Friday 21 Feb 2020
We left camp at 5.30 AM and drove along the road till we saw fresh tracks. We sent up the drone but did not see anything.
Marius took us on the tracks and after a couple of hours we reached dense thickets with now and then the sound of a snapping twig. We could see the rump of a cow but nothing else. The wind changed and the buffalo were off in an instant.
We walked back to the road and searched with the truck for new tracks when about 30 buffalo crossed the road several hundred meters away. We tracked them for an hour and our tracker told us it was only cows and calves.
Marius suggested we go check tracks again however it was getting so hot the two PHs suggested looking for plains game and in the afternoon resume buffalo hunting with George just looking for additional plains game.
I thought this was a good idea and said I wanted a zebra skin.
We were driving back when in the distance there were several zebra who ran off. We tracked the zebra for several hundred meters and there they were starring at us.
I placed the .375 on the tripod, zoomed up to 5 X aimed at the center of the lower chest and squeezed the trigger. I heard the thud. The zebra ran off and I was worried it was a poor shot however at the place I shot it there was a large pool of blood. We tracked the zebra for a couple of hundred meters and found it down with a bullet hole exactly where I aimed.
Marius said this how I should have handled the buffalo. Well it gave me a lot of confidence and look forward to searching again for buffalo in the afternoon.