Hvor farlig er bøffelen og bøffeljakta

[villreinjegeren]

BUFFALO IN THE THICK STUFF
Everybody is entitled to an opinion. Despite the buffalo’s reputation as “two thousand pounds of black fury” (and other such malarkey), my opinion is that the Cape buffalo generally isn’t all that dangerous until you mess with him. A charge from an unwounded, uninjured buffalo is almost unheard of. Even when wounded, only a relatively small percentage of buffalo seem disposed to stand their ground and fight it out. Should you make a mistake and shoot your buffalo poorly, the most likely result is not that you will face him in a hair-raising charge. It’s actually far more likely that you will never see that buffalo again.

On the other hand, it would be unfair to buffalo as well as to buffalo hunters to ignore the danger factor that makes buffalo hunting the great experience that it is. Most of the time the danger is potential rather than clear and present, but that depends on the cover. Tracking buffalo in really thick stuff is serious business. Even without evil intent, a buffalo—or an entire herd—can run over you just trying to get away. Following up a wounded buffalo in tall grass, jess or early-season riverine cover, well, that’s the stuff of nightmares.

You go one step at a time, rifles trying to cover all the angles…but you really can’t. You’ll hear the charge coming long milliseconds before the black muzzle breaks clear. If you’re both lucky and good, you can probably kill him. But you probably can’t stop him, so you hope you’re also fast enough to get out of his way.

I have no fear of buffalo, certainly not the way I fear the great cats, but to follow buffalo in really thick stuff, like early season in the Zambezi Valley, is amazing work. You smell the cattle smell and hear the cattle sounds, and sometimes you see black shapes moving in the green mass. You might get almost close enough to touch them, but you still can’t work out the individual shapes or pick out the bull. This can go on for hours…and these are unwounded buffalo. Put a wounded buffalo in the heaviest cover and you have one of the most dangerous of all hunting situations.

Read more: http://www.petersenshunting.com/uncategorized/6-hazardous-hunts-that-could-kill-you/#ixzz4de82wgjT