BUSHBUCK: NEVER A DULL MOMENT
Wounded rams: what risk to the hunter?
THE bushbuck holds a certain aura in the minds of many, of whom I am one. Reasons include his elusiveness and secretive habits, dwelling in the shadowy world of deep forests and dense thickets. His dark colouration with white patches forms the perfect cryptic camouflage amid the dappled shadows, and his favourite defensive tactic of freezing on sensing danger lets him disappear as if by magic.
It’s baffling how, every once in a while, a ram of extraordinary trophy size will be shot in an area that has been heavily hunted for years. Bushbuck remain within a limited home range. How does a ram hide for ten to twelve years to attain such trophy size without being shot by one of the many hunters searching for just such as he?
From my early teens, I attended beater-driven bushbuck hunts in the New Hanover-greytown district of Natal. This method produces far more bushbuck sightings than walk-and-stalk hunting does. I attended many such hunts into my early twenties, yet never saw a ram that measured over 14 inches. I then moved to SWA, but regular driven hunts continued to be held in that area. On my return, aged 41, for a walk-andstalk hunt, I shot a 17½-inch ram. Had I entered it then (1986) it would have ranked No 14 in Rowland Ward.
I’ve had some odd experiences with bushbuck. The first I ever fired at was airborne. I was fourteen, standing on a road during a driven hunt when a big ram dashed down the hill above me. I ran to where I thought he’d appear, but the road there was cut out of a steep slope of the hillside; my view was blocked by a vertical bank 4m high. Hearing hoof-beats above me, I looked up to see the ram leap off the bank and over my head. I fired at him in mid-air but missed. I thought his landing would break his legs, but he sped on. I did shoot a bushbuck that day – my first – but not like the trophy I’d missed.
Part of the bushbuck’s charisma lies in his aggressiveness. He’s known to make short work of dogs, and to charge hunters. His short, thick, sharp horns
make formidable weapons. I was present when a wounded bushbuck killed a pointer, and I’ve heard of several dogs suffering the same fate. Kwazulu-natal Hunters Association published a photo of a Jack Russell impaled on a bushbuck’s horn; the ram was wearing the dog like a hat when finally killed.
In Magnum, October 1981, Tudor Howard-davies wrote of a Rhodesian tsetse-control officer wounding a bushbuck ram with a rifle-shot, and then mustering some beaters to drive it out of a thicket. The ram charged and gored a beater so violently in her abdomen that its horn exited her back, killing her. In 1983, The Natal Witness reported that Koos Hugo, a farmer near George, went outside to investigate his dog’s barking. A healthy, unwounded bushbuck attacked him, goring his leg three times. His dog then attacked the ram, affording Hugo an opportunity to shoot it.
In Magnum, October 2004, Brian Marsh described coming suddenly upon a mature ram standing broadside just two metres away in a mango orchard.
The instant it saw him it turned, lowered its horns and charged. He threw himself sideways and the ram skimmed past him but kept going.
In Magnum, October 2009, Bruce Truter described five bush- buck charges he’d experienced. During his youth he believed these wounded rams had charged him, but thinking back, he was no longer certain: had they merely been fleeing in confusion, or charging his dog and he was in the way? I suspect Bruce was just being modest, not wanting to appear the ‘hero’ he says he imagined himself to be when young. In every case, he’d wounded the ram and followed it up. In one instance the ram charged from a hidden position, straight at Bruce whose shot dropped it literally at his feet. In another, the ram was moving across his front when it turned 90° to run straight at him. A third ram lay on a very steep hillside, seemingly dead, but when Bruce grabbed its horn it stood up and lunged at him, pushing him backwards. He swung himself aside and heaved on its horn, sending the ram tumbling down the slope.
On a fourth occasion, Bruce and a friend became separated while following up a wounded ram in the dark using a torch with failing batteries. Bruce saw its eyes in the dim beam and called out to determine the direction of his friend. At his call, the ram came straight for him; he had to jump aside to shoot it. He followed up the fifth wounded ram, again at night using a weak torch. The dog’s bark indicated she’d bayed the ram, so Bruce doused the light to save the batteries and approached in the dark. The moment he switched on the torch, the ram charged in his direction. The dog leapt aside but the ram came on, straight at Bruce. With no time to shoulder his rifle, he fired from the hip.
Now, on one or two such occasions, perhaps the ram was fleeing blindly or charging the dog, but five times? I’d say at least three were charging the hunter – with malice aforethought.
In Magnum, July 2010, Cyril Andrews wrote of a colleague being gored by a bushbuck they were trying to shoo off a golfing green. It charged and drove its horn right through his leg – he went over its back, landing on the grass behind. It then lunged at his stomach; he grabbed its horns, and again it lifted him off the ground, but he wrestled it down. He then jumped into his bakkie, whereupon the bushbuck drove its horns into the vehicle’s door, where they became stuck, enabling Cyril to shoot the ram.
