Dangerous Game hunt course at the Africa Wildlife College -Practice round Part 1:Buffalo

Thank you Deon, we are leaving within the following hour... I already discussed a buffalo hunt for next year..WE will see how it works out...

Good day to all the members. I returned from our Dangerous game course today. I am currently busy compiling a report with a lot of photos...this was a great event..I already am planning for the Elephant hunting course next year....Regarding the foreign hunters/ members of this forum in other countries other than South Africa: I did discuss your request to participate in such a course with Dr. Kevin Robinson...he will be able to accommodate foreign hunters/members of this forum from other countries. Please pm me so I can provide you with his contact details...

Look forward to your report on the course.

Wayne, it was just unbelievable...walk/stalk up to a herd of buffalo bulls/cows withing twenty meters..some buffalo was standing at 15 meters to our left..Dr. Kevin Robinson use a specific method to being able to achieve this type of walk and stalk...it works every time..he indicated that you need to be extremely close to a buffalo if you want to shoot it....every time you shoot at a buffalo...

Any word on teaching this course for bow hunters, or is this rifle only? I'm guessing the same tactics apply as 15 meters is close.

Lrntolive, Dr.Kevin said the course for the hunters abroad will be at east a week long/longer as one week..since all the dangerous game the big five will be included in this course.Keep in mind , in every animal discuss and lecturing there need to be three of five physical approaches to practice shot placement on these animals. You need to shoot three different courses with rifles ( you need to discuss the bow option with him) regarding different scenarios on these animals.
One of the most important modules discussed/practical work shop was the fitting of your rifle on the shooting range. The previous group included participants /owner of a double square Rigby .416 that did not even remotely fitted owner....they had to cut pieces of cardboard and used duck-tape to shape the stock ...enabling the rifle to fit the owner before he was able to commence with the shooting activities....the cost of this rifle...R174 000 .... Imagine this expensive rifle Double square bridge , exhibition stocked rifle duck-taped , nogal in a red colour running around in the bush after buffalo targets?????

Gert, thank you for this information.

Members, here is a video taken by one of our participants of the dangerous game hunt course we participated in at the African Wild Life College....we did the buffalo course, Pieter Nel is currently the best elephant guide in South Africa . Her , Pieter is explaining to Jacques and his son what you need to do when approaching an elephant for proper shot placement. When doing the elephant course you need to do at least four such approaches every day..enjoy the video...

That!!! There!!!! That is what life must be all about!!!

Gert Odendaal said:

One of the most important modules discussed/practical work shop was the fitting of your rifle on the shooting range. The previous group included participants /owner of a double square Rigby .416 that did not even remotely fitted owner....they had to cut pieces of cardboard and used duck-tape to shape the stock ...enabling the rifle to fit the owner before he was able to commence with the shooting activities....the cost of this rifle...R174 000 .... Imagine this expensive rifle Double square bridge , exhibition stocked rifle duck-taped , nogal in a red colour running around in the bush after buffalo targets?????

Click to expand...

This is an important point which is pertinent to the other thread "Rifle Lessons Learned from the Zimbabwe Professional Hunter Proficiency Exam". Factory rifles do not properly fit their owner other than by dumb luck (and, as none have any cast of any sort, it would be dumb luck indeed).

As for the Rigby, I am guessing (hoping!) that the owner was not the original owner, that it was purchased used and therefore made to fit another.

Good day to all members:
Here follows the course we participated in from the Monday to the Thursday.
We all got together in Witbank , loaded our equipment, proviand and rifles.

Entrance to the African Wild life College:



Our camp site:




Kitchen:

Extra wood:

Fire place/camp fire where all the food is made:

After we arrived at the college, we stored our rifles in the safe, wrote all the licence details of the rifles into the fire arm register , we settled in and went for a game drive, within a halve an hour we have seen elephant, lion , leopard and about all the plains game you can imagined.


and naturally Leopard:

Lots of Impala, blue wildebeest , giraffe ect....

Around the camp/cooking fire:

Around the camp fire at night:

Making Braai broodjies for everyone, my favorite dish on a camp fire :
It takes some different steps:
Here are the ingredients:



Continental ham two of each on a bread slice of bread:

Tomato slices/chutney:

Slices of onions:

Sweet and sour ghurkens :



This is what is on your plate when all the meat is barbecued

Yes Deon, I agree...

DWB said:

That!!! There!!!! That is what life must be all about!!!

Click to expand...

Yes Deon I agree....this is a wonderful life to participate in...

Gawie explain how long his pet Mamba snake is that he keep in his workshop to keep him company when he works on his rifles...

