Finally getting a shot at an elephant with a bow!!

[Rumrunner]

Really enjoying the narrative. Congrats on the hippo and croc. Good luck on the elephant.

 

[DonPablo]

 

[Tgood1]

Another fantastic report, and great writing as well

 

[mrpoindexter]

Addendum for July 15th:

After a nice spaghetti and mince meat dinner, we head out to try out the hyena equipment. Steven has his thermal linked to his iPad so we can see on the iPad what he is seeing on his thermal. I still use mine tonight as I have a better thermal monocular, but when it comes time for me to actually shoot, I can’t use mine easily. I lose night vision if it is on my right eye and to use on my left eye makes it slow to switch to my bow. Will have to get that sorted out before tomorrow night.

Steve also has a Bluetooth speaker and plays clips from his iPhone. I know this will work because John Henry Keyser has used that with me before in Limpopo and it functioned incredibly well.

I know there is almost no light pollution here and have seen the stars at night in remote locations but the first night I get to really look up at them when traveling always amazes me. The Milky Way looks magnificent here.

We pull into a bit of a canyon like part of the trail and kick on his speaker. A hyena came in FAST. One call and he was 10 yards away. He split quickly so no shot on him but we can make some plans now.

On the evening drive, we saw a bush duiker. I still need one, but this was a female. We also saw what looked like a grysbok (another animal I need) but we could not get a clear line of sight to see if it was a ram.

Hopefully I can connect on one or two of the tiny ten while I am here. I only have one so far. They have always been on my list but never a priority aside from the Dik-Dik when I was in Namibia. That is the only one I have so far. I need two of them for the African 29 slam so they are becoming a priority. With the croc down today, I am up to 20 and still have the elephant on my list. The other two on my hunt permit (spotted hyena and chobe bushbuck) don’t progress me on that slam but are on other slams.

I have 5 days left and 3 permits to cover plus maybe a few more should I get lucky on opportunities. I expect I will sleep well.

 

[mrpoindexter]

Congrats! Can you show a picture of the entrance and exit wounds? I’m just curious about where you have to hit one to get the lungs and not the heart.

I have photos and they were skinning him yesterday. Today we will cut open the body to verify the vitals and I will put them all up at once. I got one lung and the arrow existed his soft underbelly.

 

[Graham Hunter]

Congratulations! Awesome carry on.

 

[mrpoindexter]

July 16

After a nice breakfast, we head over to the skinning shed for the crocodile autopsy. My arrow hit the front of one lung and not the heart. I must have hit a major blood vessel though as there was thick “heart blood” as described by the PH.

We head out to check the camera on the hyena bait and then on to the blind over the water holes.

Two hyenas were on the bait at 4:30am. We scout the area to check the ideal area for a blind and look to see where the hyenas came in from.

8:30am and we are driving to the water holes. I have my 70lb bow in hand and the 85 in the soft case overhead should we get word on an elephant. I replaced the croc arrow with a fresh one so I have full quivers, just in case.

We arrive at just after 9:30 to the tree with the bait for the leopard and check cameras. Two leopards that are coming in daylight. Also a genet.

Somehow, I forgot how close this was to the waterhole. We climb further in and reach the waterhole. Cameras there shown bushbuck, but no zebra or warthogs. I think that baiting leopard so near the waterhole has somewhat sabotaged my chances at a zebra or warthogs and maybe reduced my odds on bushbuck. I mention this to Steven and we have to make a decision. Take down the leopard bait and let the other animals come in, or keep it up and add a major target to the menu.

Of course, we still need the elephant. That was the star of this hunt and it must die. After that, the decision over a chobe bushbuck, a zebra and a warthog vs a leopard is not much of a choice. It is a financial decision, however.

We have some time to the leopard bait stays up and we finish setting a blind at the waterhole as well before we check to see what our scouts have found on an elephant. 5 days left including today. I have 2 of the Big 5 down with a bow and 4 of the Dangerous 7. An elephant and a leopard would leave me just a rhino away from legit completing the slams fully. (The dangerous 7 slam only requires 5 for a bow with at most 4 of the Big 5 but I want to get all 7 personally).

