Steve had the first-ever Ruger M77 chambered to the new .375 Ruger cartridge, so he was anxious for the rifle and cartridge to take their first buffalo. It didn't take long. Trackers Wanda and Coffee noted at least one outsized spoor on the right edge of the herd. Wind and tracks permitting, they favored that side as they followed, and I doubt we'd walked two hours before they spotted buffalo moving through the trees ahead.

When you start on a fresh buffalo track, be prepared to walk for several hours to find the herd. Getting a shot is an entirely different story.

Paul and Wanda had conferred on that big track, but that was in Shona so it was only later that I fully understood what they were doing. Wanda had his ash bag out, and he deliberately took us away from the herd, circling around to the right primarily because that was the best wind but also because they suspected a satellite bull was shadowing that side of the herd.

I was staying back, so I don't know exactly when Paul and Steve, with Wanda in the lead, first glimpsed that bull, but their body language told me they were serious. Eventually I got a quick look through the trees, and I gulped. He wasn't especially wide, but his horns dropped well down below the jaw. Most distinctive and incredibly desirable, however, was the huge boss of at least seventeen inches--this was a "first day, last day, any day bull."

Moving carefully from tree to tree, they shadowed the right side of the herd for several hundred yards, gradually closing in. The bull stopped in a slight opening, quartering to at ninety yards, sunlight glinting on its huge bosses. Steve's first bullet rolled the old bull. It got up as we ran forward--not a good sign--but he was moving slowly and went down for good after a couple more shots. He was massive and old, a true dagga boy, yet taken on the edge of a mixed herd.

Up Close And Personal
Steve's bull was taken in Sapi Safari Area, next to Mana Pools National Park. After ten days there, we moved east to Dande North, a mix of communal lands and the Dande Safari Area administered by Zimbabwe's parks and wildlife agency. I love Sapi for its big herds that wander back and forth from Mana Pools, but this was my first hunt in Dande. The area is reported to have the highest density of buffalo in southern Africa, and it didn't disappoint.

I hunted with Paul Smith's partner Andrew Dawson. We looked at several big herds and solitary bulls, seeing nothing of great interest. On the fourth evening, driving back to camp in the dark, we bumped a big herd crossing the road, and then, a few hundred yards farther, a group of bulls following the herd.

Unless pressed by lions, buffalo don't travel a great deal during the night, so this gave us our starting point for the morning. We were on their tracks at 6:30, well before sunrise, and by 7 o'clock we had buffalo in sight on a little knoll. Most of the herd was still bedded, and we only saw a small fraction of them.