My son Tom and I plan a couple of major hunts each year and this year we spent 2 amazing weeks in New Zealand South Island in April. I hunted with Simon Kyle-Little of Australian Big Game Safaris in 2012 and tested some North Fork .458 calibre projectiles on Buffalo, so I knew how hard-to-kill Buffalo Bulls could be. Tom had never been to the Northern Territory, nor hunted Buffalo, so in mid-2025 I arranged for us to hunt with Simon in August 2026. A mate of mine from Western Australia was keen to bring his son to hunt Buffalo too, so it was arranged to have two father & son teams in camp 14-21 August 2026 for a Management Bull hunt. We feel privileged to be Simon’s only Australian clients (his American clients fill his calendar) and to contribute to the management of the Buffalo in central Northern Territory.
I was keen to hunt dangerous game with my 1909 WJ Jeffery Double Rifle in 450-400 3” calibre, known as the iconic “400 Jeffery”, a favourite of many African hunters. I loaded cartridges with 400 grain Woodleigh RNSN and FMJ projectiles and packed the double rifle in a shotgun hard case for the trip. Keith asked me to bring my 9.3x62 barrel for his Blaser R8 (shooters in Western Australia have ridiculously unreasonable, restrictive gun laws) and I loaded Spoor 250gr and Barnes TSX 286gr projectiles. Tom was taking his Sako 75 in 338 Winchester Magnum calibre and I had my Blaser R8 also in 338WM calibre for other ferals, if the opportunity arose.
An intense work program leading up to the hunt saw me fly home from Melbourne on the night before we flew to Darwin early on Friday 14th August. As a result, I forgot to take some stuff, like a knife …….. the only hunt I’ve ever done without a knife.
We got to the airport 2 hours before our flight to allow plenty of time to train the QANTAS staff in the handling of firearms. When asked for our firearms licences, Tom did the pocket-slap dance and declared that his wallet was on the kitchen bench at home. I registered all 3 gun cases on my licence without paying for extra baggage (there are some advantages to being a Gold Frequent Flyer). We arrived in Darwin at midday and Simon picked us up in the Hilux Ute (pickup for our American friends). It was a 6-hour drive to camp, via Katherine, and we arrived in camp a little before dark. Keith and Josh had left Perth on the Monday before (after attending his Mother’s 100th birthday on the weekend) and driven up to Katherine via Argyle and arrived in camp a couple of hours before us.
Simon’s camp is pretty flash and we were allocated 2-room tents with real beds – proper glamping with a hot shower and real flushing toilet. The lock-up buildings included a safe for firearm storage and a spacious kitchen and a fireplace outside overlooking a permanent creek that provides the burbling background music and attracts plenty of birds.
Tom, Josh and Keith at breakfast Day 1
Simon had 2 other Guides in camp with him, Nathan and James, both switched-on young men who we hunted with over the next 6 days. Tom and I spent most of our time with James, a 35 year-old from Hawaii who is working his way through a Biology degree and travelling the world as a hunting guide.
Keith and Josh hunted with Nathan on Day 1 and Tom and I went in the other ute with Simon. We drove nearly an hour from camp and started seeing buffalo in numbers straight away.
We dismounted and started our first walk. Simon is a year older than me but significantly fitter.
We spotted a promising Bull and started hunting him but he was onto us. Then Simon saw a herd of cows and said we would take an old management cow, to see how we would go stalking and to test the Double Rifle. While following the herd of cows, we saw another mixed herd with an old management bull. We stalked into a gully within 100m of the herd and watched for about 10 minutes, to see if we could stalk closer, when the old bull started walking towards us, heading for the water behind us. He walked within 20m and I shot him through both shoulders with a 400gr Woodleigh RNSN. He ran directly away and I put a 400gr FMJ through his right hip – and still he ran, albeit slowly. I reloaded and when he turned broadside at 60m I gave him 2 more and he finally dropped. I had taken my first Buffalo Bull with the 117 year-old Double Rifle.
We worked our way back to the ute and smashed some water with Hydralyte. The daytime temperatures were between 35oC to 40oC dry heat and the nights were cool – August is about the most pleasant time of the year for Southerners in the northern tropics.
