After reading Jim’s blog post ‘A Real Trophy’, I once again realized that there is so much more to hunting a plains game trophy in Africa than just securing your anticipated list of trophies. Jim hunted two trophies that was not on his wish list i.e. the Zebra and the Red Hartebeest.

Jim Wilson

Jim Wilson or Sheriff Jim Wilson is a native Texas with many talents and a vast amount of life experience and interests which makes for very interesting as well as entertaining conversation on a hunt as well as around the campfire. Add to it a Professional Hunter who shares the same interest and you have a winning combination in every way. They had a ball and just watching them was a treat. Jim is not only an avid hunter, but also a singer, a songwriter, a retired Sheriff and a gun-writer for the NRA. Jim Wilson’s album, Border Bravo is a collection of cowboy songs and border ballads that focus on the American Southwest and the changing frontier. Wilson co-wrote three of the album’s songs, and carefully selected the rest to tell some tales of the border country, one of the last frontiers.

Take-aways from Jim’s hunt

• Come with your wish list but be flexible / open minded. Take what Africa offers! You might be presented with opportunities to hunt animals that is not on your list, but are still good trophies and make for a great hunting experience. Take time to enjoy and savor the experience instead of rushing through a rigid list of trophies.
• Experiencing the animals in their authentic environment is very different and often influences the hunter to change his mind regarding his preferences.
• The difficulty of the hunt always makes for a desirable trophy. When you work hard for your trophy, you always appreciate it more.
• African plains game is tough: ‘These critters are tough to hunt and tough to put down.’ Jim Wilson. Hence shot placement can’t be emphasized enough.

Zebra and Red Hartebeest

The Zebra and Red Hartebeest were the trophy animals Jim had no intention of hunting. But after seeing them he changed his mind.

Red hartebeest – Alcelaphus buselaphus

Red Hartebeest make for great trophies as well as a superb hunt. They are gregarious animals which add to the appeal of hunting them. Although very different in appearance from other plains game in Africa, they have their own unique attractiveness and like Jim said: ‘The hide is beautiful, the horns are impressive and grilled hartebeest back strap is mighty appealing, too.’ Read more about Jim’s Red Hartebeest hunt: Here

Read more about Jim’s Zebra hunt: Here

Read more about Jim’s Red Hartebeest hunt: Here

Anecdotes on Safari

Fort Richmond Safaris PH Leon du Plessis, the winner of our Professional Hunter contest, being presented his Moore Maker knife by the winning team… Jim Wilson and Linda Powell.

Jim Wilson, PH Leon du Plessis and Linda Powell 

Jim’s hunt will be remembered for all the fun that was had in camp.

Hunters are adventurers, wildlife enthusiasts and lovers of nature.

Their heart is to conserve nature and enjoy the outdoors.

They study the animal and its behavior that they are planning to hunt. 

And on a hunt the means are always greater than the end.

For a hunter, hunting is a way to be intimate with nature. 

It is not all about the kill as is so often perceived. Hunters love to be in the outdoors, spending quality time with friends and loved ones while on a hunt. A quote by Charles Fergus sums it up so well: ‘Hunting has opened the earth to me and let me sense the rhythms and hierarchies of nature.’

Hunting – a great adventure if not the greatest that the world can offer.

A Hunter’s Heart…

‘Despite our ever-changing, ever-indignant world with its growing ignorance of and indifference to the ways of the wild, I remain a predator, pitying those who revel in artificiality and synthetic success while regarding me and my kind as relics of a time and place no longer valued or understood. I stalk a real world of dark wood and tall grass stirred by restless wind blowing across sunlit water and beneath star stream sky. And on those occasions when I chose to kill, to claim some small part of nature’s bounty for my own, I do so by choice, quickly with the learned efficiency of a skilled hunter. Further in my heart and mind I know the truth and make no apologies for my actions or my place in time…Others around me my opt to eat only plants, nuts and fruits; still others my employ faceless strangers to procure their meats, their leather, their feathers and all those niceties and necessities of life – such is their right, off course, and I wish them well. All I ask in return is no one begrudge me and all of us who may answer the primordial stirrings within our hunters’ souls – my right to do some of these things myself.’  M.R.James

 Any man is a better man for being a hunter. Hunting is a sport that requires alertness and develops a ruggedness of character.

(Taken from quote by: Archibald Rutledge)

   “Hunting buffalo with your son is an incredible experience.” Richard Mann

“We hunted hard, made several stalks and walked for 7 miles on our Buffalo hunt. Finally, we got the wind right. At 100 yards, Geoffrey told me it was time to take the shot. I collapsed into a seated position and shouldered the rifle. Then the training that I received from my dad (Richard Mann) and at Gunsite academy took over. I cycled the action instantly, and then I fired again. I’ve scored go-ahead goals in soccer, I’ve hit buzzer-beaters in basketball but none of the above compares to hunting a Cape Buffalo in Africa.The 100-yard walk to the Buffalo felt like another mile.

He was massive. Beautiful! He was a gift, from my father and from my friend.

