Here are a few photos of our hunt in 1996. We hunted at Chete, which borders Lake Kariba. As usual, we hunted with our friends the Vincents; Roy, Rene and Alan. 

This the view from our camp over Lake Kariba. What you see here is actually the Zambezi River, and now it forms the southern border of the Lake. 

We were looking for a big croc in the Luzi River. We did not find any this particular day, but saw this impala on the other side of the river. He was facing away at a slight angle about 150 yards. You can see the where the bullet came out right on the point of his left shoulder. I used the 375/404 with the 300 grain Barnes X bullet. Walter was trying to break my trigger finger - forgetting that I am right handed! 

Finally we did manage to get this croc. This is the smaller of the two we shot. We saw him at the end of the inlet, he was in the water, with only the top of his head out. On our side of the river, there was a dead tree stump. Roy though that if we managed to get to that stump, we might get a chance at a shot at him. We had to crawl on our stomachs, and eventually we reached our stump. I think he was about 100 yards away from us. He was intently watching a herd of impalas coming to water. After the shot, he went under the murky water, and when we got to the waterline, we found pieces of his skull bones lying around. The bullet disintegrated his head.

We are trying to see who has the biggest mouth!

This is the other croc we shot. This one was 14' 2 1/2" long. We found him lying on the bank on the Lake. We did the usual crawling stalk, and then we saw some impala feeding between us and him. I fired a shot at him, and hit him too low in the head - the bullet going through his gullet. He took off into the lake, my second shot missed him completely while he was running. We thought we had lost him, but a couple of minutes later his head came out of the water. I took a snap shot at him, and he disappeared again. We did not see the bullet splash in the water, so knew it had hit him in the head. Now we thought he is dead at the bottom on the lake, and we would have to dive to get him. While we were discussing how to recover him, we saw him trying to crawl out of the water on the opposite side of the inlet - about 180 yards away. He was facing away from us - perfect for a shot. I fired another shot at him, which did the trick. We ran over, and just to make sure, another one was put into him. We could not get the truck to where he was, so Roy drove back to camp, and brought the boat - the white and blue one on the right. You can see Walter trying to find if he could fit into the croc's mouth - yes he could!

This is my friend Rolf. He borrowed my 270 Ackley to shoot this kudu. He made a perfect heart shot, as you can see on the bull's right shoulder. Someone must have said something very funny - even Rolf is laughing. 

There is a little spring down where the water is in the middle of the photo. It is not very far from our camp, so we check it regularly for tracks. Down at the bottom there you can barely see Roy, Alan and me doing our usual inspection.

This is my friend Hite, with an impala he shot with my 270 Ackley.

Hite again, this time with a great looking buffalo bull. We had one buffalo left on quota, and it was Hite's. Late in the afternoon one day at that spring mentioned earlier, we saw a herd of buffalo, with this bull with them. Trouble was, Hite was not with us. Next morning, we came back with Hite, armed him with my 375/404 and followed the buffalo. A couple of hours later we found them having their usual siesta in the shade of some trees. Hite and Roy had to do some real slow stalking on their stomachs. Eventually they got into position to take a shot. The buffalo keeled over at the shot, and the most amazing thing happened. One of the other bulls, turned and started goring this one! And sometimes licking the blood off him.

We were driving back to camp lunch time, when we jumped two kudu bulls. They took off to go over the hill you see behind us. Just before getting to the top, they stopped to look back. A Barnes X 130 grain bullet did the trick, and he dropped from a broken neck shot. Roy was not overly happy about this shot - he does not like neck shots! His comment was "lucky his neck was in the way of the bullet!"

The meat racks were getting empty, so when we found the tracks of some bulls, we decided to follow them, and see if we could get some of them. Half an hour later, we caught up with them, and found them to be four bulls. They were in some thick bush about 120 yards from us, and slightly below us. I shot one, he walked a few yards, and lay down. Roy suggested that we try to get 2 more if we could. He pointed another one to me, which I shot, he moved slightly and I could not see him any more. Again, Roy pointed another one for me to shoot at, which I did. They were moving around and were moving around too, trying to keep them in site - all within a few yards. Eventually, we got closer, and we could see two lying down dead within 10 yards of each other. We checked the tracks of the other two, and found blood. We followed this track, and about 150 yards further, we saw our wounded bull take off into the bush. I took a running shot at him, hitting him in the back of the head, dropping him in his tracks. We got closer, and just to make sure, another shot was put into his heart.

This was our last day of hunting, and we decided to go in the boat to see if we could find a hippo, as they seem to have eluded us so far. We saw this waterbuck feeding about 200 yards from the water's edge, and after a short discussion, we went after him. We beached the boat away from them, and went on foot. They area they were feeding on was quite rocky, and all we could see was the top of their heads. And to make matters worse, there were some impalas feeding further on, which kept looking at back at us. We crawled on our hands and knees to get closer - at one stage a snake passed between me and Roy - we were no more than 1-2 yards apart. When we stopped at some rocks, I told Roy about the snake. He said: "Where is it?" I said, " It went that way!" His answer was; "Don't worry about it then, let us shoot that waterbuck." The waterbuck were feeding away from us, and suddenly, this one decided to come towards us. He was about 180 yards away, looking towards us at an angle. The bullet hit him at the junction of the left shoulder and neck. He took off towards us, ran about 20 yards and dropped. A great ending to another wonderful hunt.

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