ZIMBABWE: Cape Buffalo At Save River Valley---Almost

Foxi

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Canada, USA,Austria,Turkey,Tschech Rep.,Poland,Hungary,Serbia,Denmark,Khomas HL and Omaheke/Namibia and England(England is wonderful) Romania,Luangwa/Zambia-,Gwayi/Zimbabwe/- + Save/Zimbabwe/- River. Horseback-tours in South Africa and Botswana.
After the Corona hype, I was again drawn to faraway places. Of course, Africa is and was the first address for this.
I received an acceptable end-of-season offer for my beloved Cape buffalo from a PH I know well, which I could not accept for various reasons.
But these guys know which triggers to pull and so I decided to fly to Zimbabwe at short notice.

I have two elderly parents in need of care, had to manage a lot of things for them and could therefore only stay there for six days to hunt.
My hunter said we would have a good one in four days.

So I flew with my .375 H+H via Johannesburg to Harare and was pleased that the gun transport went off without a hitch, as it did on the return flight.

The only hurdle when entering the country was my Coronatest.
In Munich I did a PCR test-negative as expected-and then boarded the plane.
However, I failed to take a screenshot of this test on my cellphone(no chance to print before) and as the internet at the airport in Zimb was not working, the lady who stamped the entry visa did not let me into the country !!!!
Good advice was now literally expensive.
I was offered a PCR test in the airport building for a measly 60 USD.
What else could I do?
The smear was taken and then I was immediately discharged.
No matter what the result (which I never got!!!) would have been.
I could have had Ebola, it didn't matter, I was out 60 dollars and in the background a big daddy was probably collecting his Christmas money in this way.

The weapons check went smoothly and my PH Mathew was already waiting for me at the entrance.
We then had another five hours to drive to the famous Save Valley, where we could finally go buffalo hunting again after a long time.

To be continued
Save River.jpg


Save River ,at this time as big as the Danube
 
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The Save Valley Conservancy is a huge area with more than 20 operators and borders Mozambique, among others.
On the main road, on the backside of the moon, there is a turnpike called "boom," which would have led us to the camp after 60 km of sandy road!!!. However, we arrived too late and had to drive far via another access. Then, supposedly shortly before the destination, many sand tracks fanned out and we drove the wrong way, at night in an area abandoned by God.
So we drove up and down for many hours and missed our destination completely. My hunter, usually a prudent person, failed to save the coordinates on his GPS in time and so we drove all night through the bush!
I was exhausted, tired without end, and suggested to my PH to pull over somehow to finally sleep in the car.
Unfortunately, my PH said, that would not work. We have no protection against the mosquitoes (strong malaria area) and elephants can stand everywhere, no, I should sleep and he should drive, even if it should be the whole night.

So it happened that I slept like a dead man despite the heavy jolting and at 6.00 a.m. we finally arrived at the camp.

I had a coffee and then went to bed (and lost the first half of the hunting day), after all I had been on my feet for over 48 hours.

After lunch I looked around the camp and everything was so familiar, after all I had already been here years ago.
What inspired me enormously were the trophies that a German hunting guest shot shortly before me.
Two wonderful old and strong buffalos in one week!
buffs a.jpg

Mind you, these are not my trophies!:cry:
buffs b.jpg

the two left ones
buffs c.jpg


fantastic buff trophies,aren't they ???

buff boss.jpg


what a boss


My PH already knew me and he knew only too well that I never like to shoot in the first days, I am just more excited about the experience of stalking buffalo than shooting.
But he insisted that because of the short time I was here, I really had to take every opportunity to get an old buffalo and I was determined to do so.

During the afternoon and evening stalks I came across a strong herd of buffalo in the vanguard of round 30 heads which I was able to stalk at shotgun range and a much too young, strong buffalo looked boldly into my scope before disappearing.
What a wonderful start to the first day.

To be continued (its late now)
 
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Looking forward to hearing the rest of your safari Foxi.
 
Great start to the story Foxi. Looking forward to further installments.
 
Unlike a few years ago, we now had WIFI in the camp that worked as soon as the generator was running.
It was very reassuring for my wife and friends to be able to send WhatsApp messages around the world as if we were sitting in the neighbouring village.
GPS.jpg

beeline,exactly so far from home.
But it is also a disease. In the evening, everyone sits there and daddles around with his cellphone..


The next morning was a bit problematic as the elephants had brought down many trees overnight and it was a bit difficult to get out.
Plains game was always there, but often difficult to see because of the thick bush.
In general, I had problems spotting game as quickly as the boys.
Schlinge.jpg

we only found this snare.

