Safaris 2014

 

Dear friends,
2014 is now in full swing now! The rains were exceptional and late meaning that we have had to deal with very thick bush and long grass. Normally we burn at this time of year but with the late rains that is even proving hard!! As a result the dangerous game hunting where we rely on the brilliant trackers and the cats where we have baits have been very good but the plains game tough. We are just starting to see and shoot some good plains game now though.
The buff hunting has mainly been in herds as the Dugga boys early season are chasing the cows. The herds have varied from 200 strong to 30 odd with average herd sizes been about 60. We have shot some great old buff so far and have started to see that the old bulls are now leaving the herds!

The ele hunting has been successful but hard! There have been huge herds of cows in especially in the East which has complicated the bull hunting as with the grass and the fact that the bulls are in and out of the herds the whole time tracking has been hard. Credit to the trackers they have stuck to their task and we have shot several good bulls

 

One of the advantages of long grass and thick cover is that the cats have been travelling the roads a lot making it easier to identify and bait for good males. We have done 3 leopard hunts and 2 lion hunts all of which have not only been successful with excellent trophies but have come easily which as many of you now is a blessing as with the leopards we have averaged less then 2 blind sessions per cat and the two lions (one of which was shot yesterday) were both shot on the second sitting also!

Dande Anti Poaching Unit – DAPU
The highlight of the year for me, apart from all the happy clients, is seeing DAPU develop into a well run and effective anti-poaching team. With the generous donations to date we were able to employ Siraaj Gardner to run DAPU. A born and bred Zimbabwean, loves the bush and is passionate in all he does, making him the right man to take on this huge task. He has successfully trained 24 scouts and has them on rotation basis patrolling all the areas. He also has a “hit squad” on standby. If any hunters see poachers tracks we call Siraaj with a GPS co-ordinates and he is there immediately to track the poachers. We have found that this has been a very successful way of catching poachers, as before we had to drive 3 hours to get a National Parks Stick - which invariably meant that they only started on the poachers tracks the following day which was too late.
What I like about Siraaj is that he leads from the front. One finds him going out on patrol with his scouts – excellent for moral! Through the donations the DAPU teams are now relatively well equipped and we have managed to rebuild a landcruiser that is dedicated to DAPU alone!
This year DAPU has removed 150 snares in the Dande North area and 50 in the Dande East area. They have arrested 13 poachers for varying offences; snaring, fish poaching and poisoning. DAPU killed 3 dogs and apart from the snares have confiscated lots of axes and spares - a fantastic job all round!! Only one poached elephant has been discovered so our efforts are clearly working. On the negative side we have found that despite the hard work in arresting poachers, which is time consuming and expensive, we then need to take them to the police, then court to find that they get very lenient or punitive sentences. CMS will be participating in an exercise to train the judges and police later this year! CMS is also helping Tashinga Initiative and John Stevens Safaris to get a helicopter up in the Dande area to drop off the DAPU and National Parks Scouts into the more remote and inaccessible areas of the concession. All DAPUs successes and future exercises are possible through your very generous donations for which CMS extends our heartfelt thanks. If you would like any further information on our continued efforts, please visit the DAPU section of our website: http://www.cmsafaris.com/african-elephant-research/updates.html
All the best, do keep in touch - Buzz, Myles and the CMS team
Set your sights on Charlton McCallum Safaris