Hello,

I got to see some interesting footage of cape buffalo on one of the lion shows on the Discover channel this evening.

A moving herd of buff approached a pride of lions in some scrub. When the lead bull stopped the herd and all of its members came to attention, they located a pride of lions taking a siesta in the edge of the scrub. The lions were resting and had their litter of cubs cached near the lead bull who zeroed in and killed 3 of the 10 cubs. There was good footage of a bull using his left horn to mash his target. They never showed him tossing his horn or hooking, just mashing down and plowing forward over the victim.

I have not see footage like that before, but have read the likes of J.A. Hunter and John Burger.

Any of you out there have other interesting cape buffalo observations???

Hey North,
I saw the same footage a while ago...pretty grizzly stuff and it really makes you tense up your stomach muscles when you see that bull mashing down on those cubs.
A few years ago I was guiding some people on safari and we were watching a herd of some 300 buffalo from a boat...we left them and as we were heading out I caught sight of a pride of cats setting up a stalk on a nice looking waterbuck bull about 500 metres downwind of the buff herd. To cut a long story short the cats pulled him down in a few short minutes and had already opened him up and begun to feed as he kicked his last few kicks...
The noise from the pride had attracted some attention of the Cape Buffalo variety...and it didnt take long before the herd rocked over to the scene of the crime to do some investigating. At first they kept a bit of distance, but with so many buffalo in the herd, the front buffalo, mostly cows, were being pushed forward by the guys in the back all trying to crowd forward and get a peek at what all the fuss was about.
Without really realising how, the front row of cows was replaced by a shoulder to shoulder line of bulls, some soft bosses but generally all pretty hard - older experienced bulls by my reckoning...there were still a couple of mamas in the rank, but definitely more bullpower than cows. These buffalo got closer and closer - crowding onto the lions. If i remember correctly there were 11 cats, 1 mature lion, 6 or 7 adult lioness and the remainder were sub-adults between approx. 11 months and 18 months old, of which three were young males.
As the buff got in to within about 3 ft of the carcass the lions - all growling and snarly and occasionally slapping out with a paw and lunging at this black wall of horns, snot and flaring nostrils - had all stacked themselves up shoulder to shoulder on the opposite side of the waterbuck carcass.
From time to time a lion would lunge up and at the buffalo and with ears flat back, lots of noise, and flailing forelegs it would push the buffalo back a few feet. The buff couldnt really get back from the cats because of the pressure pushing forward on them from the back of the herd, but the intention was definitely there. Each time a cat came lunging out - as the buff tried to get back the whole front row would drop their heads presenting a pretty scary looking line of polished points and gnarly bosses. A couple of times the lion/lioness would hook a paw into a buff but they disengaged pretty chop chop and backed up to the carcass again to grab a quick mouthful of meat. The whole time this was going on the pride male - a beautifully mature and very impressive black-maned boy - kept his position carcass-side and hardly even looked up!
Ultimately the mob-hysteria generated by the buff prevailed and the front row pushed closer with hooks and bosses in until the lions decided to take off, and once they took off the mob really did get crazy and just started stampeding towards the fleeing lions.
The lions pretty much bolted all at the same time and it looked like they sort of turned around, picked a spot on the horizon...and went there! Fast! They didnt stick together, they just took off - and the buff did the same thing, only difference being that their spot was on the lions butt!
None of the lions were gored or injured that I could see, and apart from a few facial incisions, neither were any of the buffalo, although I reckon if buffalo had been born with toes instead of hooves there would have been more than a few bruised and battered toe tips in that herd!
The whole thing probably only lasted about twenty minutes from kill to flight. But man what an incredible 20 minutes...
Andy

Is that from a National Geographic segment?