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All total Olivia and I shot 25 animals including a top ten hippo, 5 SCI gold medals and a total of 16 animals that ranked bronze or better with SCI.
The Individual Hunts:
 Hippopotamus:
On the second day we were out driving in the afternoon and saw a lone hippo in the forest trotting toward his watering hole. This was a great opportunity to take one out of the water where you can easily lose it in a flowing river or submerged in a lake. We stalked it for about 30 minutes to the pond, where it got in the water and laid down. Nigel and I watched it for a while in the very shallow pond at the end of the dry season. Nigel said that it didn’t have many markings of an old bull, i.e. scars from fights but after some time I told him that I would like to take it anyway. Just then the bull came out of the pond and saw us and started to come for us. Nigel yelled that I had better take him now between the eyes with the 416 Weatherby. I was ready, but hit him just about 2 inches to the left of center. He turned around and opened his mouth about 120 degrees and snapped his bloody jaws repeatedly in the air with a huge closing sound each time. Nigel and I both put another round in him and he ran only about 60 feet, where I put another round into his head and a finishing shot after that. Once he was down, we opened his mouth and to our surprise he had huge teeth. Once they were boiled out of the jaw they measured over 30 inches each in length for a final master measurer score of 79 7/16 which made it number 5 ever taken with SCI. This of course was both gold medal and top ten, something that I probably will never duplicate especially on the number one killer of humans in Africa.
 Eland Antelope:
These antelope are very large, wary and run quite fast for a long time. They must be anchored well with the first shot so Nigel told me to use my 416, which I had loaded with a 400 grain round nose bullet. My first shot about 200 yards away was a good chest shot and Nigel told to wait. I disobeyed him and put another round into the air and missed. However, the recoil of this second quick shot went into my head and opened up my forehead with a bleeding 1.5 cm laceration, just next to the one I got last year with the brown bear in Alaska. They are going to call me scar face. (I just put on iron sights for this brutal gun before my polar bear hunt). My third shot was a 400-grain solid, which hit his chest, and he was finished. The bloody photo session following this was somewhat briefer than usual until I got the bleeding to stop. I call my 416 “Big Roy” after Roy Weatherby and we put it away for a while until needed for the buffalo. Nigel sewed up my head with bare hands while Olivia held the flashlight. Luckily I brought my suture kit with me and antibiotics galore.
 Lion:
On the first day of the hunt Ray and his professional hunter Piet came across an old lion surrounded by about 12 females at an area where there was a salt-water spring (magi chumvi in Swahili) at a sandy river bottom. They said the lion was so old that his coat was a slight blue color, so we dubbed him the blue lion of magi chumvi. Piet told Ray not to take him since it was only the first day of his hunt and there might be a lion with a better mane to be found. On about my 16th day I had not seen any lions and we came across the same lion thanks to the warning noises of the baboons. Again, 12 females who were progressively more pissed off the longer we stayed surrounded him. Finally I got into a good position and shot him twice in the chest with Olivia’s 375 H and H and he went down. He measured 8 foot 10 inches and the skull was 25 7/8, which was a SCI gold medal. Luckily the other females didn’t protect him or mock charge us as we collected our trophy.
 Leopard:
I really wanted to do better with my second leopard and I did the first time. We got a cat feeding on the seventh day and built a blind. I bought the red dot Burris scope that located the cross hair in the dark as the cat was silhouetted in the sky long after sunset. The baboon had warned us of his arrival by barking and he as was climbing up the thick branch I shot him in the chest with the 300 Win Mag. I didn’t wait long at all since he walked into the red dot and everything was perfect. He ran about 250 paces in the darkness before his “perfect” cross lung shot did its work. His skull was a bronze medal SCI and total length was good at 6 foot 10 inches. I had promised that if I got a good leopard I would dance in front of the fire in a leopard G-string. My daughter, however, had no idea of my plan and shrieked hysterically with laughter while holding my new Canon digital video camera recording me dancing to Led Zeppelin “Heartbreaker” as I stripped off all my clothes except the thong. Some of the natives joined in this ritual dance with me and they all got free beer that night; kabubi, kabubi!!
 Crocodile:
We took the lion carcass after it had been skinned and tied a rope to it and anchored it to the shore of Lake Uttungi, where our camp was. We really didn’t pay much attention to it and went for a dangerous canoe ride doing our best to avoid hippos. After lunch Nigel and Olivia went for a short ride off shore and saw a lot of activity down the shore where the lion was. We were just going to watch and build a blind, however when we got there we saw about 10 crocodiles ripping and twisting the last remains of the lion carcass. One very large croc just left the scene but another just a hair smaller came along and ripped and twisted off some lion meat. He then stayed on the shallow surface and turned broadside to me and stayed there. I got off a good brain shot at 40 yards and he was motionless in the water as Nigel ran and pulled him to shore. While Nigel held him, he told me to put 3 more shots into his neck to break it. Meanwhile, Olivia and the guys are running from the car through the forest to the lake wondering what the hell happed to our short walk ending in 4 gunshots. The whole hunt took about 20 minutes and we had a 12 foot 9 inch silver medal crocodile for our collection!
- Pictures from the rest of the hunt...
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