While a leopard would be a very expensive add on, it would cut a future leopard hunt off and if I fail to shoot one, I am hoping to save myself a full leopard hunt cost. We can discuss more back at camp tonight - hopefully with the elephant box checked off, but this would be like an African version of an add on for a stone sheep with no additional cost if you don’t connect on one. That is a hard opportunity to pass up.

We drive a long way through the bush, villages and even a paved road until we get to the Rufunsa river. It is nearly 2pm and we are still trying to get there. One of the local scouts has identified a small herd of 4 elephants, 2 of them tuskless. given how long it has taken us to get here, I am really hoping to connect today and have a bit more choices on what to hunt the rest of the week. While he discusses this with PH Steven and one of the trackers, I see another tracker sit down to talk to a woman who lives here. She complains about the elephants and is obviously not happy to have them around. I know people want elephants to exist, myself included, but none of us have to live with them and most people do not see the disruption they cause to those in the areas around them.

Finally, we head out to look for the elephants. The bush is thicker here, but I can see signs of locals starting to make charcoal here as well and know it is a matter of time before the pressure of human population takes its toll in another area.

We park the car in the shade and start a stalk. Part way in, we spot the bulls under a large tree. The wind is not right and we drop into a ravine to get ahead of them. 18 minutes later, the wind whipped around and we were busted. The elephants took off. We head back to the car and come across another small herd of 4 - a mother and her calf plus two youngish adults - ivory all around.

Once back at the car, we drive to try and get ahead of them. While driving towards them, I hear the local ranger tell the PH that there is one big male lion roaming this area as well. Nothing as exciting as wild Africa.

We hop back onto the tar road and drive to the other side of the village and then into the land behind their small settlement. We enter into some thick bush with some ridges that look like they may have at one time been the banks of a larger Rufunsa river perhaps. It adds some complexity to the terrain that should make for an interesting stalk if we can locate a lone or small group of elephants that contain a tuskless.

We do not find a small group, however. Instead, we see a much larger herd that numbers perhaps 50 elephants. There are only a couple tuskless here, but there are a lot of nursing mothers, which adds to the danger. If it were merely a matter of finding any elephant and closing to 40 yards, this would have been finished on the first day. Instead, we have a group of 50 elephants and we get to pick 2 at random that generally are in the middle of the group and then have to get close to those without getting close to the others or being seen, heard or smelled by any of them. Get too close to any of them and the stalk is over. Get too close to the wrong one and it is much worse than that.

We play a game of cat and mouse, but can never close the distance to less than 80 yards. I can shoot that far with my lighter (but still a heavy 650 grain) arrows, but there is no way I am shooting the 1,250 grain sticks that far. Twice, we face imminent danger and have to back out. One of those times, we had two bulls moving in to protect the others from what they perceived as a threat. Luckily, we didn’t have a guard take an early warning shot. Still, there is no real chance at the tuskless who is always both out of range and cannot be approached without triggering protective instincts from other members of the herd.

After a couple hours of attempts at getting a shot, it is starting to get dark and we don’t want to shoot one too late in the evening. We call it for the day and make a plan to head back early in the morning.

On the way back, I ask what about the hyena. We move over to that area and make an attempt at them; We can call them in and get a many as 5 to come in, but the bait is too high and they will not stay in a fixed spot long enough. Also, I cannot range them and fire quick enough, even with the Garmin, as they move in complete darkness and when the light kicks on, they scatter. Having bow hunted hyena before, I discuss with Steven how it worked for me in the past and what we need to do differently.

Elephants remain the priority over hyena though, so as long as I get my elephant, this hunt will be considered a success and no amount of other animals will make up for not getting the elephant. I am now down to 4 days hunting left. There is time, but not enough to squander any of it.

As if they communicated with their friends, we arrive back at camp to find elephants hassling us. I have a quick bite to eat and get some sleep. I don’t even get my log of the day’s events finished before I retire and am greeted in the morning with messages from friends asking where their update is. Luckily, I am not charged observer fees for my friends who want to hunt vicariously through me.

