MIKE SAROSDI

I had the great experience in July to take a six-day trip to Mozambique for Cape Buffalo prior to a week-long Leopard hunt in Botswana. I can't explain logic of the itinerary, but simply report that the Coutada 10 hunt with Johan Strasheim of Bahati Safaris turned out to be a great and too short venture. As this was a last-minute trip for two of the Big 5 in different countries, I went-alone. This was not game-ranch hunting.

THE SETTING

Strasheim and Bahati share the Coutada 10 hunting block with one other concessionaire in remotely separated camps, located south of the Lower Zambezi River, with an immense delta where the river meets the Indian Ocean. Coutada 10 lies southwest of and adjacent to the Marroumeu Swamp and the separate Marroumeu Buffalo Preserve. It is the only hunting block in Mozambique situated on the Indian Ocean, with 30 miles of coastline.

Coutada 10 has widely varying fauna and topography, including swampy delta, pans, forest, and extremely dense jungle, somewhat in that order moving inland from east to west. After returning home and re-reading Boddington and Flack's Africa Hunter II, I'll attest that the area's ecological character and history are very accurately described on pages 189-191, and is good reading. With only a few long and rutted roads, very rare and small villages, and no utility lines or fences, the 1,200 square miles seems even much larger. Add some exceptionally heavy and late-season rains, wet lows around 38-40 degrees, and unburned grasses everywhere of up to 2-3 meters, the hunting conditions were challenging from the start.

After Strasheim flew us from Ellisras via Beira in his Aerostar, I shot my rifle once and we took a late-afternoon, short look-see drive near the camp, amid the unburned grass and forested areas. A few Red Duiker (that disappeared quickly) and small groups of younger Sable were spotted, but the afternoon was mainly used to settle in.

THE HUNT

The next and first full day in-country, we were up at 4 am, and after a light breakfast,

headed southeast by truck two hours to only the edge of the Swamp. Our goal was buffalo. We transferred into the 8-wheel Argo, and by 6 am began an additional two-hour journey southeast to the Marroumeu Swamp under grey, damp skies with no hint of sunrise, just increasing grey light, with no color to the scenery. The conditions were closer to a perfect morning for January goose hunting in Texas rice fields than a buffalo hunt.

We arrived at our destination under further deteriorating conditions of an approaching cold front from the south, to find none of the expected buffalo in the open. Instead, there was a huge herd of about 35-40 Waterbuck bull, many of them trophy book class. Having taken a great one last year near Ellisras (the one reported here that literally dropped in the Limpopo River), they were, unfortunately, not on my list. We set out on foot to find buffalo spoor.

Our search was quickly rewarded with a huge set of very fresh tracks and warm dung of

several dozen buffalo that we tracked into the swamp bottoms, with tall papyrus and sparsely spaced, barren trees. After two hours of following the spoor, and rapidly changing wind directions that made us quickly reposition twice, we found ourselves 35-40 yards downwind of a small group of buffalo. We were separated by a dense growth of papyrus, which did not prevent one cow from spotting a tracker. She reacted nervously, but did not spook the other buffalo. With a tiny window through the papyrus allowing me to see only the top of the back of a big bull with his head down, I steadied for his head-raise. When he raised his head, my first look was at the bosses, which had no space between the two, and huge, deep ridges. My 375 front-quartering shot put the buffalo down 40 yards away, and a second shot after the requisite wait and walk-in dispatched him. My PH, Marius Verster, estimated his weight at 2000-2200 pounds, easily a ton.

Heavy rains moved in right after the photos and as we were loading the caped trophy into the Argo. For the next 4 hours back to camp, we were constantly drenched, and frigid, but all of us felt great for the result of our first foray, with textbook results. We realized later that had we not been successful, the buffalo hunt easily could have consumed the rest of my stay due to the hostile weather that moved in.

The next day was spent trying to dodge the rain and find game, with no success on either count.

However, day 3 dawned with no rain, light cloud cover, diminishing wind and rising

temperatures, near 60. After a long, circuitous route through the grasses, we arrived back at the swamp and, in the Argo, headed into the marsh grasses. We had such a close (10 yard) encounter with a huge, scrambling Bush Pig that no safe shot was possible, then went on to find a HUGE Lichtenstein Hartebeest in a heard of about 20, which I took at 150 yards.

After a light lunch in the field, we surveyed several herd of Common Reedbuck until we locked onto a trophy specimen. The chase and long shot in the high wet grass was memorable and productive. Notable about the Reedbuck was how they were bedded down in areas under the grass and reeds and might not pop up and show themselves until we were literally on top of them, and then how fast they could escape despite the terrain. Some of the bedded and well-hidden groups turned out to be as large as two dozen or more.

On the way out of the swamp, PH Ettienne spotted a huge Chobe Bushbuck at 90 yards,

with only the tips of his horns clearly visible above the grass, with the upper neck silhouette barely visible. A Single shot through the grass put him down on the spot, and we headed back to camp after a huge three-trophy day in the field.

For my next and final full day of hunting, Marius decided we should move north, through the northeast corner of Coutada 12 into Coutada 11, both densely forested, to hunt for Suni as well as Red and Blue Duiker. On the 25 mile, two hour drive, we saw one very small village with an open-air, roof only single classroom school, with 15-20 young children heading to class. In the middle of no where. After several hours of peering under the densest growth and passing on lots of scampering Suni, I tagged a beautiful male with a 12 gauge o/u. After a short field lunch, I was able to get a bead on a scampering Red Duiker, but only because it was 150 yds away and we had raced onto a lO-foot tall ant hill to provide a vantage point. Advantage PH Marius.