Tall Tales
BUZZ CHARLTON, well-known for his series of DVDS on elephant hunting, is one of Zimbabwe’s most experienced current professionals. He specialises in elephant hunting, and has guided such safaris for 20 seasons, averaging 20 elephants per season. Naturally, these have also included Zimbabwe’s other game species.
On leaving high school, Buzz was apprenticed to PH Lou Hallemore. A year later, he moved to the Dande North area and was apprenticed to Dengesai Makoni, the first African in Zimbabwe to become a licenced PH – and one of the most successful, with a very high clientreturn rate. Buzz describes him as one of the bravest and most skilled PHS he ever knew – the “almost perfect” professional hunter.
Buzz’s career got off to a bit of a wobbly start. For his practical exam, he was instructed to shoot a cow elephant with a frontal brain shot. Having felled the elephant, he discovered that it had a penis. The examiner failed him.
Buzz qualified in 1995, and on his first solo hunt as a licensed PH, he was charged by an elephant cow which he could not shoot as she had a small calf. He was standing right on the edge of a 5-metre vertical bank, hence was trapped. He fired a shot over her head which did not deter her, and he had no time to chamber another round. She swatted him with her trunk, which cracked the stock of the rifle he held up, and he went over backwards – straight down the 5m drop. Unable to get down to him, the cow left. However, Buzz’s fall had broken his coccyx. This entailed an agonizing 5km piggy-back ride on his tracker, then the long drive to Harare, followed by two months of rehabilitation.
He continued working for Zambezi Hunters until they lost their Dande concession. He then started his own safari company, and later went into partnership with Myles Mccallum, forming Charlton Mccallum Safaris (CMS) operating in the Dande, Save, Kwe Kwe and Hwange areas, and in Mozambique and Tanzania.
The book has a chapter which forms the best concise description I have yet read of the Zambezi River and the terrain through which it flows from its source in north-western Zambia to the Indian Ocean off Mozambique.
Buzz writes that poaching and over-hunting of elephants has reduced the size of available tusks. Gone are the days when older bulls carrying 70 to 80lbs a side were common. He says elephant hunting in the Zambezi Valley is more difficult than in the north-western areas around Hwange. In the Zambezi Valley there are many more cows than bulls, whereas the opposite is true of the northwest. Tracking is more difficult on the harder ground of the Valley than in the sandy soils of the NW. Zambezi Valley elephants are smaller in body; those in the NW are among the biggest in Africa; likewise, Valley elephants have smaller tusks, 30 to 40lbs being a fine trophy, while hunters in the NW can hope for 60lbs or bigger. Also, Zambezi Valley bulls are much harder to approach, and the Valley’s dreaded jesse (extremely dense combretum and other bush) makes elephant hunting more difficult and much more dangerous.
Interestingly, tuskless cow hunts are now more popular than trophy bull hunts. It’s very hard work – you must find a cow that is mature but with no calf in tow. On average you will approach 300 elephants to find one suitable tuskless cow. It is much more exciting hunting, and very much more dangerous. During his career, Buzz has been forced to shoot many elephants in self-defence – all but two have been cows. A huge appeal is that tuskless cow hunts are cheaper even than buffalo hunts. Today, a bull elephant hunt costs US $40 000.
The book encapsulates the more unusual, dangerous and humorous incidents which Buzz and his clients experienced during his 25-year career. There is no shortage of hair-raising charges and dangerous encounters, including his being deliberately hunted down by cow elephants determined to kill him, and a canoe safari on the Zambezi which lasted all of seven minutes before an enraged hippo bit all three canoes into wrecks. However, the book is also an informative ‘how to’ on hunting all of Africa’s dangerous species.
If I may point out one small error: Buzz writes that his mention of being a descendant of Lt Col Anthony Durnford “of Anglo-boer War fame” incurred him the wrath of a senior Afrikaans resident of Zambia who responded as if that war ‘ended last week’. To avoid Buzz any further needless acrimony, history records that Col Anthony Durnford was killed at the battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-zulu War of 1879. He never took part in the Anglo-boer War.
This hardcover book, published by Safari Press of California, is filled with superb colour photos on quality paper. It is an excellent representation of dangerous game hunting in modern Zimbabwe, and a highly entertaining read. It costs R775 plus postage/courier costs from Gauteng. Email: info@halseton.co.za. – Gregor Woods