TC - Dande

PH Comment - Alan Shearing

On the morning of day 1, we started with one decent ele track which came in and ended up going out and into Botswana. We soon picked up 3 other tracks, one being a 26” tract at 9am. We followed and found them, 3 more had joined them totaling 6 bulls at 10am. One ele was clearly a much larger bull, but was facing away from us so the tusks could not be seen. The others ranged from 25-40lbs. we then looped around and came up to them from the other side and after a quick glimpse of the big bull, which I judged to be around 60lbs I said to TC –“He’s a good bull, but it is the first day. So the choice is yours.” He asked what I though and I said he should shoot it. It didn’t take much convincing before he agreed. We moved up to 20 yards and TC go on the sticks and went for a side brain. It staggered to the shot but never went down. But after a couple of shoulder shots he went down after 70 yards. A beautiful ele and fortunately too, as he was still the biggest we saw by the end of the safari. We continued to look for eles and big buff for the rest of the hunt. We saw 42 mature ele bulls, a few of which were in the 50-55lbs class. Lots of cows and young bulls. We followed plenty of dagga boys which were well educated, but we had fun chasing them. No exceptional bulls except one young bull in a large herd of +/-46. We saw 2 bat eared foxes, civet cats, lioness, some big sable, roan and a fair amount of other plains game.