MOZAMBIQUE: Great Hunt On Coutada 9!

This hunt was several years in the making and had a few unexpected ‘twists & turns’ before it finally all came together and we departed San Francisco, headed for Johannesburg via Dubai on Emirates. I was traveling with 3 friends, two who were on their first African hunt and one who’d been on a couple safaris but his most recent was nearly 40 years ago.

One of the first timers, BC, was 31 years old and his dad, PC, was the one who’d last been hunting in Africa around 1990. Rounding out our group was my buddy LL, who is in his late 70’s. LL had never shot a rifle larger than 308 Winchester, but he was primarily interested in buffalo and had a complete shoulder replacement just a year earlier so I fixed him up with my 375 H&H, which is a complete custom build around a pre-64 action and Brown Precision fiberglass stock fitted with a Pachmayr Decellerator pad, so it’s very comfortable to shoot and would be easy on his re-built shoulder. LL is also a big guy, nearly 6’5”, so we added a slip-on Limbsaver pad to get the length of pull correct for him. That made it a very comfortable gun to shoot and LL shot it very well indeed. He ended up with 6 animals including a pair of buffalo bulls and every animal was taken with just one shot.

The Emirates check-in at SFO was simple and efficient and we were relaxing in the Emirates Lounge well before boarding time. The flight from SFO to DXB is 15 1/2 hours non-stop but very comfortable on the upper deck of the A380’s that fly this route. Attentive flight crew, good food and drink, lay flat seats and it goes by without much discomfort at all.


The flight arrives in Dubai around 7:30 and by the time you clear immigration, find your limo and get to your hotel, it’s about 9:30. None of my buddies had been to Dubai before and they enjoyed seeing the city at night. Emirates put us up at the Marriott Marquis, which was about a 30 minute ride from the airport. Bags were all checked clear through to JNB so it was pretty easy.

Superb. Anxiously awaiting this one as I'm booked there for 2028!
Just returned from the Dande with CMS and if it's half as good I'm in for a treat!
Seriously looking forward to reading the rest of this.

Looking forward to the rest of the report

This will be interesting. I am following. Keep going!

I’m in! Anxious to read more.

My buddies were hoping to meet my long time friend, Saeed, but our layover was only about 11 hours, 9:00 PM to 8:00 AM, so we didn’t get to visit. Emirates is very efficient as the limo’s arrived a few minutes early and had us back at the airport with time to spare before we boarded our flight, so we relaxed in the Emirates Lounge until it was time to board our flight to JNB.

The flight was very comfortable and everyone arrived well rested. We had all opted for Gracy Travels VIP meet & greet service, which my buddies quickly realized was a wise decision. As soon as we came up the jetway we found one of the Gracy team members holding a sign with my name and we followed him out to rendezvous with Bruce. After introducing my buddies to Bruce, we collected our bags and headed off to the SAPS office where we were in & out in about 5 minutes. I ran into an old acquaintance in the SAPS office, none other than Charl Van Rooyen! He too was headed to Mozambique to do a little personal hunting for himself. We visited for a bit and then my gang headed across the street to the InterContinental for the night. We enjoyed a great dinner there and turned in early as we would be meeting Bruce again about 7:30 the next morning to check-in for our Airlink flight to Beira. I’ve stayed at City Lodge before and probably will again if traveling alone, but we found the InterContinental to be very comfortable with great food and if traveling with my wife this will be a ‘No Brainer’ if departing JNB early in the day.

The next morning, Bruce met us at the hotel at the designated time and assisted us through check-in. As expected when he is involved, everything went very smoothly. The only inconvenience was that our jet for the Beira flight was a smaller regional jet and since 2 of my buddies are 6’5” and 6’6”, they were a bit cramped. The flight went smoothly, we arrived on-time and were met by the crew from Safari Air, who got us transferred over to our charter into Tandikwe, Coutada 9. We had reserved their Islander, which was considerably less expensive than the Caravan, but they flew us in the Caravan anyway. We did get there much faster!

More to come later…

Looking forward to it!

