Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Back from my Zimbabwe safari... Aug-Sept 2015

Part 3: Cape Buffalo 2

Day 3 and Day 4 of my hunt were pretty much more of the same: we got up, found buffalo bull tracks at a waterhole, then followed them. We got close on bulls several times, but never as close as that first morning. No opportunities for a shot presented themselves, but that' buffalo hunting, eh?

Afternoons, after lunch and siesta, we went out looking for plains game. Specifically, kudu and eland. We saw lots of kudu, mostly cows, but occasionally young bulls. The young bulls were big enough to make my jaw drop... 50-inch racks, or bigger, but the horns were thin and the bulls hadn't had a chance to breed yet, so my PH said we would have to pass no matter how dry my mouth was nor how hard my heart was pounding.

I should say at this point that kudu was not a high priority for me on this hunt at first. This was primarily because I'd never seen kudu bulls alive in the wild. After I saw my first pair of live bulls vanish into the brush like grey ghosts, my priorities changed.

ON the morning of Day 4 we were on the way to a waterhole we had put a game camera on the evening before, and came around a corner and caught a glimpse of two huge mature kudu bulls. John brought the car to an abrupt stop and said softly, "Oh, we have to go after that one. He'll go 57 and one half inches."

He saw my eyebrows arch at his statement, and he said, "You must think I'm a bit confident to say that, but I've been hunting this area for 30 years, and I'm confident of the genetics. The good bulls here come in three sizes: fifty-two inches, fifty-seven-and-a-half inches, and occasionally a sixty-incher. This pair was a 52 and a 57-1/2."

I wouldn't know, because we not only didn't get to measure any horns, we never even got to see them again. We stalked them for 3 hours, until they apparently caught sight of us and bolted. Isaac said the tracks said they'd suddenly started to run. They were gone. By this time it was near noon, it was 100 degrees or more, we were hot and thirsty and tired (again), so we trudged back to the car and drove back to camp for lunch and another nap. (Did I mention that naps are one of the best things about safari hunting in Africa?)

That afternoon we were loading up the car and John said he thought we should drive north 30 miles or so to the Bubye River valley, where we would have a good chance of seeing something interesting. Like what? I asked.

"Who knows? We have a very good chance of seeing a kudu, or an eland; the blue bulls tend to be more common there. And who knows? We might stumble across a buffalo."

We didn't see kudu. We didn't see eland. But we did stumble across buffalo.

At about 5pm Isaac tapped on the roof of the car and John stopped. "Buffalo," he said quietly. "Under that big green tree."

The big green tree was 1000 yards away, across the dry bed of the Bubye River at the bottom of the opposite bank/bluff. I looked through my binoculars and thought I could see some black specs under the tree. John said it was a herd of 5 bulls. Isaac had seen them with naked eyes and pronounced two of the bulls to be good shootable ones.

Here's a pic of the big green tree:



It's hard to imagine the scale, but the trunk of this tree was about 25 to 30 feet in diameter. You can't really get that scale from just looking at this pic, which was taken with the zoom on my camera cranked up all the way. I did put my laser rangefinder on a big rock about half way to the big green tree, though, and it said 525 yards.

So, we got out of the car, I loaded my rifle, and we began yet another stalk. I felt quite optimistic, I'm not sure why. For one thing, the Bubye River valley is beautiful. For another, it wasn't really hot, the breeze was good and strong and coming straight at us. The light was good, too. I don't know, I just felt good about it. I wasn't saying to myself, "Yeah, this buffalo is goin' down," or anything like that. I just felt good. It was good to be out and hunting in such a lovely place, with good people whose company I really enjoyed, carrying a good rifle and wearing good boots. It was just good.

We crossed the river and then headed east along the edge of the riverine brush, single file, being vewy, vewy quiiiieeeettt. Elmer Fudd woulda been proud. It was tougher than usual, as the soil is very sandy and loose along the river, and there was a lot of up and down. We came to the green tree, and Isaac scouted the mud at its base where the bulls had been while the rest of us waited in the brush.

"Five good bulls," John told me after Isaac gave his report. "At least 3 shootable ones."

Ten minutes later, we found them, and after several minutes observing through binoculars, we moved upland and skirted the next couple of ravines, then dropped down into the third one and carefully climbed the far side. There was a fallen tree to our front. I couldn't see a damn thing, but John and Isaac, in front of me, could see the bulls feeding their way up through the riverine brush toward the flats to our left. John positioned us behind the fallen tree.