We saw the other team as we ventured further into the concession and stopped for a chat – they had some early success on some feral donkeys, with Josh taking some long-range shots using his 270 WSM loaded with Barnes projectiles.
We moved on and dismounted when another management bull was spotted. We followed it for nearly a kilometre as it moved, unalarmed, away from us. The wind was good and we continued to follow, then another 2 Buffalo Bulls ahead of our target animal saw us and bolted. The target Bull turned broadside to see what had spooked them. Simon put Tom on the 4-Stable-Sticks and Tom put a 225gr Spoor projectile, from the Sako 75 in 338 WinMag, through both shoulders and heart/lungs at 133m. The Bull turned and ran about 30m and fell dead. Tom’s first Buffalo was a one-shot kill. The Spoor projectiles, from South Africa, performed consistently and impressively throughout the hunt.
We returned to the ute and drove on to the edge of the concession, saw some donkeys as they disappeared over the horizon, and walked a spring system looking for pigs, to no avail.
On the way back to camp, approaching dark, a Red Ox was sighted and it immediately ran across the road in front of us and proceeded to run parallel to the road. When Simon drew level with the Bull, he stopped the ute and a 400gr Woodleigh blew him off his feet. I hit him behind his right shoulder and it travelled forward and smashed his neck.
I took the opportunity to take some photos of the old WJ Jeffery Double Rifle that is engraved with Indian Gaur Buffalo (largest buffalo in the world – some weighing up to 1500kg) on the receiver.
What a first day!
We were up at dawn each day (the birds saw to that), had a fairly leisurely breakfast, and out hunting all day, taking the makings of lunch with us. Most days we got back to camp after dark. We were drinking 5-6 litres of water each day and 2 litres of that was heavily laced with Hydralyte.
Each day we increased the number of steps that we walked, according to my Garmin Smart Watch. Today we hunted with Nathan, a farmer from Kangaroo Island who is getting into guiding, and he took us to the “ampitheatre” a wide valley that always yields big bulls. We stopped at a management bull carcass from yesterday and found the fresh shit from a very large boar nearby – he had consumed much of the stomach contents of the bull during the night. We walked the dry creekline into the wind for a kilometre or so until the creek opened out and there was no more cover – we didn’t find this boar despite several attempts over the next few days.
We drove to the top of a low ridge overlooking a wide green valley and parked in the shade. We immediately saw 4 bulls in the shade on the next ridge and one of them was a monster – old and wide and heavy in the horn (the biggest I saw on this trip). But he was wary and ambled into the thicket upwind of us. We crossed the valley and followed into the bush where he had disappeared. We never saw this bull again but after another half kilometre into the scrub, we started seeing more bulls moving, undisturbed, into the shade on the far side of the ridge.
One bull was spotted, facing away, in the shade of a tree, with a fair span of horn showing either side of the body. It wasn’t the heavy-horned bull that we spotted earlier but he was old and on the downhill run – just what I was looking for.
He turned to face us and Nathan saw the many-ridged horns and the prominent backbone and declared him a shooter. We stalked in to 40 metres and he turned broadside, facing left, preparing to run. Using a tree rest, the left barrel from the 400 Jeffery took him almost perfectly in the shoulder, smashing both shoulders and both lungs but about an inch above the heart. He turned and ran and the right barrel went a couple of inches below the spine. Simon had impressed on us to keep shooting until the bull goes down and while I was reloading I yelled to Tom to shoot too. He put a 225gr Spoor into his left shoulder and the bull dropped but was up again immediately. I put 2 more (FMJs) into him when he stopped. Tom reported 3 holes in his left shoulder and put a 225gr Woodleigh Hydro into the same shoulder. He ran again (hard to believe) and Tom fired again and I put another two 400gr Woodleigh RNSNs into him. We continued to follow up and shoot as he walked away. Tom fired 6 rounds and I fired my last 10 rounds, the last 2 after he finally dropped. One of Tom’s shots hit an intervening termite mound and one of mine a tree. The first shot killed him but the bull absorbed 14 bullets before we were convinced that he was dead.
