This is the story of a Cape buffalo hunt in the Chirisa Safari Area, Zimbabwe, in 1992. Please read on…
The big Cape buffalo with the Cogswell & Harrison .475NE double lying across his horns.
The sun slowly settled into the tree studded horizon. Sunset was near. Amidst the haze of dusk it seemed that the waterhole was devoid of life. However, as our eyes adjusted, the silhouettes of four bull elephants emerged from the background. Three of the bulls sauntered off, offended by our presence, while the fourth took up a sentry-lie position near the waterhole. I was busy filming the scene, alternating between SLR and video, desperately trying to capture the breathtaking beauty of the waterhole and its’ enormous guard while both were shrouded in another stunning Zimbabwean sunset. My attention was fixed on this scene; when Charlie quietly uttered the only world that could drag my eyes from the splendour before us.
“Buffalo” was all that he said.
At first, all I could see was the elephant and several large flocks of guinea fowl. Then a large cloud of dust, rising from the scrub beyond the waterhole, caught my attention and as I watched I realised that the cloud was moving towards us and the waterhole. A huge herd of buffalo were coming in to drink. In time, we were treated to the sight of several hundred buffalo drinking at the small series of waterholes before us. While I panned back and forward, zoomed and focussed, Charlie ‘glassed’ the herd through his binoculars. There were many good bulls over 40” in width but the video and the binoculars kept magnetically returned to one bull with a spread of at least 45”.
This was a bull worth pursuing and I wanted to ask Charlie if we could devote all of our effort into hunting this one animal but I can’t recall saying much as I was totally absorbed by the splendour of the scene and the majesty of that big bull. He wasn’t an old animal but he had most of the attributes that makes a truly magnificent buffalo trophy. Besides the width, he had an impressive sweep, with the horns raking back towards his shoulders and, at the same time, down towards his jaw line. While he lacked a really pronounced curl to his horns, he still had plenty and the overall effect was topped off by a fairly large boss.
His one fault was that the boss was still not fully developed and consisted of two distinct sections rather than the one solid mass that you sometimes find on old bulls. However, I’d much rather have a trophy with good width and plenty of sweep even at the expense of a solid boss; by the time the boss becomes a solid mass the old bulls have often lost some length from wear and tear. If, before this hunt, I’d have sat down and drawn a picture of my ideal buffalo trophy then this animals would have been the double of that drawing. It was as if the picture of the ideal trophy that I was carrying in my thought had come to life and was now drinking at the waterhole before us.
This was our first afternoon in the Chirisa Safari Area and the second phase of my first African hunt with Charlie Stanton of Mbalabala Safaris. On our arrival, we’d hurriedly set up camp and then rushed down to the waterhole to see what game was about and to do some photography. Hunting within 1 kilometre of this waterhole is prohibited and we weren’t due to start hunting until the following morning so the herd before us, and the big bull within it’s midst, were perfectly safe for the time being.
However, if we could catch him away from the waterhole, sometime over the next five days, then he’d be fair game. While I continued to watch the bull and dream, I didn’t hold out much hope of seeing this bull again as there’s thousands of buffalo in this safari area and thousands of square kilometres in which he could hide. But whether we saw him again, or not, it was good that we had seen a glimpse of this area’s potential. At least we now had a goal; a sort of buffalo hunter’s grail! Darkness soon claimed the scene before us and we headed back to camp, still excited by the sights and sounds we had witnessed at the waterhole.
The next morning we started early. The hunting party consisted of Charlie, two trackers, myself and an AK-47-toting government game scout. Chirisa is a black rhino protection area so the game scout was along in case we ran into, or saw any sign of, poachers and to ensure that, we too, abided by the game laws; I’m still not sure which of these tasks had the highest priority but the ever-present and loaded AK would dispel even the slightest thought of wrong doing. It doesn’t appear to be widely known, but they shoot rhino poachers on sight in Zimbabwe.
Most of the wildlife documentaries on the problems of poaching, which always seem to concentrate on Kenya, hail Kenya’s decision to shoot elephant and rhino poachers as a brave step toward saving these animals. These documentaries ignore the fact that Zimbabwe (and several other countries) also shoot rhino poachers and that Zimbabwe’s record in regard to wildlife conservation, as evidenced by the ample animal populations and growing hunting industry, may not be perfect nor ideal but it is a record which ‘glows’ when compared to the sad state in Kenya. I believe that this bias is because Kenya has banned all hunting, since the 1970s while Zimbabwe encourages hunting; the anti-hunters just won’t admit that a comparison of the wildlife populations of these two countries clearly shows which is the more workable and effective system.
