July 20
Final hunting day. I hear movement outside. It isn’t elephant, but it also isn’t the wind. No animal noise, so I can rule out hyena. The steps are soft, so it isn’t hippo. I look around in the dark for my thermal. Can’t find it. If I had it, I could find it easily. Damn these catch 22’s.
Continue with the educated guesses. Based on my energy level, I slept a full night. I think I hear camp staff up and about. I also hear monkeys in the trees.
The whirring of an engine starting confirms the first guess. After brushing my teeth and getting my dressed, I confirm the second part.
I grab a coca-cola from the refrigerator and walk down to the fire. I sit and drink it overlooking the Zambezi. Hard to say I am looking over it when it is as black as the sky except no stars. The only lights I see below the horizon are the lights in our camp, the dock at the lodge next door and a small light coming from our fisherman farmer across the river on the island.
Every day I look and see there is only the one hippo there now, so I suspect I have solved half his hippo problems for a while. I am sure hippo momma will find a new guy and his problems will come back full force. Nothing stays fixed here, or anywhere in life for that matter.
The skyline is just barely becoming visible. I am less than an hour from sunrise now. Our plan is to head past the Devil’s Gate and hunt the herd up near Mr. Brown’s lodge. We have been expressly given confirmation from the government that we have the right to hunt there. We plan on getting a bigger boat to come bring us on one trip.
We will be in and with a bow, should be very quiet as long as there is no charge to be stopped. No sense antagonizing Steve’s neighbor and I do not want to be caught in the middle of a political battle, but the government will have to solve this problem.
Some people buy land inside the hunting area and want to forbid hunting on that land, but then they don’t generate any meat for the locals or concession fees for the parks department to pay ranger salaries and other expenses and actively combat efforts to manage wildlife populations. In the Western world, conservation consistently loses to uninformed masses who choose emotions over logic. I hope Africa can hold the line.
Eventually, Wessel and Steve come to join me at the fire. I am up before the hippos every day now.
On the way out in the morning, we check for elephant movement around the area and find none. Some sign of buffalo though. We head to the hyena bait station near the village. The camera is gone. The first thought is that it has been stolen, but one of the trackers sees it perhaps 30 yards from where it was mounted and chewed on by hyena. This will be some interesting camera footage for certain.
7 am now and we are again looking.
The director of Commercial National Parks messaged Steve to ask if I shot my elephant yet. It is not just me and my friends reading about my hunt on the Internet rooting for me. There is a lot of pressure on the Parks department to shoot some elephants. Just not enough to get them to do something on the weekend, I guess.
No word from the scouts on the property up above the Devils gate. Driving around looking for signs tracks and spoke. We find a big bull just before 9am but he is downwind. We have to get around ahead of him. Driving around to the side where we can approach him, we find the thicket simply too thick to traverse. It is full of blackthorn. We head back to see if we can follow him from upwind. Certainly not ideal, but we may get lucky with the wind changing.
I hate low odds stalks to begin with, especially when I am running out of time, but a low odds stalk beats nothing. We send a tracker in to see if he thinks we can follow the elephant. In the mean time, we can look and see the hyena eating the camera to pass the time.
For some reason, the camera didn’t fire off when it was moved and chewed. I see a hippo smelling around the bait and a hyena trying to get it but we set it just out of their reach to make it last longer. One short video has a hyena with the bait in his mouth and entire body hanging in the air as he swings from the hippo leg chained to the tree.
I remember an old adage that you have to walk a mile for every pound of ivory an elephant has. According to my iPhone, I have walked 61 miles in the last 8 days. Since I am going for a tuskless, I am putting in way too much work for this.
The trackers come back and let us know we cannot pass through or follow the bull. We are back to looking for a lead. Is is closing in on 10am.
We are headed back to the Zambezi and will be going upstream from the Devil’s Gate. We get back to camp around 11:30 and just have to wait for the boat to come and pick us up. There is not a well established Uber Boat here and so it may take a little bit to get here.
The generator is not running, so no internet. The outside world is far away, aside from the radio our fisherman farmer is playing across the river. It is so tranquil that even though the clock is ticking on the inevitable end of my safari, I am completely at peace.
The sense of urgency of the Zambians doesn’t seem to exist. The person with the boat to pick us up says he is on his way and 10 minutes later is still not even on his boat. It is 12:15 and there isn’t a boat on the water as far as 20x binos can see in either direction. Another crossword finished and I finally see his boat moving. Now 12:30.
Going through my mind is how much time has been thrown away. Losing an entire day from Qatar airlines cancelling my flight and Ethiopian Air not allowing me to pay for my flight online and cancelling it so I couldn’t get there on an alternate flight. The government bureaucracy not allowing me to upgrade my permit to a trophy on a weekend and having me pass up an 85-90 lb bull elephant. Then, while I am scrambling to find some way to connect on a Hail Mary pass in the last hours, this Chobe bushbuck walks into the water hole. There is no doubt this is a top 5 with a bow if I am there for the incredibly difficult 20 yard shot.