In the middle of the night, I am awoken by the same band of elephants. Like home town fans who go to the hotel of the visiting team to keep them from getting a good night’s rest, they do their best to wake us up, shaking trees outside our room so that the fruit falls onto the tin roofs of the hunting chalets. They cause quite a racket and I begin to question the repercussions of just shooting one in my underwear from the veranda. Sleep wins the battle of thoughts and I tune them out like kids bickering while dad is trying to rest. At least parenthood prepared me for things like this.

 

[Sh1kar]

Really enjoying this. Wish you had booked a 21 day safari

s

 

[mrpoindexter]

Really enjoying this. Wish you had booked a 21 day safari

s

It isn’t too late. Donations will be accepted. Should I start a go fund me?

 

[spike.t]

The wind woke me up but it wasn’t really the wind.

Something sounded different. An elephant was outside my room. Less than 20 yards, eating from a tree outside my door. Then less than 10 yards eating from the closest tree to my room. Then 3 yards from my window he decided to relieve himself. Two exits, no waiting, he made a mess just next to my window. Very funny, but the wind was blowing the wrong way so if it was a prank, it failed. If it was a tuskless, he would have heard a twang as I stood there in my underwear looking at him.

After a while, I had enough and went to bed. An hour later, I was woken again. He came back with friends. Three bull elephants outside my room. One shook the tree to free up the nuts or fruit on it - not sure what kind of tree and I wasn’t about to investigate with them there. All three had ivory. Nothing super massive, but one was a shooter, probably the biggest set of ivory I have seen on this side of the Zambezi. It just was not a legal target for me on this permit.

This time, I got my flashlight so I could take some photos and video. They were unfazed by the lights.

At least I know the rifle didn’t chase off all the elephants in the area or if it did, not for long. It is now 3am and I doubt I get back to sleep. We will be up in an hour and head out for hippos.

The stress of the western world is gone. I look forward to the coming day of hunting.

Back up at 4am and crossing the river at 4:30 to the small Zambian island in the middle of the Zambezi. This time I used the thermal so there are no surprises. Saw a hippo camped out at our boat landing site, so we had to go downstream and offload a bit further down. As we traversed the island, I would periodically check for hippo. At the same spot we came across one the day before we found the entire pod had bedded down, perhaps 40 yards from where our path takes us. We were able to make our way past them undetected, but they ran into the water right as we were getting into the blind.

The morning went slowly. We could hear the hippos making a lot of noise. It made me think of my kids playing Marco Polo in the pool. They would surface, one would grunt and another couple would grunt back and it just repeated for a few hours. Unfortunately, by the time the shooting light was up, they were out of range and mostly submerged. We waited for them to settle down, but just prior to the time we expected them to surface and expose their vitals, they left. We walked the perimeter of the island and found they had traveled over to just next to what they call the Devil’s gate, a rough part of the river where our boat cannot take a full complement of passengers. Also, should the hippos charge, we cannot outrun them there.

We find a few hippos just to the south but they are not surfacing yet. We give them some time and continue to walk the perimeter looking for opportunities. We pass by the fisherman farmer who sleeps in the field with his wife to protect their crop from the hippos. His entire farm cannot be more than a few acres and wouldn’t be considered a farm in California. It looks like he waters all his corn plants by hand. That he would have to risk his life and his wife’s to protect so little from such dangerous animals is quite sad and sobering to see how good life in America is. He informs us of the animal activity in the area.

We see three hippos just in the river near his farm. It wakes a while but we wait until they start to surface so they can nap while in the water.

There is only one bull, and he will not give me a broadside shot. I sneak as close as I can and also as far to the side as possible. The hippo is about 15 degrees to the right otherwise I would be perfectly behind him. I range him at 45 yards and drop an arrow into his back.

The arrow buries to about the cresting. I look at Steven and he seems a little unsure, feeling it is a bit far back. I tell him it will go through the lung but only one lung. From the angle, I could not get a double lung shot. The hippos all go underwater and things are quiet. We see one hippo surface and then another. Neither were our bull.

