Being hit by a charging buffalo is tantamount to being hit by a car, because the animal weighs about the same. Perhaps it would not be so bad if it were, like the rhinoceros (or like a car), satisfied with just knocking one down, but a buffalo will either hook a fallen person high into the air – some hunters have landed in the tops of thorn trees three to five metres (10 to 16 feet) above the ground, out of harm’s way – or churn its victim into the ground by first going down on its knees and goring him almost to a pulp.
The African buffalo must have given the pioneer hunters with their inefficient weapons a pretty rough time, judging by their lurid accounts. In fact, the buffalo took a fairly heavy toll on them. The early explorers traded guns – mostly antique muzzle-loaders and deadly blunderbusses (deadly, that is, to the user) – with locals, in exchange for supplies, not realising that this would result in the wounding of many buffalo, which would then exact a human toll. There are stories of some individual animals – almost certainly wounded – killing a dozen and more people before being destroyed.
Although buffalo herds destroy crops throughout their range, the same animal might one day make up for all that. Conservationists and animal husbandry scientists see in the buffalo a potential beef animal that can be raised like ordinary stock but with many decided economic advantages. For example, it takes 11 years to improve the bushveld until it is fit for grazing cattle – even then it is necessary to wage a constant battle against bush encroachment and various tropical diseases that hit cattle in Africa. But with buffalo the veld need not be improved and, while cattle are only eight per cent efficient at turning Africa’s grassveld into protein fit for human consumption (meat and milk), the buffalo is 40 per cent efficient. It is also disease-free, except for rinderpest, and can be culled at the rate of 25 per cent a year. Seventy-five per cent of the carcass is edible. It is astonishing that its potential as a food animal has not been fully realised by farmers in Africa. Half its trouble, possibly, is its dreadful reputation.
F.C. Selous, the Victorian hunter who ranged over sub-Saharan Africa, had some unhappy experiences with buffalo and as much as anybody helped establish the animal in the public mind as a ferocious beast bent on destroying humans. T. Murray Smith half a century later wrote, ‘The buffalo is not only dangerous, he can be the most wantonly vicious animal in the wilds.’1 Hunters, to this day – even with rifles far more powerful than in Murray Smith’s day, even with soft-nosed bullets (these are used to stop a buffalo in a herd without ricocheting and wounding other animals), despite almost armour-piercing bullets for follow-up shots – are apt to see the African buffalo (or Cape buffalo) as a formidable foe.
One hunter wrote, ‘Cape Buffalo are said to have killed more big game hunters than any other animal. Buffalo are thought to kill around 200 people every year, first they charge and then they gore their victims. An injured buffalo is incredibly dangerous.’2
According to Wikipedia, some hunters describe the buffalo as ‘Black Death’ or ‘Widowmaker’, widely regarded as ‘a very dangerous animal, as it gores and kills over 200 people every year. Buffalo are sometimes reported to kill more people in Africa than any other animal, although the same claim is also made of hippos and crocodiles 3.
Graham Currin supplies more ‘evidence’, having witnessed a non-fatal but quite terrifying attack in the Serengeti (Tanzania) in 2005 where a companion was twice tossed in the air and then trampled and gored. The buffalo – a full-grown bull can weigh 800 kilograms (1 760 pounds) and more – then fell dead on top of him but fortunately the ground was soft and cushioned him. In the article ‘No One Survives a Cape Buffalo Attack’, he writes, ‘They have been known to chase people up trees and then stay there for days eating around the tree waiting for them to come down, says native Kenyan Mlengu Mwachofi. They are also known to urinate on their tails and flick it into the tree to make you itch and scratch until you fall out. You do not always hear about them in the same breath as lions or crocodiles, but many say that Cape buffalo are responsible for more human deaths than any other African animal. They are rumored to have killed more big game hunters than any other creature.’4
As the buffalo is so widespread and as many are wounded when raiding crops or by lions, it is quite possible that wounded buffalo do kill 200 a year – but that can only be a guess. Under normal circumstances, unmolested, the African buffalo, Syncerus caffer, is as passive as a Friesland cow.
In many game reserves guides take tourists on foot quite close to buffalo. I have often watched tourists creep up to buffalo herds, their hearts in their mouths, their f-stops forgotten, but, as they see the animals’ wet leathery noses and vacant bovine features, the tourists’ reaction is sometimes one of disappointment. Buffalo, grazing or browsing in a herd, look and smell very much like a herd of rather large cattle. One or two in the herd might advance a few steps out of curiosity, nostrils flared and heads held high looking, literally, down their noses, but, if a tourist makes a sudden movement or if the herd catches wind of them, they will wheel around and trot off to what they consider a safer distance. The buffalo, alone or in a herd, is normally as nervous as an antelope. I have heard of only one instance – in a reserve adjacent to the Kruger Park – where a buffalo charged out from its herd and killed somebody.
