In the video of part one you saw a huge Cape buffalo approach a water hole very cautiously. I had been waiting six days for this opportunity and I was anxious to shoot. When the bull turned broadside, I began squeezing the trigger, but the bull turned back just as the arrow released. The arrow hit the horn and clipped the brisket. With the sun on the horizon, there was no safe way to track the buffalo in the dark, so we headed back to camp to watch the video and determine the next step.
For the next three days, two Professional Hunters and I tracked and tried to anticipate the bull’s movements, yet we never saw it again. One time it approached within 50 yards, but the wind swirled, and I heard it crash away. Stalking the bull through dense brush seemed like a kamikaze mission. We had to walk into the wind so that the bull could not smell us coming. Even with two PH’s and two monster rifles, an attach would have been deadly for at least one of us.
225-Grain Phat Head and New Bow
Luckily, no hunter killed “my” bull during the rest of the season, and I made plans for a do-over. This time I switched to a Mission Sub1 and a speed-adjustable scope. I still believed that the CAMX 330 could kill a buffalo, but the Mission gave me much greater speed and the quality scope. I stayed with heavy arrows and the Steel Force Phat Head broadheads which were as sharp as razor blades. Despite their large size, I cut my hand installing one.
Another Bust?
Prior scouting showed that the big bull and several smaller buffalo drank at one particular waterhole, and we tried the tree stand strategy again. After two nights, the buffalo showed no pattern of approaching and high winds made our ambush attempt futile. On the third day, we tried another ambush on the ground which ended in disaster. The group caught our wind and stampeded such that one of the bulls was spotted on a different ranch eight miles away. Was my bull still on the property?
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