Part 2:
Full Report
Zimbabwe: Matetsi ECA, non-trophy bull elephant hunt with Lindon “Lin” Stanton of Mbalabala Safaris.
I had been emailing Lin for over a year about hunting in either Zambia or Mozambique where he also frequently hunts. I didn’t initially choose Zimbabwe because I knew I would visit within a year or two because Victoria Falls was a bucket list item for my wife and we would visit together with her sister.
I did eventually choose the Matetsi ECA area of Zim and a non-trophy/non-exportable bull elephant due to my daughter
not deciding to elope this May! The camp in Matetsi is only about a 45 minute drive from Vic Falls airport so no costly air charter was required. A commercial flight was made from JNB taking only an about hour and a half.
Flying in I was surprised at how green everything looked. March is still the rainy season and we did have light rain for a short time one day and impressive thunderstorms rolled through the area mostly without raining on us but delivering the most dramatic photo opportunities, especially near sunset.
Driving past the last small village from the airport on the way to the camp the “proper” dirt road (often fully flooded) ended and from here on and through much of the daily driving is on trails made only from the Land Cruisers. Lin’s Land Cruiser is a beast and while it could power through most anything there were two times during the week that his team had to use manpower to free us.
The camp was located on a small hill with long westerly views, the sky was on fire every evening and I kept thinking about John Denver’s
Fire and Rain song. I have been to many beautiful places in the world but in Matetsi I have taken more photos than I have anywhere else. Looking west over the valley below I made the comment that this is what the Garden of Eden must have been like, without the daily struggles and the violence to survive.
Early on Lin had wanted to take me close among a herd of elephants so I would get comfortable with them and to also talk about shot placements, however, none were to be found on day one or two. We did find traces that were a couple of days old. We also followed up with villagers about elephant visiting in the night but none of these turned out to be fresh. Apparently some ele were checking on the crops regularly but they were not yet ready to be harvested (raided) by them.
On these first two days we dismounted a few times at known hot spots and hiked through muddy, marshy areas thick with Mopani and tall grasses due to a really wet season. I was happy to be out in the warm weather and walking even if the bottoms of my boots were thick with mud and getting heavy. Back in New England we had one of the snowiest and coldest winters that I can recall. We recently had a three foot snow storm with six foot drifts so I was done with winter.
On day three around 9AM we had some good local intel about a lone bull elephant that was wandering close to the Breakfast Camp hunting lodge. Our trackers quickly followed up on his tracks and after I believe was less than an hour they had found him. But first, I must admit I was a little skeptical that we would find him because Lin said that it was the night before that he was seen in the area and the initial spoor confirmed it.
As we followed the trackers we saw a lot of dung and broken branches from the night. We came out of the thick stuff into an open area and the trackers were milling around trying to find the bull’s direction again because he walked around in circles a bit. This area overlooked a small farm and it appeared that he may have been pondering a raid on crops when he decided to circle back the way he came, returning to the thick bush for the night.
The dung started looking fresher and on some the dung beetles had not yet started working; and the bark ripped from trees and broken branches were still moist. After about 50 minutes Lin reached down to feel some dung that had a fresher color to it and he said it was warm, I also felt it with the back of my hand. Excitement level up a big notch, I was now a believer.
We came upon an area where the bull walked in circles feeding and left tracks in a wide area. The trackers went one way and I followed Lin a few steps in another direction when the lead tracker signaled to Lin and then pointed to the bull, which we still could not see. Lin took on some seriousness when he looked me in the eyes and asked if I was ready. Wow, this happened fast. I was ready. We quietly walked up to the spot the tracker vacated and saw the bull seemingly looking straight at us. All I could see was from about halfway up his trunk but his head was unobstructed. Lin said right between the eyes and that is where the bullet went. We ran to the side of the bull now maybe ten yards away and he said put one right between the ears. This I also did and it was over that quickly.
