CAMEROON: Another Great Hunt With Alan Vincent - Lord Derby Eland This Time

[DLSJR]

I just returned a few days ago from another great hunt with Alan Vincent. This time we hunted Lord Derby Eland and a few other plains game I was interested in, on the Mayo Nduel & Mayo Vaimba concessions in northern Cameroon.

The genesis for this hunt started back in 2021 while Alan and I were hunting on Mlele South, his former concession in western Tanzania. We talked a lot about this hunt and the final thing that pushed me over the edge was an Idaho duck hunt with AR’s “Safari-Lawyer”, Will. Listening to him talk about an upcoming LDE hunt he had booked convinced me to send a deposit for my own hunt and Alan confirmed dates and concession with Mayo Oldiri. I’d be hunting February 10-21 on Mayo Nduel, prime time for black necked rutting eland bulls.

I departed San Francisco February 4th on Turkish Airlines, bound for a multi-day layover in Istanbul before traveling onward to Doula, Cameroon. Business Class on Turkish is very nice, not quite as good as Emirates or Qatar, but pretty close and noticeably better than some others I’ve flown. The flight from SFO to IST was very comfortable on a Boeing 787, the onward flight to DLA not nearly as good on an airbus A330. Neither the food or sear matched the overseas flight.

I need to make a note here about the Customs and TSA folks at SFO. Flying in and out of SFO seems like a much better experience than a number of other U.S. airports. The people I’ve had to deal with are all familiar with the process, friendly and efficient to get me and my gun on the way without any hassle or delay. Despite what some think about California, and San Francisco in particular, my experiences with SFO’s staff have always been very positive.

 

[DLSJR]

I used Shawn Kennedy of Gracy Travel to handle all travel arrangements. As usual, she did a great job. For those who are not familiar with requirements to take a rifle to Cameroon, you need to send your passport to the Cameroon Embassy in Brussels, Belgium to get your Visa and gun permit. Gracy has a fellow in Paris whom you FedEx your passport to and he then takes a train to Brussels to obtain your authorizations and FedEx it back to you. This requires time & expense not needed for any other country I’m aware of. While dealing with this, I kept thinking about people here who’ve mentioned their frustrations with the hassles of traveling to Africa, especially with firearms. For the first time ever, I was questions whether the hassle was worth it. Once that was out of the way, I was pretty much set to go. My itinerary would include a 2 dat layover in Istanbul, so Shawn arranged with a local service who helps with arrangements for gun storage at IST airport. Conveniently, the same fellow, Hakan Ozsala, has a tour guide company for seeing Istanbul’s sights. I highly recommend seeing Istanbul if you have time, it’s a very interesting city.

Once done with Istanbul, it was onward to Doula, Cameroon. Mayo Oldiri has staff there to help you clear your gun into the country and with a 2:00 AM arrival, I was hoping things would go smoothly and not take a few hours as I’d heard other hunters had to deal with. It took about 45 minutes for bags to show up and once we had them one of the guys took my gun permit and disappeared for about 15 minutes. He came back and said ‘Let’s go’and we were off to the Star Land Hotel. I had a room to sleep for a few hours, then we were headed back to the airport for our flight to Garoua. Our flight to Garoua went smoothly and shortly after gathering our bags everyone was headed to their respective camps.

Alan and I started on the Mayo Nduel concession. It was a 7 1/2 hour drive from Garoua, all but the first hour on rough dirt roads. We passed through numerous small villages of mud huts with thatch roofs, no electricity, running water or sewer facilities. They live much like they’ve lived for generations. About the only modern convenience are small motorcycles that some of the men have to get around. We finally arrived at camp well after dark. Camp was pretty comfortable with rondavels to sleep in and good meals of fresh vegetables, fruits and game meat.

 

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Our first day consisted of driving the two track roads, looking for eland tracks. Alan uses the GAIA GPS app, which shows the track we were driving and walking. Alan marked each location where we found eland tracks and noted the direction of travel. We did not see any eland the first day, but did find tracks of several groups as well as a pair that we thought were bulls. Three of the sets of tracks were all heading into the same large block, while one group was headed out of the block. Other than a lone Western Hartebeest bull we saw and tried to shoot that crossed the main road that runs through Mayo Nduel, we didn’t see much game of interest. We did see a Western Kob ram that was of interest but it was in the same block the eland were heading into, so there was no way I was going to fire a shot unless it was at an eland.

At the end of the day we had a good graphic that showed where we drove, each point where we saw tracks and direction of travel. The plan for the next day was to drive around that one block to see if we found any tracks leading out of the block and follow them or; if no tracks left the block, to start walking into the wind inside that block trying to find some of the eland we believed were inside.

