By Alessandro Cabella

Bushbuck hunting… as they always say, that’s bushbuck hunting for you. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or stepping into the veld for the very first time, the bushbuck has a way of humbling you. It’s not just a hunt – it’s a test of patience, awareness, and quiet determination. And on March 24, 2026, in the Eastern Cape, that lesson came alive once again.

I was hunting alongside my good friend and professional hunter, Ryan Beattie from Dubula Hunting Safaris with his Zimbabwean tracker, Alex – a man whose eyes seemed to read the bush like a book written just for him.

The morning broke slowly over the river valley, a soft light creeping through the thorn trees. The air was cool, carrying just enough moisture to hold scent low to the ground. Perfect conditions – but bushbuck country always has the final say.

We moved carefully along the river’s edge, where thick brush meets open patches of sunlight. Ryan set the pace – slow, deliberate – while Alex scanned ahead, picking up signs most would walk straight past. A bent blade of grass, a faint track in the soft soil -the kind of details that separate a hopeful hunter from a successful one. Bushbuck don’t give themselves away easily.

We had already worked that ridge above the river at least four times. Up and down. Slow, methodical passes. Each time convinced the next sweep might reveal what we were looking for. But the bush stayed quiet. Too quiet. By around 11:30 a.m., the sun had climbed high enough to change the mood completely. The shadows shrank, the air warmed, and the bush seemed to shut down. We paused, looking back over the valley, and, for a moment, the decision almost made itself – we’d head back to Malweni.

Waiting for us there was something special: a blue wildebeest lasagna, prepared by the chef at the stone cottage in Malweni. A meal we had been talking about all morning. Not just food, but a reflection of real passion – game meat handled with care, transformed into something memorable. The kind of culinary talent that deserves recognition, built on respect for the hunt and the ingredients it provides.

It was tempting. Very tempting. But bushbuck hunting has a way of asking one more question before you leave. Do you give it one last try? So, we stayed.

And that’s when it happened. Alex’s voice came through in a whisper over the radio – he had spotted a good bushbuck ram. Ryan and I moved back quickly but carefully, every step measured. We settled in, watching as the ram moved in and out of the bush… appearing for a second, then gone again. In and out. Always just enough to keep you locked in, never enough for a clean shot. We waited. Time stretched.

Then Ryan quietly set the sticks and signaled. Slowly, slowly, I moved in behind him and eased the .270 WSM onto the rest. The heat had built up by then. The humidity clung to everything. Sweat ran down my face, my hair dripping onto the scope, blurring the sight picture. It was hard to stay focused, harder still to stay steady.

Down below us, about 150 meters off the ridge, the bushbuck stood half-hidden in the dark, tangled brush. I could see one horn clearly through the scope – but that was it. The rest of him was concealed.

He was quartering slightly, alert. I had to picture it – build the shape in my mind, anticipate where the body lay beyond what I could see. In that kind of terrain, you don’t always get a full picture. You get fragments – and you trust your experience to fill in the rest.

Seconds felt like minutes. Then, suddenly, it happened. He stepped forward – just enough. A split second. That was all. The shot broke clean. And the bushbuck dropped instantly. Silence followed. A moment that held everything – the patience, the pressure, the precision.

But the hunt wasn’t over yet. The recent heavy rains had swollen the river below, turning what would normally be a simple crossing into one more challenge. We made our way down carefully, picking our line, feeling the strength of the current as we crossed, slow, deliberate, making sure every step held. On the other side, we found him. A beautiful ram, lying exactly where he had fallen. A quiet moment of respect followed – one that every true hunt carries. With success behind us, we made our way back to Malweni.

And there it was, waiting just as promised – the blue wildebeest lasagna, rich and full of flavor, prepared by the chef at the stone cottage. After a hunt like that, it was more than a meal – it was a reward earned the hard way. We sat down, tired but satisfied, and devoured it alongside a fresh bottle of South African rosé wine, the perfect end to a day that had demanded everything and given something unforgettable in return.

That’s bushbuck hunting for you. Unpredictable. Demanding. And unforgettable.

By Glenn W. Geelhoed

“Can you hear that? That’s Ole Charlie, the most experienced of the hounds, and he only makes that baying sound when the dogs have treed a cat!” Jeff Ford said to me and my PH Charl Watts. “Already?” I asked, incredulous. This time, it happened in the reverse of my usual hunting pattern.

Charl and I had joked, not altogether without serious intent on his end: “Just once, instead of waiting until the very last minute to score, could we do it up front this time to take the pressure off?

“But that way I would miss the hunt! There are days that one has a good hunt, and there are days that one has a good shoot, and they are not always the same day!” I had said. This day, the good shoot preceded the good hunt.

