Buzz Charlton

CZ550 Safari Classic, .458 Win Mag

480 grain Woodleigh softs and solids, 2200 fps

Successfully spotted a tuskless cow on a hillside and made a long stalk.  The cows and calves had moved into a river bottom and as we approached they caught our wind.  We paralleled them out of the river bottom and got in line with their track.  Stalked to within twelve yards and as the tuskless turned to face us I fired.  She was seriously staggered but not down.  I reloaded and fired several more rounds the last of which spined the tuskless and she dropped.  A great stalk and a great trophy measuring 8’4” at the shoulder.

After full day of looking for elephant bulls, we took a ride to an area overlooking the escarpment.  On the way we spotted a group of zebra.  Buzz threw up the sticks and I fired. The shot was approximately 80 to 100 meters.  The zebra ran a short distance and we found it dead.  An exciting end to several days of elephant bull hunting.

More elephant bull hunting.  The hills of Makuti are beautiful and challenging.  The hunting involves a mix of tracking and spotting. Seems to me that Buzz always has us going up hill! Appart from the numerous views Makuti abounds with year round springs.

After 10 days of solid hiking we got our elephant bull.  It was late in the evening and the setting was perfect.  I must say that I was glad to be able to take such a fine trophy after the hard work we put into the hunt.

The only plainsgame animal I wanted to shoot was a buchbuck. This we did on the first afternoon. I was fortunate to get an old bushbuck that we used as bait for the leopard.

After several days of hunting leopard with dogs we decided to switch to a blind.   Our stay in the blind was interrupted by elephants within twenty yards and a bush baby crying for an hour.  At 8:30, Buzz hit the spotlight and it highlighted this tremendous leopard.  One shot and short track found the leopard dead.  A remarkable once in lifetime trophy:  a huge leopard that capped a fabulous hunt.

We had an exceptional hunt.  The staff and accommodation were first rate.  The hunting was marvelous.  We saw over two hundred elephant and seventy-five elephant bulls over the ten days we spent chasing elephant.  Memories to last a lifetime.

- Mike Jines, September 2007