The photos show the wound in his forehead from battle with another bull – the point of a horn had gone in and cracked his skull and foul-smelling putrefaction and puss was seeping out of the wound. Only two of the projectiles were recovered – the Woodleighs did the job well.
The walk back to the ute was 9000 steps – it’s amazing how the distance seems like almost nothing when hunting and then so far when returning to base. Nathan did well to carry the head back to the ute. We relocated the ute into better shade and had lunch – corned beef, cheese slices and pickles sangers washed down with about 2 litres of Hydralyte.
We drove to the next shallow valley and spotted two good bulls, one young and one very old and heavy. We paralleled him downwind along a dry watercourse, gradually making ground on him as he headed toward some thick scrub. We were within 100 metres of the bull when Tom and I saw a Boar asleep in the water’s edge of a solitary waterhole. Nathan was focussed on the Bull and didn’t see the Boar so I whistled him and pointed – Nathan said to Tom “your choice, Bull or Boar”. My whistle had alerted the Boar and he burst out of the water and ran up the watercourse away from us. Tom’s first shot took hair off his back and the second nailed him. The Bull turned to see what was going on and walked, warily, into the scrub. We stayed downwind and paralleled his track into the scrub. A few hundred metres in we spotted him in the shade of a thicket of trees looking back the way he had come. We couldn’t get any closer to him without being seen and taking a shot from where we were risked losing him if/when he ran deeper into the thick scrub. We stood and watched him for 30 minutes but he didn’t relax or move off – they don’t that big and old if they’re not switched on. We left him alone and went back and took photos of Tom’s Boar.
We sat over the waterhole for about 40 minutes to see if the bull would come down to drink and Tom flew his drone.
We started the drive back to camp and spotted two bulls to the right of the track. One was young and the other very old and big. Tom stalked the old Bull to around 60 metres and used the sticks to put a Spoor perfectly into his shoulder broadside. The Bull ran (of course) and Tom put two more Spoors and a Hydro into him before he dropped. Three of the four shots were fatal – it continues to amaze me how tough these critters are.
Tom and I spent the next 3 days with James Joyce, a 35 year-old Biologist native of Hawaii. We did a lot of walking (over 20,000 steps each day and the third day (a Wednesday) we did 29,000 steps! We took management cows and donkeys and had two close encounters with Bulls that we walked onto unexpectedly but they both retreated.
Having a great meal and a hot shower each night was greatly appreciated and we slept well through the cool nights.
Our last day of the hunt was to be an “easier” day, after several consecutive days of more than 20,000 steps (according to my Garmin smart watch) and consumption of 5-6 litres of water with “Hydralyte” each day in 35oC+ heat. After a relaxed coffee around the fire in camp and Simon regaling us with stories of Buffalo charges (including the charge that put Glen Giffin in the hospital) and with Simon’s warning to be vigilant ringing in our ears, we headed to one of the buffalo carcasses to see if we could find a boar. We left the ute in the shade and walked into the wind along a dry creek bed toward the carcass. I was leading in case we bumped into a pig bedded along the creek bank. Still a couple of hundred metres short of the carcass, we did just that. The gnarly old boar and I saw each other at the same moment and I managed to shoot him broadside as he sprang up the creek bank, using the 9.3x62 barrel in my Blaser R8. He had an impressive set of tusks, with more mass than I have ever seen on a boar and very old, with ears in tatters, probably from Dingos and fighting other boars. Interestingly, we saw only boars on this trip.
We took the head and dropped it at camp, to recover the tusks, on our way to check another carcass. There wasn’t much left of the buffalo shot only a few days earlier and only Raptors on the carcass. We then explored a ridge on foot and “discovered” a beautiful hidden valley that James had not seen before. We were possibly the first white men to walk here. It gives one pause and a feeling of wonder.
We then drove further into the concession to an area that we had not seen before, parked the ute and had lunch. We walked a couple of kilometres down a plateau and saw this malevolent-looking Bull on the way. I took a photo because he was looking at us like we owed him money.
