin on our faces now.
The elephants was in no hurry, they were just enjoying themselves and drinking water - we on the other hand was in a little bit of a hurry, around 10 minutes to sunset. But then one started to walk across the river and the other two followed after, they were walking slightly away from us - our plan now was to intercept them 400 meters further up. We crossed the small streams and after that we started to run in the deep sand, at this point we lost eyecontact with them for around 3-4 minutes, to we finally got to a nice opening. We spotted one bull immediately, but he was going into some thick stuff and we didnt see a glimpse of his ivory ?! Was this the bull we wanted ? SHIT ! We were getting a little bit frustrated, then bull number two pops up ! all of us was confused was this him ? After a couple of seconds, all of us agrees that it was not "him" anyway by this time he was already gone. SHIT ! Then one second later something starts to move from the right side of the opening, also walking in the other two elephants footsteps comes bull number three - No hesitation now, it was him ! Jonny put up the stick and said shoot ! I only had around five seconds to he would be gone forever I aimed and squeezed and the solid was in the air, and the impact was spectacular - both of his front feets lifted from the ground at the same time and his head turned up violently and trunk came after and almost hit his own neck, when he was in this position the backlegs didnt seem to hold him up anymore and they folded.

He didnt make one little sound, he didnt moved an inch. I shot him three more times, two in his head and one in his chest just to be sure.
The trackers started cheering, many hugs and handshakes was exchanged when we walked up to this ancient animal.

When we stood next to this great animal there was alot of feelings and emotions going through us all i think and thoose feelings you cant express in words except one and that was relief that this big grey giant, the biggest land mammal on earth died a quick death.

A elephant hunter is born.

We weighed the tusks at clinic when we left Mahenye

The solid that did the work

Day 11

Recovery day !

Happy trackers on their way to the elephant

On our way to the elephant we drove past like 50 people walking and trying to find out where the elephant was laying, and this was around 04:30 !
It came around +500 people that wanted meat, and i must say it felt nice to see this wasnt just "trophy hunt" you actually helped all theese starving poor people here.

Many people wanted meat

Ele BBQ

Police controlling the whole thing

Peter interviews the CAMPFIRE chairman, and Lauri is filming

Day 12

We decided to put all our energy to getting the leopard before we moved to a different area, new baits was up before lunch.

We had a female leopard walking under a tree just here (saw tracks) + we had a lot of crocs laying under the tree

It looked like leopard country

When we drove through the village all people was out to sign up to for some "Food Aid" list. Several truckloads of food would arrive in a couple of weeks.

I also wanted a hyaena so we went up to the place where we had seen tracks every day and put out some old leopard bait on the ground just to see if the hyaenas would come to the bait.( We didnt sit in a blind that night).

Day 13

Checked all our baits - nothing. We decided that we would go to Hammond camp and hunt buffalo when the baits we had out now had gone rotten.

When we looked at our baits near the river we spotted some hippos.

After lunch we went and looked if there had been any movement at the bait that we put out for the hyaena. They had just walked past it, but the tracks was the same as earlier.

A man working in the kitchen which had lived at Mahenye for 23 years had never seen a living hyaena - only tracks of them, shy animals

An hour before sunset we camouflage up the car and put out some new meat and looked for some more tracks - 10 seconds and i mean 10 seconds after we got back to the car the first hayena came running no one was ready. I put off the safety and followed her in my scope, she was running a long circle around the bait - i squeezed the trigger while she was running, and she disappeared in the long grass. I lost her in the recoil so i didnt now if it was a hit, neither Jonny, Lauri or Peter. We all started to laugh as we were so surprised that she came so fast, while we was laughing we heard a big roar on a ridge 60 meter away from us and there was another hyaena standing with his chest against me - i took the shot and that one i saw go down. Now we started to laugh even more, this was crazy.
We started to look after the first one and found her just near the bait, a perfect heart/lung shot. The other one had the bullet entered his frontal chest. Two hyaenas in a couple of minutes.

Me and Peter

They look like ghosts (On the right side is the male)

Hyaena skulls

A week ago Amos told us that one of the spoors looked funny - this was the males paw, he had been caught in a snare and was in a bad condition

Day 14

No hits on any of the baits - and most of them was bad now ! The leopard had prooved to be elusive again, last year in Namibia i baited for leopard almost 3 weeks - nothing + theese weeks here, i have never seen a leopard in my life, but i havent given up yet.

