I'm still alive

[Fjold]

A little older, a little thinner and a lot more cynical.

[stevec]

And a greater love for life?

Congradulations Frank, That is one huge animal!

Steve

[handirifle]

That white faced old bull looks mean, even dead. Nice work. Is there a story behind this?

[Fjold]

We left out of camp heading south and east, away from the Matusadona National Park boundary that sits on the northern bank of the Chifudze River that forms the northern boundary of Bulembi Safari’s Omay South hunting concession in western Zimbabwe.

My Professional Hunter, Pierre Hundermark has been hunting on the Omay concession for the last 5 years or so and easily guides the Toyota Land Cruiser through the long grass that has grown over two meters tall between the wheel ruts.



We leave the truck on the road and walk the half of a kilometer to the edge of a steep bluff overlooking a large area of intersecting valleys.

“Nyati” (buffalo) says Steve the tracker, while the other tracker Farunga points them out to me. Pierre has his glasses out surveying the herd and says “Look at all those buffalo.”

There’s easily over 100 buffalo grazing about a kilometer to the east over the next small brushy ridge and working their way north, up a valley. We make a quick plan to drop off the bluff and hurry up a small valley that intersects the small ridge that buffalo are feeding behind to get set up in front of them before they reach the top of their valley. Steve and Farunga lead the way followed by Pierre, then me and the government Game Scout brings up the rear.

We slip and slide our way down the steep, rocky hillside and reach the narrow section of long grass at its base. The long grass grows in 20 – 40 meter wide bands in the lowest areas of valley floors broken up with scrub and trees on the higher ground. As we push our way through the first section of long grass, Pierre comments about not wanting to meet a buffalo in this stuff as the visibility is less than 2 meters and I agree thinking that meeting an angry bull in this stuff would be one of the fastest ways to become strawberry jam.



We start up the south side of the intersecting valley where we hope to reach the ridge top before the feeding buffalo get there. A quick glance at my wristwatch says that it’s 3:30 PM just as Steve hisses us to a stop. Pointing to his left there is another herd of buffalo slowly feeding in this small valley also. Pierre motions for everyone to freeze and we all sink to a crouch as we look over the herd. Farunga motions to me to move up in front of him so I creep up next to Pierre. We stay this way for a long time as Pierre uses the binoculars trying to find a good bull in the herd.



We start to hear even more buffalo further up the valley so seeing no shootable bulls we cautiously start moving up the hill.

[Fjold]

We move about 200 yards until we come to another herd of buffalo spread out in the long grass at the bottom of the valley and on the far hillside 100 yards away. We reach a small bench with a screen of brush and trees on the edge that hides us as we look over the buffalo.


Pierre glasses the herd spread out on the far hillside and the indistinct black blobs feeding in the long grass 20 feet below us.
Suddenly the first herd of buffalo that we had passed earlier caught our scent and thundered out of the valley below. For some unknown reason the herd only runs about 100 yards up the other side of the valley then turns to come uphill towards us. The herd that we’re watching now starts fitfully but doesn’t take off. They start to slowly drift down the valley with more and more animals coming out of the long grass and walk up through the brush on the other hillside. Pierre says “Bulls!” and sidesteps quickly to his left as Steve puts up the shooting sticks. I slide my Winchester into the “V” of the sticks and put my thumb on the safety. I see a bull on the hillside to the left of a tree with three more buffalo below and behind him. Pierre says “There’s a great bull just coming out from behind the tree!”

I put my crosshairs low on the bull’s shoulder and something prompts me to ask “The highest one, out in front of the other three?”
Pierre quickly says “No, lower down. His head is just coming out to the left of the tree.”
I move my scope down and think that I see a buffalo’s face just coming out from behind the tree. The bull steps forward and I see the wide heavy boss on the bull’s head come into view. The bull takes another step forward and suddenly turns to stare in our direction from 70 yards away.

“He’s looking directly at us. That’s a good bull” Pierre exclaims, “Mooshy bull, shoot him!”

