Dangerous Game Hunting course at African Wildlife College -Buffalo : Part 1 Practice

[Gert Odendaal]

Thank you very much rof this info, it is much appreciated. As pointed out by other users as well..it really seems that Photobucket management want to get their site shut down..or they really did not make a informative decision... I will be using another photo store web pages from now on..but I wonder how long it will be for free or at least an acceptable amount for the service they provide???? The downside is that I need to do all the previous thread again by substituting all the photos that does not show..which really is not possible...

[Gert Odendaal]

Members, I just returned from the Dangerous game hunting course..I will compile a report with a lot of great photos....

[Gert Odendaal]

Members, here is a video taken by one of our participants of the dangerous game hunt course we participated in at the African Wild Life College....we did the buffalo course, Pieter Nel is currently the best elephant guide in South Africa . Her , Pieter is explaining to Jacques and his son what you need to do when approaching an elephant for proper shot placement. When doing the elephant course you need to do at least four such approaches every day..enjoy the video...
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[DaavG]

Holy smokes that's cool interaction! Really interesting to watch! Going to have attend that course one day as looks incredible just to be in the bush like that...

[Gert Odendaal]

Members, I will be commencing the upload of the photos/story about the actual course we did tomorrow .

[Gert Odendaal]

Good day to all the members:
Here follows a thread regarding a Dangerous Game hunt course with specific the buffalo in mind .Here is a description of what the course entails from Dr. Kevin Robinson , author of the Perfect Shot book/video.

Hi Gentlemen, Kevin here.

Myself, Gawie Lindeque and Pieter Nel are looking forward to having you join us.

When plan to make this a memorable, rewarding and exciting experience for you.

We will be spending a lot of time out in the veld – I mention this incident to help you prepare mentally.

This will be the real deal gentlemen!

OK HERE IS WHAT TO EXPECT:

We will set up a camp for you on our shooting range.

The shooting range is unfenced – and so you will be sleeping out in the greater KNP!

There will be 3 x double tents, each with two sturdy stretchers and matrasses.

There will be a large military type tent for shades and to act as a dining room,

and a kitchen tent with lock-up space for your food. The baboons are also hungry – do not leave out anything to tempt them.

There will be a watercart, there is a toilet and we will also set up a shower for you.

We will supply all the cutlery you will need, pots pans, knives, forks, cups, braai grids etc

but please realize that it is a self-catering weekend. We will also supply a few solar lanterns but if you want better lighting,

please bring your own 12 V or diode strip lights.We will supply camp chairs and tables and some firewood to get you started

but you all need to bring wood as well. We do not supply / offer any form of refrigeration so please bring your own or ice boxes.

The shop at Orpen Gate is about 12 km away where you can purchase additional ice, wood, and basic necessities.

The toilet is close by but it will be necessary for you all to bring a good torch for midnight trips to the loo –

this is lion, leopard and hyena country remember.

Your firearms will have to be secured in the college’s gunsafe until used, but one of our trainers, either Gawie or Piet

will also sleep at the shooting range. He will be armed with a .458 should any problems arrive.

Please try to arrive mid-afternoon’ish on day of the course so you can get unpacked and settled in time for a sunset game drive.

We will kick off the next morning with all the classroom stuff – I will be presenting lectures on buffalo

ecology and the hunting thereof. Shot placement, calibres/cartridges/bullets, trophy assessment etc will all be covered in detail.

If we start early enough I can have this all done by lunchtime. If so we will spend the afternoon in the veld.

With buffalo and some elephants around we hope to be able to get you all to each do some approaches in both species.

The next morning will be spent on the shooting range where we will see how you handle your large bore rifles.

This will be basic shooting technique, shooting off sticks, sitting and ‘uit die vuys’ and 25 to 50 m.

This is essentially to test the function and reliability of your rifle and to evaluate your big bore rifle shooting performance.

We have yet to find a course attendee’s whose rifle that did not have a problem so please do not be offended

if we are honest and critical about the rifle you bring.

If it has a problem or some fault, we will find it – hopefully it won’t.

Absolute minimum calibre 9,2 x 62 mm – hope you’ll all bring something larger.

Please also bring your ammo belt, binoculars etcbecause we will want to see how you carry all this stuff while out in the veld.

