This was my last buffalo, a lone bull, who was taking a siesta in a large clump of bushes when rudely awakened by thrown rocks and shouts from the gunbearers. I was stationed slightly above the bushes on a hillside, and as he departed, he ran directly past me from three to nine o'clock, much like a Station Four shot at skeet.

I fired my wildcat .505 SRE bolt gun four times in rapid succession, three of the shots into a group behind his shoulder which could have been covered with a playing card. The buff stopped so quickly that he plowed up dirt with his nose.

Each of those shots approximated a .500 NE load (570 grain bullet at 2150 fps), and it took all four of them to stop him. I had a .458 Winchester Magnum double rifle with me back in camp, but was happy not to have used it.

I was a lifelong competitive shooter in NRA High Power competition, which requires rapid fire strings of ten shots in 60 and 70 seconds respectively at 200 and 300 yards. Much of this competition was fired with a Model 70 Winchester, so rapid fire with a bolt gun and rapid reloading the magazine are second nature to me. The butt of the rifle never left my shoulder during the entire sequence of events.