But back to the final attempt on an elephant. We got firm permission from the Zambian government that we are allowed to hunt on the island near Mr. Brown’s lodge. I will say that while their government is not efficient, they certainly are on the side of the hunters and have been very reasonable in my mind. We are headed over in a boat that is about as full as can be. On our way, I break out the binos and with the image stabilization, I can actually see stable enough in the boat to incredible distances. I counted 7 elephants I could see through my binos will still over half a mile out. I expect we will be there just after 12:50.
We get to land and start glassing for tuskless elephants. We see one female with a calf and a few tusked bulls. Then, seeing a group of three elephants, we find one that is tuskless!! All we have to do is close the distance.
The wind is at our backs, so we have to try and circle around them and come from either the rear or side. We have little cover where we are, but the elephants we want to stalk are in some very tall grass - taller than we are. This makes it difficult to determine which is the tuskless among them. It is also hard to see if the tuskless is male or female and if she has a calf.
We come closer but at about 85-105 yards across the three elephants, we cannot get any closer as we would have to cross a sandy riverbed with zero cover. We start to drift to the right to get to where we can possibly cross over, but the tuskless sees us and starts moving aggressively towards us. We back up quickly but now are quite a distance away again.
The other two bulls are also a bit of a problem and Steve tells me he recognizes the larger of the two as the one that charged us. The younger one was the one we thought was going to charge before his big brother beat us to the punch.
Eventually, we are able to get across the sand bar, but now we have the tuskless again moving towards us with two tusked bulls flanking her and we are in low scrub with no true barriers that we can put between us and them so the only thing that would stop a charge would be a bullet. Last time that happened, we started a shit storm with the lodge owner and the herd took off for 7 days.
Again we have to back down. All the while, we need to maintain visuals on the other elephants that are in the area. Some are drinking from the river, while others are feeding on the grass and bamboo.
The herd we are stalking comes in from the river and towards the mountains. We have to cross some watery marsh looking area that reminds me so much the dead marshes from Lord of the Rings that I feel like I need Gollum to guide me across. We have to take a weird path to not slip on the mud and into the marsh, all while not moving suddenly and drawing attention to the elephants while closing to less than 65 yards away.
Finally, I have my shot. I have nocked this arrow many times on this hunt, but I have yet to draw back. I pull and put the pin on him. 63 yards. The wind is blowing pretty strong. Then this bastard turns towards me, looking right at me while chewing a mouth full of grass. I cannot move. All I can do is hold my 85 pound bow at full draw. And hold. And hold. And hold.
Steve asks if I want to let down. I explain that I cannot. If I let down, the bow jerks my arm so much that it will rattle the arrow and make a noise and they can also see the movement. I tell him I can keep holding.
I know in target archery, if you hold too long, you end up with a bad shot and people will say “good shot” when you let down because you didn’t release a bad arrow. Target bows have a lower poundage, but more importantly a lower let off so they are much easier to let down. High let off bows will ramp up so fast it is incredibly hard to let them down. I continue to hold. I didn’t know how long I did so I went back and looked at the video time stamps to see. That gave me some consolation.
I have been holding at full draw for over two and a half minutes That’s right, two and a half minutes on an 85 pound bow while waiting for this elephant to rotate back to broadside or at least have hime and his friends stop looking at me so I can let down.
Finally, he turns, and after 2 minutes and 43 seconds, I let go of the arrow.
FUCK! On the bright side, the elevation is perfect. I also know that I can hit the broad side of an elephant at 63 yards. A barn will be easy from now on. Checking the video log, I released the arrow at 1:59pm. I miss her heart.
We look and see that she has not run off. She doesn’t even know what hit her. I was 63 yards away, it was windy and with the super heavy arrow, my bow does not make much noise. The other elephants don’t even flinch.
I quickly nock another arrow. She is still close enough that I can get her back in range with a few paces through the marsh. Steve and I slowly inch up to give a follow up shot, but we simply don’t get the chance as she disappears from view.
The cloud of dust coming from over the tall grass is all I can see as I was crouching to try and sneak up undetected. All I can hear is “He’s down.”
Wait, what?!?! The trackers and Wessel confirm. He went down. It is 2:06. Seven minutes and down. I am having a hard time believing it, as I know I didn’t hit the heart unless everything I have read on elephant anatomy is wildly incorrect.
Steve wants to wait 15 minutes, but I want to hurry to the left to get direct sight on her just in case. One of the trackers tells me, “No Bwana! It is down.” I reply, “Yes, but I have seen animals go down and then get back up again.” Steve says we must wait for the other bulls to leave, as one is the same one that charged us on day #2.
