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Driving down a trail in the Selous in Tanzania we ran across a road crew doing maintenance work and asked them if they had seen any buffalo. They directed us to a site a short distance away where a medium sized herd (40-60 head) was grazing. We dismounted and went into the fairly open scrub brush in line abreast, with the PH on the left with his gun bearer, I on the right with my gun bearer, and the tracker in the middle.

We eventually came up on the herd, which reacted like a herd of domestic cattle, lining up in line abreast facing us at about 60 yards distance. My PH pointed out the largest bull, and I put a 570 grain solid in the middle of his chest with my .505. The herd milled around and faced us again, minus the wounded bull which had decamped over the hill.

The PH pointed out an even bigger bull and I contributed another shot from the .505. Same thing, herd milled around, came back to a facing configuration. Again the bull I shot had disappeared.

Now the PH pointed out an even bigger bull. One more shot, and the whole herd took off. We resumed our original formation and followed.

We came across the first bull, stretched out dead about 100 yards from where he was first hit. Then my gun bearer pointed off to the right, where a bull was apparantly lying down broadside to us, facing to our right (back the way we had come). I put another shot into him at the shoulder and then went over to check the results. It turned out that the bull, now dead, had not been lying down, but was standing up in a small gully, so that only his head and body were exposed. He was dead when we came up to him, however.

We continued to follow the herd until the tracker pointed to a thicket, where we could just make out the third bull lying down and facing back toward us, evidently waiting in ambush. Two shots from my .458 confirmed that he was dead, however. (The gun bearer was carrying the .458, which I had not yet tried on buffalo. The result were inconclusive, obviously. I later did kill another buffalo with it, but felt more confident with the .505, which seemed more authoritative to me. Still does.)

The road crew, having heard the shooting, soon arrived with a dump truck and loaded the headless carcasses on it. There was wild feasting in the road camp that night.

Two of the three buffalo had evidently tried to set up an ambush, but were too sick to carry it out. If the first shots had not been well placed, I feel sure things would have gotten very lively