I think that the distance the first shot is taken from is less important than how the overall hunt is conducted. Getting in close to dangerous game is a big part of my enjoyment, whether the shot is ultimately fired close or farther away. Thinking back on first shot distances on all dangerous game my shots have ranged from a few feet to about 100 yards, with most first shots being from 15-50 yards or so, regardless of which species we were hunting. But those shots were just a portion of the overall experience on most dangerous game hunts. Some of my greatest dangerous game memories are encounters where no shot was fired.
I’ll never forget my first buffalo, where we were crawling on hands & knees behind 2 big bulls and one turned and fed across our front, stopping just 13 yards in front of us, turning its head to look directly at me but no shot due to a large mopane covering where I had to shoot. I had to wait for him to run to put a 500 grain soft point through his heart, but what I’ll never forget is being at eye to eye level with that buffalo, staring at each other before he broke and ran.
I’ll never forget tracking a lion on foot in Botswana, going from open grassy areas to dense palm jungles, following the lions as they traveled. At each dense patch, I’d remove the scope from my .416 and shove it in my pocket as any encounter was going to be at 10-20 yards. It was intense! In the end we caught up to them out in the open and my shot was around 80-90 yards across short grass. But the sweat soaked memories were made along the track where no shots were fired.
Just this past May I shot a buffalo on Hammond at around 30-35 yards. Not too close but not too far; but what made the experience so great was that we’d snuck right into the herd and actually had buffalo on 3 sides with the one I shot coming from behind us and passing on the right. We had times over the last couple days where we were 10-15 yards from buffalo in thick cover and never fired a shot; to me that’s a big component of what makes buffalo hunting fun. And about 5 minutes before I shot that buffalo, I was only 2-3 feet from some extremely dangerous non-game that we stopped to photograph with our iPhones… a Vine Snake! We almost walked under it as he was laying along a branch we were about to pass under. We stepped back, whipped out our phones, took a couple pictures at arm’s length, then walked around the other side of that big bush. I remember that close encounter with the snake as much as the buffalo.
Following wounded buffalo is a whole experience unto itself and is worthy of its own thread. I’ve followed wounded bulls several times and we’ve found them each time except once; but the one we never recovered gave us memories we’ll never forget. After losing the bull despite following it for hours and miles one evening and the next day, Alan Vincent summed up the intensity of the experience perfectly during dinner when he said “Each time we came to one of those thickets, I was sure that buffalo was going to stand up in front of one of us…. At 10 yards! “. I’ll remember that forever.
You don’t get those feelings while hunting plains game.
To me, dangerous game hunting is about the entire experience, the targeted and non-targeted game, the near & far encounters and the actual first shot is but one piece of a rather large puzzle.