When I asked about the purpose of the game scout, and his Kalashnikov, Charlie related how earlier in the year he had been hunting in Chirisa with another client when the game scouts had ambushed a poacher team in an adjacent area. Following the ambush, and while hunting buffalo, Charlie’s party repeatedly came across the tracks of a man who appeared to be wandering aimlessly; a poacher had escaped the ambush but was lost and appeared to have been wounded. Charlie’s party reported what they had seen but their hunt had ended shortly afterward and they had heard no more about it. Now, reminded of this incident, Charlie took the opportunity to ask the game scout if they had caught up with the poacher.
“Yes”, came the reply from the game scout accompanied by a big smile.
“And what happened?” asked Charlie.
“We shot him to pieces!” the game scout answered with an even bigger smile on his face.
We never saw any rhino in the relatively small part of Chirisa that we hunted, so I can’t say whether the Zimbabweans are winning the fight to save the rhino, but there is a lot of work going into game-proof fencing, anti-poaching patrols and ambushes and we can only hope that they are successful in the end. For my own part, I am proud of the fact that my hunt, in this safari area, helped to pay for these efforts to save the black rhino and that, at the successful conclusion of my hunt, I was able to contribute some much needed rations to the staff and game scouts of Chirisa.
Morning parade for the rangers, game scouts and staff of Chirisa Safari Area.
But back to the hunting…Our plan, for this first days hunting, was to track the buffalo herd’s passage away from the waterhole in the hope of finding the big bull again. However, this plan was frustrated by the enormous number of buffalo within the area. There were tracks everywhere and it was obvious that the big herd of the evening before had split into many smaller herds, but which herd would the bull be with? We finally decided that most of the buffalo were headed in the same general direction so we drove around the boundary track with the intention of getting in front of the herds and then walking in on them.
We were still driving towards our intended start position, when a herd burst across the track in front of us. We stopped and watched most of the herd cross and then we realised that there were still many buffalo in the bush that had decided that it was unwise to cross in front of a vehicle, full of hunters, in a designated safari area. We dismounted, loaded our rifles, checked our gear and then stalked in to find the rest of the herd and see what bulls were with them.
It was September, there had been 40 buffalo on quota for this area and we were one of the last hunting parties for the year. This meant that the herds had been hunted hard over the last couple of months and they weren’t about to hang around for yet another tourist hunter and his professional guide. To make matters a little more challenging, I was carrying my Cogswell & Harrison double rifle in .475 Nitro Express on this hunt (You can read about reloading for this rifle at .475 3.25″NE). While this rifle is extremely accurate for a heavy double, and 1 to 1.5 inch groups for both barrels at 50 yards are relatively easy to obtain, the open sights and rainbow trajectory of this rifle are strong incentives to get close before shooting. It had been my intention not to attempt any shots on buffalo unless I was within 50 yards and only if I felt confident of the shot. However, I was soon to discover that we were going to have to work very hard just to get within 100 yards.
The moment we stepped into the scrub, on the side of the track, every pair of eyes in the herd was on us. We tried desperately to get close but every time we got to about 100 yards the herd would bolt. Most of the time we could only see 2 or 3 animals through the foliage so we were forced to crawl through the thorns to get close and look long and hard to see all of the herd. We eventually saw enough to decide that there weren’t any big bulls in this herd and so we went looking for other herds to check out. In this we had no problems at all as there were herds of 30 or so animals everywhere. We found several herds containing bulls with horns over the 40” mark and we attempted several stalks.
This photo gives some idea of how hard it was to pick out individual buffalo in the thornbush. There is a herd of more than 30 animals in this shot!
On one occasion, Charlie asked me if I felt confident enough to shoot a 40” plus bull, with an exceptional boss. The range was about 80 yards but there were too many saplings and branches in the way and I didn’t want to risk the shot. But there was another reason why I declined the shot; I wasn’t ready to relinquish the chance of finding the 45” bull, not just yet, not at least until the last days of the hunt. After a very busy morning during which we sweltered under a vindictive sun, crawled on our hands and knees through the thorns, constantly battled with the sweat in our eyes and binocular lenses, strained our eyes peering through the foliage and were often betrayed by a fickle and changeable wind, we decided to head back for lunch and a much needed break.
