One Heck Of A Ride

98 Zambia’s Big Cats Cruiser, we returned to the skinning shed where some of the choicest cuts were saved for the camp’s meals. When my two-week cat safari ended on 1 September, I returned to Lusaka and hooked up with Mogambo Safaris’ professional hunters Grant Cummings and Jamie Wilson and drove three hours over the pot-holed “highway” to the Kafue Flats to hunt the unique splay-hoofed, long- horned antelopes that have made this small corner of the world famous among the world’s hunters. The Kafue lechwe subspecies is found nowhere else on this planet, and is Africa’s largest lechwe with the longest horns and the most accessible. There are so many Kafue lechwe that they would be ridiculously easy to hunt if they were found in typical African bush, but there is virtually no cover on the 2,500-square-mile floodplains they call home, and long shots and much wading make it more difficult than it would seem. There are an estimated 65,000 of them, and herds containing more than a thousand individuals have been recorded during their breeding season. There are so many, in fact, that it is hard to determine which male to shoot because even an average-size Kafue lechwe has spectacularly long horns. Thanks to my guides’ experience with judging these animals, though, both of the rams I shot were SCI Gold Medal trophies. I also shot an oribi, one of central Africa’s The world’s entire population of 65,000 Kafue lechwe is found only on the 25,000-square-mile Kafue Flats floodplain smaller antelopes with straight horns before we left the Kafue Flats. Those two lechwe and the oribi were only the frosting on that safari. Professional hunter Darryl Higgins, head tracker Phineas Shumba and his assistants Benton and Benson, camp manager Simon, and the safari company’s entire staff made its bush camp and my hunt a five-star experience.