Tomorrow we would leave Mahenye for Hammond camp in The Save Valley Conservancy.

After lunch we went out in the bush just look if we could find anything nice. After we had walked and hour we had spotted some Waterbucks but only small ones - so we kept on going and after awhile we bumped into a very nice bushbuck before i had the chance to shoot he was gone.

Following a bushbuck

Alouese started to follow his track and after thirty minutes we were on him again. He stood at around 100 meters slightly turned away and was looking at us, i shot him through the stomach and bullet exit wound was in his chest so he didnt go many meters. His horns were very thick and they measured 16.5" , this was a very old, scarred, bushbuck.

Alouese holding the trophy

Me, just after sunset

Day 15

Today we decided to move to Hammond camp. We did a fast check of some of the baits - no hits. We went back to camp and packed up all our things and had a quick lunch.
Jonny didnâ€™t want to leave the elephant tusks here so we tried to pull them and take them with us, and it worked !

Washing of the blood

Ready to go

As i said earlier we stopped at a small hospital and weighed them, just over 70 pounds, the scale only went up to 25KG then it started over and stopped just over 32KG, but i just have to wait and see the official weight. He measured 18â€� around the lip.

Some sick kids at the clinic

Around 15:00 we arrived at Hammond.

{B]Photos of the camp

We went out looking for buffalo tracks right after we dropped of our stuff. We didnâ€™t see any buffalo that afternoon, we did see a lot of Zebras, impalas, and giraffes.

Went back to camp and met Ivan Carter and his cameraman Doug King and two Americans clients that also hunted buffalo here.

Day 16

We started off early

After 30 minutes we bumped into a group of 10 bulls, All of them was nice but most them didnâ€™t had any width â€“ one of them was in 38â€� and Jonny wanted me to take it ! First day after 30 minutes i felt I wanted to hunt them more, so i said I wanted to look for some more.

We went on looking and it didnâ€™t take long for we had found a large group â€“ not any dugga boys but one was in the 45â€� range but soft (didnâ€™t get any photos of him).

Didnâ€™t see anymore that day, when we headed back to camp we got our first flat tire on this hunt.

Gamescout and Amos switching

Day 17

Wake up 03:30 as usual. This was really buffalo land. We started of the morning for a long approach on 5 buffalos. We found them laying down and resting because of the long grass we couldnâ€™t see them properly so we decided to sit down and wait for the to stand up â€“ but after 15 minutes the wind changed at the buffalos were off, we took a rest for 30 minutes so they could calm down after that we started to tracking them down. To make a long story short, 3 hours later, crawling with changing winds I stood on top of an anthill looking down on a white faced old dugga boy 15 meters away â€“ it was a nice feeling to get â€œinto themâ€�. Jonny told me they was much smaller than the buffalos I past up yesterday so we should leave these and try for some other ones ! It didnâ€™t matter to me I was happy anyway a, it had been a perfect morning. We saw a lot of buffalo this day â€“ and passed up all of them.

When we got back to camp Ivan showed us some parts from his new DVD Boddington on elephant with Ivan Carter and I must say everyone that love ele hunting must buy this DVD !
www.craigboddington.com

Day 18

Looking for tracks, and it didnâ€™t take long before we were looking at some buffalos â€“ nothing that we liked though. It maybe sounds that this was easy â€“ it wasnâ€™t, butt crawling â€“ sneaking â€“ checking wind every two second â€“ and walking long distances to get â€œaroundâ€� them in a perfect wind.

Back to camp and had lunch and a nap.
Out again around 14:30.

Amos spotted some tracks that had crossed a road we decided to follow them and started walking.
One hour later our gamescout spotted a bull standing in a very small opening at around 80 yards from us, Jonny laid his eyes on him and the only comment was - stand next to the tree an kill him. I took two steps forward so I could a good position leaning against the tree, but before I had him in my scope he turned. We took a rest for 30 minutes and then started to look for him again we didnâ€™t find him before dark.

Gamescout

Day 19

Today it was raining, to look for buffalo tracks when it had been raining at morning isnâ€™t easy â€“ we didnâ€™t see any buffalos today.
That night we had dinner with Jonathans mom and dad, very nice people and i met up with David Hulme that post on AR often.

Day 20

Same shitty weather as the day before, rain off and on and dark clouds and I must say quite chilly. This is what happends when you start to be â€œpickyâ€�, and im the only one to blame, but this is hunting. The only thing we saw was plains game and a turtle.

