CONGO: Congo Safari

Webster said:
i didn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable anywhere I went in the Congo. They will surely look at you when you go through the towns, I saw one other “white” person on the 12 plus hour trip north.
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Good to know! Thanks for explanation!
 
Day 4 afternoon we found another reasonable looking bongo track, we back at daylight on day 5 and took up the track. The bongo circled and did a couple of figure 8s inthe thickets,he even went into one spot that he had to turn around in and comeback out.
6 hrs on the track without the bongo seeming to slow down or feed at all.
He went into a fairly swampy area and the track was basically lost,we headed back to the truck beaten for the morning
Most days we returned to camp around 12, had lunch, and went back out around 3:30 to call for duikers. We would usually walk down a side road then into the forest and set up and call . A pigmy behind me making a distress call with their mouth and nose. Usually 2 or 3 sets an afternoon, you have to come out of the forest pretty early because it gets dark in there much earlier.
The first 10 or so attempts we didn’t have any success, I really enjoyed it nonetheless.
We had an area where Sitatunga frequented and we saw a female track about every other day, the good male track we found early in the hunt became in an area that flooded from the river with the rains we received. The female would walk in the road so we could still see her track.
 
Day 7 we left camp a few minutes early and got about 10 minutes out of camp and the tracker tapped on the roof, they’d seen a bull elephant along side the road. Truck stops and I can hear them say elephant, I look down the road 150 to 175 yds and see something standing there, I say that’s not an elephant, by then the trackers have seen it and it’s a bongo feeding along the edge of the road.
The PH confers with the tracker and he says big bull, so I shoot, the bongo kicks its back legs up and is gone, definitely hit. We go down there and they find blood in the road immediately, the trackers and pygmies are going crazy.

IMG_9068.jpeg
 
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150 yards has to be the longest shot I’ve ever heard of on a Bongo. How lucky to catch one in the relative open!!
 
Russ16 said:
150 yards has to be the longest shot I’ve ever heard of on a Bongo. How lucky to catch one in the relative open!!
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I think we were extremely fortunate to find him there, the tracker said they had never killed one like this before. We looked and the road was very rocky there, we couldn’t find his track and he’d just crossed the road
 
Amazing! And not just any bull either a real boss.
 
That has to be a record shot on a Bongo in the Congo. What a stud of a bull.
 
We tried for Buffalo the next 3 mornings, to no avail and kept looking for Sitatunga tracks also with no luck. We did call in a blue duiker one afternoon to a few paces, but it came in from behind and left extremely fast, no chance for a shot, same with a Peter’s duiker one afternoon, I never even saw it. We did have a Peter’s come in on the 10th evening , I saw a couple of flashes of its legs and I shot towards where I thought it was heading and didn’t connect.
Things didn’t look too promising for Buffalo or Sitatunga and I chose to leave a few days early. I’m still working for a living and thought I’d been away long enough already,more on this in a bit.
Thoughts on Cameroon and the Congo, Cameroon was extremely poor and overly crowded with people, the paved roads were in pitiful shape.
The Congo had a much better road north out of Brazzaville, a lot of open countryside, just gave me the impression it is not as poor or the people aren’t as hungry.
Just my observation after 2 weeks in each country, take that for what it’s worth.
I thought that Cameroon was tough hunting, some days you saw very little game.
It’s the Serengeti compared to the Congo, we did not average 1 game animal sighting per day for the 10 days I was there, we drove roughly 40 to 50 miles per day daily,the day we killed the bongo was the only day we didn’t travel that much.
The jungle was extremely tough, humid, had some bug issues a few days, but mentally you go the same route day after day, very monotonous.
Some photos of what our driver bought on the way back to Brazzaville
IMG_9195.jpeg
IMG_9198.jpeg
 
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Congratulations! and :S Welcome: to AH
 
I received a Whattsap message from the CDC about when I was preparing to leave camp asking if I had been through the DRC to get to the Congo. There’s a travel ban back to the US if you’ve been to the DRC, South Sudan, or Uganda, I told the lady I only transited through the DRC ( Kinshasa), never left the plane seat, we were there for 2 hours max on the ground, unloading and loading passengers before we went to Brazzaville. I thought it was a miscommunication about which country I visited, I was wrong. The CDC says you have to wait 21 days after you’ve been to the affected areas before they will allow you to reenter the US.
I was to leave Brazzaville on Saturday evening, back through Kinshasa (DRC) to Paris on to Washington. The CDC lady said if I go back through the DRC my 21 days starts over,so I went to the airport, couldn’t buy a ticket online with a credit card, and purchased a flight on Ethiopian to Addis Abba then to Paris.
I arrived in Paris collected my luggage and went to AirFrance to check back in, a red symbol came up on the lady’s screen and she made a call and I was denied boarding.
I had been in touch with Cyrus, luckily he resides near Paris, about the situation previously, he came to the airport and picked me up. He got me setup in an Airbnb and I started making calls to the Consulate on Monday morning, everyone I spoke to just referred me to the CDC, they had full authority over the situation.
By Monday afternoon it was apparent I’d be staying in France until Monday November 2nd, I’m writing this from the Airbnb on the outskirts of Paris now.
 