The rest of the day was very slow and no buffalo came into sight.
As we were following a track, the wind shifted once and with a lot of noise and roaring an elephant cow charged at us and only turned off at 25m (later measured exactly). My heart was on the ground
But instead of a rifle, I grabbed my mobile phone like in a dream and took these photos.
Ele Attack a.jpg


When I asked him when he had shot, my PH said that anything that attacked us and was within the 10m radius would be shot.
"Mathew my friend", I replied, "that's way too close", "I need at least 20m distance". "No", he replied, "within 10m radius you have my blessing".
Puh, in God we trust.
The elephants gave us trouble until the end and we had enough hysterical elephant cows. Too bad I can't upload some of the mobile phone videos here.
ele Attack b.jpg

You all know the videos where elephants attack and chase cars in the parks, but there you have roads where you can accelerate.
Here we had mostly rutted forest roads, it was around the bends and up and down.
Any grandfather could have caught up with us, especially the elephants, which we often ran into and the cows often behaved in a frighteningly hysterical manner.
I was not allowed to pick up a rifle.
My PH said that guesthunters often lose their nerves and shoot far too early in elephant attacks, which are often only carried out for show.
ele a.jpg

After hearing that the beasts sometimes jump into the car, I told him I would rather have trouble with the authorities than be trampled by the elephant cows. He said, "Oh, it wasn't that bad.
ele b.jpg

No one can say what the elephants have experienced before, lions harass the babies, they have a poacher bullet in their body and are therefore irritable, no one knows all that and my hair stood on end more than once.

By the way, my PH and his colleagues favour the shoulder shot on elephants by guests.
They usually lie after about 100m.Also with a good solid bullet of the .375.
Head shots are very risky for inexperienced hunters and hardly any guests have any real experience in elephant hunting.
90 % of elephants are not found after a bad head shots.
It is different with shoulder shots.

To be continued.
 
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In order to make the most of my short stay, we got up at 4.00 a.m. every morning and went to bed dead tired in the evening.
One major problem that was looming was the rain.
The rainy season simply started four weeks too early.
It fell so heavily that we couldn't understand our own words in the driver's cabin and the tracker said we had to get back to camp immediately because we had to cross two bridges and riverbeds and if things went badly we wouldn't get back to camp.
We crossed the river in this photo two hours !!! earlier and the sand was as dry as in an indoor riding arena .
fluss.jpg


It got even worse, so bad that our camp was under water.
The water was rising by the minute

camp.jpg


I was accommodated in a hut on a higher level that was not yet finished.
Without window,without door and unfortunately without mosquito net............
In the middle of the forest I wanted to have at least a curtain to replace the door.
Leopards,hyenas and lions are prowling around all the time and I just feel unsafe without a mosquito net :)


Myles Turner,the famous lion researcher of the Serengeti has decades of contact with lions and claims the mosquito net always scares the lions away (man-eaters excepted,but they are not that common either).
When I told this to my PH, he told me the following story:

He once had an apprentice who, because of the summer heat, put his camp bed outside, hung up the mosquito net under a tree and went to rest.
The next morning they noticed that a lioness circled the bed 7 times and everyone was convinced that without the mosquito net the lioness would have grabbed him, dragged him away and eaten him.
This shocked the young man so much that he gave up the profession.



spinne.jpg


a spiderbeauty on our way



The heavy rain washed over all the snakes' hiding places close to the ground and we saw some every day.
On our ways,on the bushes ,on the trees.
Actually the full programme
Boomslang
Cobra
Twigsnake
Green Mamba
Puff adder

A pro pos puff adder:
it has a venom volume of about 130 -200 mg of venom at adult age.
70mg is the lethal dose for a medium adult.

So it was always a case of paying extra attention.

Twigsnake.jpg

It looks like a piece of wood.
A Twigsnake that was not bothered by us at all. Its bite is deadly and there is not even an antidote for this snake species.
But so what? There was no serum at all in the camp.And if you are caught by it outside, it often takes hours to get to the camp and then?
Here on the backside of the moon,if you get a stroke,a heart attack or a deep snake bite,that's it for you.You have to be clear about that.
For those who are sensitive to snakes, the rainy season at the Save is not a wellness hotel..

I have respect for snakes, but as long as they are not under my pillow, they do not spoil my day.
I was always more afraid of the elephants that often appeared so unexpectedly.
elebull.jpg

do you recognise the elefantbull ?
at only 40 m he was standing there

It is also not true that snakes immediately disappear when the ground is shaken.
I walked past some of them at a short distance and they didn't move. Either they felt particularly comfortable, or it was too cold for them, or I don't know.
Once a tracker jumped aside with a giant leap to avoid a cobra.
He collided with the other one and he stumbled against my gun barrel.
The cobra didn't want anything to do with us, but sometimes I followed in the footsteps of the person in front of me, but kept a good distance away. I didn't want to be in the way of an attacking snake when the tracker jumped to the side :)

Elematar important in the bush is the flashlight.
You wear it on your belt, not in your backpack, not in your jacket pocket or leave it in your jeep.
On the belt.
It is dark after sunset like in a horse's ass.
The generator can fail,you come back late from stalking and you are helpless with the next step.And no one wants to step on a puff adder or its colleagues at night.