Finally, half way across the river, we see a hippo surface and he sprays blood into the water. There are bubbles on the surface and it is obvious that there is a solid lung shot. He submerges a few more times as he makes his way to the opposite river bank. We are hopeful that he may exit the river right next to the skinning shed, but this hippo cannot climb the banks now.

He keeps going down river and eventually ends up in a tree and thrashes out the last of his life.

By the time we get there, we cannot see the hippo. We are told he is stuck under the tree but to be extra cautious, we send the boat downstream to look for the body. That turned out to be a good decision.

They found my hippo before he took a trip to Mozambique. We do find out how strong the mighty Zambezi can be however and the boat cannot pull the hippo carcass upstream. It can barely move upstream with it in tow - perhaps a quarter mile per hour and then the engine gives out after a few minutes of running too much power.

We fashion a rope to its leg and then take a boat upstream a couple hundred feet, tie the boat to a tree and then tug of war the hippo upstream to us. Have one small boat hold him there while the other one moves upstream and repeats the process.

The trackers are surprised the bwana wants to help but I am going to earn this animal. It is a three and a half hour recovery. I am physically exhausted but my hippo is back in camp and good lord they emit some foul odors when the gasses escape their body.

We take a trip to some little village later to try and get a new car battery for the Land Cruiser as some of the employees killed it charging their phones and running it completely dead the day before. No more hunting in the afternoon but I am so tired I am fine with that.

I sleep soundly and am not woken by elephants. Tomorrow we should look for another elephant herd
View attachment 699483

Is that island just slightly down from the hunting camp?....any idea which fishing lodge ...below the gate or above it?

 

[spike.t]

I used the heavy bow and arrow for the hippo. 82 lbs and a 1250 grain arrow.

Will use that for the croc as well. Found a very nice croc today but could not get him to the bait. Must have been 80 years old. Super ugly and scarred. Will be a very special trophy if I can get him

Where are you baiting for the crocs?

 

[Slaton]

Looking forward to the next update. Cant wait to hear how the day went.

 

[Tgood1]

Yes on of his friends need to wake his ass up to do some typing, loving this

 

[wesheltonj]

Great write up, thanks.

 

[mrpoindexter]

July 17

For the first time, I am not up before the generator.

Before 7, we see a kudu on the drive out to the hunting area. It is still young, just 2 turns on his horns.

By 8 am, we are speaking with villagers. One lady is very vocal about elephants. I can’t understand her but she is certainly not telling us to fuck off. Her husband is explaining all the damage this elephant bull is doing and asking us for help. Steven asks about the tusks. I can see the guy gesturing with his arms - big ones. I cannot help him. Steven tells him he must wait until September. He will have a client for that elephant then.

The villager asks for fireworks to scare off the elephant but we do not have those. He must just put up with it for another 2 months.

We continue to look for tuskless. At just a few minutes before 8:30, a small group cross the road a couple hundred yards in front of us. There is a tuskless with them, but very quickly we see the has a calf with her. The search continues.

A local has us directed down a path towards elephants but it grows progressively worse and at this point we are committed to essentially reforging an old road that has become grown over. I don’t mind paying money to assist in managing their wildlife and providing food for villagers, but I didn’t travel to Zambia to build roads in the bushveld. I do make mention several times that one pair of pruning sheers would speed this up tremendously.

9:55 am and we are back where we were yesterday. Often locals will hear you are hunting elephant and they claim they have elephants because if you kill one near them, they will get meat. Then once they get you to follow them, they start looking hoping they will find an elephant. Perhaps they heard elephants the day before but they waste your entire day hoping them come across elephants. We are now discussing options as there doesn’t seem to be fresh tracks or spoor anywhere this local is taking us.

We have gone a different path and gotten to the herd from yesterday by 10:45 am. We find a tuskless without a calf and put a stalk on her. It takes what feels like an eternity but in reality is only half an hour. Still, half an hour sneaking up on elephants trying to get to the right one is a bit nerve racking.