Looking forward to reading all about your safari. Thank you for taking the time to share it with us.

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Following with interest. Sounds like your buddy with 6 animals had a great hunt! Looking forward to reading more ...

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Sounds like a first class operation. Tell us more, tell us more!

Off to a good start

I’m a bit slow in updating, yesterday was full of appointments.

Our arrival at Tandikwe was without any stress. Smooth and fast flight of about 90 minutes and we were on the ground. Mokore Safaris has established a superb camp in the bush, especially given the distance from any towns where one can get supplies to build with. There are five guest chalets, all concrete with thatch roofs. All have full bathrooms and I especially appreciated the shower which had good volume & water pressure.

The dining area was the main area that everyone gathered each day. It’s all open air, concrete floors under thatch, a proper African structure. It stretches out to a large deck looking to the west that has a nice fireplace where everyone would gather for drinks and appetizers before dinner. In summary, Tandikwe is a very nice camp, especially for being in a relatively remote area. Mokore ‘Does it right”!


Inside my chalet. One nice touch was both a ceiling fan and wall mounted fan to keep it comfortable when it’s hot.


Every evening started right here. Dalton McClintock, PC & BC relaxing


My PH, Neil Duckworth.


Dining & deck area, where we spent much of out time when in camp.

The sunset views from the deck were pretty special, at least until the smoke from bushfires obscured those distant mountains


Our group; me, PC, BC & LL.

We all had our priorities for this hunt. LL wanted a buffalo and didn’t care about anything else (at least, until he got into the bush his 1st morning!). PC & BC were there to enjoy a father-son safari and were happy to take whatever the bush provided. Me, my main focus was a good buffalo, bushbuck and Nyala.

We started each morning by checking pans, of which Mokore has developed a good number of large pans, some of which are fed by solar powered pumps/boreholes.


In my case, the main thing we were looking for was tracks from Dugga Boys. The first morning, we found a good sized track of a lone bull. He seemed to be traveling somewhere and Neil mentioned that he thought this bull was headed toward a particular patch of forest where he would bed for the day. We ended up tracking him for several hours before eventually losing the track. Other than following tracks, we spent the balance of our day walking in sand rivers, looking for a big Nyala bull. We all enjoyed a good first day, everyone encountered quite a diverse assortment of game, spirits were high and we were all looking forward to what the next day might bring.

Day two dawned as a great day, sunny and cool. We started by checking a few pans, then headed toward the general area where Neil thought the buffalo from the day before was heading when we lost him. We hadn’t been driving down the road for very long when Neil stopped as his tracker, Nhamo, had seen something of interest just off the road. The ground was fairly hard but we could clearly see the imprint of a single, large buffalo track. A bit more checking confirmed his direction, so the three of us loaded up and took off on the track. It seemed we had found the same buffalo track that we’d lost the previous day.

Tracking went at a good pace for about 45 minutes to an hour as the bull was generally headed in a constant direction. We hadn’t bumped into any other game initially but suddenly there were 3 warthogs at close range and one of them was an incredible boar. He only had a single tusk, but what a tusk it was! It curved upward and back over the top and angling downward toward the tip. I’ve never seen a warthog so large in all my time across Africa. But, we were tracking a lone Dugga Boy, so this special warthog was left unmolested.

As we progressed the grass got quite thick and that slowed us significantly. We lost the track several times but Neil or Nhamo would eventually pick it up again and we’d continue onward. The bull had started wandering quite a bit and it was apparent we were getting close. It was now a bit after 10:30 and we had slowed down significantly as we expected the bull was probably bedded and would be alert to any noise or mistake we might make. Fortunately, there was a steady wind so it was unlikely he would smell us unless we happened to unknowingly get upwind of the buffalo.

We came to a large termite mound that was pretty flat on top. Neil motioned for me to stay put while he climbed atop the mound to get a better look out over the tall and thick grass. After glassing for less than a minute, Neil suddenly started motioning with his hand held close by his hip, urging me to get up there with him and it was obvious to me that he meant NOW.