Over lunch we talked about the morning’s events and discussed our alternatives. We had this safari area booked for five days and it looked as though we were going to need every day if we were going to take an above average bull. There were plenty of 36” to 40” bulls available, and indeed most of the other hunters who had hunted this area had taken bulls in this size range, but I had always hoped to get a really good bull and the vision of the 45” bull at the waterhole had burned itself into my brain.
My second rifle on this trip was my BRNO 375 H&H which, with a five round magazine capacity and PME QD mounts fitted with a Leupold 1.5-5x, is itself a very capable buffalo rifle and I had brought a supply of hand-loaded Hornady 300 grain FMJs just in case. Charlie had been carrying this rifle as the back-up but it also provided me with the possibility of reverting to a scoped rifle should that prove necessary. Over lunch I became aware that Charlie was already thinking that I may have no choice but to use the scoped BRNO; the buffalo were just too wary after so much attention all year. To be honest, I was starting to think the same way, but I had put too much work into load development and practice with the double to discard it early in the hunt. I made up my mind that I would revert to the BRNO only on the last day and then I silently prayed that I was not going to regret that decision.
After lunch we headed back out after the herds and then began a repeat performance of the morning’s events. After several unsuccessful stalks on a herd with another 40” plus bull, Charlie suddenly decided on a new tactic.
This time, when the herd ran, Charlie turned to me and said “Quick, we’ll run with them!”
We jumped up and sprinted forward through the dust. The trackers and game scout followed but at a distance. The herd ran for about 200 yards and this time when they stopped to look over their shoulders we were right there with them. While they stood there amazed at our presence we tried desperately to find the big bull that we had seen with them and I tried to steady by heaving chest for a shot should I decide to take it. However, before we could make out the bull amongst the mass of horns and settling dust, the herd ran again, and so did we. Running through the bush, with the sun burning our necks, the sweat and dust stinging our eyes and the thornbush tearing at our clothes and skin, I began to wonder again about my wisdom in insisting on using the double rifle. In fact, running through the African bush, chasing a herd of potentially dangerous animals lead me to question our sanity more than once.
The herd stopped again and this time we inadvertently ran into the rear section of the herd. We tried in vain to pick out the bull while keeping a close eye on the rest of the herd. There were several buffalo only about 15 yards away and I must confess that I spent only a little time looking for the bull and most of the time watching them. Then the herd ran again and we followed. We continued with this tactic for quite some time. On several occasions the herd ran into some fairly thick scrub and we were forced to approach with more caution but, each time they ran, we ran with them.
Eventually, the herd had had enough of us and the last time we saw them they were still running and no longer stopping to see where we were. During the chase, we had crossed one of the vehicle tracks we had used earlier and, as it was now late in the afternoon, we turned down this track and headed back towards the car. Dusk wasn’t far off and while I was tired, sore and ready to call it quits for the day, I was nevertheless excited and still buzzing from the day’s events. I was also glad that I hadn’t been forced to decide on a lesser bull than the one we had seen at the waterhole; there was still a chance of finding him!
We’d walked about a kilometre, or two, when we passed a grassy glade. Charlie remarked that is was probably where the buffalo grazed on an evening and that we should pay it more attention.
Noticing a dark mass amongst the trees, on the edge of the glade, I said “I think that there are buffalo in there now.”
Charlie looked where I indicated and then quickly lead me off the track, down-wind of the glade, and through the trees bordering the glade. I had forgotten to bring my binoculars with me, following lunch, and so was forced to rely on my own eyesight and Charlie’s use of his binoculars. We paralleled the glade, walking half-stooped and stopping every now and again to ‘glass’ the herd. From Charlie’s observations I now realised that there was a whole herd of buffalo feeding along the edge of the glade but they were mostly obscured by the trees and scrub. We moved forward and checked out each buffalo as they became visible but they were mostly cows and small bulls.
I was bringing up the rear, after watching several buffalo that were now behind us, and we had just ghosted around a clump of thornbush when Charlie froze with his attention fixed on something yet unseen by me.
