The hippo can be found in many of the rivers and pans of Africa.
A lot of professional hunters have added hippo hunting to their list of dangerous game and rightfully so! The hippo can be extremely aggressive when disturbed and accounts for more human deaths on the African continent than all of the other members of the Big Five. The hippo can be found in many of the rivers and pans of Namibia. His sun-sensitive skin keeps him in the water nearly all day and is usually only found away from the water during his nocturnal grazing sessions. His encounters with humans normally occur around sunrise while he is making his way back to water and can often result in a fatality.
Hippo hunting is an amphibious adventure. You may end up in a dug out canoe paddling towards a group of them or slipping through the tall grass after a solitary bull. Hippo hunting is a great side adventure to add to you big game safari or you can book a great hippo and crocodile combination hunt. When out of the water a body shot can be used with a large caliber and solid bullets. Usually the head shot is preferred and a hunter must be sure that he knows the location of the brain. A hippo shot in the water with a good brain shot will just sink out of sight. A missed brain shot will usually concuss the animal causing him to thrash about. At this time back shots should be administered at a high rate of speed without wounding any other hippo. The dead animal will float after a few hours due to the vegetation in its stomach producing enough gas to float the carcass. I will provide you with diagrams and advise on shot placement.
The trophy of a hippo is associated with the animal’s 12 tusks. The longest canine tusk length is the measurement recorded by the record books. As far as trophy assessment goes we are looking for a mature bull and hope for the best on its tusks. You can make an educated guess on the teeth size by evaluating the ‘pockets’ on the top of the hippos jaw. These can indicate tusks size. If time is available you can wait for it to open his mouth for a visual confirmation.
The fun is in the hunt and Hippo hunting can be equated to pig hunting in that the size of the trophy is not considered to be of the utmost importance. Any mature hippo is going to be a huge animal and a pleasure to hunt on a safari.