Professional hunter John Taylor wrote:
Men get queer ideas about buffalo. Most men without much experience seem to think that buffalo will attack without any provocation. There is a belief that buffalo will invariably whip around on feeling the lead and make a savage and determined charge. Well, all I can say is that I have never experienced either of these things and I have shot close to 1 200 buffalo … and have encountered a hundred times that many.5
Eric Noble, who was a game farmer on the Sabi in Zimbabwe in the 1960s, ranched several hundred buffalo as beef stock and maintained that they are more tractable than Afrikander cattle6. W. Robert Foran, despite asserting that the buffalo was the third-most dangerous big-game animal, also observed that the buffalo’s ‘reputation for inherent savagery in its general disposition is unwarranted’7. He records an incident, which, to say the least, underlines the docility of buffalo – if unmolested. In the Tana River region of Kenya, Foran and his assistant, Hamisi Bin Baraka (who was later killed by an elephant), spotted a magnificent bull behind a large herd of buffalo. Herd bulls, says Foran, place themselves on the upwind side of the herd, as it is normally from the downwind side that their one and only natural enemy, the lion, attacks. Foran and Bin Baraka tried for some hours to get around the herd without being detected, but late in the afternoon they found themselves back where they had started. Foran so badly wanted the trophy that he decided to risk what he calls a ‘foolhardy action’. He and Bin Baraka began trotting toward the herd. The buffalo nearest them raised their heads but showed no inclination to run. They obviously had not caught the human scent yet. Foran and Bin Baraka, like a pair of rugby players, passed right through the herd, handing off any buffalo that got in the way. Once at the rear of the herd the hunter picked off the bull. Only then did the herd stampede.
A belief that dates back well into the 20th century is that a buffalo, when shot and wounded, will flee for a few hundred metres or even kilometres, and then double back along its tracks and wait in ambush for the pursuing hunter. It allows the hunter to pass it before charging from the rear. From this alleged habit the buffalo has earned itself an undeserved reputation for cunning. A wounded buffalo does in fact wait in concealment but, if it has ever purposely doubled back to wait in ambush, that must be counted as exceptional behaviour. When a buffalo is shot its first instinct is to run. A professional hunter during the first part of the 20th century, Owen McCallum, stated, ‘A wounded buffalo will move on as you come up with [sic] it.’ He once wounded a buffalo and five times got almost near enough for a shot, but each time the animal fled in the most determined manner. The buffalo’s behaviour when it reaches thick bush may have given rise to the theory that it doubles back. Like most other wounded animals it will then rest, feeling relatively secure. The hunter following the blood spoor is at a dangerous disadvantage and might even run into the animal before he sees it. Hunters have died in such circumstances.
A problem is that, once the beast has made up its mind to charge, nothing short of death will stop its rush. The only exception to this seems to be when a herd is ‘charging’, or, more likely, stampeding toward the hunter. This infrequent situation is more tricky than desperate. Foran claims he prefers ‘mass charges’ to individual charges made by wounded animals8. It is his theory that the herd is not knowingly charging the source of danger, but is rather seeking a tactical advantage by rushing upwind. Even when a herd is running away from the hunter, it might suddenly wheel around and come straight at him. Foran says that a couple of bullets placed at their feet will often induce them to turn. There is an alternative measure – one used by Native Americans when faced by a stampede of bison: kill or down two or three in the same place. This tends to split the herd and send them glancing off in two directions. (Not that buffalo herds stampede quite as blindly as the movies would suggest the American buffalo [bison] does.)
Culling a herd of buffalo is not as dangerous as it might seem and, because of buffalo population explosions and meat production in many parts of Africa, culling is going on almost daily. John Taylor gives us an example of what it is like when he describes a night shoot in the Zambezi River valley where buffalo were destroying crops. He approached the herd to within 20 metres (22 yards) or so and, using a pair of doubles as well as a powerful hunting lamp, he opened fire on the herd.
My first shot slammed through the shoulder of a very big bull, dropping him instantly. They were still nearly all broadside onto me. At the shot they all swung and stood looking directly towards me. So my next shot was a frontal brain-shot; and I knew that most if not all subsequent shots would be similar. The second beast dropped in his tracks and I exchanged rifles. It was now a case of picking a target and firing just as quickly as I could, swinging on to another, firing, and exchanging rifles with my gunbearer. Both weapons were fitted with ejectors which slung out the fired shells, so that my bearer was usually able to have my second weapon ready when I needed it … After my third shot the entire herd commenced edging towards me, jostling one another and crowding together … Eventually I had the herd within ten yards of me, and still I continued to shoot. But now I took three or four paces backwards and away from them as Saduko whispered that a number of the buffalo were working up on my right. If I allowed them to get around too far they would get our wind. So, having taken up a new position, I swung around again and dropped another two from those in the center.
