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I know water buffalo have spread quite far over the years but are there any confirmed reports of water buffalo in Far North Queensland and Cape Yorke?

From my somewhat limited experience water buffalo in areas they have been hard hunted do not stand around looking. They head off very quickly at long ranges if they know humans or hunters are around. On one of last years water buffalo hunts we hunted for a couple days an area the outfitter had hunted a lot previously. I remember seeing the water buffalo bulls take off to the yonder at hundreds of metres and mentioned I might have to swap my .450 double for a .375 bolt with scope. The outfitter - Graham Williams - said "don't worry, we will get close to lots of them yet". And he was right. Later we hunted country that hadn't been hunted much yet and found good herds and bulls. One big benefit of an outfitter having the ability to shift camps every so often to new country. This may be particularly for inland hunts. The coastal wetlands being richer feed country seem to have much larger herds with new animals roaming in and out. Also has herd "masters" get shot other bulls take their place.

It would be nice to know and to study the habits of wild water buffalo to know more on what their habits are. How far does a bull roam? What sort of territory does a dominant bull hold? Do other dominant bulls service cows in the same "herds" or areas?

For scrub bulls (ie wild or feral cattle), which Far North Queensland certainly has many of, I agree with 500Nitro, that they are probably more agrressive than either water buffalo or cape buffalo. Especially when wounded. A lot of scrub bulls come from calves that have never been handled by humans as well. On some very large stations whole areas of the leases are not mustered as it is not always economically feasible, so herds in these areas have effectively been raised in the wild.

Alan Moon when making hunting films said to me he had had many charges from scrub bulls and as it is hard to get a licence in Qld for a large calibre pistol as a backup to the camera (a long arm being hard to carry when filming), it certainly added to the "fun" of filming.

Also I believe a water buffalo bull is harder to put down than a cape buffalo bull, one reason being a considerably larger body size. But any animal will die very quickly with a brain or spine shot (incacipation). as 500Nitro says I would place a cape buffalo as a much more wary and cunning beast, not having domesticated "genes" and also growing up in an environment with deadly predators such as lion. And man of course.

Just like cape buffalo there have been accounts of unprovoked charges. Matt Graham summed it up, I thinks with - sometimes they are in a bad mood, and just want to move you out of their way. In 2004 we certainly encountered one old broomed off water buff bull like this. First he was curious, then started to run off, but as he ran off, he hooked at a sapling snapping it off and bringing it down. This caused him to hook around back straight at us. His attitude when hitting the sapling seemed to take a definite change from curious to aggressive. He came very close to us, stopped. Walked five steps forward. We decided to take some steps back. He took more steps forward, we took a few more back. This all at about 20 metres. We then decided we wanted a bigger bull and as it was the first morning of the hunt week, decided to retreat and let him be. He wasn't a happy boy.

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John aka NitroX

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