Then Charlie half turned towards me and, in a hurried but hushed voice, said “Quick, it’s the big one, use my shoulder and shoot!”
I rose up and peered over Charlie’s shoulder and there stood a truly magnificent bull. If he wasn’t the same 45” bull that we had see at the waterhole on the first night, it didn’t matter because this bull was every bit as good. As I quickly took in the scene, the first thing that struck me was that this buffalo was standing, only 60 yards away, in the open with no cover whatsoever. This was the only buffalo that we had seen throughout the hunt without a hundred yards of scrub and foliage in the way to block our vision or a shot.
The second thing that I noticed was that the bull was about to change all that, and very quickly. He had seen us and was poised for flight as the double settled on Charlie’s left shoulder and the sights settled onto the buffalo’s vitals. My pre-hunt practice now paid off as I began to squeeze the trigger. I didn’t think about the recoil, although I did briefly hope that the double, under recoil, wouldn’t hit Charlie in the side of the head. Nor did I have to think about sight alignment. I put the big ivory foresight on the bull’s vital area and, as I squeezed, lots of wounded buffalo stories ran, unbidden, through my mind till they were shattered by the discharge of the double. As I came back down, out of the recoil, I saw the buffalo run to the right but his gait was odd, his back hunched in the classic sign of a good heart shot, and his progress was slow. The Woodleigh 480 grain soft point had obviously hit the mark.
Charlie’s voice cut through my thoughts “It’s a good hit but hit him again!”
I had been training myself for months to be prepared to follow-up all of my shots. In my discussions with Charlie, prior to the hunt, he had indicated that it was perhaps the commonest mistake to look for the effects of the first shot at the expense of necessary follow up shots. Even when practicing at my local rifle range, I had always followed through and fired the second barrel on target. Accordingly, I was already stepping in front of Charlie, and swinging the double onto the bull, as he issued the command. The second barrel was loaded with a Woodleigh 480 grain solid but I was too eager, and overcome by excitement, and as a result this shot passed through the buffalo’s shoulder but a bit too high for any real effect.
The bull was trying to run with the herd and was momentarily hidden by a large termite mound. I began to run forward, to get a clear shot, but Charlie held me back until the rest of the herd had cleared the immediate area. By the time that the buffalo ran clear of the termite mound I had completed my reload and I was waiting for him. He had only covered around 50 yards, from where I’d first hit him, and now he was unable to follow the herd. He stopped behind some light bushes but I could still see him clearly enough to put another solid through his lungs. At this shot he turned to flee and I gave him the other solid through his haunch and angled towards the chest cavity. He covered another 10 yards and piled up.
As I ran up to him, I thought that he was trying to stand, so I gave him 2 more solids at a low angle from behind. As I again reloaded, I moved alongside of him, but at a respectful distance, till I was adjacent with his chest. He was still moving slightly, and with all of the horror stories about how dangerous wounded buffalo can be flooding my brain, I have him another left and right through his heart.
I was reloading again when Charlie ran up and shouted “Stop, stop, he is dead!”
The author with his 46″ Cape buffalo from the Chirisa Safari Area of Zimbabwe.
It was then that I realised that the bull was now lying still and a quick prod of his eyes, with the muzzle of the rifle, showed that he was indeed dead. The whole episode had taken very little time, a couple of minutes at the most, but it was the most action packed couple of minutes of my life. In retrospect, it would be safe to say that I got a bit carried away with the eight rounds that I drilled this bull with, but I really didn’t want him to get up (I’ve read far too much Capstick!) and he was such an outstanding trophy that I didn’t want to risk losing him.
Charlie later agreed that most of my shots were unnecessary, not that he was complaining as it was far more preferable to following up a wounded and very angry buffalo! As the dust settled, my pulse began to settle too and I was overcome by mixed feelings of sadness, for the buffalo, and elation at the success of the hunt. This was the second phase of my first African hunt and this buffalo was my first dangerous game animal. To further add to the thrill, I had taken him the way that I had always wanted and that was on foot with an open-sighted and classic big game rifle. My mixed emotions soon cleared and it was only with a touch of sadness that I examined the bull in detail and, although it had only taken a single day of hunting, I knew that I had well and truly earned this trophy. I also realised that I had been the fortunate recipient of a huge amount of good luck.