Confident that I’m now on the right bull, the bull is quartering toward us with his head turned to the left staring at us. I put my crosshairs on the point of his left shoulder just as the bull suddenly decides that we’re a threat and steps forward aggressively with his head up, rocking left to right. I squeeze the trigger and lose the sight picture with the recoil from the .375 caliber, 300 grain TSX that goes down range. At the shot, over 100 buffalo suddenly explode in different directions throughout the valley.

Pierre yells “Shoot him again!” I see buffalo running in all directions but one large bull is running low down in the valley about 100 yards to my left. “Is it the one running low down in the valley?” I ask and Pierre answers “Yes,” he’s just turning up the hill.”
I center the reticle on the black body as he runs up the hill to my left and send another bullet at him.

“You hit him!” Pierre exclaims, “His rear end collapsed but then he got back up.”

The bull disappears into the brush on the other hillside and Pierre asks “Where was your first shot?”

I said, “On the point of the shoulder, one third of the way up.” Pierre looks at me and asks “Did you see that the grass was covering the lower part of his body?”

Shocked, I said “No, I didn’t even notice that.” Even with that, we figured that I couldn’t have shot any higher than mid way up his body and should have got the left lung solidly and probably the rear of the right lung also.

Pierre lit up a cigarette and told me to reload with all solids. My hands are shaking with the adrenaline rush as I fumble with dumping the magazine of the remaining softpoints and I refill the magazine with the 300 grain banded solids. Pinching the last round under the extractor I slide the bolt forward and flick the safety all the way back.

Pierre says “We’ll give him five more minutes to settle down and hopefully he won’t get into the long grass.”

I look at my watch and see that it’s 5:05 PM and figure that we have less than hour of shooting light left and say, “Peter Capstick wrote a book about that called “Death in the Long Grass”.

Pierre just looks at me and says “Yeah”

Steve and Farunga lead the way across the valley and soon locate the blood trail of the bull. There are quarter sized drops of blood on the trail and blood is staining the brush and grass stems from thigh height down to the ground on the left side of the trail. We follow the trail for about 100 yards and it leads directly into a 30 meter wide band of 8 foot tall grass.

“%^&*” Pierre says, “He’s in the long grass.”

We can plainly see the path of flattened grass the bull has made going directly through the area but everyone is suspicious of it. Steve and Farunga converse and Farunga picks up a fist sized rock and heaves it to the far edge of the grass where the path leads. Suddenly 10 meters to the right of and downwind of his trail the bull pops up charging directly at the sound of the rock.

“There he is!” Pierre yells.

Trying to locate the bull in my scope I yell, “Shoot him!” and Pierre snaps off a quick round

The bull thunders off and Pierre says, “The ******* was waiting for us, he went through the grass and then circled downwind waiting for us to follow him.”

I asked, “Did you hit him?” and Pierre says that he doesn’t think so.

We push through the long grass to where the bull had been hiding. On the ground there is a fist sized puddle of blood that had dripped from him as he laid in wait for us.

[Fjold]

Steve and Farunga quickly sort out his trail as the shadows lengthen and moving cautiously forward Pierre says to me, “When he charges, step to your right to clear me before you shoot, Steve and Farunga will get out of your way. He’ll come in with his head up until he gets close and will drop it just before he hits. Don’t try for the brain shot, aim just below his chin so that you get the spine where it dips in the neck. If you shoot high you’ll still get the spine or the brain.

Oddly this calms me, knowing that Pierre has a plan, that he trusts me to shoot and that he had confidence that his team would all the do the right things.

Following the track the bull has cut through a dense patch of brush I constantly look left and right since Steve and Farunga had to watch ahead and Pierre has to keep one eye on the trackers and one eye looking in all the other directions. Steve leads the way around the right side of the thicket instead of cutting directly through it and I warily watch the thicket as we pass it.

Pierre suddenly hissed loudly and said “There he is!” I side step quickly and see Farunga dive to the ground to my right as Steve goes to ground right in front of me. I bring my gun up but neither of us gets off a shot as the bull thunders off. The bull had circled around on the back side of the thicket and because we had came around the right side instead of directly through the brush he was out of position for his ambush.