We dropped down off the plateau through swampy sections of ground halfway down the slope into a flowing creek. I was surprised to see so much water at this time of the year, in the middle of the dry season. We followed the creek down to a cascade over rocks into a large deep pool. We had a leisurely break and ate snacks and refreshed in the creek. The rocks were surprisingly comfortable to lie on.
At around 16:00 we climbed up the rocks beside the “waterfall” to the top of the plateau. To make the climb, I slung my rifle over my head, something I rarely do. When we came out onto the plateau we were only a few hundred metres from the ute, having circled back along the creek to the waterfall.
James was leading, with me behind him and Tom maybe 10 metres behind me. James found a flat rock that looked like it had once been part of the ocean floor and wondered out loud if he could carry it as far as the ute to take it back to camp. At that moment, Tom yelled “BULL!” and ran to the only substantial tree in the whole area.
I looked to my right and saw the murderous eyes of a Bull coming at indescribable speed straight at me. I thought “this is it, I’m dead, don’t move”. At that moment James moved (I assume he unslung the Kreighoff 500-416 DR) and saved my life – the Bull saw the movement and diverted to James and passed only a couple of metres from me. Time slowed and I saw the next couple of seconds in milliseconds. While swinging the Double towards the Bull I saw the horror on James’ face as he missed the de-cocker on the gun and realised he didn’t have time to correct the mistake. He steeled himself (he later told me that he thought “this is gonna fukn hurt”) and waited until the Bull could not respond to his move and pirouetted out of his path. The Bull’s left horn missed his arched belly by millimetres, if James had put his shirt back on after his swim he would have been toast.
The old Bull ran on for nearly 20m (a younger Bull would have been much nimbler) and when he wheeled to have another go, James put a .416 through the septum of his nose and down his throat. Luckily (there was SO MUCH luck in this encounter) he must have hit the carotid (fountain of blood) and the Bull immediately lost blood supply to the brain. Almost instantaneously, Tom put a 338 Woodleigh bullet into his heart broadside and the Bull went down. I put a Spoor 9.3 finisher into him after he was down. James turned around to me with a mixture of elation and terror on his face and said, “I nearly died!”
The photos have the piece of stone that nearly killed us displayed prominently. It was not until some time later that we figured out it was the same Bull that looked at us balefully on the way down the plateau.
I am fortunate that I was with two young men who remained steady under pressure, were nimble enough to avoid injury and for the truckload of luck that was with us that day. It was great experience for James as he flew to Botswana 2 days later to guide Elephant hunts.
Memorable end to a phenomenal hunt.
I was keen to hunt dangerous game with my 1909 WJ Jeffery Double Rifle in 450-400 3” calibre, known as the iconic “400 Jeffery”, a favourite of many African hunters. I loaded cartridges with 400 grain Woodleigh RNSN and FMJ projectiles and packed the double rifle in a shotgun hard case for the trip. Keith asked me to bring my 9.3x62 barrel for his Blaser R8 (shooters in Western Australia have ridiculously unreasonable, restrictive gun laws) and I loaded Spoor 250gr and Barnes TSX 286gr projectiles. Tom was taking his Sako 75 in 338 Winchester Magnum calibre and I had my Blaser R8 also in 338WM calibre for other ferals, if the opportunity arose.
An intense work program leading up to the hunt saw me fly home from Melbourne on the night before we flew to Darwin early on Friday 14th August. As a result, I forgot to take some stuff, like a knife …….. the only hunt I’ve ever done without a knife.
We got to the airport 2 hours before our flight to allow plenty of time to train the QANTAS staff in the handling of firearms. When asked for our firearms licences, Tom did the pocket-slap dance and declared that his wallet was on the kitchen bench at home. I registered all 3 gun cases on my licence without paying for extra baggage (there are some advantages to being a Gold Frequent Flyer). We arrived in Darwin at midday and Simon picked us up in the Hilux Ute (pickup for our American friends). It was a 6-hour drive to camp, via Katherine, and we arrived in camp a little before dark. Keith and Josh had left Perth on the Monday before (after attending his Mother’s 100th birthday on the weekend) and driven up to Katherine via Argyle and arrived in camp a couple of hours before us.