FINALLY!! I can see her just 50 yards in front of me. There is a nice tree I can crawl to just 15 yards in front of me to give me a 35 yard shot. The brush is high enough to completely shield my movement from the 2 bull elephants looking directly towards me. Psst, I hear. I glance to Steven, who lets me know she has one tusk on the opposite side. Just my luck. We saw two single tusked elephants last time and this is one of them.

There is a lone bull coming up our right relatively quickly and we are in danger of being surrounded. Plus, if he turns back towards the herd, he will absolutely see us. We have to back out, but Steven lets me know the smaller elephant between the two bulls who were looking at us is tuskless.

We cannot see her belly due to the brush. We don’t know if she is nursing or not but don’t have time to see. We back out and hope the bull on the right rejoins the herd and gives us a path towards the tuskless.

The bull on the far right that was possibly surrounding us stops advancing. We have backed out 15 yards already when the left bull of the two by our other tuskless moves past her and just near the single tusk female and lays down.

Now, with only one bull guarding the female and the other laying down for a nap, we have a chance to at least get close. We make our way back to the farthest tree we had made it to and look through the brush as best we can. Steve finds a calf sleeping. Now the question is if this youngster is dependent on the mother. The only way to know is to check her udder. If it is dry, the calf is no longer feeding and mom is fair game. If not, she is off limits.

Full udder. I check the time. 12:05pm.

New plan. We sit under a shade tree and wait. Not for the baby to grow up or mom to go dry, but this herd is still feeding and moving and we can wait for them to mingle around and then look for more tuskless opportunities.

12:40pm: "Bwana!"

These elephants don’t want to let me sleep either. One of the bigger bulls starts to head towards our shade tree. Big body, short but fat tusks. A good looking bull. I look around. Steven is standing calmly at the edge of the shade. The group of locals, the trackers, scouts and rangers are huddled up behind the truck of the tree. All except one are there. The other one is 15 feet up into the tree.

Steven tells them not to shoot. Be calm. It continues to move towards us. Steven calmly grabs a water bottle from his pocket and gives is a gently squeeze, making a small cracking noise. The elephant gets startled and changes direction. Steven chuckles.

1pm. Time for a nap. These trackers are so terrified of the elephants, they won’t sleep and will keep watch.

1:15pm, we have elephants moving in. 3 tuskless in a group. The wind is in our favor. Steven, Wessels and I approach them from downwind. Every one of them has a calf with them. I seriously don’t understand elephants. Why does nearly every tuskless have a young calf? Do the males have no standards? I would not hook up with a girl with no teeth.

The elephants start moving en masse, but not fast. They are relocating but still not feeling the pressure from us. The wind is in our favor to follow them and we do, but a small pod of bulls off to the side force us to swing around very wide so they don’t smell us when we pass by. I get within shooting range of a nice bull. Probably 70lbs total of ivory. I think 80lbs total is a top 10 for archery. If I had a permit for a bull elephant, I would have another arrow in my dangerous 7 collection.

We clear around the group and get back to the truck. The table and chairs come out and we break for lunch. At 2:30pm, we pack back up and head to get in front of the herd and make another attempt to close the deal on my elephant.

I am asking Steven to see if an upgrade is possible on my permit. If it is, then we have options. While I still have time, I don’t want to be racing the clock on such a major animal.

We head back to the village and ask who has seen elephants. There is a water hole they use by town but it looks like they only use it at night.

One of the younger boys in town tells us there are elephants just a little ways behind their settlement. They point us in the area and we head there but the amount of kids following either to watch or try to loot our car when we hunt makes us look like the pied piper heading out of town.

By 3pm, we are back on the rear end of an elephant herd. We have seen this herd before, as I recognize two of them - one with only a right tusk and one with only a left tusk. I jokingly ask Steven if I can shoot one of them since they are “one tusk less”. We keep following the herd and cannot seem to close in on any of them, let alone a tuskless. Most of the tuskless have calves and I am getting quite frustrated over the difficulty in just finding a legal target.