He was a gift from Africa. Africa is a special place. It’s where you become a Buffalo Hunter. And it’s a fine place to grow up.”  Bat Man

A Boy and a Buffalo

South African Buffalo Hunt by Empty Cases

Trophy Hunting Buffalo

The term Big Five game was coined by big-game hunters of old and it refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot.

Cape Buffalo (Syncerus Caffer) is the most popular to hunt from the Big Five and will give a hunter a challenging and dangerous hunting experience. It is also referred to often as the most dangerous of all the Big Five to hunt. Although it appeared docile when grazing in a herd this animal can be extremely aggressive when agitated or wounded.

Buffalo are heavily built & bulls are black while cows have a reddish brown tint with the black. Bulls have heavy horns with well developed Boss. Cows’ horns are much lighter – they have broad muscle and large ears situated behind the eyes.

Size: Mass 750-800kg.  Shoulder height: 140cm.  Habits: Buffalo move around in large family units. The old bulls group together in bachelor groups and in the dryer season they tend to graze near water. They reached puberty at three years of age. Gestation takes 330-346 days i.e. +/- 11 months.

The Buffalo is a non-selective grazer who drinks every day. It occasionally will browse. Buffalo will lick termite mounds and will also lick the mud stuck to their coats from wallowing in mud pools, off each other in order to get the nutrients lacking from their diet.

The horns of a bull can be quite spectacular in spread with a deep curl and a solid boss which covers the forehead.

Buffalo are found in southern Africa in herds which varies in size.

As with all hunting, shot placement is paramount when hunting the Cape Buffalo – a rifle of .375 caliber is adequate. To succeed a hunter needs to have put in the necessary preparation to be comfortable with his rifle as well as practicing on the shooting range. Trust the judgment of your Professional Hunter with shot placement and the selection of rifles and bullets when hunting the Buffalo.

Buffalo and you by Peter Flack (African Outfitter Magazine)

Buffalo may be done with you but you are never done with them, not even if you have never hunted them. They loom so large in the hunter’s lexicon, they can simply never be ignored. Even if you are a committed plains-game hunter, you know they are out there waiting for you. They are the buffalo in the room, even when never mentioned in polite hunting company. You know that some day, if and when you can afford it, you are going to want to measure yourself against this ultimate game animal.

Why is it that your first Buffalo, for those of us that have been lucky enough to experience this right of passage, this double-edged opportunity to measure ourselves against this ultimate hunting challenge, is the one we all remember with the utmost clarity? We can remember that we saw, heard, smelt everything with our senses on such high alert they were almost supernatural. It was almost as if we were in our innermost beings and at the same time to the tip of our fingers and the nails of our toes. Certainly, up until then, we had never experienced anything similar.

And it is this two-stage reaction to the number one of Africa’s Big Five, which is primarily responsible, I believe, for the whole variety of differing results from a fair-chase hunt for this incredible animal that some people still argue is no different to cattle, on the one hand, and Africa’s most dangerous, four-legged beast, on the other hand.

To some, the experience is just too much. I remember a Zimbabwean PH telling of a wealthy Arab hunter haring off through and over the bushes in his white, flowing Arab robes when he came face to face with his first buffalo at 40 paces. A good friend and one of the most highly experienced buffalo PHs in Africa today, nearly came to a premature end when his American lawyer client wounded a big bull at a range so close that it is just about impossible to imagine how he could have placed the bullet where he did – centre Mrs Venter! I can go on and on, including the case of the very nice man who accompanied Derek and me to Mozambique for his first buffalo hunt, and who wounded two, one after the other, never to find either one no matter how long and hard he looked.

I suppose these and other similar stories ( and you can read about any number of them in my book, Hunting the African Buffalo by Peter Flack) serve to keep the buffalo legend alive and well in Africa. They also confirm the challenge that these magnificent beasts have always offered and always will.

Basic Lessons learned on a Buffalo Hunt by Derek Carstens:

• Clarify at the beginning of the hunt with your PH precisely what you expect of him, come the time to shoot. Once on the shot, it is no time to enter into protracted negotiations, clarifications or discussions.
• If you are close, comfortable and confident on the animal of your choice, take the darned shot. Just let your PH know which animal you are drawing a bead on.
• Don’t hamstring yourself in search of the perfect shot. Optimize.
• Know your ballistics. This was a big lesson for me as I do a lot of hunting back home with a flat-shooting 25-06 and seldom have to compensate for bullet drop. In this sense the .375 is not in my muscle memory and the 300 gr solid would have dropped by at least 3” to 4”.
• Improve your knowledge of the animal’s anatomy that you are hunting to ensure a well-executed, imperfect strategy.
• And then critically remember it is all about the last hundred yards. All the sweat and toil in the tracking kilometers leading up to that point count for naught if things fall apart in the home straight. So be close to your PH at all time, and be ready when the action comes, as it tends to be faster than you may be used to.

Many stories are told by hunters – men and women who glorified the African Safari. The one aspect they all have in common is that these hunters and conservationists all loved to hunt buffalo and wrote books and stories about the Buffalo safaris they enjoyed so much. As said before it is the Cape BUFFALO that is hunted the most of the Big Five, the most sought after trophy on safari.