Zimbabwe Hunting Safaris

The Chirisa Safari Area is Brian Van Blerk's primary hunting ground in Zimbabwe. Located in the remote northwest of the country, Chirisa covers approximately 171,000 hectares of mixed mopane woodland, jesse bush, and riverine forest. It borders the Sengwa Wildlife Research Area, creating a massive continuous wildlife habitat.

Chirisa is renowned for its exceptional leopard and buffalo populations. The thick jesse bush provides ideal leopard habitat, with dense cover for baiting and ambush hunting. Buffalo herds in Chirisa are large and healthy, with mature bulls regularly producing exceptional spreads. The area also holds good numbers of elephant, lion, and a wide variety of plains game including sable antelope, kudu, eland, and waterbuck.

The terrain in Chirisa is demanding. Much of the area is covered in impenetrable jesse bush, a thorny scrub woodland that limits visibility to a few metres and makes every dangerous game encounter a close-range affair. This is not a place for the faint-hearted. When American Hunter writer Philip Massaro joined Brian for a Cape buffalo hunt in Chirisa, he described crawling through the bush on hands and knees to get within shooting distance of a dagga boy bedded in thick cover.

Camp in Chirisa is comfortable but functional. Tented accommodation with en-suite facilities, excellent food, and cold drinks around the campfire. The focus is entirely on the hunting. Brian runs a tight operation: early starts, long days in the bush, and meticulous attention to trophy quality.

The Zambezi Valley is one of the last truly wild places in southern Africa. The valley floor stretches along the Zambezi River from the Kariba Gorge to the Mozambique border, a vast, hot, remote landscape that holds some of the finest elephant and buffalo hunting on the continent.

Hunting in the Zambezi Valley is physically demanding. Temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees Celsius in the late season, the terrain is broken and rugged, and the bush is thick and unforgiving. Elephant tracking in the valley can mean walking 20 or more kilometres in a single day, following spoor through mopane scrub and across dry riverbeds. The reward is the chance to hunt elephant bulls in conditions that have barely changed in a hundred years.

The valley is also home to excellent buffalo hunting. Herds move between the escarpment and the valley floor with the seasons, and mature bulls often separate from the herds to form small bachelor groups in the thick riverine bush. Lion and leopard populations are healthy, and plains game species include impala, kudu, bushbuck, and the rare Cookson's wildebeest in certain concessions.

Brian has been hunting the Zambezi Valley for decades and knows the area intimately. His relationship with local game scouts, trackers, and communities means that every hunt benefits from deep generational knowledge of animal movement, water sources, and terrain.

Zimbabwe's hunting areas offer an exceptional range of dangerous and plains game species. Brian Van Blerk's Zimbabwe safaris focus on:

• Leopard:Brian's signature species. Zimbabwe's leopard hunting is conducted over bait, requiring patience, skill, and intimate knowledge of leopard behaviour. Brian has harvested 136+ leopards, earning the nickname "The Catman."
• Lion:Hunted over bait or tracked on foot. Zimbabwe produces excellent trophy lions, particularly in areas like Chirisa where pride dynamics create opportunities for mature males.
• Cape Buffalo:Perhaps the most exciting dangerous game hunt in Africa. Tracked on foot in thick bush, buffalo hunting tests nerve, fitness, and shooting skill. Brian has taken 300+ buffalo.
• Elephant:Tracked on foot in the Zambezi Valley. Elephant hunting is a marathon, often requiring days of tracking before an opportunity presents itself on a mature bull.
• Plains Game:Kudu, sable, eland, waterbuck, zebra, impala, bushbuck, warthog, and others. Plains game can be combined with dangerous game hunts or pursued on dedicated safaris.

Zimbabwe's hunting season runs from April to October, coinciding with the dry winter months. Each period within the season offers different conditions and advantages:

Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE programme (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources) is one of Africa's most successful community-based conservation models. Established in the late 1980s, CAMPFIRE gives rural communities direct ownership and benefit from the wildlife on their land.

Hunting concession fees paid by outfitters like Brian Van Blerk go directly to the local Rural District Council and from there to the communities. This revenue funds schools, clinics, boreholes, and other infrastructure. Meat from hunted animals is distributed to villages. Employment as trackers, skinners, camp staff, and game scouts provides income in areas where jobs are scarce.

The result is powerful: communities that once saw wildlife as a liability, destroying crops and killing livestock, now have a strong financial incentive to protect it. CAMPFIRE areas consistently show lower poaching rates and healthier wildlife populations than areas without community-based management.

Brian Van Blerk is a committed advocate for CAMPFIRE. He has operated within CAMPFIRE concessions for decades and has seen firsthand how sustainable hunting revenue transforms communities and protects wildlife. For Brian, conservation is not a marketing slogan. It is the foundation of everything he does.