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On September 7th my son and I flew out of Atlanta as we began the journey to the Selous in Tanzania. Victor is about to graduate from the University of Georgia and we knew the real world waiting on him would make such a trip together like this after about now very difficult.
We hunted with Luke Samaras Safaris on his 7 million acres of concessions that he has had for 20 years. Our PH was Leon Kachelhoffer, originally from Botswana; a young and highly energetic fellow that I knew would make our trip special.
Our relatively short flight from Dar es Salaam to the Selous was followed by an almost 2-hour ride through the concession to our camp. We were in Luke’s Utunge Camp, which is on the shore of a very large lake. The lake is the home to many hippos, crocs, and the life blood to most everything else that endures the area during this dry part of the year.
Soon after arriving in camp Leon explained his basic plan for the safari, starting with concern that we were already seeing baby wart hogs following their mothers. He said the babes were prime leopard food and that getting a leopard on bait would prove more difficult as the days went by. He wanted to get leopard baits up very soon, which meant whacking a zebra was our first priority. Victor gladly obliged:
The next day we came across where some buff had recently crossed the road. The tracks were fresh, but the swirling winds of midday suggested we might want to hold off our pursuit until later in the afternoon. We started tracking about 4:30pm and were able to get around the herd so that they fed past us. There weren’t any great bulls in the group but we needed to get some lion baits up as well. I decided to take one with a bit of character and hit him in the chest with my .470. He turned and ran away as I followed with a second shot that entered about 2” below his anus. He ran about 80 yards before going down. It was then we looked over and saw a second buff dead as a hammer. How had that happened? We finally decided that my second shot (a soft) had exited the first buff through the rib cage and had hit and killed what was probably the second best bull in the group. We could shoot as many as 6 buffalo, so this was fine as we needed the buff anyway to get a start on lion hunting.
In the days ahead we searched for leopard and lion tracks and got our baits in place. We also looked for other game and came a cross a nice herd of eland. It took a lot of maneuvering to get in place for a shot, but Victor finally had a chance and hit this one with a .375 from about 350 yards. It tried to stay with the heard but later moved into some thick woods. We finally caught up with it and he brought it down.
While checking leopard baits we spotted one of the always elusive bushbucks. These are such beautiful creatures and it was special to have the opportunity to get one. One of the trackers did a great job spotting it.
We were very excited when a big-footed leopard (2 1/4 inches) started hitting one of our baits. We set up my trail camera and got some great pics. Here's one of them:
We built a blind one morning as soon as we saw some of our leopard pics and came back that afternoon to hunt him. As darkness neared he showed up; it was thrilling to see him in the tree and the vision of him in my cross hairs will be there always. Victor had shot one 3 years ago and it was great to be there when he did. I was glad he could be there for mine.
With things getting very dry, we decided to move for a while over to a fly camp on the Rifiji River. The river is paralleled by a dry and sandy river bed in the area where we were, which was a very popular area for cats, elephants, and buffalo. I got on video one afternoon probably 500 buffalo crossing in front of us. It was an amazing sight. One morning we spotted 2 old buffs leaving the sand and moving into the woods. We tracked them until Victor downed this nice old buff with a very fast shot that reminded me of our many days together hunting quail.
Along the dry river are pools of water that stay full through the water table. In one of the larger ones one morning we spotted 2 hippos. Hunting one here, as compared to the Rifiji, has a lot of advantages, most notably the lack of risk of the hippo sinking and floating away. We were able to get on this one and Victor shot him in the head followed by a couple of body shots. He then turned and got across the water from us on the bank and was running from our right to left out about 100 yards. With Victor out of ammo, Leon pulled me up and I whacked him twice with my 470 as he collapsed to the ground. These big things are tough!
About to to shoot:
We enjoyed hunting near the river; lots of things going on around there. In addition to the good hunting, we fished during the middle of the day. Tiger fish and some variety of catfish kept us busy.
For lion bait, I popped another zebra.
One afternoon while heading out we spotted an ancient old buffalo hiding in the brush. It was a fun hunt, but this buff was lion bail on 4 legs. Interestingly, after I had shot him twice, we avoided his blood trail so that we could ease around and spot him from his side. We found him looking straight back from where he thought we were coming prepared to charge us. I pounded him to close the deal. We took him straight to a hot lion bait with plans to hang the whole thing.
We carefully approached the bait. We had selected this spot as there were tracks from a massive lion nearby. This lion was easy to identify and we began calling him “Bigfoot.” Here is one of his tracks with a 470 bullet for perspective:
As we neared the bait, one of the trackers suddenly got the attention of Leon. “Simba,” I heard. A couple of hundred yards away they had spotted him. He was alone as we closed the distance. At about 75 yards I eased from behind some brush and raised up my 375. The shot hit his shoulder hard and he was down. A couple more shots stopped all movement and we approached the lion whose tracks had been on our minds for days. He was indeed big, though a typical low elevation Selous lion without the heavy mane. Early indications suggest he’ll score very well with Rowland Ward. My second cat celebration by the camp staff was coming and my bar bill would grow even more!
