HUNTING THE AFRICAN BUFFALO
The buffalo is different from any other kind of animal in Africa. A
lion prefers not to fight a man. He almost never attacks unprovoked,
and even when he does attack he is not vindictive. The elephant, like
the lion, prefers to be left alone. But he is quicker to attack than
the lion and he isn't satisfied merely to knock out his man enemy.
Complete destruction is his aim. The buffalo is even quicker than the
elephant to take offence at man and he is as keen-sighted, clever, and
vindictive as the elephant. As a matter of fact, the domesticated bull
is more likely to attack man without provocation than any wild animal
I know, and those who wandered on foot around the bulls on our Western
prairies in the old cattle days probably experienced the same kind of
charges one gets from African buffaloes.
Nevertheless, despite all these qualities, which are almost universally
attributed to the African buffalo, I am confident that the buffalo,
like the elephant and other wild animals, has no instinctive enmity
to man. That enmity, I am sure, is acquired by experience. I had an
experience on the Aberdare Plateau with a band of elephants that had
seen little or nothing of man, and until they learned about men from me
they paid no more attention to me than if I had been an antelope. But
after I had shot one or two as specimens, they acquired the traditional
elephant attitude. I had a curiously similar experience with buffaloes.
It happened in this way. Mrs. Akeley, Cuninghame, the famous hunter,
and I had been trying for some time, but with little luck, to get
buffalo specimens for a group for the Field Museum at Chicago.
We had reason to believe that there was a herd of buffaloes living in
the triangle made by the junction of the Theba and Tana rivers. As
the buffaloes would have to water from one stream or the other, we
felt pretty sure of locating them by following down the Theba to the
junction and then up the Tana.
From the swamp down the Theba to its junction with the Tana occupied
three days in which we saw no fresh signs of buffalo. On the second
march up the Tana, as I was travelling ahead of the _safari_ at about
midday, looking out through an opening in a strip of thorn bush that
bordered the river, I saw in the distance a great black mass on the
open plain which, on further investigation with the field glasses, I
was reasonably certain was a herd of buffaloes. Sending a note back to
Cuninghame, who was in charge of the _safari_, suggesting that he make
camp at a hill on the banks of the Tana about two miles ahead of my
position and await me there, I started off over the plain with my two
gun boys. Coming up out of a dry stream-bed that I had used to conceal
my approach, I came on to a large herd of eland, and my first fear was
that I had mistaken eland for buffaloes.
Going farther on, however, we saw a herd of about five hundred
buffaloes lying up in a few scattered thorn trees four or five hundred
yards away. At first it seemed an almost impossible situation. There
was practically no cover and no means of escape in case the herd
detected us and saw fit to charge, and at that time my respect for the
buffaloes led me to be extremely cautious. We worked around the herd
trying to find some place where a safe approach might be made. Finally,
seeing a little band of a dozen buffaloes off at one side on the bank
of a ravine which offered splendid protection, we stalked them but,
unfortunately, not one in the band was desirable as a specimen. Since
this was so, I tried them out, giving them my wind, then going up where
they could see me better. I found that they were quite indifferent
either to the scent or the sight of man. They finally moved off
quietly without alarm. I then knew that this herd, like the Aberdare
elephants, had had little or no experience with men, and that there
was perhaps less to fear from them than from the traditional buffalo
of the sportsman. So going back to the main herd, I crept up boldly
to within a hundred yards of them. They saw me, faced about, closely
inspecting me, but with no sign of alarm. It was approaching dusk, and
in this great black mass it was difficult to pick out a good pair of
horns except with the aid of glasses. I carefully located a fine bull
and then shot, as I supposed, at the one I had located. As I fired,
the animals bolted, first away, then back toward me. They wheeled,
ran halfway between the dead animal and me, and passing on about a
hundred yards to the right wheeled about again and stood watching me,
the bulls in the front, lined up like soldiers, the calves and cows in
the background. On coming up to the dead animal, I found, much to my
regret, that I had shot a cow and not the bull I had picked out through
the glasses.
I returned to camp feeling that now at last, from this herd living
apparently in the open, we should have relatively little difficulty
in completing our series of specimens. On the following morning, much
to our disappointment, our first glimpse of the herd was just as it
disappeared in the thorn bush along the bank of the river. We put in
nearly a week of hard work to complete the series.
During those seven days of continual hunting, that herd which had been
indifferent and unsuspecting at the beginning, like the elephants,
became cautious, vigilant, and aggressive. For instance, on one
occasion near the close of the week, after having spent the day trying
to locate the herd, I suddenly came face to face with them just at the
edge of the bush at night on my way back to camp. They were tearing
along at a good pace, apparently having been alarmed. I stepped to one
side and crouched in the low grass while they passed me in a cloud
of dust at twenty-five or thirty yards. Even had I been able to pick
out desirable specimens at this time I should have been afraid to
shoot for fear of getting into difficulties when they had located my
position. I turned and followed them rapidly as they sped away over
the hard ground until the noise of their stampede suddenly stopped. I
then decided that it was best to get to some point of vantage and await
further developments. I climbed an acacia tree that enabled me to look
over the top of the bush. Fifty yards ahead I could see about fifty
buffaloes lined up in a little open patch looking back on their trail.