We move quickly now pushing the bull hard as the light is fading fast. The trail veers to the right and then starts a wide arc to the left. Pierre suddenly indicates with his hands that he sees the bull. Steve steps back to him, setting up the shooting sticks and I slide over into place just seeing the black bulk of the bull skulking in the shadows of the trees watching his back trail again. We had moved through the area where he had taken the sharp right hand turn while he was making his big arc to the left and passed through the area of the trail that he was watching before he got set up. The second that the forearm of my rifle touches the V of the sticks I touch the trigger sending the 300 grain solid through his left shoulder. Instantly with my shot I hear Pierre shoot and see a small tree shatter in a spray of white bark. The bull lunges forward and I hear him crash to the ground. My elation is quickly crushed as we hear him scramble to his feet and run off into the growing darkness.

We rush quickly to where the bull was standing and Pierre asks me “Where did you hit him?” I said “Shoulder, how about you?” He says “Mine was further back. I saw a little tree shatter at the shot. I couldn’t see it in the dark with open sights until it exploded in white.”

The trail led directly into another patch of long grass and Pierre stops us there saying, “I can’t see my sights, it’s too dark.”

Standing in a clearing next to a lone Baobab tree I look at my watch and see that it’s already 5:50 PM and the sun is down. “We’ve got to get out of here” Pierre continues, “We’ve got the get to the top of the bluff before dark so that bull doesn’t find us.”

We quickly skirted the thicket of long grass passing to the left of the Baobab tree travelling north along the path for about 50 meters before making an abrupt left and heading directly for the tall bluff. With every step my heart sinks lower and lower, my biggest fear was coming true. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than leaving a wounded bull in the field. Steve set his usual blistering pace as we walked by the light of the ¾ moon the half of a kilometer to the base of the bluff and start up it. Everyone climbs up it and I slowly lose ground to them as the physical pain in my bad knee soon outweighs the emotional pain of leaving my bull wounded in the bush. Just as I think that I’m not going to make it to the top of the bluff the ground flattens out and everyone is waiting for me. This was the same bluff that we had spotted the herds of buffalo from earlier that afternoon.

On the ride back to camp Pierre tries to cheer me up saying that the bull is hit hard and won’t make it through the night. He was sure that we would find him dead in the morning there in that thicket.

It was a long miserable ride back to camp. In camp I showered and then went out to the fire pit where the apprentice PH Ian, was sitting by the fire trying to get warm in the 5 degree (40 degrees F) evening chill. He asked me how the hunt went and I had to relive the whole ordeal again in telling him. Ian tried to cheer me up telling me the story of having to strangle a duiker with his bare hands when it had attacked him in a hunting camp in Mozambique when he was a young a first year apprentice but even that didn’t cheer me up. I suffered through dinner and turned in early to spend an almost sleepless night replaying the day’s events in my mind.

[Mbarnes72]

Great read, come on keep going.

[Fjold]

I was already awake when the knock on my door came at 05:30. I dressed quickly and walked out to the fire pit where Ian was restarting the mopane fire. I ate breakfast while Ian and Pierre huddled around the fire drinking coffee. We loaded the truck at first light, Pierre and me in the front with Ian, Steve, Farunga, the game scout and Tell (an off duty tracker who watched the truck while we were out hunting) in the back. Pierre drives to the bottom of the valley, at the foot of the bluff and we load our rifles and set out for the Baobab clearing about a kilometer away. Steve and Farunga lead the way followed by Pierre, then me, with Ian’s 416 behind me and the game scout bringing up the rear.

Reaching the Baobab tree Steve and Farunga easily pick up the blood trail and we head back into the long grass.


We spot pools of dried, pink, foamy blood on the path. “That’s a lot of lung blood” Pierre exclaims, “He can’t be far.”