Dr. Kevin Robinson joined us every evening for a coffee around the fire:


Pieter Nel joined us as well:

A camp fire par excellence :

Coffee at it`s best:


Sunset just before rain:

Members, I am currently preparing for an upcoming hunt but will upload as much of the course as possible before I drive to the game farm on Monday....I did reload for the 8x57 JS Mauser .

Here is another good video about the shooting we did on this course..here is Jacques van Dyk shooting Dr. Kevin`s .505 Gibbs something I like to look at and not doing myself...

Eugene Groblar shooting his .450 Rigby Mauser with a muzzle-brake that shattered Ian Rautenbach`s head phones ...Eugene really can shoot this big bore caliber, he shoots it extremely fast and accurate.

Another video of Eugene shooting his .450 Rigby Mauser:

Day 2:

Day two consisted of lectures at the African Wild Life college. Lecture was conducted by Dr. Kevin Robinson. Members, Dr. Kevin Robinson is a joy to watch when conducting his lectures, he keeps it interesting, explaining important concepts like SD of bullets /penetration properties /bullet construction at an understandable level and back up every statement with practical evidence.

The most important aspect of this lecture is the procedure to age a molar tooth of buffalo shot/caught by predators or died naturally. The level of enamel on a buffalo tooth indicates the age of a buffalo including the physical properties of the buffalo on the set age. Working through thousands of these molar tooth Dr. Kevin gained insight and an understanding of what to look for when aging a buffalo to be shot for trophy or biltong.

Most important fact regarding trophy hunting buffalo:
Grave mistakes had been made/still is being made by PH /hunters when trophy hunting buffalo. They are shooting out the wrong buffalo, they are shooting out the eight year to eleven year buffalo, that constitutes the herd bull, the gene pool carrier, the hard boss 42 inch buffalo.
Even when encountered in a old bull/dagha boy group, these are the gene-pool buffalo that took some time off to be alone between the men , just to return later to the breeding herds..This is why most of the buffalo population in Africa `s gene-pool is de-generative , the strong genes are being eliminated by this practice.

What then do we need to shoot ?
The older buffalo , the 11 years of age and older, the scrum cup , we need to revisit our idea of a trophy buffalo for the sake of a regenerative gene-pool.
This scenario can be apply to all species currently being hunt as trophies in Africa.

Since we left the lecture room we all had the correct mindset to age a buffalo in the bush and identify the correct buffalo that constitute a real trophy to preserve the Cape buffalo gene-pool.
In a short time the group was able to identify and age a buffalo that is suitable/or not for trophy hunting.

Yes, yes we did pay attention in the class...

The following important facts emerged from this lecture :
Dr. Kevin pointed out the following regarding trophy hunting done on buffalo herds. He showed us many photo about the Rowland Award/SCI nr 1,2,3,4,5,6, buffalo that was measured and photograph after the hunt of these specimens. All these buffalo shot for trophy was too young, not suitable to be taken out of the herd..they destroyed the gene-pool , some of these buffalo did not even had the chance to breed when they were taken out as "trophies"
Here is a scull of a buffalo bull that charges Dr. Kevin Robinson while conducting training with students on this course..he had to shoot it with his .505 Gibbs at three paces when it attracted them...


Then it was off to spoor and find buffalo to age and identify....

Out to find buffalo:

We had our own diesel stalk tracker, Piet Nel who has eyes like a speed-cop not missing a castle lager beer between a motor car driver`s legs...Piet followed those tracks on the wing...


Dismount, ready to take up the spoor:

Notice: Jacques junior is carrying the laser rifle we used to point a laser beam at the correct shot placement.. this is an extremely effective device , build by Gawie for this purpose.

Glassing for buffalo:
Do not even attempt to track buffalo without a pair of high grade quality binoculars..you will tire your eyes in a short while..it is glassing every bush , every scrub , hedge since these large animals know how to disappear..we track the buffalo for at least ten kilometers , cross cutting their spoor ....at last we found the first buffalo patty....these buffalo was on the run , covering large stretches .We suspect the lions we saw the previous day had given chase and try to get a buffalo for an evening meal...

How do you find how fresh the track is?
We do it like this....

If you want to make really sure you are more than welcome to taste it as well, just to make sure the buffalo was chewing cud on these grasses ...
Found them:
Jacques nearly dislodged Dr. Kevin from the termite heap when seeing the herd of buffalo...excitement all around..but the wind was from behind..we had to approach from another direction with the wind in our faces..so we moved again:

There they are:

We found them further down fro we saw them for the first time..they had smelled us and moved again..

Now the practical part converge with all the theory we gained in the lecture room. Every one now had to age a buffalo, discuss shot placement and do the shot placement on the buffalo with the green laser....

Members , more to come, I am off to re-load my 404 Jeffery for a hunt... Please keep following this thread...