As we stood there, admiring the bull, the trackers and game scout finally caught up to us as they had fallen well behind, and out of sight, during the stalk. Charlie wanted to keep the actual shooting party small, so as not to spook the herd, so he had instructed them to hang well back. However, I noted that their approach was a little hesitant and definitely full of caution. As they had not witnessed the finale to the hunt, I suspect that the barrage that I had fired at the bull had given them the impression that the situation had turned decidedly nasty and that there may have been a couple of dead white guys that they would have to scrape up off of the local scenery. They seemed quite relieved when they saw us both standing over the bull. I don’t think that their relief was out of affection for Charlie and I. In truth, I suspect that the relief was more to do with not having to worry about running into an angry and victorious buffalo, who was looking to add a couple of more humans to his credit. Or perhaps the relief, that we were alive, meant that they were spared the paperwork and bureaucracy that would accompany the death of a tourist hunter and his PH.
Charlie, the PH, his two trackers and the game scout pose with the big buffalo bull.
As we examined the buffalo, I found it a little hard to come to the realisation that we had taken the big bull we had seen at the waterhole. However, Charlie pointed to the shape and sweep of the horns and to a large depression, in the front face of the right horn, and remarked that he had noticed this depression on the bull at the waterhole. Later, the video I had taken at the waterhole confirmed it. The buffalo which now lay at my feed was the same one whose vision, silhouetted as he drank at the waterhole against the backdrop of that impressive Zimbabwean sunset, had been burned into my thoughts. I passed my pocket tape measure to Charlie and we measured him at just a fraction under 46” wide and Charlie estimated that he would score about 120 SCI points which would place him fairly well in the record book. That night I floated around the camp and not just because we drank a few too many celebratory beers.
During the caping out and butchering in camp, we had further opportunities to examine the damage the double had inflicted on the bull and we were able to recover several of the Woodleigh projectiles that I had fired into him 1.. The 480 grain softpoint, which had been the first shot through the heart, had formed into a perfect mushroom shape and had lodged under the skin on the offside. The retained weight of this projectile was 464 grains or 96% of the original weight. We only recovered three solids, the others had exited, and the ones we recovered seemed to be completely undamaged with the exception of the rifling marks. I think that I could have reloaded the solids and shot them again. These Woodleigh products certainly seem to live up to their reputation of being excellent big game projectiles.
Butchering of the buffalo consisted of halving the bull so that it could be transported back to camp.
Packed and ready to leave Chirisa for the next phase of the hunt. With half a buffalo, under the gear, the Toyota is well down on the springs!
We broke camp the next day, four days earlier than planned, and headed up to Matetsi for the next phase of the hunt which was for a sable antelope. While the buffalo hunt had been shorter than planned, the time we spent in Chirisa had been outstanding. Charlie’s professionalism and good company, the friendliness and efficiency of the trackers, skinners and camp staff, and taking a buffalo bull better than I had dared to hope for (although I had dreamed of it!) had all combined to make for a memorable, and perhaps unbeatable, first African hunt. Of course, the next hunt we’ll be looking for a 47” bull but I think that we will have our work cut out for us in that endeavour 2.. In fact, I ribbed Charlie about this point for the rest of the hunt and it would go something like:
“Charlie, seeing as we’ve started with such an outstanding trophy bull, how do you propose to better this one when I come back next time?”
Most of the time Charlie just smiled, but on one occasion he simply answered “Elephant!”
Hmmm, elephant? Now that is an interesting thought!
© Robert Pretty 1992
Notes:
- In order to be able to recover the buffalo, and take it back to camp, we had to cut the animal in half so that it would fit into the Toyota 4WD. One half we donated to all of the game scouts of Chirisa, to supplement their meagre rations and pay, and we kept the other half to feed our safari for the coming weeks.
- The truth is that, with time and maturity I have come to realise that bettering this animal is extremely unlikely. In addition, it is better game management if we concentrate on older animals who have already contributed their genes to the herds. So, while I have not managed to hunt buffalo since this hunt, my next hunt (next year?) will not be for a bigger trophy but, instead, a true duggaboy; and old timer who has been kicked out of the herds, with worn or broken horns and a ill-tempered disposition to go with his mean looks.
Leave a Reply