M’barangandu is 5 million acres of wilderness on the south-west border of the Selous. Our hunting camp was Ligombe, a tented camp over looking the river. It’s a stunningly beautiful area, quite heavily wooded with rolling hills and gullies. There seemed to be abundant water at this time of year which made the hunting challenging, you don’t get the game congregating around available water.

Dave and I both had 2 buffalo each on license so that was our primary species. We saw Elephant practically every day while we were hunting but not much else, the odd small Zebra herd, a few Sable and a good herd of Eland.

The first 2 days involved a heck of a lot of driving and looking for tracks but to no avail though did bump into this Lion while we were out following some tracks. He grunted and then sauntered off.

On the 3rd day we decided to go out further and fly camp so we could spend more time hunting. I was amazed how quickly the camp staff under the leadership of Juma built the fly camp.

We finally cut some fresh tracks and the hunt was on. We followed the tracks down a deep gulley into thick bush and swamp where you only had 3 to 4 yards visibility. This really got the heart pumping, we could smell buffalo everywhere there was fresh dung on the trail. After about an hour of tracking we came up to a clearer area and caught a glimpse of a couple of black shapes. The trackers dropped to their knees and Myles signalled me forward, one bull and a cow, stragglers at the back of the herd. I took the shot and the bull leapt, obviously in trouble. I followed up with 2 more shots and then heard the mournful bellow. The bull was 40 inches, boss unfortunately a bit soft but it was one of those now or never situations.

The next day Dave managed to take a great old Dagga boy after only 5 minutes tracking. We felt we deserved a “Gimme” after the hard hunting we had put in so far!

Day 6 involved a lot of getting stuck in the riverbed, 5 times in fact!

It was worth it though as we saw a wonderful old Dagga boy crossing the river. He was about to disappear into the thick stuff and the shot was long but I took it and it paid off. When we got up to him he stank dreadfully and we could see a large calibre hole on his left shoulder. On opening him up his left lung was full of puss and there was lots of clotted blood in the chest cavity. I can hardly believe that an animal could survive that sort of injury for long but judging by the infection it had happened at least a week before.

Day 7, Dave managed to bag his 2nd buff and it’s smiles and handshakes all round.

It was great to hunt with Myles again, he really puts heart and soul into it and I can’t wait to hunt with him again next year.

- Ed McNair, September 2006