No elephant!

Having just enjoyed two weeks on safari in South Africa, I thought I might assemble a few posts detailing our adventures and how it all panned out. Best to start with the elephant as that was very much the impetus for the safari...

Our elephant hunting plans changed at the last minute, 48 hours before our flight out of Sydney when Nature Conservation decided it was suspicious that a foreigner would want to hunt elephant and not take the trophy home. They couldn't or wouldn't understand that Australians cannot import elephant and refused to issue the non-export permit I had applied for.

My PH came good and organised CITES permits on two separate game reserves on very short notice - southeast of Musina and north of Hoedspruit. At Musina the permit was to hunt bulls that Nature Conservation had identified as excess to the carrying capacity of the reserve. These bulls were up to 25 years old, weighing in at around 4,000kg and totally not what I was looking for - a bull at least 40 years of age that would weigh around 6,000kg.

On Hoedspruit side we would be hunting elephant quota that had been gazetted to adjoining game reserves by South African National Parks (SANP). SANP had issued this quota on the condition that any bull hunted must be less than 30lb of ivory per side. The bulls in this area come out of Kruger where they grow their ivory long and heavy; bulls in the 50-80lb range are very common. 

Two big-bodied bachelors and their askari.

We encountered a very old bull elephant standing in in a waterhole, trunk-to-trunk with a mature bull that had reached full body size but not quite the age of his comrade. These two old bachelors were accompanied by a young askari; a bull around 20 years of age, old enough to make trouble in the breeding herd and make him insufferable to the cows, he is pushed out of the herd and joins these old bachelors where he is disciplined. Our permits allowed us to shoot a couple of these younger bulls, however we travelled to Africa in search of one of those old bid-bodied bulls. 

So the only way this was going to work was if we found a bull with two broken tusks. No chance! Which meant that again we would be limited to hunting bulls up to 25 years of age. So while Nature Conservation approved my permit to hunt these bulls, upon spending some time in the bush and really gaining an understanding for the elephants we could hunt, I decided that this wasn't how I wanted to do it.

And that my friends, is why we did not shoot a big old bull elephant.

The missus was quite proud that her hunter-husband was able to show such restraint when the elephant hunt was the reason for the safari; but not for one second did I entertain the idea of hunting anything but a big-bodied, old bull. Ivory means nothing to me, but an old animal past his prime and no longer part of the breeding cycle was what I wanted in my trophy bull.

This breeding herd was heading for water when we had our little encounter.

Regardless of the outcome, the hunt itself was awesome and we had close encounters with bull elephants and some very exciting moments with breeding herds, particularly one afternoon at sunset when we managed to get ourselves between a herd of cows and calves and a waterhole as they came in for their afternoon drink. We had heard them feeding slowly towards the waterhole and tried to tip toe past them through thick mopani forest but a couple of cows got wind of us; there were some very nervous moments with ears flapping and trunks trumpeting. All for show but I near pissed my pants! Bloody great stuff!

A small herd feeding away from us in thick mopani woodland; at 60 yards they vanished.

In hindsight I have no regrets that I didn't bring home an elephant (figuratively speaking, as we cannot import elephant to Australia, see here for details).  I guess this means that the adventure lives on and we can continue to work on creating the right opportunity to hunt elephant somewhere a little bit to the north.   

With Botswana's increasing quotas, maybe there's a bull for me along the Chobe River? Or perhaps it'll be an adventure in Tanzania's Kizigo Game Reserve?  Either way, it's comforting to know that there are still plenty of opportunities out there to hunt Africa's dangerous game. I just need to get out there and do it!

A lovely bull that would make this hunter very proud.