When I decided I wanted to bow hunt Cape buffalo, I chose South Africa for several reasons, but two stand out - cost and hassle. Here I would not have to fly to another country after landing in Johannesburg (saving both time and a lot of dough), I would not need malaria and yellow fever vaccinations, and the overall hunt cost would be much less than had I chosen to hunt in, say, Zimbabwe, which offers the next-lowest-priced buffalo in southern Africa.

          
It proved to be a wise choice. It had been the wettest, coldest winter in 25 years in the East Cape region of the country, but this morning broke clear and crisp. At mid-morning PH’s Andrew Renton, Marius Potgieter and I, together with a local tracker, located the buffalo herd in thick cover, and then found an old “dugga boy” bull that the local boys said was not interested in being around other buffalo at all. In fact, when they got near him he instantly wanted to fight, and so he spent a lot of time alone. Perfect, that would help alleviate potential problems caused by other animals as we tried to creep in close enough for a shot. We circled to get the wind right, and then climbed carefully above him. That’s quite a contingent to try and be sneaky with, but all were experienced African hunters and we had the crest of the hill and some waist-high brush to hide our movements.

Soon he was just 75 yards off. Should we creep closer or hope he fed past us in the semi-open terrain? Marius wisely chose to play the ambush game, and so I snuggled up to a thorn tree, nocked an arrow, and got ready. It took seemingly forever, but soon the bull was just inside a thorn tree I had ranged at 20 yards. We were well hidden, and the bull was focused on eating the fresh grass shoots that had sprung forth from the recent rains, so we let him walk just a bit past until he gave a very slight quartering-away shot. 18 yards.

 

I drew the 80 lb. Hoyt RKT, put the 20-yard pin on the sweet spot, and sent the 816-grain Easton Dangerous Game shaft and 200-grain Phantom SS two-blade broadhead through his ribcage.

When he hopped a few feet forward, then turned and glared at us, the tension was high. Would he charge? Instead, the bull dropped his head and rolled onto his side. In less than 60 seconds it was all over! The arrow had penetrated to the fletching; when the bull rolled you could see it sticking out the other side.

Are you kidding me? It was the first day of what would prove to be an unbelievably successful South African bow hunt.

Learn more about my setup and equipment on the Insight Post, 'Buffalo Medicine.'