We started out early the next morning, driving directly to the block and started looking for tracks leading out of the block to follow. About halfway around, Gumna our lead tracker, stopped us and had a quick discussion with Alan. It was decided that the two trackers would walk across the block to look for eland while we continued to drive the perimeter looking for tracks. We drove the balance of the road and were waiting in a shady area for a short while when the trackers showed up. Gumna and Alan had a short discussion, after which Alan asked if I wanted to go back to camp for lunch… or, would I rather go shoot one of the big eland bulls they’d seen not far away!

We all sucked down some water and took off on foot in the direction of the eland herd. We didn’t have to go far, maybe a half mile and suddenly we were glassing a herd of eland drifting through the trees a couple hundred yards away. The first thing I saw in my binoculars was an eland bull with wide spread horns. For someone who’d never hunted Giant Eland before, it was a a sight I’ll never forget. The bull had long and heavily ridged horns and an unusually wide spread, easily upper 40’s in length. But, he was one of two satellite bulls hovering around the perimeter of the herd. The herd bull, probably 11 or 12 years old, was a huge bodied bull with heavily broomed horns, both the ridges that run around the spirals as well as his tips broomed down by several inches. He was covered with mud on his face and neck, clearly the dominant bull.

The wind was bad, so we had to make a large circle to get the wind right. Once downwind we found a creek bed that allowed us to sneak back near the herd which numbered around 30 eland. We were sneaking along the creek bed through thick grass when Alan nearly stepped on a large water mongoose! It was probably 2 1/2 feet long and came blasting out of the grass to get out of the way. Thank God it wasn’t a mamba or cobra!

As we came up from the creek bed the closest eland was the big herd bull. He was standing broadside in the shade of some trees. We snuck as close as necessary to get a shooting lane and Alan set the Gunstix up. Alan studied the bull, turned to me and simply said “I think you should shoot this bull. He’s old, big and if you pass on him we both may regret it in a week.” That was all I needed to hear.

The bull was about 225 yards away and there were some tree branches about halfway to the bull that covered the lower part of his chest. I was shooting my .375 H&H which I’d had built recently on a pre-64 Model 70 express action I had. It was topped with a Leupold VX5HD scope in 2-10 magnification, with illuminated Firedot reticle. I settled the gun on the sticks and turned the scope up to 10x to better see the vegetation between me and the bull. I had to hold high on the shoulder to clear the obstructions, the red Firedot made aiming easy and I touched off my shot, sending a 300 grain Bearclaw on its way. The bullet hit with a loud ‘whop’ and the bull collapsed on the spot, never taking a step.

At noon on the 2nd day we had a grand, old Lord Derby Bull! We were both relieved to have success so early in the hunt.

 

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[Hank2211]

Congratulations. One of the great trophies of Africa and not one of the easiest to get. Your PH was smart to advise you as he did, and you were smarter to take his advice!

No all we need is a picture!

 

[Rare Breed]

wow!!! congratulations!!!

 

[MontanaPat]

View attachment 590580

That is a heck of a nice bull, congratulations

 

[Andrew62]

What a wonderful story, such an amazing LDE! Congratulations!

 

[gillettehunter]

Nice worn down horns on a old bull. Great one to take. Congrats
Bruce

 

[AES]

Thanks for the report. Great bull!

 

[Mekaniks]

Great Bull! Thank You for sharing with us

 

[buck wild]

Looks like you made the right decision. Congrats ! Living the Dream.

 

[DLSJR]

Now that the eland was in the salt, it was time to focus on the rest of what I was interested in on my one license. I wanted to take not only a roan but also buffalo in addition to my LDE, but couldn’t work out an acceptable price to add a few extra animals so I just had the one license. The next morning went looking for Roan, but the first thing we found was a nice Kob, all alone and calm, so after a short stalk and shot we had a nice Western Kob. It ended up being the largest ram we saw between Mayo Nduel & Mayo Vaimba.

 

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View attachment IMG_0237.jpeg

 

[Scott CWO]

Congrats Dan! Helluva trophy old bull! Hadn't heard from you for a while since Istanbul and was hoping it would be good news!

 

[Cleathorn]

Congratulations. Great LDR, and awesome kob!

I’m leaving Brussels tomorrow morning 3 March to hunt the same areas for some PG (bushbuck, waterbuck, hartebeest, kob, etc.). Looking forward to it.

 

[7mmFan]

Congrats on a successful hunt and thanks for sharing.

 

[cpr0312]

Nice eland, congrats and thanks for sharing!