Although we have written an article in the past on Malaria, Steve and I concurred that what happened to us on our recent trip to the Dark Continent would be interesting for this installment.

A typical Tonga fishing village and also breeding ground for the Anopheline mosquito, the carrier of the dreaded disease Malaria.

Having been on many safaris in the past to South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe, we have only taken malaria prophylaxis (prevention medication) one time and that was our first trip to Africa. The CDC recommends malaria prophylaxis for all trips to Africa, but it doesn’t take into account exactly where or what time of the year you will be visiting the locality. We imagine that you're thinking that The Hunt Doctors don’t follow the recommendations of the CDC but in all reality we do.

The difference is that we've always hunted in the middle of the African winter, or "dry season" as it's called and the areas we frequent are devoid of mosquitoes that time of the year. We've never even seen a mosquito on our trips and some parts of South African are known as malaria free zones to boot.

So on this particular trip, nothing was out of the ordinary as far as traveling nor the areas we would be hunting. We flew into Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and drove northwest towards Hwange National park for the first part of our hunt where we hunted buffalo and plains game. As expected, the area was bone dry and not a bug to be found. After successfully taking our intended game, we moved up north to hunt hippo in the Lake Kariba area.

Through discussions with local villagers, we quickly learned that large male hippos were plentiful around all the villages, but unfortunately they only came out of the water at night and kept a wary eye out when surfacing for air during the day. We found that odd as the hippos faced very little hunting pressure and the local villagers steered clear of these dangerous beasts.

The process of finding a big bull involved climbing a surrounding hill and glassing a pod of hippos resting in the still, weed-choked water of a back bay off the lake, studying them as they surfaced for a shooter before they submerged again. It was extremely difficult keeping straight which animal was surfacing where.

After finding a large pod located in an area that was amenable to being stalked, Steve and I sat under the shade of large bush high up on the steep bank to avoid being seen by sharp-eyed hippos. While we were sitting, we started being bitten by what we perceived to be a less potent variety of our South Carolina fire ants. The bites burned some, but the pain was tolerable and diminished quickly.

We searched in vain for our tormentors, looking all around us on the ground and vegetation but to no avail. After putting up with this for close to an hour while glassing the hippo pod, we noticed that none of our fellow companions were having a similar problem sitting in the sun just back from us, so we moved.

After inquiring what was biting us in the shade, we were nonchalantly told that it was the Anopheline mosquito that carries the dreaded malaria.

We told them it couldn’t be since we never heard them buzzing around or saw them flying...also the bites didn’t itch or whelp up like a normal mosquito bite.

“Exactly” was the response by one of the PHs.