KNOW YOUR BUFFALO

Above: Tracking buffalo can take us to some beautiful wild places.

Ideally, the buffalo bulls that should be taken are old, past their breeding years, and are often cast out of the herds. At a minimum, bulls should be old enough to be completely hard bossed. Mistakes certainly do happen in the field, but shooting a buffalo with soft bosses should be avoided when at all possible. In today’s well-managed buffalo areas, finding a suitable old bull should be attainable on virtually every hunt.

I remember my first buffalo hunt nearly 20 years ago like it was yesterday. I chartered into the Charisa Safari Area in Zimbabwe, and I absolutely could not wait to start following tracks. I had been to Africa a few times, but this was my first dangerous game hunt, and I had scrimped and saved for years to do what I thought would be my one and only buffalo hunt.

My PH, Jim, picked me up at the airstrip, and we chatted and got to know each other a bit as we drove to camp. I told Jim that I absolutely wasn’t a tape measure hunter. I wanted mature animals that were representative of the species and area. I also told him numerous times that my only criteria for a buffalo were that it had to be old enough and have a completely hard boss. I had heard from other clients that Jim just liked to have clients shoot the first animals they could and be done and dusted as early as possible. So, I really tried to drive home my desire for older animals with him that first day.

The next day we got on tracks, walked for hours in the heat, and finally came upon two bulls bedded in the thick stuff. We crawled into less than 50 yards, the closet bull was old, and Jim guessed him 40” wide, and he told me to shoot him. We were filming the hunt for a show on Outdoor Channel, and they had a rule that they would not air footage of an animal being shot while lying down, so I told Jim we had to wait for them to stand up. Of course, the fickle wind changed, the bulls blew out, and we had a 2-hour walk back to the truck in the mid-day heat. Jim was beside himself with anger, and it set a rough tone for the rest of the safari.

The next day, we were out and actually drove by a large herd of probably 80 buffalo. We continued on for a half-mile, stopped, and decided to stalk back to them with the wind in our favor. Within ten minutes, we were butt scooting closer to the herd, and Jim picked out a bull, pointed him out to me, and told me we were going to stand up, and I should shoot him as quickly as possible.

Things worked just right, I made the shot, the bull ran about 70 yards and tipped over and was done. We walked up to the fallen bull from behind, and he wasn’t very wide, but he had really big bosses. All was great until we saw him from the front, and it was obvious that he had very soft bosses and was definitely a young bull. I was not happy, and I could tell that Jim couldn’t care less. That bull probably needed another 4-5 years, he wasn’t even close to being a shooter.

I did end up shooting another buffalo on that trip, and while on the shooting sticks, I asked Jim 3 separate times if he was positive the bull was completely hard bossed. He was, and at least I was able to come home with one good bull, it just cost me the price of two!

Since that hunt, I have been fortunate to take quite a few more buffalo. I still have the same talk with every PH about only wanting older bulls. Again, mistakes can be made, but you have to strive to take old bulls. A couple of years back, I shot a nice old bull in Zambia that was standing looking straight at us at the edge if some tall grass. I placed the red dot of my Trijicon RMR2 in the middle of his chest and sent a CEB Safari Raptor straight into the boiler room. He did a 180 and disappeared into the cover.

My PH and I ran up, quickly were on his spoor, and only 60 yards away when the cover opened up a bit, we right into the bull standing facing us. I pulled up the .470, put another into his chest, and he lumbered off and fell within sight. As we walked up to him, I looked off slightly to our left, and there

Top left: Nice old bull from Tanzania taken with PH Charl Van Rooyen Top right: The author’s “mistake” 2nd bull taken in Zambia at point blank range. Below: The author’s first bull, a young one that should never have been shot.

When hunting big dangerous animals like buffalo, your gear can literally make or break a hunt, so it is very important. My overwhelming choice for a bullet on buffalo is Cutting Edge Bullets’ Safari Raptors. These all-brass bullets penetrate a few inches into the buffalo, then 6 blades sheer off and travel in a star shape and do massive trauma. Then the core continues to penetrate like a jagged solid. I have shot buffalo with a number of other bullets, some good, and some bad, but there is nothing out that can compare with a CEB in my opinion. I have ultimate confidence in them, every time.