"They're coming up the bank," he whispered. "They should come out right here," and he pointed to the open grassy plain to our front, "But for God's sake do NOT shoot unless I tell you."

"Gotcha," I said, feeling more confidence than I had any right to. John placed the sticks and I rested my rifle in the canvas. Several minutes passed, then suddenly a buffalo bull appeared roughly 50 yards away. Again, the size and color of a railway tanker car. Hay-Zeus!!!

"Steady," John whispered, as the first bull fed slowly out into the open, and we could see the others at the edge of the brush. The first bull was in tall grass, and we couldn't see his horns. He fed past a bush about halfway between us, and then got into shorter grass.

"He's got hard bosses. Do you have a shot?" John asked me in a very soft whisper. I had been asking that same question, and the answer was "no". The bush between us had a single branch on it that mattered, and of course that branch and a dozen leaves were squarely between me and the bull.

"No joy," I said.

"Then don't shoot, just wait," he replied. So we waited. I noticed that the light was fading, and there were no shadows. When had the sun set? Minutes ago, I thought. Still lots of light. Gradually, the other bulls fed out into the grass. There were three bulls now.

"They're all hard, but one on the right is the widest one," John whispered. "Do you have a shot?"

I swivelled my riflescope off the first bull carefully and looked through it at the third bull, both eyes open, the field of view clean and full. He was in the clear, head down. I could see both front legs, his shoulder, could visualize his football-size heart between those massive shoulder. His hindquarters were back in the next county.

And I knew. All the thoughts of buffalo I'd ever had coalesced to this moment and my whole mind focused down on the illuminated tip of the post of my reticle and the shoulder and heart of the massive bull. And I knew he was mine.

"I have him," I whispered.

"Then shoot him," John said simply. I flicked the safety forward, placed my thumb on the top of the tang, placed my finger on the trigger then smoothly brought thumb and finger together. The big rifle crashed and bucked up in my hands but I heard the solid whack of the bullet as it hit him and out of my non-scope eye I thought I saw blood blow out his nose and I knew I'd hit him exactly where I'd meant to and I knew he was dead on his feet even though he was trying to run, running and limping with his left shoulder smashed into uselessness, and all the bulls were running, running to our left into the open field.

The first bull, the one I hadn't had a shot at, was roaring; a huge loud bellowing roar--BRRRAAAAAAAAWK!!--unbelievably loud, as he charged up beside my shot and dying running bull and dropped his head and hooked up hard as they ran side by side, and he lifted my bull off his feet and up into the air. Simply unimaginable strength and power: sixteen hundred pounds of buffalo tossed into the air like a rag doll, all four feet off the ground! It was incredible, simply unimaginable.

Both bulls were roaring then, running together and the younger bull trying to hook him again, then my bull stopped and stood there for several seconds, then fell down. The younger bull hit him again, hard, trying to hook him with his left horn again and again, both bulls roaring at each other. (I don't think they were friends, those two bulls. They appeared to have a history.)

The other three bulls stopped and milled around. They seemed confused, unsure of what had happened, looking all around for the source of the loud noise that had startled them, while the dying bull on the ground continued to grunt and blow, trying to rise and failing. The other bull gave up trying to gore him and moved away. Then the four bulls turned and ran off and out of sight.

I watched my bull on the ground for a good five minutes, groaning and grunting, his tail flicking and his head tossing. Then he lifted his head and let out a long loud moaning bellow, the famous death bellow, then his head dropped and he lay still. His tail twitched a few more times, then stopped.

"Hit him again," John said quietly then. "Just below the hump, through the top of the grass. Insurance."

I put the post on him and fired again, just to be sure, but the bull didn't move. I can't describe the feeling I had as I came up on the dead bull. I don't have the right words. I expect if you want to know you'll have to hunt one and kill one yourself.

Anyways, here's some pics of my buffalo on the ground. I think he shrunk quite a bit after I shot him. He's 36 inches across the horns, which is fairly respectable, I think. He's got good hard bosses, a symmetrical head, and in short is a very nice representative specimen. I believe he'll look good on my wall.













The whole process of getting this big guy loaded into the hunting car and back to camp is worthy of a chapter its own self, but I'll likely save that for another day. I like this photo from the skinning shed, though, as it gives a good perspective as to the size of these magnificent creatures: