The Hunt for a Cape Buffalo: A 50th Birthday to remember.

I decided to hunt a Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer) as a 50th birthday present to myself- one of the sure ways of getting exactly the present you really wanted!

I had previously hunted in a number of different Southern African countries and decided that it was time for me to graduate to something that had the ability to fight back.

I had once been offered a chance, by telephone, to shoot a sick bull in South Africa on a ranch by a PH with whom I had been hunting before, but, when I found out that it was unwell and liable to die anyway, plus that it was on a Ranch and they wanted to me to pay full price, I told him that it would be better to find someone else or to shoot it himself and that I was not interested. I have my own hunting philosophy, part of which is, whenever possible, to only shoot what can and will be eaten or what is a pest. I have normally only shot a representative trophy of each species and have had them shoulder mounted and brought back – I suppose it could be an extension of the ‘good enough to shoot –good enough to pick up’ game shooting philosophy I try hard to adhere to.

I am lucky in that my brother is an RFD (Registered Firearms Dealer) and deals in arms & armour, so I asked him to see if he could source a suitable weapon for the job and before long he had found a little used Ruger bolt action .458 for me and he then sourced a Zeiss wide angled scope. To complete the basic equipment I arranged for a friend to load me both some FMJ & soft nose .500 grain rounds for the job.

My firearms licence did not allow me to fire the rifle in the UK and it was, therefore, bore-sited here and I then had the unpleasant job of zeroing on arrival at the hunting area-isn’t it strange that when you fire at a beast you never hear the shot, but when you are on a range it is like Mike Tyson punching you in the face each time you pull the trigger?

I had been hunting in Southern Africa both with and through Tony Williams of GBW Safaris before and he had arranged for me to hunt within the Chewore North hunting area in the Zambezi Valley in Zimbabwe. I flew into Harare and was met with Pete Fick, my PH. (Professional Hunter). I had arranged a 2 week split venue holiday and we first motored to the first camp in the main Tobacco growing area in Zimbabwe where I had arranged to shoot some Francolin, Dove & Guinea fowl for a couple of days before moving up country into the tsetse fly area of the Zambesi valley.

The tsetse fly is both good & bad news- they can drive you crackers and it is like hunting with swarms of biting horse flies or clegs as they are known in Northern England but the good news is that, if they were not present in the valley, then it would have been split into huge cattle farms in quick time-much to the detriment of the game population. 

I had gone in November, which is just prior to the annual rainy season and everything was very dry and grass was scarce. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Zimbabwe Game Department, who tend to burn small areas to encourage re-growth each year, had made a huge miscalculation by burning an area too early and it had got out of control and many acres had been denuded of what little grass there had been left. You might think that this would have made Game finding easier, but it turned out to be the opposite and our search for a decent Bull proved difficult. However I did manage to shoot a good Warthog head whilst searching- they always amaze me by their resilience- he did not realise that he was dead until he tried to draw breath without lungs. He was old and going back and beginning to suffer the rigours of surviving with little feed.

I also shot a good Chobe Bushbuck, a species which amazes me by being capable of taking a shot that would lay low other species, but that is another story.

 The day in question started at dawn, as normal, with a shower, a quick breakfast, a check of equipment and a drive out towards a spring, that we had agreed the previous night, we needed to check for spoor.

Our group consisted of Pete & yours truly, two trackers, plus a Game Guard, seconded from the Game Department, to ensure ‘fair play’.

As we drove along, the roof of the Land cruiser was tapped by one of the trackers to indicate that we should stop, as he had seen something. There were two sets of spoor that had crossed the track –these had been made earlier by a couple of ‘Dugga boys’- Bull buffalo who had left the main herd to eat and mooch around together, but certainly well worth more investigation so we debussed and checking the wind, set off to follow up the spoor. After half an hour we came up on them eating quietly together, but, after we had approached close enough we decided that neither fitted the bill in the head department, so we decided to spook them to watch their reaction, which was dramatic, as I had not been so close before – you very rarely see a small buffalo and neither of these was an exception.  As we stepped out from behind the cover, they both snorted in unison and ran off away from us for about 60 yards and then turned and looked at us in typical buffalo style, which as Robert Ruark accurately described them, ‘as if you owed them money’ –a mixture of disdain, curiosity and unconcealed malice.

Whether at a distance or close up, they cannot fail to inspire awe, especially when you add their ability to be aggressive and to manufacture huge amounts of adrenaline, both, in themselves and those to whom they have taken a dislike!

We returned to the Land Cruiser and carried on to the spring, which was situated in the bottom of a deep gully which could only be approached on foot, by following a track worn flat by the footprints of the many elephants that had visited.  I was told that there was no need to take my rifle and left it locked in the truck. We reached the bottom of the gully and quietly approached the area of the spring, studying the ground to see if a herd of Buffalo had visited in the recent past.  Mike and the 2 trackers carried on down the gully whilst the Game guard and I were looking around one end. Suddenly, I heard something moving in the undergrowth on the opposite side of the gully-Mike was to far away to attract his attention and so I flicked my fingers to attract the Game Guard and pointed to the area indicating by wiggling with my fingers that something was moving. At that moment there was a loud snort and the noise of a large body moving towards us through the thick undergrowth. The undergrowth parted and a very large, hairy and upset Bush pig boar hurtled across the stream straight towards the Game Guard, who, with a look of horror on his face, unslung his FN rifle and cocked it. The Bush pig saw him and skidded to a halt, looked at him in surprise for a second and then set off back the way he had come at top speed

.

It took us all, with the exception of the Game Guard, at least five minutes to stop laughing! The trackers were rolling around on the ground and imitating the look of horror and then breaking out into howls of derision at the poor crestfallen Game Guard who, in the end, accepted that perhaps it might have been amusing, saw the funny side and joined in the merriment.

We carried on following the stream bed for a couple of miles with, every so often, an outbreak of sniggering and a deal of overacting taking place. We then climbed up the side of the gully and rested under a tree, while one of the trackers was sent to fetch the cruiser by retracing our steps and driving around the gully.

 When he arrived back, he was in a state of excitement as he had just seen the last bodies of a large buffalo herd that had just crossed the track in front of him as he had driven round to meet us. We quickly jumped on board and set off to check the signs.

It was obvious, to even me, where the herd had crossed and we could see, in the distance, the rear ends of the last few buffalo moving away from us in a steady walk. We checked the wind which was nearly behind us, and decided that we should move across to our left, and, using a small valley, move quickly parallel to their direction of travel and see if we could get towards the front of the herd to spy a suitable bull.

It was just as well that I had had a week to acclimatise to the conditions, as we then set off across some difficult country, at a serious pace, trying to catch and pass the herd.

I admit that I did have to remind Pete that he might be able to get there quicker than me, but it wasn’t he that was going to pull the trigger!

After catching the herd up we tried several times to approach the main body but were unable to get close enough to spy properly as our way was blocked by a succession of cows who were there on the outside edge ‘riding shotgun’  and we did not want to alarm  them or the herd.

Eventually, we found an old elephant track that led us up steep valley side and then down the other, and, then, without warning, we found ourselves in a thickly covered hillside surrounded by the vanguard of the herd.

The excitement of being in thick cover with lots of potential targets or opponents was nearly heart stopping and the adrenaline started to affect my breathing and heighten my senses, as you could both hear the Buffalo very close and see a number of their broad black backs in the bush all around us. Luckily, so far, the wind had been on our side but this was just about to change.

When we had realised that we had arrived at the front of the herd we split into two groups. Pete and myself had left the others about 60 metres downwind of us on the edge of the escarpment we had just climbed. As we stood listening to the banging and crashing of the buffalo feeding around us, we were surprised to hear the angry trumpeting of an elephant somewhere to our front and about 100 metres to our right and… 30 seconds later all hell let loose…….

From behind us there was another loud trumpet and the sound of a crash of bodies through the undergrowth and then came the sight of the three men, who we had left behind us, running past us with a very upset cow buffalo in very close pursuit. The Game Guard, who was built for comfort, not for speed, peeled away from the other two, and, while the cow steamed past him in hot pursuit of the other two, cocked his FN and fired a shot into the air. This action had the desired effect of persuading the cow to break off from her desire to spoil the trackers day and veer off into the bush. Of course, the sound of the shot sent all the 60 odd members of the herd into a stampede, luckily directly away from us, down the hillside, and across a shallow valley.

Pete had a complete sense of humour failure and started shouting at the Game Guard and trackers who had, somewhat sheepishly, started to return. Amazingly he had not seen the cow and had seen no reason for the guard to fire is rifle and spoil what had promised to be a good position. After I had managed to convince Pete that the guard was telling the truth, the funny side kicked in, and, probably as a way to dissipate the adrenalin rush we had all just experienced, the laughing broke out again.

The laughter was silenced after a minute or so when one of the trackers brought our attention to the herd which had stopped on top of the crest across the valley and slightly below our position, about three quarters of a mile away and they were all looking back across in our direction. As the dust started to dissipate we were in a position to scan the headgear in view and it wasn’t long before we were able to pinpoint a candidate for our hunt. The herd bull, who sported a well above average set of horns with a complete boss and good curls on the tips. The only trouble was he was in the middle of a herd of some sixty or so stirred up buffalo, still, at least he was  down wind.

We decided to give them some time to settle down before moving off and it wasn’t long before the laughter and imitations started again- the poor Game Guard was not having a good day!

Whilst we waited, we managed to work out what must have happened to cause all this mayhem.

The herd must have continued to advance up the slope towards us and had eventually come across a small family group of elephants. Once there were a large enough group of Buffalo, they had decided that they did not fancy sharing their part of Africa with the elephants and had unceremoniously evicted them. This was the cause of the first trumpeting. The elephants, who understandably were not overly impressed by this manoeuvre, had come across a lone cow and had decided that she must pay for the actions of her fellow herd members and had given her a hard time; she in turn had been chased off and taken umbrage at her treatment and, when she had come across the trackers, who were minding their own business, decided they, in turn, were going to get a good kicking for her shoddy treatment by the elephants. The resulting chase was what had caused the furore.

 Once the dust had cleared and the herd had walked quietly over the crest, we planned our next move and set off:-it was still only 10.45 am! 

The next few hours are, in retrospect, a blurred memory. We moved quickly towards the herd and, moving parallel, started to overtake it. We then tried several times to penetrate the screen of old cow buffalos who seemed to place themselves directly in our intended path and on the fringe of the herd and caused us to backtrack and try again and again so that we did not spook the herd. All this happened during the hottest part of the day and over rocky undulating ground.

We once had to lie in the open for 40 minutes while an elephant and calf moved out of our route – this was good for regaining breath but not for reducing ones’ temperature.

Some hours later we reached a cliff that overlooked a valley which ran at right angles to us and through which, in the distance, we could see the herd wandering slowly up the wind and away from us from right to left. We were all fairly weary by then and were disappointed by our lack of success in not getting through into the middle of the herd to find the bull. In fact, we had not seen him again since our first glimpse and were beginning to think it may have been a mirage.

After a summit conference we decided to have one last go and to leave one of the trackers and the game guard, who was suffering from the pace more than me due to his build, on the top of the cliff and the other three of us would climb down the rocks of the valley side and see if we could make contact one last time.

The three of us moved into the trees and started to make our way carefully down the side of the valley.

It seemed like a few minutes, but was probably more like 25-30 mins, before a warning noise from the tracker froze us in our tracks. I looked across at him and he was pointing across the valley so I followed his gaze and saw, looking at us in their inimitable fashion, down their noses, three big black buffalo bulls and the one in the middle was our quest- the herd bull.

They were about 120 m away across the valley. The immediate decision was that there was no way that we were going to get any closer and that the shot, if taken, would have to be from our present position and quickly or not at all.

 The tracker set up the sticks and I unslung the weapon. I put the cross hairs onto him, confused a bit by the fact that he was almost facing me, and Pete whispered to aim at his right nostril. I steadied the rifle, adjusted the reticule, controlled my breathing and gently squeezed the trigger.

At the sound of the report all three Bulls turned in unison and galloped off into the bush.

I reloaded quickly took another look just to make sure and turned to Pete to ask him what he had seen. His answer threw me ‘Was I happy with the shot?’- I confirmed that I had been and he told me that he hadn’t seen any strike but, then the tracker confirmed that he had seen it and the shot was good. At that moment a loud long deep groan echoed across the valley followed immediately by another and they both started to clap me on the back and shake my hand. It took a few moments before I was told that what I had heard was the ‘death bellow’ and that my bull was dead. I was mightily relieved –all those thoughts that I had had came back to me about first bullet placement and the scenario of a follow up in thick cover that would now never take place - at least not this time!

As we were talking the whole thing through, the others that we had left on the crest, joined us and we had to retell them the whole story.

We then crossed the valley and went to where we thought the bull had been standing, but could find no sign of the bullet strike. We then started to follow the signs of the three bulls as they had barged through the bush; we had only gone about 40-50 yards when we came on him where he had collapsed.

He was every bit as impressive close up, as he had been through the binoculars and I was more than satisfied with the whole outcome. We then moved him round and Pete started to take the photos-I have never been fond of having to pose for more than one photo and after sitting, posing with a very heavy buffalo head on my knees for over 5 minutes I called a halt to the activity and we then started to make plans to get the Land Cruiser to the location -  a feat that was not as easy as it sounds, as they had to walk back to it and then drive in a long semicircle, because of the terrain, clearing the bush in front as they went –this took just under 2 hours which I spent near the carcase trying to doze, a feat I found totally impossible because of the adrenalin, heat and other noises ‘off stage’ that my imagination required me to investigate.

Once they had arrived back, we then had the less enviable task of having to cut the carcass in two as the winch on the cruiser was out of action - during this activity we found my bullet, unbelievably un-deformed in any way –it had gone through his chest, heart and ended in his gut without hitting anything solid and fitted perfectly back into the case again!

It took all six of us to lift the two halves of the carcass into the back of the Land Cruiser and we started off on the long slow journey back to camp - but at least we were not walking.

We arrived back at camp at six o’clock, just as the African lights were switched off.

Pete estimated that we had walked about 15 miles that day and after a very welcome hot shower and a few too many gin and tonics we sat down for our evening meal which started with, what I was told was a spicy sliced sausage which I ate ravenously. After they had cleared the plates away I was happily informed by Pete that I had just eaten the Bull’s testes - regrettably for him (Pete), it did not have the desired shock effect, probably because of the day’s rigours combined with too much Gin- he just got the standard Scottish Gillies’ statement when he starts to gralloch the stag on the hill that ‘he didn’t need them nae more!’

I have to confess that I didn’t stay around the campfire very long that night after the end of the meal. After listening to the night noises, marvelling at the number of stars and the clear African sky, I took my torch and walked slowly back to my bed in my Rondevaal, with a huge, silly smile all over my face.  Once in bed,  I  still  listened to those special African night noises for only a few seconds whilst I relived the days activities before drifting off into a deep sleep -still smiling.