The other two bulls start moving away and as we are watching them, I see a third elephant following them. I am sure it is mine, but the arrow went in the other side and I cannot verify this is my elephant. I don’t want to shoot a second one, as I cannot get a second permit and Zambian jail doesn’t sound like the risk to reward is worth it. It is 2:09, so my elephant was down after 7 minutes, then got up 3 minutes later.
It is absolutely my elephant. He’s not running. I see him moving very slowly and obviously severely injured. All I want to do is get close enough to put another in from the opposite side and speed up the process. I also make sure that it is fatally wounded.
We start moving closer to get a follow up shot and as I am inching closer, Down goes Frazier! The other elephants rally around and try to get him up. I can see them using their tusks to lift their fallen comrade but it is in vain. I cannot see him with through the tall grass. I have closed to within 60 yards but there is a deep waterway in front of me. Easily deep enough for crocodiles and directly connected to the Zambezi, so no, I am not wading through that. I cannot even get a shot anyway because the grass and bamboo are too tall. I can barely make out the shape near the other bulls but cannot see any signs of life or death.
We wait a good 20 minutes, but the 2 bulls won’t leave. We guess they are all related - probably brothers. There is only one way we can surely scare the other elephants off without firing a rifle, which would alarm Mr. Brown and just open another can of worms.
Wessel is a smoker and we borrow his lighter to start a brush fire upwind of them. The smell of smoke should get them to move, although the thought of being burned alive would certainly jolt my elephant up if it was in fact not dead yet. The wind pushes the first mostly towards me but slightly lateral towards the elephants. This will cause it to take a little while to get to them, but the fire will burn out when it hits the edge of the water.
With the elephants eventually bugging out, Steve, Wessel and I are able to approach my tuskless. The trackers are convinced, but we want to be absolutely sure. “She is down, Bwana” one of them says. I turn and say “He is down. This isn’t America. Learn your pronouns.” All the trackers laugh very hard. I guess our crazy culture has been heard of here.
At 2:51pm, we see my tuskless elephant. No sign of breathing. Before Steve goes to do the eye test, I tell him I will put an arrow in just to be sure. I send one from 20 yards just above the spine while viewing from the top of the back. This will only hit one lung, but this is just to check if that even matters.
The arrow cracks through a rib and buries to the nock. Not a single flinch. It is done, with 3 hours of light left to spare on a 10 day hunt.
We send word to the village that Njovuo is down and there is free meat available. I go to recover my arrow. It is stuck. Finally, I am able to pull it out, but the broadhead and insert do not come out with it. Based n the angle and depth, I am positive that the broadhead is stuck in either the ribs on the bottom of the chest or the upper leg bone.
When the locals show up to start the process of butchering it, I instruct them to be very careful of the arrows and ask for them to recover them for me. I might as well have instructed a pack of ravenous dogs to not spill their food. These guys actually came running to the elephant from the village, knives and bags ready and start cutting this thing up at a speed that would impress any butcher or piranha.
Steve had asked for the military to be present and I soon saw why. To say there was a feeding frenzy would be about as accurate as any description I could come up with. Once they find my arrows, Steve recommends we leave before things get out of control, and they WILL get out of control, I am told.
We load up the boat and head back to camp. I have a concern that the younger people who got there first will try to keep all the meat for themselves and not save any for the elderly, like the farmer whose food stores were raided by there elephants. His mother still works hard even in her 80’s. I cannot really guarantee that they get some meat. Steve informs me that it is best to let the military handle this so that we are out of it and won’t have to deal with people who would accuse us of giving more meat to one person than another. It sounds just like when I would give my kids ice cream or a slice of cake. It got bad enough I would have to have one of them divide something in half, knowing the other sibling got first pick.
There are over a hundred people at the elephant now and more will likely be coming. We get back to camp via the boat and I change my shoes into something drier and volunteer to go with Steve to collect his trail cams and blind from the water hold and the leopard bait.
We are in such a hurry, Steve and I both forget our flashlights and thermals. We end up arriving in the dark and approach a leopard bit with the only illumination from iPhones and my Garmin watch. I hear an animal in the dark move. While my imagination runs wild with what it could be, I expect it isn’t a leopard as we would be unlikely to hear that and it is probably some random plains game critter. Luckily there is no leopard present that we can see, but something dead was in the area so a leopard has apparently killed and will come back to continue to feed.
We collect our things as quickly as we can, move forward and tear down the blind over the waterhole, collect trail cams and head home to pack and have some elephant filets for dinner.
I am up until the generator shuts down at 10:30pm, packing as much as I can. I sleep peacefully until sometime around 3:45 am or so, when I wake up to hearing random fruits falling and hitting the tin roof of my chalet. I go to the bathroom and then attempt to fall back asleep, but that is interrupted very soon. At around 4:15 am, I hear a woman very close by shouting at somebody and she sounds hysterical. At first though, I start cracking jokes in my mind. Did one of the tracker’s girlfriends or wives find out girlfriend or wife #2 get more meat than her? Funny, but no, this woman sounds like she is really in distress.
