Every day hunting is a good day but sometimes you just hit all of the marks. This is one of those hunts but in some unexpected ways. Call it hunter’s luck…or good fortune…but I was very blessed to be able to take advantage of this cancellation hunt. At DSC this year, a client of mine introduced me to a PH he had hunted with previously; Benny Lategan of Lategan Safaris. Benny is a PH from South Africa but he also guides in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique and gave up a successful career as a pharmacist to pursue his love of professional hunting over 20 years ago. I sat in his DSC booth for some time talking about his hunts and noticing that he is very successful on leopard. Nobody likes to jinx themselves but upon asking several times about his success on leopards, he replied…100% for the last 7 seasons. We talked some numbers but I was already booked for a buffalo/croc hunt (see report here https://www.africahunting.com/threa...ame-hunt-with-mattanja-hunting-safaris.76233/) and we decided to see what could happen later.
Well, later came sooner than I expected! Some months later, Benny contacted me about a cancellation leopard hunt where the 50% deposit was already paid. Then he dropped a little bombshell when he said, hey do you want to add trophy elephant near Hwange Park for $15k only? I almost fell out of my chair. It would be just 10 weeks after my buffalo hunt but I couldn’t say no. My only request was that as much as possible, this would be a leopard hunt first and elephant hunt second. Well…it was a good thought anyway but not easily executed. You take what the hunt gives you.
This was going to be a leopard/elephant hunt in a CAMPFIRE (Community Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources) area above Bulawayo in the Dollar and Bubi 1 concession areas. For some reason, this area gets a lot of bull elephants only out of Hwange Park…no cows are ever seen here. There are different theories as to why that is but the facts are you just see bulls and that's not a bad thing. Typical ivory taken are in the 30-40 pound range. Good enough for me but the leopards are of a different class. Photos of the ranch leopards taken in this area of Zim have always impressed me. These are those big, pressured ranch cats that kill cattle and are tricky to take. It was going to be a 14 day hunt in the heat of the last half of Sept. I couldn’t wait to get there.
This trip had me taking a couple of Dakota rifles; a model 76 in .416 Rigby for the elephant and a model 10 in 7x57 for shooting bait animals and the leopard. The .416 had been hunted on a lot of dangerous game by its previous owner (also a member of this forum) but this was it’s first hunt with me. The 7x57 was new. Both rifles have Swarovski scopes with 4a illuminated reticles. I really like these scopes and reticles and have them on several of my hunting rifles. They have allowed me to take some difficult shots in low light conditions, which tends to be where a lot of my success has come from over the years. Since this was a CAMPFIR hunt for leopard, we would be allowed to use artificial light and hunt at night for the leopard over bait. One more thing on these Swaro scopes, do yourself a favor and give Mark (site sponsor) a call on pricing. I normally have bought in the past from the big shops online (EO, etc) but forum sponsor Mark Biggerstaff from R&M Firearms gave me a fantastic quote and I will be buying more from him. He’s also just a great guy to talk to. Thanks Mark for helping make this hunt a success!
I will write this hunt report a little differently than usual with different subjects/highlights on each post versus a day by day report for 14 days.
Well, later came sooner than I expected! Some months later, Benny contacted me about a cancellation leopard hunt where the 50% deposit was already paid. Then he dropped a little bombshell when he said, hey do you want to add trophy elephant near Hwange Park for $15k only? I almost fell out of my chair. It would be just 10 weeks after my buffalo hunt but I couldn’t say no. My only request was that as much as possible, this would be a leopard hunt first and elephant hunt second. Well…it was a good thought anyway but not easily executed. You take what the hunt gives you.
This was going to be a leopard/elephant hunt in a CAMPFIRE (Community Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources) area above Bulawayo in the Dollar and Bubi 1 concession areas. For some reason, this area gets a lot of bull elephants only out of Hwange Park…no cows are ever seen here. There are different theories as to why that is but the facts are you just see bulls and that's not a bad thing. Typical ivory taken are in the 30-40 pound range. Good enough for me but the leopards are of a different class. Photos of the ranch leopards taken in this area of Zim have always impressed me. These are those big, pressured ranch cats that kill cattle and are tricky to take. It was going to be a 14 day hunt in the heat of the last half of Sept. I couldn’t wait to get there.
This trip had me taking a couple of Dakota rifles; a model 76 in .416 Rigby for the elephant and a model 10 in 7x57 for shooting bait animals and the leopard. The .416 had been hunted on a lot of dangerous game by its previous owner (also a member of this forum) but this was it’s first hunt with me. The 7x57 was new. Both rifles have Swarovski scopes with 4a illuminated reticles. I really like these scopes and reticles and have them on several of my hunting rifles. They have allowed me to take some difficult shots in low light conditions, which tends to be where a lot of my success has come from over the years. Since this was a CAMPFIR hunt for leopard, we would be allowed to use artificial light and hunt at night for the leopard over bait. One more thing on these Swaro scopes, do yourself a favor and give Mark (site sponsor) a call on pricing. I normally have bought in the past from the big shops online (EO, etc) but forum sponsor Mark Biggerstaff from R&M Firearms gave me a fantastic quote and I will be buying more from him. He’s also just a great guy to talk to. Thanks Mark for helping make this hunt a success!
I will write this hunt report a little differently than usual with different subjects/highlights on each post versus a day by day report for 14 days.
