Cape buffalo & Hippo hunt – Tanzania or Zambia?
July 8th, 2010
The information below is an answer for a Global Sporting Safaris client requesting a combination 10-Day Cape buffalo & Hippo Hunting Safari. Our GSS Hunting Consultant and Africa Specialist, Bob Anderson, wrote the following response.
Zambia
The Destination Overview that I sent you for hunting Zambia contains pretty much all of the information that I have on our Zambian outfitter. He has two camps, one in the Kafue area and one in the lower Zambezi River valley. The camps are semi-permanent with en-suite bathrooms and are comparable to most camps found in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. These are not lodges like the ones you will find in Namibia or South Africa but are very comfortable with good food, hot and cold running water, etc. This is also generally true of the camps that you will find in Tanzania as well. I can send photos of their camp if desired.
Depending on your budget, Zambia has a number of species that are generally not available anywhere else in Africa including black and Kafue lechwe, puku, and Crawshay’s defassa waterbuck. Zambia is also known for very good sable and Zambezi sitatunga. So there are some incentives to hunting Zambia aside from just buffalo and hippo. Of the southern African countries, Zambia is probably the most expensive to hunt due to the government concession fee of $6,000 for a classic safari, but the species available make Zambia a “Must Hunt” destination if you want some of these species as you can’t get some of them anywhere else.
Insofar as Cape buffalo and hippo, there are very good buffalo and hippo in the country. Whether ten days is sufficient to take buffalo and hippo would depend on your luck and shooting skills, but the outfitter would not offer a ten day hunt for buffalo and hippo if it were not reasonable to believe that you would take both species. The hippo should not be a problem in ten days and could be hunted mid-day after hunting buffalo in the morning. The buffalo would depend on how particular you are concerning size. I would think that you should be able to take an older, mature (hard-bossed) buffalo bull in the 38″ range in ten days – anything larger may be pushing your luck and if you are looking for something extra-special you should consider extending your safari to fourteen days – particularly if you want some of the plains game species as well – but that raises the government concession fee to $6,000.
Tanzania
Like Zambia, Tanzania hunting has a number of fairly unique species available considering that the northwestern portion of the country is geographically situated in the area known as East Africa which is comprised of the Great Rift Valley and Masai steppe. As such, there are a whole plethora of species available in this portion of Tanzania that are generally not available anywhere else in huntable Africa except for portions of Ethiopia. The East African species include the gazelles (Grant’s, Robert’s and Thompson’s), gerenuk, lesser kudu, East African kudu, Masai (East African) bushbuck, East African eland, East African impala, Coke’s hartebeest, fringe-eared oryx, white-bearded wildebeest, etc. So if you want these East African species you must go to either Ethiopia or Tanzania but all of these species are not readily available in Ethiopia and their distribution is limited in Tanzania.
The Cape buffalo in Masailand and the areas of western and northwestern Tanzania surrounding the Serengeti and Tarangire National Parks are known to produce some of the biggest Cape buffalo in Africa and is THE place to go if you are looking specifically for a bull in excess of forty inches. Unfortunately, Tanzania is also one of the most expensive destinations in Africa as shown on he attached Destination Overview for Tanzania. The Tanzanian Government sets the schedules for safari length and the animals that are available on each specific safari. For example, you can hunt two cape buffalo and limited plains game on a ten day hunt, but you cannot hunt hippo. In order to hunt hippo, you must purchase a 21 day license – which runs the cost of your safari up considerably, and is exactly why I asked about a projected budget.
Summary
So, if you want an opportunity to hunt truly big buffalo along with hippo, you must strongly consider a 21 day hunt in Tanzania. If you can live without hippo for the time being but still want an opportunity at a truly big buffalo, then opt for the 10 day hunt in Tanzania – will cost somewhere between $30,000 and $35,000.
On the other hand, if you want both buffalo and hippo but cost is a bigger consideration than inches, then hunting Zambia should be your choice.
The wild card in all of this is the plains game species that you would like to collect while on the trip. For example, I am much more interested in the lechwe, sitatunga and puku than I am in gerenuk, lesser kudu and East African kudu – so my choice is to hunt Zambia to collect the plains game that I am most interested in. I hunted buffalo/plains game in Tanzania this past November for ten days as a big buff was real high on my list. So, the three primary factors that will drive your selection of a destination include:
1) budget;
2) priority species; and
3) preferred trophy size for your buffalo.
In the final analysis, the hippo in both Tanzania and Zambia will be mature herd bulls and very comparable in size, so your only decision regarding hippo would be to pay the extra cost to hunt 21 days in Tanzania for buffalo and hippo, or a lesser cost in Zambia for hippo and a potentially smaller buffalo bull. So it all boils down to the size of the buffalo – which translates into hunt cost and whether you want any specific plains game species that are only available in one area or the other.
Which brings me back to my original question about budget. Once you can give me an idea as to your proposed budget, your trophy preferences, and your desire to harvest any of the indigenous species in either Tanzania or Zambia, then I can start working on a specific proposal and suggest hunt dates. Generally speaking, I would recommend that you hunt Zambia in mid to late summer, western Tanzania the same time, but for a chance at the truly big buffalo in Masailand, you need to hunt later – preferably during the first half of November.
Once you have had a chance to digest this information, get back to me and we will start narrowing your destination and hunt costs down.
Thanks again for contacting Global Sporting Safaris, Inc. - we appreciate the opportunity to be of service. Please advise if you have any additional questions in this regard.
Sincerely,
Bob Anderson
Hunting Consultant & Africa Program Director
Global Sporting Safaris, Inc.
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