The alpha male then charged into the center of the pool of light and wheeled away with the herd, now in full flight, following on his heels. There were no wounded. But there were twenty-two dead buffaloes – all within a few yards from one another. This was at night, of course. Such a feat would probably not be possible in daylight.9
Although Taylor and people like Charles Goss, who shot two large bulls stone dead with a single .600 bullet, make buffalo-shooting look easy, a seemingly accurate shot – even a heart shot – may not stop a buffalo. John Burger, a South African hunter, once killed a large bull buffalo with a perfect heart shot using a .404 soft-nose. The bull, fortunately running away from and not toward the hunter covered ‘187 yard’ (171 metres) before dropping dead. On opening the animal, Burger found its heart was just ‘pulp’. An acquaintance of mine was killed by a buffalo that he and another hunter had hit 11 times. The first shot was a bad heart shot at 200 metres (220 yards). The buffalo turned around and looked for the hunters. Having good eyesight, it soon spotted them and charged full bore. It was then hit with the second barrel of the .270 (a favourite rifle among old-timers but, for hunting buffalo, a little risky). The buffalo showed no reaction and continued its charge as the bullet buried itself in its shoulder. The hunter swapped guns and rashly pumped off two brain shots, which he could hear ricocheting off the heavy boss that protects a great deal of the buffalo’s head from the front. He then – at 100 metres (109 yards) – put a shot into the animal’s right shoulder, and it went down for the first time. But in an instant it was up and charging again. He raked it with a sixth shot. His companion, who was carrying a .333, put the seventh shot in the animal’s right shoulder, breaking it. The buffalo went down but again rose quickly and charged. Another shot hit the same shoulder and the buffalo stumbled but still came on. The hunter who had started it all tried a spinal shot through the neck and missed badly at about 20 metres (22 yards) and had yet another poor shot at about 15 metres (16 yards) but this shot brought the animal down again and it struggled to regain its feet. Then it came on again. The second hunter put a shot through its chest, which felled it instantly. It was a perfect frontal heart shot and the two men, both a little shaken, as the buffalo was lying a mere 10 paces away, shook hands. The first hunter walked over to his trophy and placed his foot on it for the camera. The buffalo lurched to its feet, knocked the man down, pummelled him into the ground killing him.10
One-armed George Gray did not allow his lack of an arm to hold him back – until the day he fluffed a shot at a charging buffalo. It killed him. His brother had been killed some time earlier by a lion – also following a poor shot.
T. Murray Smith described the damage inflicted on a 50-year old African, who had been gored and trampled ‘literally into the ground’ by buffalo. His intestines had spilled from a hole ripped in his stomach, every limb was broken, and one of his arms was all but severed from his body. The man’s face was a pulp and his right hand still clutched his spear, the head of which was missing. The late Ken Beaton, chief warden of Queen Elizabeth Park, saw just how determined a buffalo can be when one charged his Land Rover, ripping off a door and gashing the body in a number of places.
There are on record several ‘miraculous escapes’ involving the buffalo. Once, a wounded buffalo, also in Queen Elizabeth Park, charged a mother and her child. The buffalo charged the woman first, hooked at her, and missed. It kept going and then caught up with the child, which it also tried to hook. Again it missed. It continued its flight until it was out of sight. Tobi Rochat of Acornhoek in the Lowveld of Mpumalanga described to me in 1966 how he was charged by a wounded buffalo. His gun bearer fled. The buffalo rammed Rochat (who was in his 60s) into a taaibos (‘tough bush’) – a dense, springy type of shrub. Every time the buffalo tried to push the man into the ground, the bush absorbed the shock and Rochat bounced upright like a jumping jack. The buffalo gave up.
Alan Calenborne tells of a man who was tossed into the air and landed on top of the dense crown of a blackthorn tree (Acacia mellifera), which has densely packed hooked thorns as sharp as a cat’s claws. It caused all concerned a great deal of pain and bloodshed and took considerable time to extricate him.
A friend walked past a sleeping buffalo and became aware of it only as it sprang to its feet and charged. He was flung into the air but the buffalo, fortunately, did not stop. I was told of a villager in Uganda who, riding a bicycle, was charged by a buffalo. He managed to bang his hat over the animal’s eyes. The buffalo stopped to shake it off and the man got away. Normally it is impossible to avoid a charging buffalo since, unlike so many other animals, including the domestic bull, it keeps its eyes on you all the time and only at the last minute does it lower its head.