I inquire about the cost of upgrading to an exportable trophy bull. The problem is they have sold their quota for the year and those other tags still have hunters coming for them. The first hunter of the year has a lot of perks, but getting discounts on left over permits isn’t one of them.

I see a monster of an elephant with one tusk that looks like it is a full 2 feet longer than the other. I ask Steve about it. There is a minimum size for hunting here and if you are under it, there is a fine and the outfitter could lose their elephant quota for up to 4 years so it isn’t worth it to shoot something that looks risky. This one looks well over 60 pounds and Steve tells me it is a cow. She is the matriarch of the herd. We are very close to her - less than 80 yards, sometimes as close as 65 yards and we get to watch her for quite some time.

We keep moving to our right to try and get a shot as the herd continues to migrate that direction. Eventually, we drop back and move as far enough to get ahead of where the herd is going and we come to the top of a bank overlooking a villager’s small plot they have planted a crop that looks like it was harvested months ago. The farmer’s home is at the top of a small hill on the opposite side and there is a natural choke point here that will bring the elephants within 50 yards of us.

We position ourselves next to a bush on the right most portion of the berm we are on and we wait and watch. The first of two bulls comes through the gauntlet and he is less than 50 yards before he moves on. The second one gets slightly closer. The wind is in our favor and the farmer has a fire going so smoke will cover any trace smells of ours that travel towards the elephants. There is also enough noise from the village in the distance that any small noises we might will blend in with those. We have the high ground and a place to retreat to should we need it. In short, we cannot come up with a better location if we tried.

Finally, the first of the tuskless is headed over. It is a bull and he is 3rd in a line of elephants. The first comes through and then moves over to eat from a tree on our side of the opening. He is perfectly broadside and 35 yards away. He is borderline on making the legal size limit. Barely legal isn’t a term I would associate with elephants, but I guess it applies here. Unfortunately, I am still bound by the tuskless permit. The tuskless jumps the queue and heads towards the opening next. He is about 60 yards away when we see some issues to our right.

The bull that was 35 yards away has decided he wants to eat from the rest of the trees on our side of the berm. He is less than 25 yards away. Steve notices he is close to musth and will be unpredictable. We try the water bottle trick but it does’t work. He approaches closer. I am no longer even paying attention to the tuskless, especially considering I am the one closest to this elephant. At 21 yards, Steve throws a water bottle at him! Seriously, he chucked a water bottle at an elephant that was just about to charge.

A bit confused, the elephant backs up, shakes his head a bit and then takes off. The rest of the herd starts to move away from us in unison. They are not running like when the rifle warning shot was fired - I expect these will stay in the general vicinity, but we are done hunting them for the day.

We were THIS close!! Ugh. A failure in end result, but a success in terms of getting close to elephants without getting killed and getting multiple shot opportunities on tusked elephants. We enjoy the moment for a while before we head back to the truck and off to camp.

During the drive back, we see a genet and a female duiker, but no other wildlife, save an occasional bird or rabbit. We have burgers for dinner and Steve and I discuss options on upgrading to an exportable bull should it look like we won’t get a shot on a tuskless. I will still try for one, but I would prefer to pay a little more for a trophy bull than to go home without connecting on an elephant.

Tomorrow, I should have a lot more options on what I can shoot at. While a tuskless would still be the top choice, I certainly do not want to go home without completing my elephant with a bow. Given how the day went, I am fairly confident about getting an elephant down before I run out of time.

 

[mrpoindexter]

Is that island just slightly down from the hunting camp?....any idea which fishing lodge ...below the gate or above it?

It is just above the Devil’s gate.

Where are you baiting for the crocs?

On the Zambezi but I don’t know the name of the area exactly. I suppose I can pull up the GPS coordinates as I should have them geotagged on my phone.

 

[PARA45]

Oh man, what an exciting hunt. Had me on the edge of my seat. Keep it coming. You have a huge fan club here cheering for your success.

 

[Altitude sickness]

You are Soo close. Hopefully you get a tusked quota or can get into different herds.