The dawn was ideal, as this coastal area of the Southern Ocean along Eastern Cape Province had had unusual rainfall and was greener and with better morning scent-holding dew than usual. That meant that the three teams of dog handlers had put out the hounds after they had paused at 4:00 a.m. to listen in the dark for the barking of a bushbuck as a warning that danger was near. It could be one of the diurnal predators like the African Crowned Eagle that picks off the newborns of the bushbuck, or nocturnal pack hunters like the jackals. But these predators are nowhere near as efficient as the caracal, a predator with a kill rate of over 95% with its incredible pounces of three to five meters high, snatching flying grouse and taking on almost all newborns of game species and domestic livestock.

The dew held the scent, and the pre-dawn darkness was just glimmering in the east as an orange ball rose over the mountain horizon. The fynbos (the unique regional flora that contains 80% of the species in the continent of Africa) was so dense with various species that I could look in each direction and count a dozen kinds I had never seen before. The volcanic loam was good for raising pineapples, the biggest agricultural industry here.

We were going through Bathurst, a town that looked like a proper English country village with an advertised historic pub named the “Pig and Whistle” established in 1832 – the oldest in the country.  I was asking lots of questions about caracal behavior when I heard the walkie-talkie radio crackle. Jeff was talking in the “click language” of Xhosa to Marone, his lifelong childhood friend and hunting playmate on the family farm that was established in 1837.  Marone had cut a hot track!

We went to collect Tim, a dog-handler Jeff had brought in from another PH in the year 2000. These are all one family and are treated with utmost respect because they know what they are doing and one can simply turn them loose and know that each will be doing the right thing. We got Tim, who was carrying an old double-barrel shotgun for defense, and a few hounds that stay with him – small groups of the 16-hound pack remain with their respective handlers – and we drove to an abandoned pineapple slope. We eased on down the edge as the sun had not yet crested the mountain at the east, but left a pink glow behind us as we would be going in the opposite direction from the din of bellowing hounds.

Jeff took out the vintage autoloader 12-guage without any explanation except to say that the first shell was ‘triple-A’ and the next one was threes, which made no sense to me as a 00-buck, No. 2 goose shot, and No. 6 birdshot guy. But there was no time to chat, and we hustled off upwind in the direction of the excited hounds. We slipped behind some cactus and yucca and looked through the leaves at a tree with a big cat ten meters up and looking away. Its head was turned to the hounds on the right side of my line of vision. He was 37 meters away and, unaware of our presence, instead was looking down on two of the hounds that had tried to climb the tree and were five meters below him, and slipping off and bawling.

Jeff handed me the 12-guage and said, “Shoot the body and not the head which is facing right.” It was 7:03 a.m. in a glimmer of dawn’s ruby light.

I shot, the cat swayed, and then the front half swung upside down with the rear legs caught in the fork of branches. I was close enough to see that I had shot a big tomcat. After the hounds’ hard effort tracking and treeing, their bloodlust was up, but I was told the handlers were quite ready nearby to pull the dogs off as they would maul the cat.

Tim climbed up the lower branches of the tree in his gum boots and poked with a broken-off branch to dislodge the cat, easing it down into his grasp, and handing it to me without a dog ever getting to it. Charl had my phone and took a video as I turned to him holding the cat with its tufted ears and face toward the camera. It was a five-year-old male with a lot of kills to its credit.  Its 14-kilogram heft proved it hadn’t gone hungry.

The hunt was our first, and it was over in four minutes. This contrasted with my last-minute leopard after going without a sighting for 14-days, or the last-minute greater kudu in Limpopo at sunset after a full week of hunting the specific bull. More significantly, Jeff had hunted here with John Maclaurin who had not seen a cat or crossed a track in the first four days of the hunt, so we threatened to send a photo to John with the date changed to 5 September to show we had put in our time on this hunt!

Now that we had experienced the good shoot, we would invest the time and waiting and further scouting to have a good hunt. We went over the fynbos as the sun rose and we could admire the surroundings with the cat in the bag. And I had a whole mount done by Tim Owage of Timoland Taxidermy.

I had flown to South Africa from Kigali, Rwanda, after I had run the Rwenzori Marathon, starting at the Equatorial marker in Kasese, Uganda, running pre-dawn at the 2,850-meter altitude of the Mountains of the Moon. Charl had introduced me to Jeff Ford, who heads the Predator Control in the part of the Eastern Cape near Port Alfred. He is welcomed by all his farming neighbors to range his hounds on their lands because they often lose more than fifty percent of their goats’ kids in this late August springtime in the southern hemisphere. For some farmers who have the elusive blue duiker on their properties, the bigger loss is the two-thirds of the duiker young to caracal and jackals, as the blue duiker is a coveted trophy they hope to conserve.