I do not understand the language, but I do understand the word hippo, which I hear several times. I grab my flashlight and come outside to investigate. Steve also wakes up and demands some answers to why there is so much ruckus.
A woman from the village came to talk to the park ranger. Somebody in the village was attacked by a hippo. It bit a woman in the leg and she is still laying in the field. One of the scouts tells Steve he wants to go and help. Steve asks what he plans to do. The scout says if he sees a hippo, he will hammer it.
My first gut reactions is what the hell is a woman doing outside at this time of the night? Then I remember the fisherman across the river who sleeps in his field with his wife to keep the hippos from stealing his corn and I notice I am sitting in bed just crying. I don’t understand why exactly - I understand the hardships but that isn’t it. The sense of loss I am feeling is deeper than that.
Hemingway once wrote there there was not a single day where he woke up in Africa and was not happy. That has been my experience here so far every single day on eight safaris, but I think there are a lot of villagers here that see a different side of the story.
There is no peace for these poor people and they will not just accept this wildlife conflict forever. Eventually, they will grow tired of these attacks and the wildlife will be exterminated.
This is wild Africa and it is disappearing. Populations are still rising quickly and people are being pushed out into wildlife areas where they chop down the forests and human animal conflict increases as the number of people living here continues to grow. I don’t know what the solution is. I only know that the Africa I am experiencing here won’t be around much longer.
Two rifle shots ring out in the distance and snap me back to reality. I assume there is one fewer hippos in the area now. A few minutes later, I hear another rifle shot. What the hell is going on now? Did they close in and finish it off, I ponder, as I climb back into bed.
I hear the park ranger and scouts back at Steve’s chalet, talking about the hippo and the woman. I slip on a pair of crocs and go out to hear the story. At first I thought they were going to tell him the woman had died, but they say she is laying out in the field, injured and that the hippo is now wounded. I look at them with a look of incredulity over the situation. “You fired three shots and the hippo is still alive? Do you need to use my bow?” They laugh, but one of them asks if I can shoot my bow in the dark. I tell them it is already taken down and packed up as I leave in a couple hours. The woman cannot walk and needs to go to the hospital.
It puts Steve in a tough position - the local lodge owner who doesn’t like hunting will complain that we are “illegally hunting at night” if they hear a gunshot and Steve is involved. My hippo tag is already filled and I only had one tag. Hunting an angry hippo on land at night with a bow and arrow is also more adventure than I wanted to buy on this trip. Besides, bow hunting is about giving the animal a fair chance. When a hippo attacks a woman, they don’t want fair chase or some romantic hunting story. They want justice, vengeance and peace from these animals.
Christ Almighty, what a mess. I go back to my room and grab my thermal and a flashlight. I am still in my underwear, so I throw on a pair of pants and get in the truck. This isn’t my hunt, but I am more than willing to help while I am here. I also have by far the best thermal imaging equipment in the area - probably the only one other than Steve’s, actually.
We head towards the village and see a group of 10 people standing out in the darkness. A woman is on the ground. I do not see blood and she had not been bitten or attacked per se, but I think she got trampled. She certainly is in pain and needs some medical attention. We load her into the back of the truck and get in to take her to the hospital when one of the villagers attacks Steve as soon as we are in the vehicle, grabbing him by the collar and punching him.
Steve gets out and is not happy about this, confronting the person and asking why he is getting assaulted when he is just here to help. The kid is in his late teens or early 20’s and keeps shouting “this is my mother!” As though this is somehow our fault. Steve explains this is not a farming area, but a game management area. One of the villagers says it is our job to protect them from the animals. I ask him what we are supposed to do and he says “Shoot the animals. Kill them.” I told him this is a wildlife area. He shouts back “But we live here!” I ask him where the hippo is supposed to live. Where do the animals get to live?
If it were up to them, there wouldn’t bet be a wild animal left.I don’t know what the solution will be, but I do not expect the wild animals to win this battle.
Five years ago brought my oldest daughter to Africa. My youngest wants to come now. I will show her this part of the world, but I fear her kids won’t have that same chance and my grandkids might hear my stories the same way I heard about Selous, Capstick and others. They can tell stories about how grandpa lived in a time that was so different and this world I am in now will no longer exist. And now I know why I was crying. It just took a little longer for my brain to get to the truth that my heart already knew.
We take the woman to the hospital and then head to the military station so that Steve can press assault charges on the person that attacked him. As for the hippo? Sadly, the village and parks department are going to have to deal with it. I have to fly home now and it is a no win situation to use the local outfitter as their personal animal control officer.
