Nile Buffalo
The pièce de résistance......
On our first afternoon in camp, after getting settled in, we headed out to first check the rifles. Once we were done with this, we then headed off to hunt. I don't think it was 30 minutes later that Jacques stopped the truck.
Almost straight in front of us just off the road to the right you could clearly see the legs of a buffalo that was standing behind a tree that obscured the body. In short order, the buffalo moved off giving us our first view of his head. Jacques called it a shooter and down off the truck we went to put the stalk on.
Is this really happening this fast? Yes, but a bit too fast and with it a bit of a brain fart. Threatening skies had me put on my rain jacket before we left camp. As we got rifles ready, I thought to myself that I should take the jacket off. There was no need to hurry the buffalo was not boogered. But I decided to just go.
We got pretty close to the bull, but kind of stuck for a moment where we could not get a shot but also shouldn't move. But then the bull did what Jacques wanted to and we moved up into a position that the bull would move into and give me a shot. As Jacques put up the sticks to get me ready for the shot, I pulled the my .470 double down off my shoulder.
And with that generated this fine crumple sound from my rain jacket that served as something of an air raid siren for the buffalo.....and he was gone.
So the next day, the first full day of hunting we are back out looking for buffalo. Sometime around mid morning Jacques gets a call from Vickram and the other guys. They've got eyes on a buffalo near the entrance to the national park. It's hanging out with a group of cattle and they think he's an old one worth us coming to take a look at.
So off we go and sure enough we see the old bull before we get to the other guys. Bouncing along Jacques can still tell it's an old buff. We go on past the bull and meet up with the other guys. After a bit of discussion, we're off on the stalk. The other guys had observed the bulll enough that they thought he was blind in his right eye. This proved to be true.
We set out after the bull who is about 300 yards away or so. We are between him and the park boundary and he is facing away from us. And as you may guess, we're using the termite mounds to conceal our approach.
The grass and dirt below is again soft and quiet. There's virtually no rocks or twigs to give away an audible alert. And the nearby Ankole cattle meandering back and forth also serve to mask any sound. Now if the wind will just hold.
We slowly close the distance. The buff has barely moved continuing to graze and use a small tree to scratch his face and head. We soon find ourselves behind a termite mound which is the last between us and the bull.
The bull is still facing away from us and Jacques sets up the sticks just off the right edge of the mound. I drop the double into the sticks, left elbow into the sling and get the bull in the view thru my RMR red dot sight.
Now if the wind does not betray us and the bull turns, this may just happen. We wait.......wait some more.......wait a bit more......heart starting to pound........wait yet again........head games begin........wait some more again.......is this bull ever going to turn?
I don't know if it was my body language or if Jacques could just tell I was starting to become unnerved, but he whispers to me what I was thinking......if this bull is blind in that right eye, we should move to the right so that his right side will be exposed.
And this is what we did. We didn't push our luck and try to get him perfectly broadside, but not too much of a quartering away angle either.
Down go the sticks and up goes the double. Now sometimes when I'm hunting, the adrenaline takes over and I get buck fevered out even on game I've taken before. And other times, I just go into the zone and become almost machine like. Why one versus the other? I haven't a clue.
This time it was fortunately the zone. I get the bull in the red dot sight, adjust to horizontally put the dot in the gap between the front legs and vertically at the middle of the shoulders. I give the rear trigger the squeeze and send the 500gr A-Frame on it's way.
Even at just 40 yards I heard the impact of the bullet. The bull immediately turns a bit to his right and takes 2-3 labored lunges. He then makes a U-turn to his left and comes back to the left the short distance he moved right.
During this I'm recovering from the recoil of the rifle and getting the bull back in the view of the red dot sight. Just as I'm getting the dot into the boiler room, the bull comes to a stop and so does the red dot on his left shoulder. I give the forward trigger a squeeze and the bullet hits home. The old bull just drops in his tracks.
Jacques and I move forward after I reload. I give him the insurance shot, but the bull does not even flinch, he's done. I asked Jacques later how much time between shots, he said less than a second. I don't know if it was that fast or not, but I do think this was one of those occasions where a double shines with the fast follow up.
Now with the bull down, we can truly assess his age. Even to neophyte, one can see he's old. Jacques estimated that he's 16 years old. I'll let the pictures speak mostly for themselves.
Note the spine. In spite of plenty of graze, this old bull was in decline. And yes that's the entry wound about 1/2 way back on his right side.
In fact he was blind in his right eye.
A few folks showed up for the butchering and took home a bunch of meat.
@Tundra Tiger, you have a thread about what a trophy buff is, this would be my response. This buff is not a record breaker by any means. I'm sure in his younger days he was a bit bigger. But then he wouldn't have had the character in his bosses that he did now.
As a hunter conservationist, I'm quite grateful and proud of the opportunity to have taken this bull. He was clearly long past his prime and physically in decline. He died quickly instead of slowly viciously from hyenas or from disease. And he provided meat to a bunch of people.
