Mozambique Tales Of Boomslang Snakes, Man-eating Crocodiles & Angry Buffalo 2013-2014

[Scott CWO]

Thanks for your interest and patience. Had some things come up but will be posting again today.

 

[PARA45]

 

[Wheels]

Fantastic shooting.

It's unfortunate he is no longer with us.

 

[BRICKBURN]

After Jaimie is certain the cat is dead he immediately checks on his trackers injuries. Professionalism at its best.

Those growls are always spine tingling.

 

[Sue Tidwell]

It’s been about ten years but since I’m laid up after surgery on my right tibia, I thought I would share some safari adventures in Mozambique.

After a 2012 safari to the SVC in Zimbabwe, my wife and I knew we had to go back. A cancellation safari came across my desk and I jumped on it. The safari was for leopard, buffalo, sable and plains game with the late Jamie Wilson of Luambeze/Mazeze Safaris in the Niassa Reserve area R3 bordering Tanzania. The gentleman that cancelled told me he had been there four times and had killed four leopards with a bow in daylight! He said the leopards in the area weren’t the biggest in Africa but due to the absence of people, they also weren’t very spooky. I had heard tales of hunters struggling to get a leopard after several trips so this sounded too good to be true but Jamie confirmed the story!

I booked for July and started making the necessary travel arrangements and applied for a USFWS leopard permit, which I received before I left for Africa.

Before we knew it, Wendy and I were on our way to Africa for the second time. I brought my custom Winchester M70 .338 WM and my CZ550 .458 Lott. After flying to JNB, we took another flight to Pemba, where we met Jamie. We went straight to his plane, a twin engine Piper Navajo. Besides being a very experienced PH, Jamie was also a great pilot.

Flying with us was Jamie’s head tracker, Cosimo, who had just been released from the hospital after being tackled and bit by a wounded leopard. Cosimo had stitches on his scalp and cheek. Wow, this was getting real!

View attachment 512648View attachment 512649

Yes, that's a little too real for me. I'm glad the tracker lived to tell the tale. Congratulations on a great hunt.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

I was able to download the video and watch it. I think I need to go change my shorts now! Looking forward to the rest of the story!!

 

[R.M.C.]

Dang it, I can't get the video to play lol sounds like a crazy hunt!!

 

[TucsonFX4]

Dang it, I can't get the video to play lol sounds like a crazy hunt!!

Same

 

[Woodcarver]

I remember GFs who teased like this....

 

[Just Gina]

 

[Scott CWO]

Dang it, I can't get the video to play lol sounds like a crazy hunt!!

You need iCloud

 

[Scott CWO]

Same

You need iCloud

 

[TucsonFX4]

You need iCloud

I have iCloud. It opens my photos to the “For You” section, but that’s the end of progress.

 

[Tra3]

Wow.

 

[Scott CWO]

Wendy at Jamie’s plane. She might have overdressed lol.

 

[Scott CWO]

We landed at the strip at a village on the western border of R3 where Jamie kept his plane and ultralight aircraft under guard. The ultralight is under the tree in the background. He flew Wendy to the safari camp from here while I was relegated to a 2.5 hour bumpy, dusty Cruiser ride! I was quite jealous.

 

[Scott CWO]

The camp was along the Ruvuma River on the Tanzania border, which made for a nice setting. The chalets were thatched grass walls and roofs. A bit more rustic than some of the other wilderness permanent camps we’ve been to since but plenty nice.

 

[Scott CWO]

The next morning, the first order of business after breakfast, was to hunt plains game and to begin baiting for leopard. At that time, Jamie had just two Niassa wildebeest on quota and I had one reserved. We got really lucky and found two bulls with some zebra on opening morning in a clearing in the forest. They spooked and I took a 100 yard shot at one of the bulls while he trotted away with that distinctive trot that all wildebeest possess. I hit him quartering away but he made it into the forest and out of sight. There wasn't much blood and after tracking for a few hundred yards in the forest, we began to question our route. We were fairly certain that the shot was good so we doubled back and we spotted him laying dead off to the side of the main trail about 50 yards in some grass. He hadn't went far but button-hooked on us and fooled us a bit. His right horn had a unique dip to the curvature but I was more than pleased!

 

[Scott CWO]

Over the course of the next couple days, I shot baboons for bait, a reedbuck and a Lichtenstein hartebeest. This gave us quite a few baits and we began checking them while looking for buffalo, sable, bushbuck and eland.

 

[Scott CWO]

We started to get some leopards feeding on the baits. We were checking trail camera pictures and found pictures of three different females and one good-sized male. The day before, we had caught a poacher from Tanzania so Jamie's other PH, Darren, and I went hunting and checking baits the next morning while Jaime drove the poacher to jail in a village several hours away. Wendy slept in and stayed at camp with Jamie's wife, Eveline.

Darren and Jamie had decided that if the male came back to eat bait again, that Darren should build a blind and we would sit there for the afternoon/evening. The male had been back so a blind was built and we settled in and waited. Those of you who have sat in leopard blinds can appreciate what is involved but this was my first time and first day in a leopard blind. I always inform my PH when I arrive that I am a lucky hunter and that the safari will be great if we hunt hard. Although this is true, I find it to be a pressure release for the PH and sets everyone at ease. As a guide/PH myself, I understand the pressure that a PH feels. It's always good karma and has never failed me to tell them I am lucky. A PMA (positive mental attitude) makes a difference on a hunt. I do a lot of research into the areas I hunt and, of course, that definitely helps as well.

After a few hours, suddenly from nowhere, a leopard was in the tree and it was just 4:30 pm. A leopard in the daylight! Our blind was across a small, sandy river drainage from the bait tree and there were a few pools of water in the riverbed. After looking for a bit, Darren confirmed it was a male but wasn't sure it was the same one we had on camera. While I have hunted mountain lions, I couldn't tell the size but said it seemed like a decent male to me. I had been informed that the leopards in the Niassa were sometimes referred to as "river cats" and usually not as big as leopards from Zimbabwe and Namibia but I didn't care. I just wanted a representative male. Leopards are plentiful and easy-going in the Niassa and although I received a partial discount for taking the cancelled hunt, it was still expensive to me and much more money than my plains game hunt the year before in Zimbabwe. Definitely the most money I had ever spent on a hunt up until then and I didn't want to be one of the guys that didn't get a leopard!

Darren was honest and told me it wasn't the biggest male leopard that he and Jamie would have ever taken in the area but that it was legal, decent and mature. I told him that based on that, I wanted to shoot!

I had brought my custom Winchester M70 .338WM that was built for me by a long-term client/friend that lives near me in Colorado. My client/friend and his wife are both eye doctors and owned two clinics and also had other doctors working for them so he had the resources to build his own gunsmithing shop and tutored under David Miller of Arizona. The rifle sports a fluted Krieger barrel and is my go-to rifle for elk. The Leupold scope has a Premier Reticle in it with dots at 300, 400, 500 and 600 yards with the crosshair sighted for 200 yards and it is calibrated to my rifle's ballistics for the load. The bullet used in the load is a 225 gr Swift A-Frame. I had shot the rifle many times at 50 yards as well and knew where to hold.

As the cat fed, I settled in for the shot. Luckily, I wasn't too nervous and at the shot, the cat leapt up into the air in our general direction. It landed in one of the larger pools of water and just disappeared, making a big splash! I quickly reloaded and we watched to see if it surfaced or ran out of the water but it was just gone and out of sight in the water, from what we could tell! Wow, that was exciting! We waited for a while to make sure it didn't suddenly appear out of the water and then got carefully out of the blind to go have a look.

With rifles loaded, we carefully approached the water and this is what we saw!