The trail passes through the long grass and makes a sharp left to the more open ground and suddenly Steve says something in Shona and Pierre says “There he is, he’s dead!” then turns to me with a big grin and shakes my hand. I’m almost faint with relief when I see his big belly sticking up over the grass. We enter a little clearing where he lays and see the pools of blood where he waited for us last night.

[Fjold]

He’s a magnificent bull with big humped neck and hard bosses, solid all the way to the front. His heavy drooping horns curve back and up to worn tips. He’s got the big Roman nose on a face almost worn bald and a sagging wattle under his chin like an old man’s goatee. I’m elated and Pierre’s all smiles.



“What a monster, a real Dagga Boy” Pierre says, “He’s the biggest bodied bull I’ve seen in years. He’s got great bosses, all the way hard in front and you couldn’t slide a credit card between them!”
Ian examines the bull and says “He’s got a huge body, look how long he is! Look at how he’s polished the lines off his bosses, how smooth they are and he’s got huge feet, beautiful track!”



I’m unbelievably relieved just admiring the beauty of the animal. He’s everything that I could ask for in a bull. He’s old and big with hard bosses, great drop and beautiful thick curving horns.

[Fjold]

I ask Pierre how old he is and what he’ll weigh and Pierre estimates “He’s at least 10 years old and close to 800 Kilos. We haven’t seen a bull his size in over 5 years.”

Pierre takes Farunga, Steve and the game scout with him to get Tell and the truck and hack a road to us to get the bull. They leave young Ian to watch me as I admire my bull, running my hands over the worn bosses and taking pictures of him from various angles.
Ian answers all my questions and listens to me repeat over and over again all the highlights of my bull as we wait for the truck. I eventually sit down and light up a nice cigar and just enjoy the moment.

In less than an hour the truck arrives and the guys start clearing the brush to get the truck around and the bull set up for pictures.
Standing there, I see the lone Baobab tree less than 40 meters away. Pierre looks at me and says “You noticed that, huh?” He then points out to where the bull is facing out of the clearing, eleven paces from the bull’s nose is the path that we took in the dark last night to get out of the area.



We had once again moved to quickly for him and had passed his ambush point before he got set up in position. Pierre’s instincts last night to get out of the area as quickly as possible had been proven correct.
Inspecting the bull for bullet holes we found my first bullet had entered exactly where I had aimed and had destroyed the back half of the left lung and tore a softball sized chunk out of the rear of the right lung. My second, going away shot had entered exactly center of the hams and from the angle had passed through the hole in the middle of the pelvis and tore through the front of the left ham. My third shot was a through and through high on the shoulder and Pierre’s bullet (after deflecting on a tree) entered and exited through the guts.

We get the bull posed for pictures, field dressed and loaded into the truck.

[xhogboss]

Nicely told, Frank. Welcome back.

[EFBell]

Frank, I had been wondering how you made out. Great Hunt! Great story! Glad to see you stop in.

Regards, Ed B.

[handirifle]

WOW great story, and great hunt. No wonder you feel happy to be alive. I was right, that old sucker was a mean one and planned on doin you guys in till his last breath.

[J.Baker]

Congrat's on the successful hunt Frank, and glad to see you made it back in one piece. ;D

[Mbarnes72]

Great read, I wish I had your literary skills. Congrats on a great animal. And now I have to go buy a big double as I am convinced that my .375 is just not the stopper I wish it was.

[fyimo]

Great story and picutres of the type of hunt many of us only dream about.

[Aircraftmech76]

And that, gentlemen, is how it's done. A story well told Frank; one for the record books for sure! Thank you for sharing; I enjoyed every word.

Kevin

[Dennis]

Enjoyed the post, I almost felt I was there on the hunt with you!

[bythebook]

Enjoyed the post, I almost felt I was there on the hunt with you!

+1 you have to admire the moxy of an animal like that!!!

[rphguy]

enjoyed the hunt details.
My wife read your account.
I asked her "would you like to go hunt a buffalo?"

she answered, "Not is the tall grass."

[piroguejoe]

Congrats on the bull! That was an amazing story as well.


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