The Selous is the largest hunting reserve in Africa and, by a stretch, the most demanding hunt I have done. Twenty-one days, four-thirty starts, evenings in blinds until eleven, three nights in a row of zero results, and then suddenly everything happening on a Tuesday afternoon. I came home twelve pounds lighter. The hyena was the third trophy and the one I had been least sure of.
The hunt was nominally a buffalo and leopard hunt. The .416 was the rifle for the buffalo and what I'd carry for a backup on the leopard. The hyena was a quota animal that came with the package whether you wanted it or not, and the outfitter — a Tanzanian operation in its second generation, run by a son who had been guiding since fifteen — strongly recommended sitting a separate bait for hyena in the latter half of the trip rather than hoping one came in on the leopard set. I took his advice.
Day four. A herd of perhaps sixty crossed our front at six in the morning. We picked an old, broken-horned bull at the trailing edge, took him at 80 metres with a frontal shot that put the 400-grain solid through the chest cavity and into the offside shoulder, and finished him with a second round into the boiler-room as he dropped. He was old enough that his teeth were mostly stubs and his coat was rubbed through on the flanks. Trackers said his herd days were probably over and he was on his way out anyway. That kind of thing helps, on the long drive back to skin him.
Days five through twelve, with an off day on Sunday because the camp staff observed it and so do I. We hung four impala-and-baboon baits in different drainages, checked them twice a day, and got hits on two by night five. Sat the better of the two on nights six and seven. Nothing.
On night eight we moved to the second bait, in a sausage-tree drainage closer to the river. The leopard came at twenty past nine. He fed for forty minutes. The shot was 35 metres into a torch-lit branch with a clear angle through the chest. He went down on the bait and never moved.
The .416 with a 400-grain soft-point on a leopard is, frankly, too much rifle. I knew that going in. The reason I used it was that the licence required a minimum of .375 and the operator did not have a .375 to lend, and rather than ship two rifles in I used what I had. The damage to the cape was significant. The taxidermist will manage. I will not do that again.
Hyena bait went up on day fifteen, a hundred metres downwind from the now-empty leopard bait, in the same drainage. The theory was that any hyena cleaning up after the leopard would already be in the area; the practice was that they had been, but not on our bait — they had stripped the leopard set down to the rope in the two nights between the leopard kill and our setting the new one.
We sat the new hyena bait three nights in a row. Nothing.
On the fourth afternoon, just before dusk, the older of two clan members we had on camera came up the drainage, tested the wind for a long time at the edge of the clearing, and committed to the bait at the last moment of legal light. He fed for perhaps ninety seconds. The shot was 70 metres, side-on, low into the chest. The .416 anchored him.
What I want to record about the moments before that shot is the absolute conviction I had, listening to him test the wind, that he was about to walk away. Hyena on bait is not like any other shot in Africa. They are smarter than the cats. They will leave on a gust they don't like, come back the next night, and never feed again if anything is off about the setup. I had been told this and I had not really believed it. After three blank nights I believed it. The shot was probably the most willed shot I have ever taken, in the sense that I had to make myself take it cleanly when most of me wanted to wait for a better moment that I knew, by then, was not going to come.
Buffalo, leopard, hyena. No plains game; we hadn't planned any. The schedule was tighter than any previous trip and the success rate was higher, which I think reflects the operator more than anything I did. The PH had been guiding for sixteen years; his head tracker had been in the Selous since before the PH was born. They knew the country down to individual trees.
If I sit hyena on a bait again — and I will — I am going with at least four nights' patience and a thermos of strong coffee. The temptation to give up at three nights is real and was wrong.
I will also bring a .375. Putting a 400-grain solid through a hyena is not actually the constraint, but the second shot on the cape, if it had been needed, would have made a mess. The .416 stays for buffalo. The leopard and the hyena both wanted a lighter rifle.
Tanzania remains my favourite of the countries I've hunted. I am already saving for 2027.