Webster said:
We tried for Buffalo the next 3 mornings, to no avail and kept looking for Sitatunga tracks also with no luck. We did call in a blue duiker one afternoon to a few paces, but it came in from behind and left extremely fast, no chance for a shot, same with a Peter’s duiker one afternoon, I never even saw it. We did have a Peter’s come in on the 10th evening , I saw a couple of flashes of its legs and I shot towards where I thought it was heading and didn’t connect.
Things didn’t look too promising for Buffalo or Sitatunga and I chose to leave a few days early. I’m still working for a living and thought I’d been away long enough already,more on this in a bit.
Thoughts on Cameroon and the Congo, Cameroon was extremely poor and overly crowded with people, the paved roads were in pitiful shape.
The Congo had a much better road north out of Brazzaville, a lot of open countryside, just gave me the impression it is not as poor or the people aren’t as hungry.
Just my observation after 2 weeks in each country, take that for what it’s worth.
I thought that Cameroon was tough hunting, some days you saw very little game.
It’s the Serengeti compared to the Congo, we did not average 1 game animal sighting per day for the 10 days I was there, we drove roughly 40 to 50 miles per day daily,the day we killed the bongo was the only day we didn’t travel that much.
The jungle was extremely tough, humid, had some bug issues a few days, but mentally you go the same route day after day, very monotonous.
Some photos of what our driver bought on the way back to Brazzaville View attachment 804558View attachment 804559
Click to expand...
Was that second picture bait or dinner?
 
Cyrus has been in the hunting industry most of his life, he made a few calls and found an outfit about 2.5 hrs from Paris that was holding a driven bird shoot on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
We signed up for 2 days, rented a room near the place and headed that way Tuesday afternoon.
We arrived there Wednesday morning to meet another group from eastern France, 8 guns
We would eat breakfast at 9, then do 2 drives before lunch , then 2 more after lunch
They put guns around a piece that they planted birds in earlier that morning, then send beaters and dogs in to flush the birds, pheasants and chukars, they called them partridge.
You draw cards in the morning to get your stand number for each drive.
I rented a Browning over under from them that was pretty tightly choked. I shot it reasonably well.
I enjoyed the shooting, we ended up staying and shooting on Friday then returning to Paris on Saturday
Mark458 said:
Was that second picture bait or dinner?
Click to expand...
it’s crickets they catch them and then fry them, they can’t fly. They were still alive, the put them in a big water bottle to bring down the road
I called them crickets, maybe not the proper term for them
 
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Webster said:
Cyrus has been in the hunting industry most of his life, he made a few calls and found an outfit about 2.5 hrs from Paris that was holding a driven bird shoot on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
We signed up for 2 days, rented a room near the place and headed that way Tuesday afternoon.
We arrived there Wednesday morning to meet a

it’s crickets they catch them and then fry them, they can’t fly. They were still alive, the put them in a big water bottle to bring down the road
I called them crickets, maybe not the proper term for them
Click to expand...
That's what I was afraid of. Hahaha
 
Grasshoppers and cicadas are both quite tasty when fried. Guessing those are similar.
 
Webster said:
I received a Whattsap message from the CDC about when I was preparing to leave camp asking if I had been through the DRC to get to the Congo. There’s a travel ban back to the US if you’ve been to the DRC, South Sudan, or Uganda, I told the lady I only transited through the DRC ( Kinshasa), never left the plane seat, we were there for 2 hours max on the ground, unloading and loading passengers before we went to Brazzaville. I thought it was a miscommunication about which country I visited, I was wrong. The CDC says you have to wait 21 days after you’ve been to the affected areas before they will allow you to reenter the US.
I was to leave Brazzaville on Saturday evening, back through Kinshasa (DRC) to Paris on to Washington. The CDC lady said if I go back through the DRC my 21 days starts over,so I went to the airport, couldn’t buy a ticket online with a credit card, and purchased a flight on Ethiopian to Addis Abba then to Paris.
I arrived in Paris collected my luggage and went to AirFrance to check back in, a red symbol came up on the lady’s screen and she made a call and I was denied boarding.
I had been in touch with Cyrus, luckily he resides near Paris, about the situation previously, he came to the airport and picked me up. He got me setup in an Airbnb and I started making calls to the Consulate on Monday morning, everyone I spoke to just referred me to the CDC, they had full authority over the situation.
By Monday afternoon it was apparent I’d be staying in France until Monday November 2nd, I’m writing this from the Airbnb on the outskirts of Paris now.
Click to expand...
I was wondering about this and figured I’d wait to see if it came up. Safe travels and sorry to hear about your unplanned delay.
 
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