Every desert traveller knows the saying that more people have drowned in the desert than died of thirst.
This is because many adventurers set up camp in a dry riverbed. .
200km further on, violent thunderstorms hit and those who have not experienced how quickly a dry river bed can turn into a raging torrent find it hard to believe.
The flash floods sweep everything away.
fluss heftig.jpg

Only to disappear again the next day.

to be continued
 
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I am very much enjoying your adventure, thank you and Kerry us updated!
 
This is beautiful, keep it coming. Thank you!
 
great report thus far. thanks and keep going!
 
Foxi, youve had enough time to rest and recover - we need more..!
 
we have the football (soccer) world cup at the moment and of course i always have to watch it...;)
 
To make matters worse, our car broke down in the field. one of the wheel bearings was defective and we drove back to camp at a crawling pace, always hoping that it would hold out.
Fortunately, there was a replacement vehicle there.
As my PH wrote to me later, the repair cost 80 USD + spare part.
80.- USD for which my BMW workshop in Munich looks under the bonnet just once, but only once, not twice.:)
However, these prices are of course different from ours.
By the way, the current exchange rate is 1 USD = 800.- Zimb Dollar !!!!
(the litre of diesel 1.50 USD)
And nobody wants the latter. Because nobody likes to have so many plastic bags with worthless paper to pay their bills.
These lovely, cheerful people there have a really hard life, and it's a wonder to me that they still haven't lost their sense of humour.



I had a straw hut with a cement floor, behind the bed a half-high wall, behind it the "bathroom".
Now and then a frog would sit there in the evening and try to croak me to sleep.
This was not possible, as frogs are the main prey of many snakes and I did not want to invite them to eat. So I always took them out into the fresh air, leaving them to their fate.
Frosch.jpg

it want always give me a night concert



I actually wanted to take my Ferlach double rifle with me on this trip.
It is an over and under double, in cal .458 Win Mag.
And I loaded 480gn bullets from Degol. A Belgian premium bullet manufacturer.
You want to try something different now and then.
But strangely enough, both !!! firing pins didn't work. I haven't found the cause yet, because I can't take the rifle in for repair until after Christmas.
But in the end I was glad to have my bolt action. A Brno Safari in calibre .375 H+H with variable Swarowski scope.
.375.jpg


A simple repeater with a 98 system is almost as robust as a baseball bat and not as sensitive as a double rifle.
Any of you who carry both systems will know the difference.
But men like us always need something else to play with.
And African hunters who hunt big game always have the best discussions about it at home in front of the fireplace with their hunting friends.

Buffalo were almost always there and we followed some herds and bachelor groups until we were totally tired.
But we always lacked the last bit of luck to finish the job. Most of the time the wind shifted and off we went, or when we approached a strong bull on the last metres, a herd of zebras galloped past us and took him away. There was always something.
Getting up at 4.00 a.m. also made itself felt.
And the idea of hunting in South Africa in a luxurious lodge on their bred grazing buffalobulls; this thought is no longer as strange to me as it was 10 years ago.
You just get older, even if I don't want to admit it :rolleyes:.

The hunt for the king

Here you can see a good buffalo bull track.

gute spur.jpg


but this

Kapitale Fährte.jpg

took our breath away.

Although not quite as fresh, the buffalo had plenty of water and food everywhere at this time of year, so they didn't move around as much, and they didn't have to, as they were standing in their supermarket when they weren't being flushed out by lions.
So we hoped that this king of all Daggaboys had not left his home and the boys tracked him down, better than any well-trained search dog.

After 1 hour we had him!
And there he was.

On a slight hill about 70m away, looking at us, wondering what kind of strange creatures we were.
The stick was placed in front of me in no time at all and I somehow tried to find a reasonable target. But I did not succeed.
There were metres of bushes in front of his chest and head.
Only his wide-sweeping horns protruded from the bushes and a mighty curl to go with it.an absolute rarity.
And no vital target to be seen.
Damn.
My men, of course, urged me to shoot.
But I would have had to wound the animal deliberately, and I couldn't do that.
Plus he would know who had caused him the pain and a buffalo hunt in thick stuff is anything but fun hunting.
On top of that, wounded and not found - full price.
This is also an important point, not ethically, but economically.
No, it just didn't work.
And this all happened within a few seconds and then the spook was over and the king disappeared never to be seen again.
Our disappointment was great and I noticed in the looks of the trackers a certain reproach for not having shot.
But what the hell.
My hunt and also my responsibility.
So the last day of hunting passed and we returned to camp, tired in body and mind.