Charl and I went in pursuit of black-backed jackal and scored, immediately adjacent to a site of a historic calamity: Near the small Eastern Cape village of Martindale, right at the site of our successful jackal hunts, was the renowned tragedy of South African history’s worst rail disaster where one of the goods trucks derailed on the Blaauwkrantz Bridge over the Blaauwkrantz Pass and, with the three carriages and the guard’s van, plunged into the ravine 200 feet (61 metres) below. Of the 55 passengers, 28 were killed and 22 seriously injured. The bridge was rebuilt in 1928.

We climbed the nearby mountain slopes in search of mountain reedbuck, with several days of “good hunts,” but not the same as the “good shoot” with which we had started with a bang. We could enjoy these hunts without pressure, since we already had the cat in the bag.

After a full week of further hunts exploring the fynbos of the Eastern Cape, we got together and did most of what is one of the primary reasons for going hunting – swapping good fireside stories and sharing good meals among great friends, while making plans for the next good hunt/good shoot adventure.

By Hendrik White

I recently read a book by Wilbur Smith called Assegai. In a nutshell, it’s about Leon Courtney, a professional hunter and his adventures. During his tenure as professional hunter, he guided none other than Theodore Rooseveldt and his son. They hunted for weeks on end. They shot a plethora of game, big and small. The book describes incredible hunting stories where the hunter takes his time, pursues his quarry for days on end and eventually – the moment all hunters dream about – the culmination of days of blood, sweat, and tears for the perfect opportunity, the perfect shot.

This was not that.

In today’s world, the luxury of time is, well, a luxury. And to be honest, a luxury I can scarcely afford. Most of us don’t have the time anymore to take a couple of weeks for our very own safari. Make no mistake, though, when the opportunity came along to go hunting, I grabbed it with both hands. Even though it was only for a weekend and nearly 500 km away, and very, very late in the hunting season – September.

This hunt was different in that I wasnt the one who was going to be pulling the trigger. My little sister had been gifted an impala ram for her birthday. Having recently shot with my .30-06, she wanted to hunt it with “boeta se geweer”. This is what merited me the invitation to go hunt with her on a picturesque farm north of Louis Trichardt.

Time was flying and before I knew it, it’s the Monday, the week before the hunt. I had nothing prepared. I had recently worked up a load and decided that I was going to just load a couple of rounds using said load and we’d be off to the races. Well, that was until I was gifted a box of 180 grain Nosler E-Tips by my hunting and reloading mentor – I simply had to try them. So I hastily loaded up a few loads Monday evening, using a combination of Gordons Reloading Tool and QuickLoad. I drove to Irene Arms the Tuesday during my lunch hour to go test the loads. Lucky me! The first load was right on the node with the group size increasing slightly as i veered away from the node.

Wednesday evening, I loaded up the balance of the E-tips. Thursday evening, I was packed and ready to leave Friday morning at 04:00 am – I would be driving to Polokwane, working there until the afternoon when we would leave for the hunt.

We arrived at about 21:00 on the incredibly beautiful, albeit dark, farm. As we idle through the “tweespoor” road, we admire the massive Boababs scattered among the Mopanie littered bush. The sight of red, sandy earth combined with the green, fluttering leaves of Mopanie makes me forget about time just for a short while. I snapped back to reality as we near the farmhouse. We had to hurry to get the fire going as we had to still braai up some delicious beef short rib and garlic bread and of course, start the donkey so we could have a shower before settling in and falling asleep to the tranquil bushveld’s night noises. As flames of our fire started to dwindle, we confirmed a couple of final arrangements for the day’s hunt ahead. “You can shoot two impala rams, our host said.” “Please try and do so early, as tomorrow’s temperatures are in the high thirties and we need to get the carcasses hanging in the cold room asap”. “Dankie oom,” I replied.

My main goal for the hunt was to get my little sister onto an impala ram, but I would lie if I said I wasn’t excited that maybe I could also have the opportunity to take a ram. As I started falling asleep, the thought of the searing heat lingered with me – “what if we take too long to get the carcass gutted and it goes off?” “What if there isn’t enough time for the carcass to cool down enough for transport? “Again – time is the enemy.

05:00 am Saturday, the alarm I set on my mobile rings, I am quick to stop it as I was already awake, too excited to sleep. I quickly grab a coffee, and we hastily make our way to the shooting range – a final zero check. My father had also brought his .243 Winchester Sako L579 with. It used to belong to his father and still had the “ancient” 4×32 Nikko Sterling as optic. Since little sis insists on using my .30-06, I carried the .243, just in case I got an opportunity. It is a fantastic little rifle, perfect for carrying in the bush – lightweight, well balanced and the low magnification scope aided in this regard. And the 100grain PMP factory ammo made for a decent punch in the bushveld (although some may argue).