As I got to the top of the mound I looked out over a sea of tall straw colored grass and about 50-60 yards directly in front of us I could see the back of a buffalo feeding along broadside, going from my right to left. I couldn’t see his head but Neil had spread the Viperflex Sticks he carries, and he didn’t need to tell me what to do. I carefully placed my rifle across the sticks and began following the buffalo through my scope. When his head became visible the first thing I noticed was a wide, smoothly polished boss. I immediately knew I was going to shoot this Buffalo but Neil broke the silence, whispering “You might not want this bull as I think he’s between 41-43”.

I need to back up here to explain that comment. Mokore has a sliding scale on buffalo trophy fees. Up to 40” is one price, 40-43” is a higher price and over 43” is yet another price tier. Before my hunt began, the only thing I’d told Neil about buffalo was that I didn’t want to shoot a buffalo between 40-43 inches as I already have shot four buffalo in that size range and didn’t want to pay a higher fee to shoot another. I told him I’d be very happy with a sub-40” bull that was old and broken but wouldn’t want a bull between 40-43”. Since I’d never shot a buffalo over 43” I’d happily pay the even higher trophy fee if I could shoot my biggest buffalo to date. Now, back to our buffalo….

Great read so far

Nice start, sounds like a great report. Following with interest. Keep em coming

Thank you for sharing.

The buffalo was slowly feeding along and completely oblivious to our presence. There were a couple areas where the grass was a bit sparser but I held off shooting as it was apparent that he was going to pass through a clear window in the grass right after he cleared a tree he was coming to. As the bull came into the opening just past the tree he turned a bit to his right and was now quartering away, which many would consider a somewhat risky shot; but I could see a clear path to his heart area so I touched off a shot just as Neil was getting ready to make some noise in hopes of getting the bull to turn broadside. The Northfork solid (Neil wanted me to use a solid instead of Barnes’s TTSX for my first shot since the buffalo was alone) made an obvious solid hit as the buffalo hunched up & appeared hurt bad and Neil was commenting that his right shoulder (opposite side from shot) was giving him trouble. He was sorta hopping along on 3 legs, not using his right front leg very well.

I’m a believer that ‘Bullets are cheap, shooting is fun and you can’t kill a buffalo too dead” so I quickly worked the bolt but couldn’t shoot for a moment as the tall grass obscured the buffalo. Neil was reminding me to shoot him again but I was already reloaded and tracking the buffalo. It took about 5 seconds from the first shot until he was visible again in the grass and I could see something to shoot when I sent another shot off which hit him midway back and angled forward. I immediately chambered another round, and shot a few seconds later when he appeared again, hitting him in the left hip and dropping him ‘right there’.

Neil was saying ‘he’s down’ while I was reloading and looking for something to send another bullet into. There was no need to shoot again, the buffalo was indeed down. From first shot to third only 10-11 seconds had elapsed and the buffalo had only covered about 30 yards. Neil was carrying a hell of a lot bigger gun than me, his William Evans 470 NE, and he was ready to go check out our bull right away. I suggested that since we had all day perhaps we should wait 5-10 minutes to make sure he was truly dead. Neil agreed but after just a few minutes he said ‘come on, let’s go look at him’ so we advanced slowly and came up to about 10 yards behind the bull. No movement but again I suggested we just wait and see how things would unfold. Neil didn’t want to keep waiting so told me to put a bullet through the top of his back and down through his spine. I did and there was no reaction as Neil was right about the bull being dead. Only then did we move around in front of him to get our first ‘head-on’ view.

It was immediately obvious that fortune had smiled upon us as this bull had it all. Nice full bosses, deep drop, broomed back to where the tips ended pointed straight upward, and the spread was more than we expected. We were oohing and aweing and Neil asked what I was thinking. I told him “What I’m thinking is we just killed my biggest buffalo ever”! We made some guesses but wouldn’t know for sure until they measured him back at camp. Whatever he was, we knew he was mid-forties! I was ecstatic, thoroughly pleased to be blessed with such a great bull, regardless of what the tape might say.

Congratulations on a fantastic bull! And thanks for sharing the story with us. Great read and looking forward to hearing more