Amongst the wild bovine that I’ve successfully hunted over the years (till now), my own modest bag consists of:
- 21 African Cape buffalo
- 1 Asian Gaur (random encounter during the war in 1971)
- 46 Water buffalo (Asian & Australian)
- 1 Thai Seladang
- 1 American bison
I have more photographs which I‘ll get my hands on very soon, but here are some of them over the years.
I shot the American bison with a .505 Gibbs (built on a Granite Mountain Arms African Magnum Mauser action with a 25” Douglas Premium by the talented Joe Smithson). The round was a hand loaded 600Gr Northfork Cup Point Solid. He gave out within a second of getting the shot (a behind-the-shoulder heart shot).
Wild American bison are incredibly lean compared to their domesticated counterparts. And cooking them like beef (or even domesticated) will culminate in an extremely unpleasant culinary experience. Things to remember:
- Go for an quick dispatch shot, such as a brain shot or a heart shot (taking care to employ a large caliber heavy-for-weight controlled expansion bullet for the latter) or else adrenaline will degrade the meat quality.
- Grind the meat for some excellent hamburgers, meatballs, Koobideh, meat pies, sausages, etc.
- Whole muscle cuts should always be either run through a meat tenderizer (such as is done for chicken fried steaks) or braised (such as is done for pot roasts) or sliced very thin (as is done for Carne Asada tacos) or tenderized with papaya (as is done for Bengali Chaaps).
Out of all the wild bovines that I have hunted till now, my scariest experience was with the Seladang in Chengmai (Thailand) in 1978. But perhaps this was only because I had gone after him with a .30-06 Springfield caliber rifle.
Oh, and by the way… bovines get maddened at the sight & smell of blood and will even savagely attack members of their own herd who are wounded and visibly showing blood. This phenomenon is known as ”Ringing”. This is why Spanish Matadors in bull fighting arenas use red silk cloths in or order to provoke the bulls.
When the American frontiersmen were commercially downing American bison for their tongues in the late 1800s, they managed to exploit this phenomenon by wounding members of bison herds with lung shots from their .45-90 caliber Sharps Model 1874 & 1877 rifles. Within a few seconds of the wounded bovines coughing up frothy blood, the remaining members of the herd would go mad and commerce wantonly attacking each other. The shooters would then down the survivors with a few additional follow up shots. It was an extremely cruel but highly efficient practice.
My men and I personally employed this technique in 1980 during the feral water buffalo culls in the island of Lotar Char above the Bay of Bengal (when local residents were constantly complaining to the Ministry of Forests about constant attacks from the rancidly growing populations of feral water buffalo on the island). Equipment employed were government issue Lee Enfields in .303 British (with army surplus 174Gr spitzer tipped copper jacketed military ball). I am a completely unrepentant hunter, but I always felt extremely guilty about taking down those water buffalo in such a cruel and inhumane manner. But an order is an order and the value of human lives (i.e the local residents) far outweighed the ethics of killing the water buffalo by “Ringing”.
This tactic was also used during the Cape buffalo eradication culls in Western Zimbabwe during the 1980s. The rangers were using the service FN FAL in .308 Winchester (with army surplus 147Gr spitzer tipped copper jacketed military ball).