Little sis however, was carrying a bit heavier – the .30-06 is a Husqvarna 640 built on an FN commercial 98 action with quite a heavy contour 24” barrel. It has a lightweight scope on though – Leupold VX Freedom 3-9×40 Duplex CDS.

After we checked zero on the rifles, we followed our guide (required by rules – as there were also buffalo on the farm) as we started off checking for spoor near the watering holes.

We found some tracks and started making our way through the dense bush. It was tough going, especially for little sis. Not only was it already 27 degrees Celsius at 06:00 am, but walk and stalk style of hunting is a first for her – having only ever hunted from a hide or a vehicle. As you might know, walk-and-stalk hunting is a totally different beast.

As we zigzag through the mopanie trees, we finally see them. There are 3 rams in the herd, 2 younger rams and one very old ram. He does not have the biggest set of horns, but they are old and worn. As I look at little sis, I see those telltale signs of buck fever. She takes rest against a tree, aims. Bark! The herd melts away in the thick bush. We slowly follow, sneaking from tree to tree to hide our silhouette and also try and hide from the scorching sun. The Impala seems to be just one step ahead of us. Each time we get our sights on them, either the ram is behind a tree or brush, or there are ewes directly behind him. We followed the herd until about 12:30. The heat was now almost unbearable, I had a quick look at my cellphone – 38 degrees. Yep, it was time for a lunch break.

We started the journey back to the farmhouse. Usually, you would have a nice lunch, take a dip in the pool, tell some hunting stories and then much later in the afternoon go for a walk again. However, like I mentioned – time was against us, the longer we take to get our quarry, the less time the carcass will have to cool. We had to get going again.

To try and win some time, we decided to take the cruiser and spot the herd, where after we would put a stalk on them. We jumped on the back of the cruiser, ready to go, sunscreen applied, rehydrated – but still hot. Through the deafening cicada we can barely hear the well-known sound of starter fighting against a flat battery. Not now ! I thought to myself, we are already running out of time. A couple of precious minutes later we managed to switch batteries from another vehicle. The hunt is back on.

Time ticks away so quickly, we spot a couple of wildebeest, a small herd of kudu cows, some warthogs. But no Impala. We try and shift on the back of the cruiser to try and hide our legs and arms under our shadows – however the African sun is way too clever for this and I can feel my calves baking.

Finally, we spot them. We jump from the bakkie and start our stalk. Trying to ignore the flies buzzing around our faces, we dare not wave them away in fear of the impala seeing us. This time there isn’t much cover to rest against for little sis when we saw the ram. She rested the rifle on the guide’s shoulder, me standing behind her to film it. Before she could take the shot, the wind direction switches and we are made. The ram’s bark is followed by a clattering of hooves as they make their way over a koppie.

This was our chance to get ahead of them, I gestured to the driver to quickly drive around the koppie so we could intercept them. I knew it was a gamble, because if they had heard us go around, they might be spooked the other way.

As luck would have it, we intercepted them perfectly, however – when we got stalking again on the other side, we had no idea if it worked yet, as we couldn’t see them when we drove around.

We took a game trail in the direction of where we guessed they would be coming down. As we sat for a few seconds listening, I suddenly see little sis and the guide slowly pointing and getting ready. She again slowly put the rifle on his shoulder as he starts covering his ears. She slowly racks the bolt just like I showed her – getting a round in the chamber.

The next 3 seconds seemed like 30 – the only time during the past week I felt time went slowly.

Bang Flop! She jumps up in excitement and starts making her way to her quarry. A high lung and spine shot instantly killed the ram.

With smiles all around we grabbed a couple of pictures together. Immensely proud not only with the E-tip’s performance but especially proud of little sis. She had done it, her first stalked animal. A very special hunt indeed. I looked at the clock on my phone – 17:30. We carried the ram to the nearest road and then drove to the cold room.

We quickly gutted and skinned the ram, as out of the blue a massive thunderstorm was approaching the speed at which only a bushveld storm can. The temperature dropped drastically with the howling wind and scattered raindrops. We recognised this type of storm, the rainy season has started – and with a vengeance. It was going to rain like this for the coming days.

As we tried moving the carcass to the cold room, we noticed that it was hot inside. Upon closer inspection, some of the wiring had been chewed by mice, and the cold room was out of action! We now had no choice, we had to hope that the evening air along with the stormy wind cooled by the rain, passing through the shade netting which covered the sides of the butchering area, would be cool enough to get the carcass’ temperature out of the danger zone.