You need to be dressed as if you are actually huntingso we can see ‘if it all works’

We take such things seriously because our lives depend on them! (the buffalo stopping incident mentioned above is a prime

example of this) We will be in the veld doing approaches, tracking etc. in the afternoon.

On the last day of the course we will shoot our life-like courses – buffalo.

There are 6 targets in total and some will be shot a couple of times so I suggest you bring at least 2 boxes of ammo for your rifle.

If you are serious about this, bring the ammo you would actually hunt with, not cheap practice stuff.

The shots are very life-like with the shooting distances varying from about 15 to 60 m.

Shots will be taken from all the ‘usual’ veld positions

Remember this is a big bore dangerous game course so no large high-power scopes.

It is likely to be hot so please bring good hats and sunscreen.

And good walking shoes/boots because we will be walking in the veld.

And neutral clothing.

Please also bring the completed college registration form AND a copy of your ID. See attachment

This is so that we can register you with the SAWC – a necessity for the issuing of an attendance certificate.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me – my contact details are below.

Remember you’re doing this to learn and have fun! So lets make it happen!

Kevin


We are a group of six participants, I got the participants together for a training session today, focusing on cycling the rounds( dummies ) through the action as fast as possible. Today we did the cycling procedures as well as sighting in the rifles with scopes. I shot my 404 Jeffery today , open sights at sixty meters.
Step 1 :
Sighting in the scoped rifles all were .375 H&H Magnum rifles at sixty meters: All rifles were sighted in..my open sights 404 Jeffery was on the spot as usual...this rifle shoots much,much more accurate as what I am able to shoot.

[Gert Odendaal]

We all assemble at Eugene`s office to load our gear into the trailer

A few photos of our camp, the tents we were sleeping in, the large tent is the kitchen and our camp fire where all the food was prepared .

Some extra wood for our camp fire...


The African Wild life College building:


After we booked our rifle in, putting them in the safe, we took a drive through the bush to look for some game..within the first halve an hour we saw the following game...


The first evening , we made some braai brood , every one pitched in to make food ...



Jacques assisted me in making the braai broodjies..:


Procedures to make these braai broodjies:


Put some ham on;





Naturally we had some meat/wors to braai as well:


This is what I call a braaivleis at it`s best:


Around the fire:

Coffee:


That was the first evening...

[Gert Odendaal]

Day 2;
We commenced with a lecture conducted by Dr. Kevin Robinson. This was an extremely informative session about buffalo and their gene-pool that is under threat due to the wrong buffalo being hunt .
Day two consisted of lectures at the African Wild Life college. Lecture was conducted by Dr. Kevin Robinson. Members, Dr. Kevin Robinson is a joy to watch when conducting his lectures, he keeps it interesting, explaining important concepts like SD of bullets /penetration properties /bullet construction at an understandable level and back up every statement with practical evidence.

The most important aspect of this lecture is the procedure to age a molar tooth of buffalo shot/caught by predators or died naturally. The level of enamel on a buffalo tooth indicates the age of a buffalo including the physical properties of the buffalo on the set age. Working through thousands of these molar tooth Dr. Kevin gained insight and an understanding of what to look for when aging a buffalo to be shot for trophy or biltong.

Most important fact regarding trophy hunting buffalo:
Grave mistakes had been made/still is being made by PH /hunters when trophy hunting buffalo. They are shooting out the wrong buffalo, they are shooting out the eight year to eleven year buffalo, that constitutes the herd bull, the gene pool carrier, the hard boss 42 inch buffalo.
Even when encountered in a old bull/dagha boy group, these are the gene-pool buffalo that took some time off to be alone between the men , just to return later to the breeding herds..This is why most of the buffalo population in Africa `s gene-pool is de-generative , the strong genes are being eliminated by this practice.

What then do we need to shoot ?
The older buffalo , the 11 years of age and older, the scrum cup , we need to revisit our idea of a trophy buffalo for the sake of a regenerative gene-pool.
This scenario can be apply to all species currently being hunt as trophies in Africa.

