Day 8 Dagga Boy By Al Banes

Day 8 Dagga Boy

By Al Banes

My August 2011 Zim journal reads, “Humani Ranch, Southeastern Zimbabwe, Save River Valley on the Turgwe River.” Seven days without a shot opportunity on Cape buffalo, and you start to think the odds are against you, that this is not your time…

Zim PH, Butch Coaton, and I had worked together on some solid plans this trip to take nyati on Roger Whittall’s, Humani Ranch in southeast Zimbabwe, with me carrying my Sako 85L in .375HH mag with a Trijicon 1-4X. However, taking some plains game was enough.

On Day 8, we planned to check the tracks of the “Magnificent 7”, as I thought of them, an elusive group of old bulls we had been pursuing all week. Instead, we went south on Humani after picking up Jaie, a young, hot-shot tracker, Mazondi, Butch’s tried and true man, and Absalom, the more senior tracker, who had spotted a tuskless elephant for me two years ago, in Zim’s northern Dande province. Off we went at 5:45 a.m. and by 6:10 a.m. we were in the field having crossed tracks of five Dagga Boys.

We stopped the truck, readied our kits and checked our weapons. I routinely put four rounds in the .375 (holds 4+1), usually a Barnes Triple-Shock soft on top of three 300-grain Hornady monolithic solids. I had taken two other buffs, a cow Al Banes Hillsborough, NC (left) with Butch Coaton PH Harare, Zimbabwe (right) with a 1600 lb, adversarial, Cape buffalo that ambushed us from 9 meters. Eight shots in six seconds ended the altercation, but it was an eternity that we both relived for weeks, when the sun went down.

Zambia ‘The Real Africa’

and an old bull with single shots. The terrain sometimes only permitted a few yards visibility to several hundred yards. It was a toss-up as to what power to pick on the Trijicon. I chose 2X because I expected a close-up and personal shot. I got my wish!

We tracked these buffs for about two hours. We had hit warm-to-the-fingerstick spoor within 20 minutes. I carried my rifle at the ready, like a bird gun. We tracked, found more spoor, tracked, and watched the woods and the wind. We were in and out of thick, thorny acacia and grass, and then in rocky kopjes, with some depressions and elevations, then in more open areas. The buffs moved in a counterclockwise circle and I knew they were on to us when we started the second huge circle of a few hundred yards right over our own tracks! They weren’t running, or grazing. They were leading us on! More spoor, wind with us, then against us. Several times the trackers stopped and saw something… No, nothing. Then right at the two-hour mark, Butch glassed a huge, deep curled monster buff about 180 yards off at the edge of an acacia stand, really thick stuff with jesse tangle as well. I got my Leica up and quickly saw what he was talking about - a huge rump, a quick glance, and gone.

We hustled parallel to the acacia stand from several hundred yards off, moving downwind. After a proper distance, we slowed, then crept and crawled toward our quarry. Butch glassed the acacia, dense and gray, and there was a Dagga Boy, 7080 yards off. Not the monster, but he was facing us, chest forward, head up. It was a difficult sight picture: a dark spot with a lighter, top horn. We crouched. The sky was gray, given a second day of cloudy drizzle. No standing, as we would bugger the ambush.

Butch, on hands and knees, but glassing towards the buff, asked slowly, “Do you see him?”

I peered through the Trijicon, and “Yes,” I said, “the dark spot, yes!”

“Put the barrel on my shoulder,” Butch whispered hoarsely. “OK.” I slowly moved the .375 barrel up to his left shoulder, trying to get a sight picture on the buff at the edge of the acacia stand. In the shadows, other dark spots were about, making me doubt that I was aiming at the right spot through the grass beneath his chin. Now I could see the buff’s horn, his head up, as he peered in our direction. I had to assume he was facing us directly.

Butch whispered hoarsely, “Do you have solids?”

“Yes,” I said, for the second time.

“Put one directly in his chest, not too high! Can you see his chin?”

“Not really,” I thought, then, “Yes, I see it!”

“Now, down a bit.”

I put the green dot on the buff’s mouth, took it down half-way in the phantom chest, let out a half-breath and squeezed the trigger. His head went down at the shot, the trackers said. I was still coming off the recoil. He headed off to the left, back over our tracks. He was really moving. We raced to the spot where he had stood.

They “made” us! The “Magnificent Seven” Cape buffalo on the sandy bottom of the Turgwe River near the Humani ranch in the Save River basin southeast of Harare, Zimbabwe, August 2011.

“Did you hit him!?” Butch shouted, “Were you far enough down?”

“Yes!” I was speaking to Butch’s back while clutching my bouncing binos to my vest as we slowed to the target spot. “I was halfway again down the black that I could see!”

We inspected the area that minutes before had been the buff. No blood, no hair, no evidence that he had been hit at all! Hmmmm? Momentary doubt. The trackers returned after a quick reconnaissance of the get-away and reported that he had gone off to the left with two others that had boiled out of the acacia. We picked up tracks, but no blood. The buff had stopped running after 100

The San people rock wall off at our left and behind the kopje to our right lay our bull, in ambush (Larry Norton original pen and ink art. Scene 1). Later, Jai inspecting the bushman settlement atop a 30 meter high rock kopje.

yards. He was walking. ”Are you sure you hit him?” Butch queried. ”Yes, I am sure!”