I realized then and there that this whole time, the timing was perfect, had we shot the animal earlier, it would have been too hot and it would have definitely spoiled. Had the rain not come at this exact time, and, for example, a day later, the same thing would’ve happened. But luckily for us, and our freezers at home, the Impala carcass cooled down enough to be transported. It was cold and miserable all the way to Polokwane where we the carcass was processed by a butcher.

Timing isn’t always what we want it to be, but sometimes it’s what we need it to be.

By Ken Moody

‘What’s my setup need to be?’ was the question offered by an excited client on the other end of the phone. ‘Heavy,’ was my response. For months, Joe and I had spent hours on the phone as he peppered me with questions regarding his upcoming bowhunt for Cape Buffalo. With his New England accent, most of my time was spent deciphering his dialect, but eventually, we got all the questions answered and all the preparations made. I was happy to meet Joe as he arrived in our bush camp, big and brawny, with a wingspan like a condor. ‘Now here’s a man that can handle the heavy bow,’ I thought. After the obligatory salutations, Joe reached into his bow case and presented for my approval, his monstrosity of a bow. 90lbs of killing machine, with an axle-to-axle length of 44”, and a draw length of 32”, the bow held heavy in my hands. Reaching into the case again, Joe pulled from its clutches a full length, 1000 grain aluminum projectile topped with a razor-sharp, two-blade, steel broadhead. This was an impressive arsenal for 1997 and with it, we hoped to survive the next few days as we pursued ‘black death’ in and out of the thickets of the lowveld. ‘Think that will do it?’ he grinned, knowing that his stick was exactly what we’d discussed. ‘Provided we find a willing participant,’ I quipped back. The rest of the evening was filled with stories and jokes around the fire as we both anticipated the upcoming adventure. Hunting buffalo with a bow and arrow…what could go wrong?

The next morning was brisk, with a hint of frost upon the ground. As we loaded the bakkie and prepared for the day’s events, I told Joe that we’d first get in a few shots with his bow to make sure all was still good to go with his equipment. ‘Whack’, struck the first arrow, its momentum carrying it thru the foam target and up to the fletching. ‘Whack’, the second arrow struck, colliding with the first as it too smoothly penetrated the block. ‘I think you’re good,’ I said, happy with my client’s shooting abilities. ‘Now if you can do that while shaking uncontrollably and pinching your butt cheeks together, we might stand a chance.’ Joe laughed out loud as his long form climbed the steps of the cruiser and positioned himself on the frost covered seat.

The drive was a bit far on the large reserve we were hunting, and our PH Jaco and I passed the time by discussing the hunt and what we might encounter. Eventually, we came to our first waterhole, where we scoured the area for fresh tracks. Finding nothing suitable, we remounted the bakkie and proceeded to the next one. In about two hours’ time, we came across a natural pan that was littered with buffalo spoor. From here, we found a nice saucer of track, square toed and heading off alone, into a western block of thorns and sickle bush. ‘Let’s walk this one,’ I said, the temptation of seeing the old brute at the end of this track too much to pass up.

About a quarter mile into the track, we found the bull as he joined a herd of others, the lot of them feeding within a small marshy bottom which fed into a dense thicket. I sized the bull up and after conferring with our PH Jaco, we decided to give him a pass. He was an old, mature buffalo, but his horn shape was flat across the tops with no drops whatsoever. We could do better.

The next few days, we continued spotting, tracking, crawling, and being ‘busted’ by a few hundred buffalo. With a rifle, we’d had our trophy by day three, but a bowhunter must be very close and have an unobstructed path for his arrow to fly true. It’s a very difficult thing to stalk within 25 yards of an ever-wary buffalo, but that was the mission, and we were determined to accomplish it.

Day four broke with a sunlit horizon and steady wind whistling through the camp. A good, constant wind is always a bonus when stalking, as the sounds made by the rustling of the leaves and grass help cover a hunter’s approach. Like all the previous mornings, we began by sorting tracks found at the waterholes. We were lucky this day as we found the perfect track at our second stop, fresh and still wet with the mud gathered and dropped from an enormous, blunted foot clearly visible, the sun’s rays glistening off the undried clay. ‘Bingo,’ I thought. We had found this bull early enough so that he was only about an hour or so in front of us. We’d need to move at a careful but steady pace to close the gap before he bedded.

Walking track is always exciting for the first mile or so, but with each passing step afterwards, it can become a bit tedious. Step after step we continued, the midday sun beginning to take a toll on our sweat covered bodies. This bull had not meandered and fed as we expected, but had moved steadily in one direction, determined to get somewhere quickly. Around 11am we stopped and found a bit of shade where we’d lunch and rest until about 2pm or so before continuing. I figured this buffalo would eventually bed down and following a track midday is pointless as tracking them to their beds will nearly always result in being ‘busted’ by an alert and usually unseen animal. Fortunately for us, this bull was alone, which increased our odds greatly, and I didn’t want to blow it by stumbling onto him. We’d rest now and refocus our efforts in the afternoon.