Since we left the lecture room we all had the correct mindset to age a buffalo in the bush and identify the correct buffalo that constitute a real trophy to preserve the Cape buffalo gene-pool.
In a short time the group was able to identify and age a buffalo that is suitable/or not for trophy hunting.

Yes, yes we did pay attention in the class...

The following important facts emerged from this lecture :
Dr. Kevin pointed out the following regarding trophy hunting done on buffalo herds. He showed us many photo about the Rowland Award/SCI nr 1,2,3,4,5,6, buffalo that was measured and photograph after the hunt of these specimens. All these buffalo shot for trophy was too young, not suitable to be taken out of the herd..they destroyed the gene-pool , some of these buffalo did not even had the chance to breed when they were taken out as "trophies"


Some photos of a buffalo skull with a bullet hole in , Dr. Kevin Robertson had to shoot this buffalo after it charge him and a group of students..he manage to stop it three steps from his feet...


After the lecture , we all got into the cruiser to find buffalo so we can follow their tracks and identify some eight and nine year old buffalo who carry the genes to ensure the buffalo population grows.




We found fresh buffalo spoor where they crossed the road. We follow the tracks for at least ten kilometers before we commence tracking them through the bush.
Gawie following the buffalo tracks and found fresh dung:




Jacques nearly toppled Dr. Robertson from a termite heap when finding the buffalo standing about seventy meters away..


ind is blowing from us to the buffalo, we had to get down wind and then move towards the buffalo with the wind in our faces...

Ready to find buffalo:





Then we found them...


We move closer, using the scrum technique , ons of Dr Robertson`s methods to get extremely near the buffalo since they do not recognise us as humans...we all had the opportunity to determined the age of the buffalo, put the laser onto the vitals of the buffalo and practice shot placement..






We used Dr. Kevin Roberson`s 505 Gibbs to practice shot placement as well..

These two buffalo was standing near to us on the left side...


Afterwards we draai some wors for brunch:





Back to camp, Dr. Kevin spending some time around the fire and drinking coffee...

[Gert Odendaal]

Fact: 8 to 10 years of age buffalo bulls mortality rate is the highest of all buffalo, these eight years of age buffalo bulls find it their duty to protect the cow and calves from lions and other predators. Most of the eight year/nine year breeding /guarding buffaloes are shot for trophies since few sport shooting clients knows which buffalo is eight to ten years of age and normally 42 inch spreads...the breeding genes....

Some characteristics of a mature buffalo bull past prime , a candidate for trophy hunters without demolishing the gene pool...
Notice the dewlap underneath the chin....it is testosterone that effect these types of characteristics. The white marks along side the eyes, a solid hardened boss growing densely with external growth /bone structure just below the boss above the eyes..a bulging effect. The penis sheath has a lot of dens grown hair on the point of the penis sheath...
The strong, muscle compact build at the heavy front quarters suggest this bull has fought to reach the top ranking position in the herd...the difficulty now is to keep that position. Unfortunately, these buffaloes always patrolling the herd of cows /calves and looses condition fast...ensuring an eminente defeat by another bull taking over his position.
Fact: This scenario creates a situation where these defeated bulls join other bulls to gain condition to return later to the herd and challenge his rival for the nr.1 position again...this is where trophy hunters shoot these buffalo since they perceive these buffalo as to be the 'Dagha Boy buffalo" . At this stage these bulls are shot and their genes dies with them, ensuring a smaller genetic pool..

Some game we saw when driving back to camp:

[Gert Odendaal]

Day three: Practical shooting /fitting of your rifle.
Members, we commenced the third day with the practical shooting on various life size targets that portray different scenarios when hunting buffalo.

Dr. Kevin Robertson commenced by explaining what a rifle needs to be able to do when hunting dangerous game.
The most important aspect being the rifle needs to fit your physic perfectly..this we practiced by putting strips of card board on the rifle stock until it fits the user perfectly when lining up in front of the target .
Here is Dr. Kevin Robertson explaining the con and pro`s of a dangerous game rifle.

(Apologies for the photo qualities, camera was left at the camp fire and got some fog into the lenses)


Making the rifles fit their users;






Shooting stance:







Shooting off sticks is really some of the most important trades to be mastered when hunting buffalo..


Fast and accurate shooting is essential ;


You need to be able to shoot fast and accurately :