Then I saw bright, red, foamy blood about every yard. The shot would be lethal, but this Dagga Boy was not ready to go and, as it turned out, he wanted to take us with him!

We came up to a termite mound about 10 feet high. Butch turned to me with a smile. ”Rrrright, let’s stop here a bit and let him lie up.”

As we waited, Absalom selected a shaft of yellow grass and carefully inserted it into a tunnel in the side of the termite mound. He let the grass rest, then slowly withdrew it. At the end of the shaft, was a bright, red-bodied, termite with pincers firmly embedded. He carefully picked the termite off by the body, put the pincers between his teeth then bit down, spitting out the pincers and crunching on the termite. He repeated the process, happily consuming the succulent insects.

We waited at least 30 minutes for the buff to stiffen up, then started back on the wounded beast’s tracks, and there he was, this impossibly huge figure broadside to us, about 100-120 yards ahead amidst clumps of blackish rock. The buff steadied and ran. I fired a solid, Butch fired his .458 Winchester, then ran and fired again. The solid pinging off a distant rock made a sound like a ricochet from the “Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. Butch turned to me. “We are going to have a problem with this one!”

As we would learn later, no new hits were in the animal, and we knew he was likely making a plan to ambush us. We carried on for 400-500 yards when we bumped a pair of black rhino and calves! We gave them a wide berth, but Jaie started to head towards them, and they picked up our scent.

Butch angrily motioned Jaie to come with us. We stalked another 20 yards around the left of a kopje that was three yards high, 40 yards long and about 12 yards wide. Farther off to the left, about a kilometer away, was a much higher kopje, perhaps 30 yards, and we could just make out an ancient dry-stone wall of granite rocks. The trackers pointed to it, and Jaie said that his father had told him it was built by the Bushmen - San people, I surmised. The area was known as Zamara or Zamora, thousands of years old.

So there we were, with black rhino 60 seconds ago on our right, the rock

Four meters and closing! (Larry Norton original pen and ink art. Scene 3). We jumped aside and fired again! (Larry Norton original art, scene 4).

formation on our left. Two distractions we did not need. Then, just to the right from the rocks, and nine yards away out of sight in the kopje dividing us from four rhino, was the wounded bull. Shot through the chest from 70 yards, his right lung bleeding, and the solid lodged in his grass-filled gut, this bull had saved plenty for us.

I was still thinking of San people and the stacked stones when, for an instant, I thought that Jaie had snapped a jesse branch.

But no! It was this horned, black, contorted thing, rising from its haunches, front hooves impossibly high, at the level of those massive horns. Silence, but for the sliding rocks and cracking branches. Butch’s .458 exploded to my left, and I instantly snap-shot my .375. Both shots hit the buff’s swinging head.

He was above us, leaping over the rock wall. My solid hit just over his right eye, a centimeter into his boss. Butch fired again into the mouth. “Boss in the way,” I thought, firing through the right ear pinna and down the neck, trying for a spine shot, he was so close. This was an ugly, deadly, moving target, now at three or four yards and closing. Second shot, short shuck. Time slowed down. “Huh, a jam!” I thought as I cleared and slammed home the bolt, firing from my waist at the buff’s head! Butch fired a third shot as he moved in a nimble dance just to the left. I side-stepped as well and fired into the neck again, hoping for a spine break. The animal kept coming, hung in the jesse in the second rock barrier.

Butch’s fourth shot struck home and the buffalo fell in the open space where we had been standing seconds before. I finished off a fourth at his head, reloaded and put one down his spine. All this happened in about six seconds.

I let out a huge “Yee Haaw!” having survived a raging bull onslaught. All the trackers pranced and jabbered excitedly in Shona, retelling each other what had just happened.

Butch and company trekked back to retrieve the Cruiser. I lay down, alone, at the kopje ambush with our buffalo where, moments before, he had been. It was an hour before the vehicle arrived.

We loaded up and went to camp where we told and retold the story. But I relived the day’s events that night in my dreams – terrible - and thankful that this Dagga Boy did not get us.

He wanted to, and it was close!

Albert J. Banes PhD is a Professor Emeritus in Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, NC and President of Flexcell International Corporation, a biotech company in Burlington, NC. Butch Coaton PH is a professional hunter of 35 years from Harare, Zimbabwe. He hunts throughout Africa. See Butch’s website at butchcoatonsafaris.com. Pen and ink art by lifelong Zim wildlife artist, Larry Norton of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (larrynorton.co.za).

The Sako 85L Kodiak rifle and 1-4X Trijicon scope-a great combination, from this author’s standpoint. The action was smooth and tight, balance was just right, the barrel length great for quick point and shoot, on or off sticks. The Trijicon’s green dot left no uncertainty as to where your bullet was headed. Both the .458 (solid below) and .375 Barnes bullets retained mass. An arduous hunt, uncertainty, the camaraderie of the hunters and professionalism of the entire crew. Thank you Butch and trackers and Thank you Africa.