African Hunter Published Books Campfire Tales Volume 3 of 20 | Page 10

off a lot easier than anticipated. Back at the camp, we found that
the first shot had been good, having gone through the left lung. Had
we had more daylight the previous evening we could have been
on him within half an hour. But, this first buffalo hunt had several
lessons compressed into one: the long chase, the importance of
being patient and not pushing them too hard during the afternoon,
the late evening stalk, a tricky shot and finally, the experience
of tracking down what we thought was a superficially wounded
buffalo. Also, we were now one up on Sijarira! Incidentally, the
buff measured a respectable 38.5”, and was a good representative
trophy.
With our baits not attracting too much attention, we decided
that for the next couple of days we would concentrate on finding
the Dagga boys and see if we could locate something in the 40 plus
category. Day three saw us abandon the vehicle and resort to some
legwork. A 12-15km morning walk along the shoreline revealed
no fresh signs, so the afternoon found us on the raft heading
towards the nearby peninsula which was about 25 minutes away.
On the map, this area looked promising for the bull herds, as it was
away from the roads and connected to the main land mass by a
narrow strip about 400m wide. This would make it easy to monitor
movement of game in and out of the peninsula. Putting theory into
practice meant logging in a few more hours of walking, but the
end result was satisfying. There was fresh spoor of small buffalo
herds, elephant, leopard and plenty of impala and kudu. As Dean
would remark on the way back, he had a good feeling about this
place, and he was not referring to the magnificent Kariba sunset.
If we were to get our big buff, it would in all likelihood be on this
peninsula, hopefully over the next couple of days.
Day four found us on the move by sunrise. We zig-zagged our
way across the northen side of the peninsula, and even though
we ran into elephant, kudu and impala, there was no sign of the
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African Hunter Magazine - Campfire Tales, Volume Three