Alan Shearing

What a privilege to hunt the first legal Roan trophy in Zimbabwe (since they were protected) with DH. It was far more challenging than I had anticipated and found roan to be exceptionally alert and difficult to spot and approach. We learnt a lot during the course of the hunt. Tracking them was slow and difficult, and many days we spent the whole day following them only to have them run off before we saw them. They tend to split up, and join up throughout the day and often lave calves alone to fend for themselves, and then join up again at different times. They also seem to feed backwards and forwards, making tracking even more difficult and the chances of them catching our scent is increased. They don’t drink water very often and when they do, they drink between noon and 3pm, or 1-2am. We perceived that there are a lot more Roan in Dande East than one realizes, and we saw roan every day. Most of the bull we saw were roughly the same horn length but varied thickness.

On day 7, we picked up a big track that we had followed a few times before, but had had no luck in seeing him. We started as usual with just his track, which soon joined up with his herd. By 11 am they scented us and had run down wind of us. We chased them for a while and then decided that they were heading for water and as this herd hadn’t drunk water since we arrived we decide to loop around and wait for them to come to us. We waited +/- 20 minutes and a large cow appeared, then 2’s + 3’s until there were 16 cows and calves, no bull!

Behind them came an impala ram, and finally behind him DH’s roan bull appeared. We had a short discussion and as we were running out of days and this roan was heavier in the horns than others we had seen, we diced to go ahead and shoot him. DH shot him perfectly behind the shoulder, he bucked and ran straight toward us. DH reloaded and shot him again on the run, knocking him down. Photos and celebratory cold beer or two were in order for the remainder of the day.

DH took a decent kudu a couple of days later and on a joint hyena missing with Myles and GW. DH shot a big hyena and wounded another, but both were difficult night time running shots with a spotlight.

What a treat and a pleasure to hunt with DH again. An absolute gentleman and upstanding person.

Thank you DH, I look forward to the next adventure.

Awesome hunt again with Alan. I truly enjoyed another African experience. What a professional organization with top notch staff. I can’t thank everyone at CMS for outdoing themselves again. I am honoured and forever grateful to be the one chosen the Roan.

- DH, June 2019