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Eland! Grande!

We put in a rest day after the buffalo fell. Although some of us could feel the celebrating the night before, life was anything but depressing, and we took it easy. We even found a suitable pool in the river where we could swim. As we swam around, I suddenly heard deep grunting further up the river. I looked questioningly at Leo, who had also heard the noises. “Hippos! There should be no hippos here!” Sure enough, in a puddle a few hundred meters further up the river, a mother hippopotamus with her offspring had settled down. It was a good thing we didn't swim in that puddle..

Since the buffalo hunt was completed much faster than expected, we had to find something else to fill the days with. Leo had heard about my flair for eland hunting, and was quick to come forward with pictures of well-grown eland bulls that had been shot in the area. In addition, he could tell that we were actually in the middle of Ernest Hemingway's favorite hunting grounds. Hemingway had once written something that nowhere in Africa was the eland hunting better, and the bulls bigger, than at the Loreco river in October. Coincidentally, that was exactly where we were. The flycamp we sat in had a view of Loreco, in mid-October.

Courtada Marangira, which we hunted in, is relatively far north in Mozambique, actually only 130km south of the well-known Selous Reserve in Tanzania.
The locality means that there are opportunities to encounter both Livingstone's eland and Patterson's eland, as well as crosses between the species.
One of the other PHs at MWA had seen a real specimen of a Livingstone eland a couple of weeks earlier. We decided to see if we could find it.

The following morning we drove out of the flycamp, and Mosa's local knowledge guided us in the right direction. 6-7km from the camp, Mosa exclaimed: "Eland! Grande!” How he spotted the eland at a distance of 4-500m in the thicket while we were driving at good speed is a mystery to me. Anyway, we had found an eland worth tracking. Wise of damage, after the previous eland hunt in South Africa, I made sure that the cartridge holder in the belt was full of cartridges for the 416 Rigby.
We moved at a single line through the bush, following Maxwell and Mosa. Maxwell took the track while Mosa scanned the thicket with his incredible vision. In addition to the tracks of the bull, Maxwell also found tracks of females and calves. Leo gave me a thumbs up, as the huge eland was supposed to stay together with a herd.

After following the trail for an hour, Mosa suddenly stopped and pointed energetically into the bush. I couldn't see anything, and was up with the binoculars. Leo did the same, and suddenly he was in a hurry to bring up the sticks. He pointed to a den in the thicket, and I put up with the CZ. I still couldn't see the eland, but after a bit of a whispered explanation from Leo, it was as if the eland suddenly emerged from the thicket.
"It's a long shot! See if you can find a gap in the bushes.” Leo seconded in a whisper. The eland stood approximately 180m away from us. The rifle was sighted 4cm high at 100m and an eland has a reasonably large vital area, so I put the aiming point at the back of the shoulder and squeezed off the shot.

The eland leaped into the air like a rodeo horse before it crashed away through the thicket. Maxwell slapped me on the back and cheered. "The eland is dead! The bullet hit straight!” The shot felt good, but as I said to Maxwell: "The hunt is not over!" Leo and Mosa grinned widely. There was no doubt what they thought about the matter.
200m further on we found the eland bull. Maxwell was right, the bullet had entered the back edge of the shoulder, blasted the top of the heart and exited behind the other shoulder
"This really is the big one!" Leo exclaimed. “I have hunted over 200 eland bulls in my time as a PH, and none have had horns as big as this one”
The eland was truly "grande". The body weight was estimated at 850-900kg, and the horns were both between 41 and 42 inches.

Today's hunt was over, and it wasn't 8 in the morning yet. Although over... the hunt itself was over, but now the work began to get the car to the drop, and to get a small ton of antelope onto the back of the car. In any case, it was fun work, at least when I found the bottle with Dr. Nielsen that was in my hunting bag...
During the slaughtering of the eland, we picked out one tenderloin. This was put in a marinade, and was grilled for dinner the same day. Served with pap and hot sauce, it was a gentleman's meal.

Edited by maral (13/02/24 08:31 AM)

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