Simon’s camp is pretty flash and we were allocated 2-room tents with real beds – proper glamping with a hot shower and real flushing toilet. The lock-up buildings included a safe for firearm storage and a spacious kitchen and a fireplace outside overlooking a permanent creek that provides the burbling background music and attracts plenty of birds.
Tom, Josh and Keith at breakfast Day 1
Simon had 2 other Guides in camp with him, Nathan and James, both switched-on young men who we hunted with over the next 6 days. Tom and I spent most of our time with James, a 35 year-old from Hawaii who is working his way through a Biology degree and travelling the world as a hunting guide.
Keith and Josh hunted with Nathan on Day 1 and Tom and I went in the other ute with Simon. We drove nearly an hour from camp and started seeing buffalo in numbers straight away.
We dismounted and started our first walk. Simon is a year older than me but significantly fitter.
We spotted a promising Bull and started hunting him but he was onto us. Then Simon saw a herd of cows and said we would take an old management cow, to see how we would go stalking and to test the Double Rifle. While following the herd of cows, we saw another mixed herd with an old management bull. We stalked into a gully within 100m of the herd and watched for about 10 minutes, to see if we could stalk closer, when the old bull started walking towards us, heading for the water behind us. He walked within 20m and I shot him through both shoulders with a 400gr Woodleigh RNSN. He ran directly away and I put a 400gr FMJ through his right hip – and still he ran, albeit slowly. I reloaded and when he turned broadside at 60m I gave him 2 more and he finally dropped. I had taken my first Buffalo Bull with the 117 year-old Double Rifle.
We worked our way back to the ute and smashed some water with Hydralyte. The daytime temperatures were between 35oC to 40oC dry heat and the nights were cool – August is about the most pleasant time of the year for Southerners in the northern tropics.
We saw the other team as we ventured further into the concession and stopped for a chat – they had some early success on some feral donkeys, with Josh taking some long-range shots using his 270 WSM loaded with Barnes projectiles.
We moved on and dismounted when another management bull was spotted. We followed it for nearly a kilometre as it moved, unalarmed, away from us. The wind was good and we continued to follow, then another 2 Buffalo Bulls ahead of our target animal saw us and bolted. The target Bull turned broadside to see what had spooked them. Simon put Tom on the 4-Stable-Sticks and Tom put a 225gr Spoor projectile, from the Sako 75 in 338 WinMag, through both shoulders and heart/lungs at 133m. The Bull turned and ran about 30m and fell dead. Tom’s first Buffalo was a one-shot kill. The Spoor projectiles, from South Africa, performed consistently and impressively throughout the hunt.
We returned to the ute and drove on to the edge of the concession, saw some donkeys as they disappeared over the horizon, and walked a spring system looking for pigs, to no avail.
On the way back to camp, approaching dark, a Red Ox was sighted and it immediately ran across the road in front of us and proceeded to run parallel to the road. When Simon drew level with the Bull, he stopped the ute and a 400gr Woodleigh blew him off his feet. I hit him behind his right shoulder and it travelled forward and smashed his neck.
I took the opportunity to take some photos of the old WJ Jeffery Double Rifle that is engraved with Indian Gaur Buffalo (largest buffalo in the world – some weighing up to 1500kg) on the receiver.
What a first day!
We were up at dawn each day (the birds saw to that), had a fairly leisurely breakfast, and out hunting all day, taking the makings of lunch with us. Most days we got back to camp after dark. We were drinking 5-6 litres of water each day and 2 litres of that was heavily laced with Hydralyte.
Each day we increased the number of steps that we walked, according to my Garmin Smart Watch. Today we hunted with Nathan, a farmer from Kangaroo Island who is getting into guiding, and he took us to the “ampitheatre” a wide valley that always yields big bulls. We stopped at a management bull carcass from yesterday and found the fresh shit from a very large boar nearby – he had consumed much of the stomach contents of the bull during the night. We walked the dry creekline into the wind for a kilometre or so until the creek opened out and there was no more cover – we didn’t find this boar despite several attempts over the next few days.
