What follows is an account with a hunt with Elephant Trails Safaris and their PH Shingi. I learned about this hunt from the BookYourHunt website. There had been a positive article from someone who hunted with them during October 2024. But things changed sometime from year to year, which I was about to find out the hard way. Let me emphasize I don’t blame BookYourHunt for any of what transpired; they responded quickly and professionally when I told them about my experience, and pulled this outfit from their website. Thanks Peter Ruddle!
I had booked a 7-day hunt back in February for the period June 10-16. I knew from a hunter who had hunted with them before that the chance of a buffalo in Unit 5, which is close to Hwange National Park, would be very good, much better than Matetsi ECA (a communal area, with multiple land use types, including farming). I had asked them to hunt in Unit 5 and would gladly pay the extra trophy fees for that area.
Here are my main points:
I had made it very clear that I wanted to hunt in area 5 and had them put this in the contract. However, upon arrival in Victoria Falls their PH Shingi told be that no permits were available for that area. Had I been told that, I would have cancelled the hunt. A respected PH in Zimbabwe, Martin Pieters, told me later that they would have known that no permits were available well before I booked the hunt as no permits were issued for that area all year (“they lied to you”)
Skingi became very defensive when I confronted him about not being able to hunt in area 5: “it shouldn’t make a difference to you where you get your buffalo”. Well, I like to be the judge of that.
The first 4 days we found one buffalo track and followed it, day after day. Not an ideal situation as you wouldn’t even know if that animal was even worth shooting, potentially wasting a lot of time. No other tracks or buffalo were seen. The area had hardly any game tracks; it appeared to be poached out.
The buffalo we had been tracking appeared right along the road on day 2. I was sitting in the passenger seat of the land cruiser and the PH dragged me, by my arm, out of the vehicle, to try to get a quick shot. I stumbled over some branches and when I got myself straightened out the animal was running away. I never saw it. After that the PH wanted me to sit in the back so that I could shoot from the vehicle. Not only is this illegal over there, I certainly wasn’t interested in that type of hunting. Didn’t mind sitting in the back though as visibility is a lot better there. Then the PH insisted that the rifle was loaded and cocked with the safety on. The rifle they provided had a flimsy safety that I didn’t trust. Nevertheless he wanted that rifle placed in the rack behind the cabin. Seemed like a very unsafe situation to me and I stopped loading the rifle. No use arguing with the PH, he knew everything better. Besides he kept conversation to an absolute minimum. When we finally gave up on hunting the communal area we moved to what was once a white farm further south. It's hard to describe how badly neglected this farm had been. No wonder that Zimbabwe no longer produces enough food to feed its own people after they kicked the white farmers out...This area was fenced and it appeared to have more game. We tracked a
group of three bulls and connected with them on day 5 of the hunt. I had a chance of one frontal shot, but due to lack of communication it wasn’t clear to me which animal I should shoot. When I tried to look the animals over to get an idea of their trophy size, he said “no need to look, I’ll tell you what to shoot”. Anyway, the shot turned out to be off a bit, probably due to hitting some branch and the animal appeared only to be lightly wounded. We tracked the remainder of the day and all of the next day. Then we lost its tracks.
This guy shouldn’t be in the guiding business. The outfit is a shady one. I got a taste of that the first day when he picked me up in Victoria Falls to drive me to the camp. When he filled up his vehicle with gasoline, he asked me to pay for that…. “the money from the booking agent is a bit slow to get here”. OK, I thought, since I probably have some extra expenses later on I can adjust that with the gas money. I ended up subtracting it from his tip at the end of the trip (didn’t like that, I could see…).
From the few trophies, roan, impala that were in camp from the previous hunt I could see from the poor quality that these were probably desperation kills. The only area that produced game was an area with thick bush that had quite a bit of elephant activity, but animals like impala, kudu, zebra were virtually absent. Lots of people activity, schools, donkey cart tracks, cattle, kids walking to school etc.
I wanted to forget this bad experience as quick a possible and booked another hunt a few months later, this time with Martin Pieters. My PH was Chap Esterhuizen, couldn’t have wished for a more kind, experienced PH. Returned from that fantastic hunt in the Bubye Valley Conservancy a couple of weeks ago, with a great buffalo. Saw over 100 buffalo every day. Luckily some good hunting can still be had in Zimbabwe…
