hte 
ei Nae Be es 2. | 
THE AFRICAN BUFFALO 227 
pretty sure to go somewhere near the lungs. Directly the 
smoke cleared, my gun-bearer told me that he had seen 
the tree fall, and on going up to it I found the bullet, an 
8-bore, had caught it exactly in the centre and so shattered 
it that the heavy table-top had caused it to break off where 
the bullet entered. Whilst measuring it I heard a deep groan 
in the direction the buffalo had taken, and on taking up the 
spoor found my beast quite dead, lying in the grass about 
150 yards off, shot through the shoulder. On cutting it open 
I found the bullet had gone through both lungs, and was 
sticking in the ribs on the other side. A shot at the head, even 
with an 8-bore, with hardened bullet and twelve drachms of 
powder, would in most cases have little effect on a buffalo, 
unless, of course, the beast should be sufficiently near to enable 
the sportsman to make sure of putting his bullet just under the 
frontlet of the horns into the brain ; but I think that most men 
who have shot buffaloes would say that-such a range would be 
far too near to be pleasant. As the chances that a head shot 
at a buffalo will prove fatal are so very small, this shot should 
be avoided altogether except in the case of a charge, where it 
may be the only one offered. 
Although I have killed a good many buffaloes, and under 
all sorts of conditions, I have only once had recourse to the 
head shot. This was in the district lying between Kahe and 
Taveta, where I was shooting in February 1887. The country 
was here fairly open, with numerous patches of bush dotted 
about, and a few small isolated rocky hills, appropriately called 
by one writer ‘earth boils.’ On climbing up one of these to 
get a better view of the surrounding country, I spied an old 
bull buffalo about a mile off, quietly feeding close to a patch 
q _ of bush, which was about 150 yards long and about 50 yards 
wide, and, as the wind was favourable, I felt pretty sure of 
| 4 getting him without much difficulty. On arriving at the bush, 
"| I found a small low ant-heap just opposite the place where 
I had last seen the buffalo, and I stepped on to it to try and 
see exactly where he was on the other side of the bush, but 
Q2 
