Too Close For Comfort

In 2006 I booked an elephant, leopard, buffalo hunt with Tshbezi Safaris in Zimbabwe. I flew into the Bulawayo airport (an experience in itself) and met professional hunter Kirk Mason, with whom I spent the next 14 days hunting in the Gokwe North concession area. We drove the 6 hours to Gokwe and began immediately looking for elephant tracks and running leopard baits.

We spent the majority of the nights in a stilted river camp on the Ume river. There were several lions in the area and plenty of elephant. Unfortunately, though we tracked and looked at many bull elephant over the course of the hunt, we never located one that would have made 50 pounds (ivory weight per tusk). 50 pounds was my self-imposed, and ambitious, limit for a trophy bull.

About 4 days into the hunt early one morning we cut the tracks of, what appeared to be, two good bulls that had crossed the two track road above camp during the night. We took up the track and followed it for about 3-4 miles before we lost it in a rocky area. It's unusual for the talented trackers of Zimbabwe to lose a track, and in my experience it's the rare situation that it happens. After spending about an hour and a half trying to sort the issue out, we elected to turn back toward the cruiser in hopes that we might catch the bulls in the case they had doubled back on us.

When we were about a mile from the cuiser the trackers began hearing elephants ahead of us feeding in the thick jess. Elephants are anything but quiet as they move and feed in the brush, and sound is a frequent method for finding them. Kirk felt that we might have located the two bulls. We moved into the thick jess where visability was, at most, 15 yards in any direction. Suddenly, we could see the backs of the a herd of cow and calf elephants as they moved parallel to our position and in the direction we had come from. Since cow elephant are significantly more dangerous than bulls, we were glad to let this group move out.

I was walking slowly and watching the cows to our right at about 20 yards. They didn't appear to pose any threat and it was thrilling to be that close to them. When I looked forward the palm of Kirk's hand was held out straight to me in a frenzied warning to stop - I did! Then i noticed a young cow elephant facing us and not moving and about 7 yards in front of the lead elephant tracker who was leading the group.

The hunting group consisted of Kirk and I, two trackers, a skinner and a council game scout. There all six of us stood motionless waiting to see what this close encounter would produce. Neither Kirk or I had time or space to get our guns up. The group was in single file fashion and I was third in line with one tracker, one skinner and the game scout standing behind me.

The standoff lasted about 30 very long seconds and finally the cow turned to her left and began walking to our right, apparently content in her conclusion that we were no threat that needed aggression. Unfortunately, as she did so, Moses, the council game scout who was legendary in his fear of elephant broke ranks and spun around to run. At that point, I was the only one in the group without a tree between the cow. When she saw Moses' movement she turned on a dime to face us, dropping her head and came forward at us. By this time, both Kirk and I had raised our rifles for protection. Honestly, having never experienced such offense from an elephant, I never appreciated any emergent situation. It's a good thing Kirk did though, because the elephant had a bead on me. At 11 paces I heard the unexpected BOOM of Kirk's 500 Jeffery as Kirk stopped her charge with a shot low in the head. His shot missed the brain but turned the elephant to the side. I hurriedly put a shot in behind the shoulder, and the whole thing was over within a matter of seconds.

Obviously, the elephant was not charged to me as a trophy, and the council took possession of the hide meat and tusks. The guys went in the afternoon with the tractor and recovered the elephant. All of the meat went to the local villiagers, save a chunk of the backstrap which came down to our camp and provided a couple of very nice dinners.