At 2:30, I rose and put on my Courtney’s, the laces worn but still holding together. The old boots and I had shared many a mile at this stage and, though blemished and faded, the tough Zimbabwean leather showed no signs of quitting. ‘If you can do it, so can I,’ I thought, chuckling to myself. I gathered the group and, now fresh from our respite, hit the track again, determined to see what lay at the end. Our tracker, Samuel, led the way, with Jaco close behind. Joe followed Jaco and I, as usual, brought up the end of the procession. We snaked our way through the thick bush, weaving and bobbing to miss the ever-present sickle thorns determined to pierce everything they contacted.

Onward we trudged, the pace a bit quickened now as we needed to close on the bull before darkness deterred our efforts. The buffalo seemed to be making for a large, open section of fields, strategically positioned in the center of the reserve’s thickest and thorniest block. Time and again a thorn would snag a loose, hanging shirt corner, hampering our movements, but through it all we pushed on. Just as the last minutes of daylight forced its way into the tangles of bush, Samuel raised his hand and slowly pointed  to our front.

There he was, muddy and damp from a recent wallow, the object of our march. As he fed along the edges of the fields, I admired the massive beast before us, his hard-bossed horns the prominent feature adorning his bulbous head. Jaco smiled as he turned to Joe and gave him a slowly turning thumbs up. We were going to give him a go.

We moved quickly to gain a favorable shooting position, the terrain in our favor as we could use the thickets to move onto the flank of the bull, the wind perfect for the maneuver. We crawled around to the right, using the wind and noise of the feeding buffalo to full advantage. Our final approach was slow but deliberate, the unsuspecting bull fully occupied with consuming the fresh grass before him. We crept up to 20 yards, but the slowness of our movement had taken time and only the last few minutes of shooting light remained. Getting into position alerted the bull and as he turned to stare at us, Joe raised and settled his 20-yard pin onto the shoulder of the broadside beast and released the shaft. The arrow flew with dart-like precision, finding its mark and burying up to the visible white fletching. We had done it!

With a thunderous surge, the death-stricken buffalo spun to his left and crashed through the thickets directly opposite of our position. We all stood quietly in place, straining to hear the sure-to-come death bellow of a dying buffalo, but all was silent. Minutes passed and only the sounds of the night seeped through the thorns. Having viewed the shot, I assured Joe that the buffalo was fatally hit and that we would certainly find him the following morning. We just needed to mark the position and find our way back to camp.

The following morning was met with exuberant anticipation as we loaded up and headed to the place of the buffalo’s last track. All of us expected to find the bull dead within a few hundred yards, but when those yards grew into miles, we knew we had a problem. How this old buff could still be on his feet was a complete mystery, as the shot could not have been more perfect, or so we thought. On we pressed, the track easy to follow with the sporadic drops of blood further assurance of our route. When we stopped for lunch, Joe queried me about the situation and, for once, I had no answers. I replayed the shot over and over in my head and after each sequence, the same conclusion was met, dead buffalo. Picking up the track after lunch, we continued until darkness forced us back to camp, the ride giving me time to re-evaluate our predicament.

The next day, reality hit us hard, as we knew the buffalo wasn’t yet dead and that something had gone wrong in our evaluation. Before returning to the track, our PH phoned a pilot nearby and asked if he was available to give us a hand. The pilot had a microlight aircraft and might possibly be able to spot the bull and direct us to his whereabouts. Fortunately, his response was positive, as he told us he could be on site within the hour. ‘Great!’ I thought, the knowledge of ‘eyes in the sky’ giving all of us a boost of confidence. About an hour or so back on the track, we heard the whining pitch of the little micro’s engine as it slowly crept towards us, circling like a vulture waiting on the currents to lift it up into the air. After spotting us, the tiny aircraft floated away, its aerial survey and search underway. All our fingers were crossed as it flew from sight.

‘I have a buffalo spotted here, down by the river,’ crackled the handheld, our pilot reporting on the other end. ‘He’s lying down with his head swaying from side to side. Something’s not right with him.’ ‘On our way,’ we replied, new hope and determination forefront in our actions. The river was miles from us, so we backtracked to the truck and headed towards it as fast as the terrain would allow. ‘I’m circling the bull now,’ reported our pilot, his voice and signal now stronger than before. We parked the cruiser and began moving rapidly towards the sounds of the engine hovering above. About a quarter of a mile in, we spotted the aircraft slowly circling a specific spot along the banks of the murky water. ‘He’s directly below me,’ came the report. ‘Doesn’t seem to have any interest in me.’ Once the location was pinpointed, we waved the plane off and began our slow traverse to the buffalo. This had to be him.