As I was perched in the tree endeavouring to pick out a desirable
animal, I suddenly discovered a lone old bull buffalo coming from the
bush almost directly underneath me, sniffing and snuffing this way and
that. Very slowly, very cautiously he passed around the tree, then back
to the waiting herd, when they all resumed their stampede and made good
their escape for the day.
One morning I came in sight of the herd just as it was entering the
thorn bush and followed hurriedly on the trail, until just at the edge
of the jungle I happened to catch sight of the two black hoofs of an
old cow behind the low-hanging foliage. I stopped, expecting a charge.
After a few moments I backed slowly away until I reached a tree where I
halted to await developments. Stooping down I could see the buffalo's
nose and black, beady eyes as she stood motionless. The rest of the
herd had gone on out of hearing and I think she was quite alone in her
proposed attack. After a few moments, apparently realizing that her
plan had failed, she turned about and followed the herd, moving very
quietly at first, then breaking into a gallop.
On the following day toward evening we came up again with the herd in
the same region. As we first saw them they were too far away for us to
choose and shoot with certainty. We managed to crawl to a fair-sized
tree midway between us and the herd, and from the deep branches picked
out the young herd bull of the group. When we had shot and he had
disappeared into the bush, a calf accompanied by its mother gave us a
fleeting glimpse of itself, with the result that we added the calf to
our series.
The herd disappeared into the bush and after a few minutes we descended
from our perch and inspected the calf, then started off in the
direction the wounded bull had taken, and found him lying dead just a
few yards away.
This completed the series, much to our great joy, for by this time we
were thoroughly tired of buffalo-hunting. It had been a long, hard
hunt, and our _safari_ as well as ourselves were considerably the worse
for wear. To shoot a half-dozen buffaloes is a very simple matter
and ought to be accomplished almost any day in British East Africa
or Uganda, but to select a series of a half dozen that will have the
greatest possible scientific value by illustrating the development from
babyhood to old age is quite a different matter.
These buffaloes of the Tana country that we found on the plains and
in the bush apparently rarely or never go into the swamps, a fact not
only confirmed by observation but also indicated by the condition of
the hoofs. These are horny, round, and smooth as a result of travelling
on the hard and more or less stony ground of the region. But the
_tinga-tinga_ buffaloes have lived in the swamp for years and spend
practically no time on hard ground; hence the hoofs are long, sharp,
and unworn as a result of walking always in the soft mud and water. All
this despite the fact that these two herds may actually come in contact
at the edge of the swamp. Other herds live in forest country but come
out into the grasslands to feed at night, always going back into the
forest at daybreak.
In Uganda, where buffaloes are recognized as a menace to life and are
of no particular value except for food, they are officially treated
as vermin and one may shoot as many as he will. Here the herds had
increased to an enormous extent and, because of the dense jungles and
general inaccessibility of the country, it was rather difficult to hunt
them. While elephant-hunting in Uganda we found the buffaloes a decided
nuisance, frequently coming on to them unexpectedly while hot on an
elephant trail, sometimes having difficulty in getting rid of them, not
wishing to shoot or stampede them because of the danger of frightening
away the elephants, to say nothing of the constant menace of running
into a truculent old bull at very close quarters in dense jungle. The
buffaloes actually mingle with the elephants, each quite indifferent
to the other excepting that on one occasion we found elephant calves
charging into a herd of buffaloes, evidently only in play. They
chased about squealing and stampeding the buffaloes, who kept at a
safe distance but did not actually take alarm. Occasionally an old cow
whose calf was being hard-pressed by the young elephants would turn,
apparently with the intention of having it out, but would always bolt
before the elephant could actually reach her. Despite the fact that the
record head, fifty-four inches in spread, was shot by Mr. Knowles in
Uganda, from our general observation the heads in Uganda run smaller
than those of British East Africa while the animals are perhaps heavier.
Although in our buffalo-hunting we have never had any actually serious
encounters, I fully appreciate that the buffalo deserves his reputation
as one of the most dangerous of big-game animals. His eyesight is good,
he has keen scent, and is vigilant and vindictive. While the lion is
usually satisfied with giving his victim a knock-out blow or bite, the
buffalo, when once on the trail of man, will not only persist in his
efforts to find him but, when he has once come up with him, will not
leave while there is a vestige of life remaining in the victim. In some
cases he will not leave while there is a fragment of the man remaining
large enough to form a target for a buffalo's stamping hoofs.