We drove to the top of a low ridge overlooking a wide green valley and parked in the shade. We immediately saw 4 bulls in the shade on the next ridge and one of them was a monster – old and wide and heavy in the horn (the biggest I saw on this trip). But he was wary and ambled into the thicket upwind of us. We crossed the valley and followed into the bush where he had disappeared. We never saw this bull again but after another half kilometre into the scrub, we started seeing more bulls moving, undisturbed, into the shade on the far side of the ridge.
One bull was spotted, facing away, in the shade of a tree, with a fair span of horn showing either side of the body. It wasn’t the heavy-horned bull that we spotted earlier but he was old and on the downhill run – just what I was looking for.
He turned to face us and Nathan saw the many-ridged horns and the prominent backbone and declared him a shooter. We stalked in to 40 metres and he turned broadside, facing left, preparing to run. Using a tree rest, the left barrel from the 400 Jeffery took him almost perfectly in the shoulder, smashing both shoulders and both lungs but about an inch above the heart. He turned and ran and the right barrel went a couple of inches below the spine. Simon had impressed on us to keep shooting until the bull goes down and while I was reloading I yelled to Tom to shoot too. He put a 225gr Spoor into his left shoulder and the bull dropped but was up again immediately. I put 2 more (FMJs) into him when he stopped. Tom reported 3 holes in his left shoulder and put a 225gr Woodleigh Hydro into the same shoulder. He ran again (hard to believe) and Tom fired again and I put another two 400gr Woodleigh RNSNs into him. We continued to follow up and shoot as he walked away. Tom fired 6 rounds and I fired my last 10 rounds, the last 2 after he finally dropped. One of Tom’s shots hit an intervening termite mound and one of mine a tree. The first shot killed him but the bull absorbed 14 bullets before we were convinced that he was dead.
The photos show the wound in his forehead from battle with another bull – the point of a horn had gone in and cracked his skull and foul-smelling putrefaction and puss was seeping out of the wound. Only two of the projectiles were recovered – the Woodleighs did the job well.
The walk back to the ute was 9000 steps – it’s amazing how the distance seems like almost nothing when hunting and then so far when returning to base. Nathan did well to carry the head back to the ute. We relocated the ute into better shade and had lunch – corned beef, cheese slices and pickles sangers washed down with about 2 litres of Hydralyte.
We drove to the next shallow valley and spotted two good bulls, one young and one very old and heavy. We paralleled him downwind along a dry watercourse, gradually making ground on him as he headed toward some thick scrub. We were within 100 metres of the bull when Tom and I saw a Boar asleep in the water’s edge of a solitary waterhole. Nathan was focussed on the Bull and didn’t see the Boar so I whistled him and pointed – Nathan said to Tom “your choice, Bull or Boar”. My whistle had alerted the Boar and he burst out of the water and ran up the watercourse away from us. Tom’s first shot took hair off his back and the second nailed him. The Bull turned to see what was going on and walked, warily, into the scrub. We stayed downwind and paralleled his track into the scrub. A few hundred metres in we spotted him in the shade of a thicket of trees looking back the way he had come. We couldn’t get any closer to him without being seen and taking a shot from where we were risked losing him if/when he ran deeper into the thick scrub. We stood and watched him for 30 minutes but he didn’t relax or move off – they don’t that big and old if they’re not switched on. We left him alone and went back and took photos of Tom’s Boar.
We sat over the waterhole for about 40 minutes to see if the bull would come down to drink and Tom flew his drone.
We started the drive back to camp and spotted two bulls to the right of the track. One was young and the other very old and big. Tom stalked the old Bull to around 60 metres and used the sticks to put a Spoor perfectly into his shoulder broadside. The Bull ran (of course) and Tom put two more Spoors and a Hydro into him before he dropped. Three of the four shots were fatal – it continues to amaze me how tough these critters are.
Tom and I spent the next 3 days with James Joyce, a 35 year-old Biologist native of Hawaii. We did a lot of walking (over 20,000 steps each day and the third day (a Wednesday) we did 29,000 steps! We took management cows and donkeys and had two close encounters with Bulls that we walked onto unexpectedly but they both retreated.
Having a great meal and a hot shower each night was greatly appreciated and we slept well through the cool nights.