What I will take to heart much more for myself in the future:
If we are tracking a herd and an old, good bull is there-soft coat.
But for a single track or a bachelor group.
Only solid..
They are suddenly there and are almost always in the thick stuff.
There is no time to change the cartridge. It has to be quick.

Why were the buffaloes so shy:
Well, a buffalo,10years and older did not become so old for nothing.
There are 20-23 outfitters in the Save.
The buffaloes are followed by guests all year round and when the hunting season ends for 2-3 months -lions and poachers stay on their tracks. They are on the lookout, hear banging all year round and probably know most car brands by the sound of their engines as they drive through the bush.
Except for a few lucky circumstances, it is always a challenge.

Farbenpracht.jpg

Heady Maiden moth /amata cerbera eating the elephant dung.





The early onset of the rainy season threw a spanner in the works and out of only 6 days of hunting I lost almost three whole days because of it. Two more days and I would have had one. I am sure of that.

circle of life.jpg

circle of life


The things were packed, tips were distributed, the farewells were heartfelt and the next morning we were in the car at 5.00 a.m. heading for the main road where an ordered taxi was waiting for us.
As I wrote earlier ?
There is always something, and here too.
Elephants must have put another tree across the road and we couldn't get past it. There was only one way out.
And-no axe on board!
So we drove back 20 minutes in a hurry,loaded up the axe and crew and off we went.the tree was felled,we prayed that no other tree was lying on the forest tracks (or the strange native axe was broken )
And in an AFFENZAHN (fullspeed) we drove 60 km of sand track to the turnpike.my tropical doctor,whom I visit before every such trip to check my vaccination card,always says to me,the worst thing that can happen to you in Africa is a traffic accident. Living with this thought, I asked the driver to slow down a bit and was already mentally prepared to miss the plane and get accommodated in Harare for the next flight.
But the driver told me not to worry, everything would be fine (all of a sudden?).
And to say goodbye, a herd of elephants and a herd of 200 head !!! of buffalo actually ran across the road and drove unharmed to the "Boom" where we, my PH and I, got into a taxi.

At the airport, gun control was a breeze.My PH Mathew,a local Shona chatted with the officials as familiarly as with friends and the police even brought my luggage to check-in. It was like VIP service. That is how courteous they were.
On exit, no one wanted to see a Coronatest and I boarded the plane feeling safe after saying goodbye to my PH like a good friend.
My route was Harare,Johannesburg,Frankfurt,Munich and I was looking forward to home.
But why should everything go smoothly here too?
This trip really had it all.

Shortly before boarding in Johannesburg, the pilot said there was no oxygen in the cockpit cabin. A technician now fetched an oxygen cylinder, but the pipe to determine the leakage also had to be checked and that would probably take hours.........
After four !! hours, we were finally able to board the plane and we all hoped that the line would remain tight for the overnight flight to Frankfurt.
I missed the connecting flight to Munich, my luggage arrived two days later. But now everything is there, intact and in one piece.
The buffalo king follows me every day.
Should I have shot him and taken my chances?
This subject occupies me far too often and I know I still have a score to settle with him and hope for a meeting next year.

Well friends, that's it, I hope I haven't bored you too much with my short trip to Africa and I wish you a Merry Christmas.
Don't put off anything in life.
Carpe diem.

Finally a photo of an absolute, even if deadly beauty, which did not let itself be disturbed by me.
mamba.jpg

a Green Mamba
 
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Great story @Foxi

Better luck next time with the “buffalo king”
 
Great adventure! thanks for sharing
 
Sorry for the bad luck Foxi, but you made the right choice, there will be another chance :D Cheers:
 
Beautiful safari, and good on you for not shooting, this was the responsible and ethical thing to do. Killing something doesn’t make a good safari, everything around does. Congrats!!!
 
...
Only his wide-sweeping horns protruded from the bushes and a mighty curl to go with it.an absolute rarity.
And no vital target to be seen.
Damn.
My men, of course, urged me to shoot.
But I would have had to wound the animal deliberately, and I couldn't do that.
Plus he would know who had caused him the pain and a buffalo hunt in thick stuff is anything but fun hunting.
On top of that, wounded and not found - full price.
This is also an important point, not ethically, but economically.
No, it just didn't work.

That is also why I refused a shot at a buffalo cow (to be used as bait) a couple of years ago. Not because I didn't have a shot. But they had bunched up very densely and I did not wish to pay for multiple animals in case of a pass through.
 
Great story. You made the correct choice in not taking the risky shot.
 

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