Here’s what was causing the prints we saw:
By the way, I have about 1,000 pictures of the lion wearing out some hippo and buffalo bait. It is something to see as the lion eventually rips down the hippo bait from the tree. Here are a few trail cam pics from the 3 nights I have pics of him, and keep in mind the bait is hanging almost 6 feet off the ground. They said the lion weighed around 450-460 pounds.
With the leopard and lion in the salt, the whole nature and mood of the safari changed; we fished more, quit having to push everything to get baits up and checked, ect. We now relaxed and went after a variety of other things. First we concentrated on crocs. To do so, we needed more bait, and we came across this hippo that probably needed us. He had obviously lost a huge confrontation with another male and had a massive and crushing bite wound in his side. Two busted ribs protruded out and he had lost a lot of weight. Anyway, he was now “my” hippo.
We drug the hippo to the river and built a blind. It doesn’t take long for word to get out about such a beachside feast, so we planned to hunt the spot the next morning.
Victor and Leon chillin' by the Rifiji:
The next morning proved fruitful. We slipped in before sunrise and Victor got a fine one. Later that morning Victor also got a big impala.
We came back to check the hippo bait after Victor shot the impala and the crocs were back. I was glad to get one, too.
Another thing we really wanted was a Roosevelt sable. Victor made a great shot while hiding behind an ant hill.
Sometime old guys just gotta nap.
The next morning we felt really lucky to spot a Bohor reedbuck. Victor made a great shot with the .300WM to drop this one as it was facing him. These things have seen their numbers seriously decline in recent years since the wild dogs started getting protection.
As our hunt neared its end, we found ourselves tracking some buffalo on cross country marathons. While looking for some, Victor shot a bushpig, the first of the year according to the trackers.
Overall, we had a wonderful hunt. This was my first visit to the Selous and the concentration of game there is amazing. The four contiguous concessions Samaras has there create a remarkable hunting opportunity. If Samaras would market what he has as well as some of the others out there, he’d be booked up 3 or more years in advance like others I’ve used whose hunting and services are at best equal.
I learn so much from a trip like this, be that more about their culture and history, to more about myself and how fortunate I am to have had my son along with me and a wonderful wife at home that puts up with such indulgence. It takes a long time to get ready for a such a trip, but the benefits and memories will last a lifetime.
We hunted with Luke Samaras Safaris on his 7 million acres of concessions that he has had for 20 years. Our PH was Leon Kachelhoffer, originally from Botswana; a young and highly energetic fellow that I knew would make our trip special.
Our relatively short flight from Dar es Salaam to the Selous was followed by an almost 2-hour ride through the concession to our camp. We were in Luke’s Utunge Camp, which is on the shore of a very large lake. The lake is the home to many hippos, crocs, and the life blood to most everything else that endures the area during this dry part of the year.
Soon after arriving in camp Leon explained his basic plan for the safari, starting with concern that we were already seeing baby wart hogs following their mothers. He said the babes were prime leopard food and that getting a leopard on bait would prove more difficult as the days went by. He wanted to get leopard baits up very soon, which meant whacking a zebra was our first priority. Victor gladly obliged:
The next day we came across where some buff had recently crossed the road. The tracks were fresh, but the swirling winds of midday suggested we might want to hold off our pursuit until later in the afternoon. We started tracking about 4:30pm and were able to get around the herd so that they fed past us. There weren’t any great bulls in the group but we needed to get some lion baits up as well. I decided to take one with a bit of character and hit him in the chest with my .470. He turned and ran away as I followed with a second shot that entered about 2” below his anus. He ran about 80 yards before going down. It was then we looked over and saw a second buff dead as a hammer. How had that happened? We finally decided that my second shot (a soft) had exited the first buff through the rib cage and had hit and killed what was probably the second best bull in the group. We could shoot as many as 6 buffalo, so this was fine as we needed the buff anyway to get a start on lion hunting.
In the days ahead we searched for leopard and lion tracks and got our baits in place. We also looked for other game and came a cross a nice herd of eland. It took a lot of maneuvering to get in place for a shot, but Victor finally had a chance and hit this one with a .375 from about 350 yards. It tried to stay with the heard but later moved into some thick woods. We finally caught up with it and he brought it down.
While checking leopard baits we spotted one of the always elusive bushbucks. These are such beautiful creatures and it was special to have the opportunity to get one. One of the trackers did a great job spotting it.