Our last day of the hunt was to be an “easier” day, after several consecutive days of more than 20,000 steps (according to my Garmin smart watch) and consumption of 5-6 litres of water with “Hydralyte” each day in 35oC+ heat. After a relaxed coffee around the fire in camp and Simon regaling us with stories of Buffalo charges (including the charge that put Glen Giffin in the hospital) and with Simon’s warning to be vigilant ringing in our ears, we headed to one of the buffalo carcasses to see if we could find a boar. We left the ute in the shade and walked into the wind along a dry creek bed toward the carcass. I was leading in case we bumped into a pig bedded along the creek bank. Still a couple of hundred metres short of the carcass, we did just that. The gnarly old boar and I saw each other at the same moment and I managed to shoot him broadside as he sprang up the creek bank, using the 9.3x62 barrel in my Blaser R8. He had an impressive set of tusks, with more mass than I have ever seen on a boar and very old, with ears in tatters, probably from Dingos and fighting other boars. Interestingly, we saw only boars on this trip.
We took the head and dropped it at camp, to recover the tusks, on our way to check another carcass. There wasn’t much left of the buffalo shot only a few days earlier and only Raptors on the carcass. We then explored a ridge on foot and “discovered” a beautiful hidden valley that James had not seen before. We were possibly the first white men to walk here. It gives one pause and a feeling of wonder.
We then drove further into the concession to an area that we had not seen before, parked the ute and had lunch. We walked a couple of kilometres down a plateau and saw this malevolent-looking Bull on the way. I took a photo because he was looking at us like we owed him money.
We dropped down off the plateau through swampy sections of ground halfway down the slope into a flowing creek. I was surprised to see so much water at this time of the year, in the middle of the dry season. We followed the creek down to a cascade over rocks into a large deep pool. We had a leisurely break and ate snacks and refreshed in the creek. The rocks were surprisingly comfortable to lie on.
At around 16:00 we climbed up the rocks beside the “waterfall” to the top of the plateau. To make the climb, I slung my rifle over my head, something I rarely do. When we came out onto the plateau we were only a few hundred metres from the ute, having circled back along the creek to the waterfall.
James was leading, with me behind him and Tom maybe 10 metres behind me. James found a flat rock that looked like it had once been part of the ocean floor and wondered out loud if he could carry it as far as the ute to take it back to camp. At that moment, Tom yelled “BULL!” and ran to the only substantial tree in the whole area.
I looked to my right and saw the murderous eyes of a Bull coming at indescribable speed straight at me. I thought “this is it, I’m dead, don’t move”. At that moment James moved (I assume he unslung the Kreighoff 500-416 DR) and saved my life – the Bull saw the movement and diverted to James and passed only a couple of metres from me. Time slowed and I saw the next couple of seconds in milliseconds. While swinging the Double towards the Bull I saw the horror on James’ face as he missed the de-cocker on the gun and realised he didn’t have time to correct the mistake. He steeled himself (he later told me that he thought “this is gonna fukn hurt”) and waited until the Bull could not respond to his move and pirouetted out of his path. The Bull’s left horn missed his arched belly by millimetres, if James had put his shirt back on after his swim he would have been toast.
The old Bull ran on for nearly 20m (a younger Bull would have been much nimbler) and when he wheeled to have another go, James put a .416 through the septum of his nose and down his throat. Luckily (there was SO MUCH luck in this encounter) he must have hit the carotid (fountain of blood) and the Bull immediately lost blood supply to the brain. Almost instantaneously, Tom put a 338 Woodleigh bullet into his heart broadside and the Bull went down. I put a Spoor 9.3 finisher into him after he was down. James turned around to me with a mixture of elation and terror on his face and said, “I nearly died!”
The photos have the piece of stone that nearly killed us displayed prominently. It was not until some time later that we figured out it was the same Bull that looked at us balefully on the way down the plateau.
I am fortunate that I was with two young men who remained steady under pressure, were nimble enough to avoid injury and for the truckload of luck that was with us that day. It was great experience for James as he flew to Botswana 2 days later to guide Elephant hunts.
Memorable end to a phenomenal hunt.
