On November 14th, we left camp to look for hippos along the rivers near camp. It’s no secret that lion love hippo bait. My friend and PH in Zambia, Fico Vidale, always uses hippos for lion bait. Mike decided that we needed to up our game for lions with a hippo and Jim was only too happy to oblige. Jim really wanted a hippo skull.
None of our lion baits had been hit even though we heard lions often throughout the area and near camp. The lions were also being quite nocturnal and bedding in the thick brushy areas along the rivers during the day. We hadn’t seen any out sunning themselves on the big rocks in the area like they usually do. With the migration ending early, we wanted to keep as many lions around as possible.
Judging hippo and telling males from females can be difficult but the best clue is the shape of the top of the head. Males have a flat head along the top while females have a pronounced bump on top of the head.
In one slow moving turn of the river, we found a nice male hippo with three females. Jim got setup to shoot off the sticks with his S&W 500. The distance was about 50 yards. The male slightly surfaced for a breath of air and Jim took a shot. He hit the water just below the hippo’s head instead of the hippo. Incredibly, the bullet ricocheted and didn’t even hit the hippo. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. There was no blood or reaction other than the hippo went back under water. None of the hippos seemed to know what happened because they didn’t even spook.
A few minutes later, the bull surfaced again unscathed, confirming our belief that it wasn’t hit. Mike and Jim decided that Jim should switch to his 375 JDJ because it is scoped. Jim got setup again, this time with the 375. A few minutes later, the bull surfaced again and Jim fired. The bull was hit this time and when it submerged, we could see blood in the water. For a few moments, we thought the bull was hit correctly in the brain because nothing much happened.
Then suddenly, the bull erupted up above the surface with blood clearly coming out of the head and it went berserk! This freaked out the cows too and they all were splashing around in chaos! Pandemonium ensued with the bull finally turning away to flee upriver and started heading for the shore. It ran out of the water with Mike exclaiming for Jim to shoot. Jim got another shot off but missed. Wendy and I backed away and returned to the Cruiser because we were unarmed. The Game Scout got worried and when she went to cock her AK-47, she inadvertently dumped out the clip and the ammo scattered out of the clip into the grass! I cannot lie, that made me chuckle a bit!!
Mike and Jim then started running along the riverbank heading upstream after the hippo. There was a big bend in the river. Mike got off two quick shots with his .458 WM double rifle as the hippo was out of the water running away. The hippo went down momentarily but then regained its feet and barreled into the water in the next bend in the river. Mike and the trackers were ahead of Jim and gave chase and found the hippo standing in shallow water and facing them. Mike shot it in the head before it could charge and it was all over! Wow, what a crazy situation and luckily, nobody got hurt. Mike handled it like a pro. Upon further inspection, we found that Jim’s shot hit the bull too low and missed the brain.
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