That's great to hear. I just booked with Zander Osmer for a Match elephant hunt.
Did you have any issues with non-hunting tourist in the area? In your opinion did you feel the animals were habituated to humans?
I will be posting a comprehensive hunt report (hopefully within a couple of weeks or less) once my videographer is finished editing the video with some video shorts which will be part of my hunt report but to answer your question, no I did not encounter any tourists because you will be accompanied by a warden (ranger) whose responsibility is to insure there will be no hunter and tourists conflicts, so no tourist and game viewing drives will be done in the area you hunt.
Many of the animals we encountered in both the land cruiser and on foot bolted immediately: black rhino, white rhino, steenbok, impala, zebra and kudu to name a few. The one animal that was completely unafraid and indifferent to us was a large male leopard, which we passed within 10 ft in the Land Cruiser!
While I had been very close to elephant while touring the park itself where there is no hunting, they were clearly accustomed to many tourist vehicles but the Greater Kruger was different we did not get too close to elephant while driving our hunting area (100,000 acres), only observing elephants from our Land Cruiser from a couple hundred yards away or more. Hunting on foot, I shot an impala ram for camp meet off sticks at 120 yards away and it was very skittish.
The animals are skittish and you must have the wind in your favor when hunting not because they are heavily hunted by humans, they are not, but they are hunted by a LOT of predators like lion, leopard, hyena and wild dogs so they are wary.
On foot we were observing a bull elephant from about 60 yards away, he was too young or borderline for a management bull, while he had the 25 lb ivory, he was 17-18 years old and the warden wanted a 25-30 year old bull. This bull was making a beeline for water, knowing of our presence when apparently it had enough and charged! The warden and my PH both held there ground and yelled and he stopped, but made several more charges getting to within 20-25 yards, just a few more yards before he reached the warden and PH’s designated marker to shoot in self defense!
I will never forget how quickly he covered ground and how small I felt. Let’s not forget that two tourists were killed by elephant in Kruger this year. They may be accustomed to seeing humans but they are wild dangerous animals. I believe the video footage will be most excellent. Regarding elephant and buffalo, you must hunt them on foot, you must have the wind in your favor, and you must make a careful stalk and while we were successful early with elephant, it took longer with buffalo although were many, many more.