We were very excited when a big-footed leopard (2 1/4 inches) started hitting one of our baits. We set up my trail camera and got some great pics. Here's one of them:
We built a blind one morning as soon as we saw some of our leopard pics and came back that afternoon to hunt him. As darkness neared he showed up; it was thrilling to see him in the tree and the vision of him in my cross hairs will be there always. Victor had shot one 3 years ago and it was great to be there when he did. I was glad he could be there for mine.
With things getting very dry, we decided to move for a while over to a fly camp on the Rifiji River. The river is paralleled by a dry and sandy river bed in the area where we were, which was a very popular area for cats, elephants, and buffalo. I got on video one afternoon probably 500 buffalo crossing in front of us. It was an amazing sight. One morning we spotted 2 old buffs leaving the sand and moving into the woods. We tracked them until Victor downed this nice old buff with a very fast shot that reminded me of our many days together hunting quail.
Along the dry river are pools of water that stay full through the water table. In one of the larger ones one morning we spotted 2 hippos. Hunting one here, as compared to the Rifiji, has a lot of advantages, most notably the lack of risk of the hippo sinking and floating away. We were able to get on this one and Victor shot him in the head followed by a couple of body shots. He then turned and got across the water from us on the bank and was running from our right to left out about 100 yards. With Victor out of ammo, Leon pulled me up and I whacked him twice with my 470 as he collapsed to the ground. These big things are tough!
About to to shoot:
We enjoyed hunting near the river; lots of things going on around there. In addition to the good hunting, we fished during the middle of the day. Tiger fish and some variety of catfish kept us busy.
For lion bait, I popped another zebra.
One afternoon while heading out we spotted an ancient old buffalo hiding in the brush. It was a fun hunt, but this buff was lion bail on 4 legs. Interestingly, after I had shot him twice, we avoided his blood trail so that we could ease around and spot him from his side. We found him looking straight back from where he thought we were coming prepared to charge us. I pounded him to close the deal. We took him straight to a hot lion bait with plans to hang the whole thing.
We carefully approached the bait. We had selected this spot as there were tracks from a massive lion nearby. This lion was easy to identify and we began calling him “Bigfoot.” Here is one of his tracks with a 470 bullet for perspective:
As we neared the bait, one of the trackers suddenly got the attention of Leon. “Simba,” I heard. A couple of hundred yards away they had spotted him. He was alone as we closed the distance. At about 75 yards I eased from behind some brush and raised up my 375. The shot hit his shoulder hard and he was down. A couple more shots stopped all movement and we approached the lion whose tracks had been on our minds for days. He was indeed big, though a typical low elevation Selous lion without the heavy mane. Early indications suggest he’ll score very well with Rowland Ward. My second cat celebration by the camp staff was coming and my bar bill would grow even more!
Here’s what was causing the prints we saw:
By the way, I have about 1,000 pictures of the lion wearing out some hippo and buffalo bait. It is something to see as the lion eventually rips down the hippo bait from the tree. Here are a few trail cam pics from the 3 nights I have pics of him, and keep in mind the bait is hanging almost 6 feet off the ground. They said the lion weighed around 450-460 pounds.
With the leopard and lion in the salt, the whole nature and mood of the safari changed; we fished more, quit having to push everything to get baits up and checked, ect. We now relaxed and went after a variety of other things. First we concentrated on crocs. To do so, we needed more bait, and we came across this hippo that probably needed us. He had obviously lost a huge confrontation with another male and had a massive and crushing bite wound in his side. Two busted ribs protruded out and he had lost a lot of weight. Anyway, he was now “my” hippo.
We drug the hippo to the river and built a blind. It doesn’t take long for word to get out about such a beachside feast, so we planned to hunt the spot the next morning.
Victor and Leon chillin' by the Rifiji:
The next morning proved fruitful. We slipped in before sunrise and Victor got a fine one. Later that morning Victor also got a big impala.
We came back to check the hippo bait after Victor shot the impala and the crocs were back. I was glad to get one, too.
Another thing we really wanted was a Roosevelt sable. Victor made a great shot while hiding behind an ant hill.
Sometime old guys just gotta nap.
The next morning we felt really lucky to spot a Bohor reedbuck. Victor made a great shot with the .300WM to drop this one as it was facing him. These things have seen their numbers seriously decline in recent years since the wild dogs started getting protection.
As our hunt neared its end, we found ourselves tracking some buffalo on cross country marathons. While looking for some, Victor shot a bushpig, the first of the year according to the trackers.
Overall, we had a wonderful hunt. This was my first visit to the Selous and the concentration of game there is amazing. The four contiguous concessions Samaras has there create a remarkable hunting opportunity. If Samaras would market what he has as well as some of the others out there, he’d be booked up 3 or more years in advance like others I’ve used whose hunting and services are at best equal.
I learn so much from a trip like this, be that more about their culture and history, to more about myself and how fortunate I am to have had my son along with me and a wonderful wife at home that puts up with such indulgence. It takes a long time to get ready for a such a trip, but the benefits and memories will last a lifetime.