The three of us moved like soldiers as we crawled into the high grass leading to the river. We snaked our way ever closer, eyes and ears on full alert. When we could hear the faint sounds of the slow-moving water, we peered over the grass and saw what the pilot had reported, a bedded buffalo moving his head back and forth in a precise, methodical sway. ‘It’s him,’ I whispered to our PH, his binos trained on the bull. ‘Yes, most definitely,’ he replied. With Joe by my side, I moved forward and the three of us proceeded, anticipating another opportunity with the bow. We closed the distance to within 30 yards, but before any further progress could be made, the wind shifted, a slight breeze hitting the back of my neck and filtering its way to our wounded bull.

With a tremendous surge, the buffalo gained his feet and quickly sorted out our location. Though mortally wounded, he charged his last, determined  to go out on his feet. At 10 steps, the sound of Jaco’s .458 echoed down the river as the buffalo fell, a warrior till the end. It was over.

When we arrived at the skinning shed, we all stood by, anxious to see why the arrow hadn’t killed the beast initially. Once the lungs were removed, our amazed faces couldn’t fathom what we were seeing. Before us on the ground were two pierced lungs, one green and totally collapsed and the other only three quarters collapsed, a hint of red still visible in the frontal lobe. The buffalo had survived a double lung shot for two days on one partial lung, which hadn’t fully succumbed to the perforation of the two-blade head. I have never seen such a will to live in anything else. Cape Buffalo are different and my respect for them only continues to grow with each passing year on the track. They just don’t come any tougher.

First published in 1957, Stuart Cloete’s novel is a serious work (belied by its sensational cover) guaranteed to give any herpetophobe nightmares. It’s all part of the charm.

By Terry Wieland

A Flowering of Serpents

One of the first questions you hear, when you announce that you’re going to Africa, is a tremulous, “But aren’t you afraid of snakes?”

Answer:  “Yep.  Terrified!  What of it?”

If I let my life-long dislike of reptiles deter me, I would not hunt in south Texas, I’d avoid Alabama, and Australia would be out of the question.  For that matter, I wouldn’t live in Missouri, where we have copperheads, water moccasins, and the occasional rattler.

Every so often, I sit back and count on my fingers the number of times, during 14 or 15 trips to Africa, totalling more than three years of my life, that I have even seen a snake.  I have yet to run out of fingers.  Snakes there certainly are, but they just haven’t bothered me.

Now, stories about snakes?  You done come to the right place, pal.  Where do you want me to start?  Oh, wait:  First, a word of advice.  If you are a herpetephobe, fearing snakes to an irrational degree, the first question you should ask a prospective professional hunter is how he feels about them.  If his face lights up and he assures you that he loves snakes and plays with them every chance he gets, thank him politely, back away, and sign on with someone else.  Trust me on that one.  I speak from experience.

People who actually like snakes can’t fathom people who don’t, just as cat lovers can’t relate to the benighted few who find cats repellent.  Fortunately, there aren’t that many snake lovers; unfortunately, most of them seem to be PHs.

One time in Botswana I was waist-deep in a hippo pool, which was home to (by actual count) 14 hippos and one large crocodile.  We were hunting ducks and geese, and my guide would fire a shot over the reeds, and birds would flush.  One duck came zipping by and I dropped it into the water a few yards behind me.  When I went to retrieve it, I found a large python curled around it, contemplating duck recipes.  With whoops of joy, my PH handed me his gun, grabbed the python by the tail, and hauled it ashore, yelling at me all the while to be sure to get the duck.

The python turned out to be a young one — only 12 feet long, but he looked bigger to me — and we “played” with it on the bank for an hour, then allowed it to slither back into the water, shaking its serpentine head in disbelief and making reptilian mutterings.  I knew how it felt.  We kept the duck, which I thought was a trifle unfair.

Another tiime, I was staying with a friend on the edge of the Okavango.  He had a permanent tent camp, and I had a mattress on the floor of the cook tent.  Cook tents generally contain mice, and mice attract snakes.  The night we arrived, around dusk, Clint pulled into his usual parking spot.  I opened the door and jumped out, looking down as I did at a cobra, right under my feet.  You can, I found, change trajectory in mid-air, and my feet missed the cobra by at least a yard.

“Oh,” Clint said, “I forgot to tell you.  I killed that snake this morning.  Found it behind the cook tent.  Sorry.”

