These six adventuress will test your body, spirit, nerves and hunting skills like no others. Are you game?
Jul 14, 2005
CAPE BUFFALO// Tanzania
Of Africa's Big Five game animals, the Cape buffalo is the one almost guaranteed to give you nightmares and trigger a flood of adrenaline. Myopic and volatile, "dugga boys," as the oldest bachelor bulls are known, can also be lethal, especially when they are tracked and stalked in the classic style, which requires a hunter to walk anywhere from two to ten hours to get close for the shot.
"Cape buffalo are notoriously short-tempered animals prone to charge when they're wounded or when their comfort zone is violated," says Jill Kleynhans, a safari operator who specializes in tracking Cape buffalo hunts in the famous Selous preserve in southern Tanzania. "We often track them through mopane forests and twelve-foot-high grass where you can stumble onto them. It can be a deadly scenario if you're not prepared."
Adam Clements, another professional hunter who specializes in Tanzanian safaris and shot his first dugga boy at age 7, agrees. "Nine times out of ten, if they wind you they'll stampede away. But if you get close before they scent you or you wound them, they head for the thickets and lie in wait. Then you're in for trouble."
Indeed, every year buffalo hunters are charged, stomped and gored, which is akin to being hit by a pickup truck with horns. Making matters worse is the habit some buffalo have of circling back to check their trail when being
followed. If you're lucky, you'll never have that experience.
"It's always in the back of your mind," says Robert Crew, who had to follow a Cape buffalo he wounded with Clements in the Selous in 2003. "He went into the thick stuff and we had to crawl
in after him on our hands and knees. It was almost like night in there. We had to inch forward, studying the shadows, listening to the beast crashing ahead of us. My eyes were as big as saucers and every hair on my neck stood on end the entire time we were
in there. Five shots later, he
was dead."
Contact: Adam Clements (210-698-0077; safaritrackers.com) or
Jill Kleynhans (+27 83-280-3558; mafigeni.co.za)
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