What made me initially want to book a dangerous game hunt? Probably a sense of adventure. We live in a pretty digital, binary, at times mundane world. A dangerous game hunt in a truly wild area is certainly an “analog” experience. I had recently left both the Army and a combat zone and was missing that edge of an analog experience.
My first dangerous game hunt is likely an oddity, even amongst the very experienced crew here at AH.
Two friends and I booked a hunt in Mozambique with a PH we had hunted with before. This was about 25 years ago. I was pursuing a lion, one friend buffalo, and another sable. Perhaps it could work out - we had three weeks. The floods in the Zambezi were particularly bad that year so we had to reset. Ahead of departure, the hunt was changed to the Matetsi. As it turns out, it was a private game ranch bordering the Matetsi. The sable there was amazing. The buffalo was absent, and the lion chancy at best. After one friend took a sable we abandoned that hunt and chartered to the Caprivi. We were way over gross and barely limped the Cessna 210 from Vic Falls to Katima Mulillo. There was a still a broken down Russian tank and a bunker of sandbags at the end of the runway.
Our PH had recently secured an elephant concession, Salambala. The Caprivi in those days was rather desparate. There was elephant and little else. We found a handful of bone piles of previously poached elephants, and saw virtually no game. After many days following tracks and not finding a suitable bull, we returned to camp one afternoon, on the Chobe river.
In the Chobe river flood plain, and on the Namibian side of the river channel was an old bull. When their molars wear down they often spend more time near the “softer” grass and reeds of the river. We decided to take a run at this bull. I had a 416, and the PH borrowed my friend’s 458. He had traveled to Zim without a rifle, as he was licensed in Namibia. We borrowed a watu, a wooden dug out canoe from the villagers. We poled our way out most of the way. The water was about 2-3 feet deep for the most part, and infested with mosquitos. The PH was later diagnosed with a “a touch of malaria” when we returned to Windhoek. As we got closer, we pulled our way through the reeds, holding a rifle in one hand and pulling reeds with the others. We could see the elephant raise its trunk over top the reeds sniffing for us as we stood up in the watu. We played this dance for a little while, seeing the elephant‘s trunk from a distance above the reeds and pulling ourselves through them, standing up in the watu, creeping closer to the river channel and border with Botswana. The PH said “be ready” and whistled. All hell broke loose. The elephant came for us, luckily quartering in. I got the first shot and the third. The PH had the second. Spent brass flying into the river. It was an instant and the bull went head first into the flood plain with a wave rocking the watu we were standing in.
It was late. We cut the tail and headed back to shore. I recall the PH, now deceased, saying “we call this moment the present, because it‘s a gift”. He said I should write an article about this adventure for Magnum “MAN” magazine, and I did.
The next morning was chaos. The flood plain was stained with the blood of the elephant after the locals, arriving from every cardinal direction, hacked it to pieces. I still don’t know how we didn’t attract every croc in the Chobe. Amongst the locals was Prince George Mutwa, prince of the Basubians. He had something to say to the PH that amounted to “next time take one on dry land’. He shared with me that when he was a child, that flood plain was teeming with lechwe; a far cry from my experience. The head of the elephant was severed and we pulled it to shore with a powered boat. Everywhere along the shore there was palm leaves covered with elephant meat, so the meat wouldn’t get in the sand. I had no idea where all the people came from.
Did I eat some of the meat? Yes. It was grainy. The locals had more of a taste for it than me.
I look in awe at the pictures coming from hunts in the “Zambezi Region” today. What I experienced was a desperate land, with really only transient elephants. I like to think that managed hunting was an important contributor to restoring the wildlife to the Caprivi.
So, yeah, dangerous game - its a departure from your predictable, digital life.
