African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

To the west of the river Gwai, however, I believe that few, if any, buffaloes still survive in the interior of South Africa, though in my own personal experience I met with these animals in extraordinary numbers wherever I hunted between 1872 and 1880 in that part of the country, whether to the south-east of the Victoria Falls, or farther westwards along the Zambesi and as far as I went along the Chobi, or in the valleys of the Machabi (an overflow from the Okavango), the Mababi, or the Tamalakan.

In fact, speaking generally, the Cape buffalo was formerly very abundant everywhere throughout South Africa wherever there was a plentiful supply of water and grass in close proximity to shady forests; for these animals never appear to have frequented open country anywhere to the south of the Zambesi. They spread themselves all down the thickly wooded coast belt of East and South Africa as far as Mossel Bay, and along all the tributaries of the Zambesi and the Limpopo rivers, and it was probably from the headwaters of the Marico and Notwani rivers that they found their way to the Molopo, and thence through Bechwanaland to the Orange river.

Buffaloes were met with in that district, about 1783, by the French traveller Le Vaillant, and in Southern Bechwanaland some five and twenty years later by the missionary John Campbell, whilst in 1845 Mr. W. Cotton Oswell still found large herds of these animals living in the reed beds of the Molopo; but it is worthy of remark that, owing to the gradual desiccation of the country, which has been and still is constantly taking place in South-Western Africa, there is to-day not enough water to support a herd of buffaloes either in the Molopo river or anywhere to the south of it, throughout Bechwanaland.

During the quarter of a century succeeding the year 1871 (during which I first visited South Africa) the range of the buffalo had been very much curtailed, but up to 1896 these animals were still numerous in many of the uninhabited parts of the country, and especially so in the Pungwe river district of South-East Africa. In the early part of that most fatal year, however, the terrible epidemic of rinderpest crossed the Zambesi, and besides depleting nearly the whole of South Africa of cattle before a stop was put to its ravages by Dr. Koch, almost absolutely exterminated the buffaloes. The few that remain will probably be gradually killed off, I am afraid, and I think it quite likely that before many more years have passed the only buffaloes left in South Africa will be those living in the Addo bush in the Cape Colony.

There was always a considerable difference of opinion amongst South African hunters in the old pre-rinderpest times as to the character of the Cape buffalo, but there is no doubt that this animal was looked upon by all experienced men as a dangerous antagonist under certain conditions, whilst by some it was considered to be the most dangerous of all African game. It is all a matter of individual experience. A man who has shot two or three lions and a few buffaloes, and who, whilst having had no trouble with the former animals, has been charged and perhaps only narrowly escaped with his life from one or more of the latter, will naturally consider the buffalo to be a more dangerous animal than a lion, and vice versa.

Personally I consider that, speaking generally, the South African lion is a much more dangerous animal than the South African buffalo, for not only can a lion hide much more easily and rush on to its antagonist much more quickly than a buffalo, but the former is, I think, much more savage by nature, on the average, than the latter. As regards viciousness I should be inclined to put the buffalo third on the list of dangerous African game, without reckoning the leopard (of which animal I have not had sufficient experience to offer an opinion) and the black rhinoceros (whose true character it seems so difficult to understand); for, whilst putting the lion first, I think the elephant should come second, as I believe that of a hundred elephants shot, a greater proportion will charge than of the same number of buffaloes. However, a charging elephant can almost always be stopped with a bullet, and it is most difficult to stop a charging buffalo; therefore the latter is perhaps actually the more dangerous animal of the two.

To follow a wounded buffalo into a bed of reeds, or into long grass, where it is almost impossible to see it before getting to very close quarters, is a most dangerous, not to say foolhardy, proceeding. It is quite exciting enough to follow one of these animals when wounded into thick bush, but there you have a chance of seeing it as soon as, if not before, it sees you.

I have had a very considerable experience with South African buffaloes, having killed 175 of these animals to my own rifle, and helped to kill at least fifty others. When hunting on the Chobi river in 1877, and again in 1879, I had to shoot a great many buffaloes to supply my native followers with meat, as I did not come across many elephants in either of those years.

During 1877 I killed to my own rifle forty-seven buffaloes, and in 1879 fifty. All these buffaloes, with the exception of five, which I shot when hunting on horseback near the Mababi river in the latter year, were killed on foot, and a large number of them were followed, after having been wounded, into thick bush, and there finally despatched.