In 2013, Frank Jackman of Zambia wrote to me of a Mr Green recently walking his dogs when a bushbuck charged and gored him in the groin, severing his femoral artery; he bled to death on the spot. And I have a note in my files that Magnum received a letter around June 2016, unfortunately not published, telling of a hunter recently killed by a wounded bushbuck. These eleven cases represent only those I personally know of; a great many more must have occurred these past two centuries.
I ’ve had one fright from a bushbuck. Though not a charge, I suspect an attack would have resulted had circumstances not enabled me to prevent it. In 1994, I was walk-and-stalk hunting in a timber-growing area of southern Natal, when I took an offhand shot at a big bushbuck ram moving away from me at a very slight angle some 100m off. I aimed for his spine between the shoulders. I was sure I’d hit him, though I’d obviously missed the spine, for he ran on and disappeared. While searching for blood I became aware of an unusual sound emanating from the bush ahead – a faint, repeated expelling of air, as from a sleeping person whose exhaled breaths escape his closed lips with soft pff… pff… pff… sounds. It was unlike any sound I would associate with an animal, so I ignored it and continued searching the grass for blood.
However, the sound continued, repeated roughly every three seconds. It was not a natural sound of the veld, hence I wondered if it wasn’t perhaps coming from the wounded ram. I ceased tracking and quietly moved in that direction, entering an area where a timber
plantation had been felled and the logs trucked out. All the leafy branches cut from the trees had been piled up in short, parallel rows about four or five feet high, spaced a few feet apart. Creepers had grown over these, reducing visibility to only a couple of feet on either side of me as I walked through the narrow passages, glancing into the brief gaps on either side. No discernible breeze was evident and the soft, damp carpet of pine needles afforded me silent movement. Or so it seemed to me.
The pff pff sounds became clearer as I proceeded, so I held the short Mannlicher .308 carbine ready at hip level pointing forward with the safety off. Approaching a gap between two heaps, I realised the sounds had ceased. Stepping forward, I glanced into the gap on my right and saw the ram’s hind leg and flank less than two short paces from me. Instantly I moved my left foot forward and swivelled my hips, bringing into view his neck and head, which he’d turned toward me, his horns but a metre away.
I registered that he was tense but standing normally, not looking sick or on his last, so I fired from the hip, pointing the muzzle at his shoulder. Fortunately, the bullet broke his spine.
In peak condition, this 14-inch ram weighed 71kg. My first shot had entered high on his shoulder from behind, leaving a 12mm exit wound in his throat, opening his windpipe. The sounds I’d been hearing were puffs of air escaping this hole with each breath he took. The shot had clipped his upper shoulder blade, doing no immediately fatal damage.
Why had he let me get so close without fleeing? No telling, but I suspect he’d rejected flight in favour of fight. I think he’d heard me coming; his body was facing my general approach, but he wasn’t sure where I’d appear. A screen of brush and creepers stood between me and his forequarters as I passed. Then the gap exposed his black hindquarters a split second before he turned his head to see me. Had his body been facing the opposite way, I may not have had time to swing on him.
I had another odd experience on Allan Frost’s farm near Uitenhage. Allan had dropped me off at a spot in a valley with a view of an open area atop an otherwise bush-covered hill opposite. He had recently seen an old ram browsing along the fringes on one side. I had Allan’s very accurate bull-barrelled .308 target rifle which I had empirically zeroed on his 200m range, and its 165gr Barnes-x bullets printed within 2-inches at 200m. Allan said the distance to where the bushbuck usually browsed was 220m, and I should aim fractionally above the halfway level on the ram’s chest. I argued that it looked more like 300m to me, but I’d take his word for it.
When a mature ram appeared, facing me head-on, I aimed as Allan had instructed, fired, and the ram simply disappeared. Allan arrived and we found a substantial patch of blood and hairs where the ram had gone down and a tiny piece of what appeared to be lung tissue.
Nearby was another substantial patch of blood where he’d either stood for a while or gone down again. A minimal blood trail led into extremely dense thornbush. We called in Allan’s friends Theo and Guy, and all separated to search for the ram. Long story short: some hours later, Theo returned to the blood patch, saw a bushbuck ram close by and shot it (wounded rams are known to travel in a circle, returning to their starting point). But the carcass revealed no bullet hole other than Theo’s. However, to his utter bewilderment, the scrotum and testicles had been freshly amputated.
I arrived, and after deliberation, pointed out the spot down in the valley whence I’d fired the shot; Theo agreed that it was at least 300 yards. That explained it. The 80-yard discrepancy in range estimation resulted in additional bullet drop. The ram was above me, and facing me head-on. My bullet had passed just below his brisket, between his legs and taken off the only central appendage that hung below that level!