20 days without shaving

Day 21

My last hunting day.
Couldnâ€™t sleep so well so I woke up at around 02:30. When I was walking down to the lounge I felt the grass â€“ WET ! I looked up to see the sky, I couldnâ€™t see the stars â€“ dark clouds ! This aint gonna be good for my last day of hunting.
Start looking for tracks, we didnâ€™t find any tracks the 3 first hours worth following. We bumped into two herds of mixed buffalos all youngsters.

We dropped off Alouese and Meke to look for some tracks in the forest, we continued too look on the roads and waterholes. It didnâ€™t take long before Alouese called us on the radio â€“ they had spotted 4 bulls.

We met up with Alouese and he tried to describe the bulls to us â€“ all of them was mature old bulls !
So we started our approach, after 40 minutes we was around 150 meters away from them we had good wind and everything but somehow they spotted us and started to run away.
We then decided if we spook them again we would leave them to after lunch because they would be so very alert after that.

We started our approach again â€“ after 40 minutes of crawling and sneaking Jonny, me, Lauri and Alouese was standing 50 yards from an old warrior â€“ he stood in a perfect broadside with some thick stuff up to his chest but I could perfectly see his â€œtriangleâ€�. I think that Jonny didnâ€™t want a wounded buffalo on his last day so he put up the shooting sticks. I followed his front leg up to the chest and squeezed the trigger he started to run â€“ hmmm. We heard like 200 meters away that they had started to fight or something like that it was some loud noise from the buffalos.
We called after the other trackers and just waited â€“ when they arrived our search begun. We couldnâ€™t see any blood the first 50 meters not even on the shooting spot. This cant be good was my feeling.
Amos found some blood not much but blood anyway â€“ it was a light red colour and it didnâ€™t look to bad â€“ the only thing that looked bad was the amount of blood. Jonny and me was ready with the rifles and the trackers was following the small drops of blood and after 100 meters they couldnâ€™t find anymore blood.
It had been a large group of buffalos there earlier so it was very hard just to following the right spoor.

We looked at the shooting sequence at Lauris camera but couldnâ€™t see where the bullet had hit.
I started to go over the shot in my head over and over again and I must say it was the easiest shot i ever done in my short hunting career (im only 26).
Jonny just said:

- Its no such thing as an easy shot.

Amos found a blood drop a kilometer away and the buffalo was still with the other three bulls, and this was not a good sign that he still had the strength to keep up with the rest of the group.

Anyway the bulls had turned and crossed a road almost where we had parked our car â€“ and there we saw our first good sign, the bull was now alone so now we knew that he was sick.
We agreed that we go back for lunch and leave him so he could lay down and stiffen up a bit.

At lunch we met up with Ivan Carter and his crew and we decided that Ivan and his cameraman would come along.

Ivan, his tracker and Jonny

We borrowed Doug Kings laptop to try to see where the shoot had hit â€“ after we played it in slow motion a couple of times we started to see a little bit of dust coming of his chest just when i shoot, but we donâ€™t now for sure.

Doug King

After lunch Jonny and Ivan cleaned their doubles.

We started off at the same tracks on the road. In the dich we found one small, small drop of blood we walked in the bush at around ten meters all people were looking after tracks when suddenly Ivan asks calmly:

- isnâ€™t that the bull you are looking for, laying down over there ?

It was ! the bull was now standing up at around 100 meters and running away I started to run to get a clear shot and fired two quick shots both of them hit branches before him the last bullet i had in my clip hit him in the spine at around 150 meters â€“ that shot sat him down.

Me, Ivan and Jonny ran up to him and he was very much alive he was standing up on his front legs and facing us wanting to get closer and he was MAD ! We was at around 15 meters when i got a clear shot at his chest and i fired. The buffalo was down ! He was now laying and just looking at us with angry eyes and when i lifted the bolt to push another round in the barrel â€“ was it already one cartridge in there, the rifle had jammed it was no way i could reach and take it out so i just looked at Jonny and showed him the â€œfailureâ€� he then lifted his 500NE and shot him just near his eye the buffalo never moved again.

My first shot that wounded him for 5 hours ?

We cracked him up, to see what had happened to the bullet, somehow my angle must have been wrong because the bullet ended up in the belly ? But it doesnâ€™t look so on the DVD anyway he is in the salt now.

Spine shot

Ivan and Jonny

Plane to Harare

This is the shooting sequences for the elephant and buffalo - if someone is interested i will try to put up a small film sequence here also.