A hunter I met once told me of an experience he had with a buffalo
which shows in rather a terrible way these characteristics of the
animal. He and a companion wounded a buffalo and followed it into
the long grass. It was lurking where they did not expect it and with
a sudden charge it was upon them before they had a chance to shoot.
The buffalo knocked down the man who told me the story and then rushed
after his companion. The first victim managed to climb a tree although
without his gun. By that time the other man was dead. But the buffalo
was not satisfied. For two hours he stamped and tossed the remains
while the wounded man in the tree sat helplessly watching. When the
buffalo left, my informant told me, the only evidence of his friend was
the trampled place on the ground where the tragedy had taken place.
There is nothing in Africa more vindictive than this.
There was another case of an old elephant hunter in Uganda who shot a
buffalo for meat. The bullet did not kill the animal and it retreated
into the thick bush where there were even some good-sized trees. The
old hunter followed along a path. Suddenly the buffalo caught him
and tossed him. As he went into the air he grasped some branches
overhanging the trail. There he hung unable to get up and afraid to
drop down while the wild bull beneath him charged back and forth with
his long horns ripping at the hunter's legs. Happily the gun boy came
up in time to save his master by killing the beast. This hunter was an
extraordinary character. He was very successful and yet he was almost
stone deaf. How he dared hunt elephants or any other big game without
the aid of his hearing I have never been able to conceive, yet he did
it and did it well.
One morning Cuninghame, having gone out with some boys to shoot meat
for camp, came upon three old buffaloes. He sent a runner back to
camp with the news, and Mrs. Akeley and I started out to join him.
Halfway from camp we were obliged to make a wide detour to avoid an
old rhino and calf, but soon caught up with Cuninghame. He reported,
however, that the buffaloes had passed on into some dense bush. We
started to follow but suddenly came upon two rhinos. We quickly turned
to leeward in order not to disturb them by giving them our wind, for
we were not anxious to bring on a general stampede of the game in the
neighbourhood. This turn brought us to the windward of the old cow
and calf that we had first avoided, with the result that she came
charging up, followed by the calf close at her heels, snorting like
a locomotive. Cuninghame helped Mrs. Akeley up a convenient tree. He
stood at the base of the tree and I at the foot of another where we
waited with our guns ready, watching the old cow go tearing past within
twenty feet of us.
We continued on the buffalo trail, but the stampede of the rhino had
resulted in alarming the buffaloes so that instead of finding them near
by, we were forced to follow them for an hour or more before again
coming in sight of them; and again twice more they were stampeded
by rhinos that happened to get in our path. At last the buffaloes
evidently became tired of being chased from place to place, and came
to rest on a sloping hillside which we could approach only by crawling
on our hands and knees in the grass for a considerable distance. In
this manœuvring it happened that Mrs. Akeley was able to stalk the best
bull, and a few minutes later he was finished off and we were busy
photographing, measuring, and preparing the skin.
About twenty-five miles to the northwest from the Tana, across the
plain on the Theba River, is a marsh where a herd of nearly a hundred
buffaloes was known to live, but the Provincial Commissioner had
definitely said that we were not to shoot these. We decided finally to
ask for the privilege, which was granted, but with a warning in the
form of an explanation: that he had told us not to shoot there because
of the danger involved.
We found a reed marsh about one by two miles in extent with, at that
time, a foot or two of water in the buffalo trails that crisscrossed
it in all directions. On arriving, and while making camp at one end of
the marsh just at dusk, we saw the herd come out on dry land a half
mile away--but they returned to cover before we could approach them.
In fact, during nearly two weeks that we spent there we saw them come
outside the swamp only twice, each time to return immediately.
We made several attempts to approach them in the marsh, but found
that while it was quite possible to get up to them it was out of the
question to choose our specimens. Also it would have been impossible
to beat a retreat in case of a charge or stampede; so we adopted a
campaign of watchful waiting. From the camp at daybreak we would scan
the marsh for the snowy cow herons that were always with the buffaloes
during the daytime. These would fly about above the reeds from one
part of the herd to another, and at times, where the reeds were low,
they could be seen riding along perched on the backs of the animals.
Having thus located the herd and determined the general direction of
its movements, we would go to a point at the edge of the marsh where it
seemed likely that the animals would come out, or at least come near
enough to be visible in the shorter reeds. It was in this way that
we secured the specimen that makes the young bull of the group--and
two weeks spent there resulted in securing no other specimen. On this
one occasion the buffaloes, accompanied by the white herons, had come
to within about a hundred yards of our position on the shores of the
swamp. They were in reeds that practically concealed them, but the
young buffalo in question, in the act of throwing up his head to
dislodge a bird that had irritated him, disclosed a pair of horns that
indicated a young bull of the type I wanted. A heron standing on his
withers gave me his position, and aiming about two feet below the bird,
I succeeded in killing the bull with a heart shot.