cuttingedgebullets.com

I also think optics are very important. I use a Trijicon RMR2 reflex or red dot style sight on my double rifle, and a 2.5x12x42 AccuPoint scope on my bolt action .416. Both have illuminated aiming points that allow for precise aiming and offer very quick target acquisition for follow-up shots which can be very important on buffalo. They also allow for shooting with both eyes open, and that’s a huge plus.

trijicon.com

Lastly, I have been hunting in KUIU Tiburon shirts, shorts and pants for the past 4 years, and I have never worn anything so light, comfortable, and fast drying. The Tiburon material is basically see-through if you hold it up to the light, but it is durable, breathes, and me being a heavy sweater, it dries incredibly fast. I have found that I don’t sweat nearly as much when wearing it in hot temps because of the breathability. The Tiburon line comes in all the Kuiu camo patterns as well as solids for those who prefer those. I find myself wearing Tiburon shorts casually almost every day during summer at home.

kuiu.com

Above: Trijicon RMR2 Sight is perfect for hunting buffalo with a double

Above: CEB Safari Raptors, before and after being recovered from two buffalo. Below: A brace of great old dagga boys in Uganda.

Left:

An experienced bunch of hunters with some truly old and remarkable bulls taken in a week in Karamoja.

was another dead buffalo! The bull to the left was the original buff I had shot, and the one we had run up on, was another we didn’t know about. It wouldn’t have mattered, we were so close to him and had startled him, we most likely would have had to shoot him in self-defense, and it was a two buffalo area.

The bad thing was that the second bull had just a bit of soft boss. He was magnificent. He was a bit over 40” wide, had the best drop of any buffalo I have ever shot, and had big 17” bosses, but they were a bit soft at the front edge. In a couple more years, he would have been the kind of buffalo we all dream of. I hated that I had taken him out of the population, but we didn’t have time to assess his headgear when we ran up to him at almost point-blank range.

I was in Tanzania a while back with my old buddy Charl Van Rooyen as my PH. Charl and I are close friends, and he knows I only want old buffalo. I was hunting with my .470 double rifle again, and by necessity, we had passed some phenomenal bulls as we couldn’t get close enough for me to be comfortable with the double. We had also passed up on some bulls that were marginal on age.

On my last hunting day, we drove into a small group of bulls, and I saw a couple of definite shooters. They ran into a long narrow valley, so we followed and stayed high on one ridge. There ended up being hundreds of buffalo scattered in that valley, and we caught glimpses of quite a few good bulls, but most were on the opposite hill and 200-250 yards away.

We shadowed them down the valley, and after about a mile, Charl pointed down the hill to where I could see parts of three bulls. He said the one farthest to the right was a very old bull. He wasn’t as big as many of the 42-45” bulls we had seen, but he was definitely old. I pulled up my Swarovski binos, immediately knew he fit my criteria, and I hit him hard with a big CEB Safari Raptor. The bull dropped on the first shot but was still moving. The grass was fairly high, so from above him, I put a few more in him for insurance before we waded through the thick stuff to recover him. At the time, that was the ugliest buffalo I had ever shot, but he was perfect to me. He was obviously old, and I had taken him with a good friend at my side.

Last spring, I was able to go to buffalo heaven in the Karamoja region of Uganda. I had been twice before, and I knew that it was not uncommon to see hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of Nile buffalo per day. I only wanted to shoot very old buffalo, and I was hoping to find an ancient old “scrum cap”, or a bull that had worn his horns down to the point that only his bosses remain like a cap on the top of his head.

On day three after looking over a lot of buffalo, PH Edwin Young and I found two old bulls feeding in some hills. We watched them for a while, and when one swung his head in our direction, we saw that he really had no horns. We immediately dropped down into a small dry creek, flanked the bulls for a few hundred yards, and were able to pop up within 40 yards of the bulls who were completely oblivious of our presence.

I put the tiny green aiming point of my Trijicon AccuPoint scope low on his shoulder and sent a 370 grain CEB to its mark. The bull turned and ran straight away, and I quickly worked the bolt and put another in his back end that dropped him right there.

This was the bull of my dreams. I have taken some nice old bulls over the years, a few over the coveted 40” mark, but that old scrum cap is the pinnacle for me. That ugly skull will be displayed with prominence in my trophy, and I will never forget making that memory. Lord and COVID-19 willing, I will be back in Uganda about the time this article comes out. You can bet I will be looking for the oldest and gnarliest bull I can find, and that now is the real challenge that makes buff hunting so much fun to me. ★