It was dead, but still.  I can’t say I slept all that well the first couple of nights, but then I settled in and all was fine.  The memory receded.

My particular horror is the Mozambique spitting cobra, which rears up and lets fly a stream of venom, aimed at your eyes, and is reputed to be accurate from several yards out.  Blindness does not appeal to me.  A friend who has a game ranch outside Bulaweyo had her buildings constructed around an inner courtyard, one of which contained the shower and another a privy.  As is normal in Africa (don’t ask me why) the privy was at the far end of a narrow room, with a tiny window in the wall above.  She went out in the dead of night to do what people do in the dead of night.  The generator was not running, but there was a full moon, so she didn’t bother with a flashlight.

As she settled in, she felt a stream of cool liquid hit her thigh.  A spitting cobra was in there with her, probably right beside her in the darkness.  The room was illuminated only by thin moonlight through the high window.  What did she do?

“I closed my eyes and waited,” she said.  “Then I made a dash for the door.  Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t run with your pants around your ankles.”  The cobra also made its escape.  The privy now has its very own flashlight, hanging outside the door.

Cobras are one thing.  Mambas are another.  Mambas make cobras seem almost friendly.  Stuart Cloete, the great South African writer, wrote a blood-chilling novel called Mamba, which is about a love triangle, with the snake playing the same role it’s enjoyed since Genesis.  Ever since reading that, 40 or 50 years ago, the mamba has haunted my dreams.

At the risk of overstating, they are reputed to be able to outrun a horse (if snakes can be said to run), outclimb a monkey, be extraordinarily deadly, and have the personality of a wolverine.  There are black mambas and green mambas.  The black is the most common, and is actually a dark brownish-grey.

The editor of one of the Big Three went to Botswana back in the early ‘90s.  He was sleeping in his tent one night when something woke him up.  He heard scurrying.  A mouse.  It scurried here.  It scurried there.  Eventually, he dropped back to sleep.  In the morning, they went out hunting, and returned to camp for lunch.  He walked into his tent and out through the back to the adjoining privy, which had the toilet on one side and the shower on the other.  He glanced into the shower and there, halfway in through the drain hole, was the front half of a black mamba.  At the sight of him, it reared up, but was unable to perform with mamba-like dexterity until it had pulled itself in through the drain, which was a tight fit.  By the time it cleared the drain, our fearless editor was out through the front and calling for help.

The PH returned with some trackers and a shotgun, found the tent empty, and proceeded to beat the brush behind it.  The mamba made tracks (so to speak) and got its head blown off.

Piecing it together, they concluded that the scurrying noises the editor heard the night before was a mouse, seeking to escape, while the mamba stalked it under the bed and over the wardrobe.  This realization was too much.  The editor was packed and heading for the airport before dark, and has never returned.

Another mamba story:  I was in Tanzania on the edge of the Rift Valley, driving along a track past a Masai camp.  We saw a mamba cross the track and go into a grain-storage hut through a crack in the wall.  We stopped and advised the residents.  Soon, a bunch of budding Masai morani, complete with spears and robes, had gathered around and were debating who was going to go in after it.  Our trackers, both Masai themselves (and who insist on spelling it with one ‘a’) looked disgusted with the whole thing, and finally one climbed down, pulled aside the door frame, and went in.  There was loud clattering as he beat his walking stick against the grain baskets.  The mamba came out the way he went in, scattering the teenagers, while our other tracker nailed it.  There then began the debate about who had panicked and run first, while we drove away.

Just so there is no mistake, yours truly would not have entered that hut for a 50-inch buffalo.

By scientific analysis, per gram of venom, the boomslang is (or was) reputed to be the deadliest snake in Africa, although I believe now some obscure adder from West Africa is considered deadlier.  The boomslang (it means “tree snake” in Afrikaans) is a medium-sized green fellow with a shy and retiring nature.  Not aggressive like the mamba (I guess you don’t need to be when you’re that well armed), he is made less deadly by the fact that his fangs are in the back of his mouth, and it’s tough for him to get a good grip and inject much venom.

One time, staying on a farm outside Arusha, my PH was called to deal with “A snake! A snake!” in one of the store rooms.  Having no idea what it might be, we grabbed a club and bucket and went to investigate.  It turned out to be a baby boomslang, no more than eight or nine inches long, vivid green against the shavings on the floor.  My PH was no snake lover, but he believed that all creatures have their place.  We herded the little guy into the bucket, then released him in some brush on the edge of the farm.

I have other snake tales — cobras, mambas, puff adders — but we’ll save them for another time.  Funny thing, though, thinking about all this has made me realize that, much as I dislike snakes, Africa would not be the same without them.  If only to terrorize the folks at home.