After some hand shaking with the team I went over to the bull for a closer look. I was surprised by two things, first that I had nowhere as much adrenaline as my Cape buffalo hunt in 2024, I felt a calmness come over me, maybe it was relief that I didn’t screw it up, secondly I thought that maybe I would be emotional and I was not. No explanation though I just accept it for what it was.
At about the time that the team had skinned the bull men from the local village arrived. A trail was cut and a villager on a farm tractor and trailer made it to the site. They would finish the job and remove the meat to the local village.
Over the next couple of days the team set some bait up for Hyena and built a blind. Returning from the bait site we were driving down a trail and noticed some elephant signs. Lin stopped the vehicle and because the grass was up to eight feet high or more he stood on top of the Land Cruiser and glassed a large herd off in the distance. We geared up and walked into the grass to close the distance. We exited the tall grass and the herd was in an area where we could actually see them. This was a good learning opportunity for me; we were not planning on shooting another one. I was also relieved that the grass was shorter here, how do you hunt elephant in the really tall stuff where you can only see a few feet?
The wind was in our favor for the larger herd but a straggler or two downwind from us had our scent. Lin said they were communicating with the matriarch, and sure enough the herd started moving off in the opposite direction from us.
We caught up to them again at a small water/mud hole and from a short distance away watched them take turns throwing water on themselves and creating a ruckus. The matriarch and a few other cows were standing facing away from us and one by one all the elephants exited the water, quieted down and faced the same direction very still, no doubt getting marching orders from the matriarch and they slowly moved off
Lin explained the process for taking an elephant in a herd and I thought that it would be a very exciting way of doing it. It will have to wait for another time though and I think for the first elephant hunt that taking the solo bull and the tracking involved was a very good training experience for me.
Hyena Attempt
About an hour and a half before sunset on the last night we set out to see if we could bag a Hyena for which the team had previously set the bait and constructed a blind. I had brought along a model 70 in .416 Rem as a back up rifle and for other opportunities. In addition to solids I had some Swift A-Frames. We stopped to check that the scope was still good and Lin also mounted his night vision scope on a .308 and sighted it in. We arrived at the bait at 6:00PM and entered the blind about 40 yards from the bait.
Before they moved away the guys had pulled a speaker up the tree directly over the bait from which Lin could Bluetooth hyena and lion sounds. At 7PM we took my .416 off of the tripod and replaced it with Lin’s .308 because of the darkness.
From time to time Lin would stop the recording so we could listen. It was during one of these pauses that we first heard a lion off in the distance. After repeating this for a few more times Lin said that there was now a lion and a lioness about 30 yards to our front left. He showed me this live on his phone which he captured from his scope.
After the lioness circled around behind us he said that he had to call it off as he did not want to shoot a lion in self defense. We used our white light flashlights to try to find the lioness but couldn’t find her, I was hoping that the light would scare her away. Lin then radioed the truck to pick us up. Wow! This was so cool, I told Lin that I would rather not shoot a hyena than not to have had the lion experience.
Conclusion
Lin is a fantastic PH and host. He answered so many of my questions that I thought he must be tiring of them, but he didn’t. In the field he taught me a lot about the animals, insects, birds, trees, etc. When I was in SA in 2024, my first time in the southern hemisphere, I totally forgot that I wanted to see the Southern Cross and in July it was clear every night, Lin showed it to me and how to find south by it.
I have never in one trip either as a hunter or just a tourist had so many peak experiences, the weather + landscape, getting close to a herd of elephants, the lion “experience”, obviously the hunt itself and there were a couple of really cool people that Lin introduced me to that I don't have time to go into here.
Finally, crossing the coast at Namibia and seeing the Namib Desert as the sun was getting low in the horizon was the first cool thing on this trip. I made sure to sit on the left side of the airplane with a window view this time.
Thanks for providing a great hunting forum,
Rich
PS- pics attached of sunsets, large headed lioness in grass, muddy trails and tall grasses and barn owl spending the night with me
