After reading the topic 'Only rifle for whole world', I think that I can start this topic.

If you have a 22 LR rifle, and you have to shoot a cape buffalo, where would you place your shot and from how much distance? Is it possible?

Through the ear or through the eye into the brain stem. I would only attempt it if he had someone pinned and was hooking him. range would be 3 feet or less.

I have killed a lot of cattle with a 22 through the skull, but I suspect that would not work on a buffalo bull.

Don

Through the ear at four paces. Of course I would shoot while well positioned in a large tree.

I would use what ammo I had to signal for help!

If he was unaware of my presence, I'd try to put one in his earhole at under 50ft.

If he was looking at me trying to figure out what I was and whether to kill me, I'd aim for both eyes then run like hell to fetch a bigger gun!

George

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Shoot straight, shoot often, but by all means, use enough gun!

Alf,

I am really surprised that .22LR will penetrate the skull behind the bosses. I figured the bone would be massive all the way to and through the Atlas joint.

Nothing like experience to show what really works!

Don

I would climb a tree and shoot myself in the eye and then twice in the back of the head, just to be be sure he didn't have the satisfaction of grinding me into spaghetti with meat sauce.

No, no, you guys have it all wrong. You shoot your PH, only to lame so he can't run, so the buff will toss him, while you are hoofing out of the area.

Will, I only hunt with PHs that are slower than me. My prerequisite is nothing under a 15 second hundred.

Will,
I assumed the scenario was that I was alone; if I was with a PH, and he let me try to kill a buff with a .22LR, I WOULD shoot him (the PH)!

George

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Shoot straight, shoot often, but by all means, use enough gun!

When I took my son-in-law to Zim this year and a cow ele charged us, he "said" he wasn't worried, because, out of all of us in attendence, I was the slowest at back peddling or running.

I forgot to thank him for the sentiment.

What's that saying about the lion only has to be faster than the slowest antelope?

[This message has been edited by Will (edited 08-16-2001).]

If ,BELL, could score around 1000 elephants with 7x57 Mauser,I think i may bag one buffalo with Brno .22lr .I would place my shot in soft cavity at the base of ear which opens into brain. Maximum range should be under 30 yards. Don't under estimate efficient .22lr, not only many big game animals have been poached with it , but an elephant was downed when it was shooed out of garden in Kenya.

Nickudu stole my first thoughts, but after reading Alf's credible comments I would hope to be up a tree shooting down at the back of the skull near the juncture of the bosses and neck in the midline. If the bull was standing over my prostrate carcass I would go for the upper angle into the eye.

Thank you for this potentially life saving information, Dr. Alf.

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Good huntin' and shootin',
RAB

Yes Alf,
And if he doesn't choke on the butt of the 22 rimfire rifle, one could keep the muzzle of the gun in close proximity to one's own orbit, and no attention to the angle of entry would be necessary.

With the way those armor-like buffalo ribs overlap, it would be easier to kill an elephant with a lung shot from a 22 RF than a cape buffalo, the most bullet proof animal on earth. Elephants succumb to a single 22 RF in the lungs, sometimes, if what I have read is true.

The Botswana folk just love to scrape the grass out of the rumen of a buff and boil the gut up into a delicacy, a gelatinous mess. I stood watch over Ernest and Motsome as they dismembered my buff with a couple of butcher knives. I hated it when they used the horn tips as whetstones, but I loved it when Motsome pronounced: "JEEZIS! Fresh Meat!" after each slab of buffalo hoisted away to hang on a tree branch or pile on some grounded boughs. He said the same thing when he hoisted the pale grass and bile stained stomach parts.

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Good huntin' and shootin',
RAB

The ear hole eh!

As I sit here in my office, looking at vereous Cape Buffalo mounts, and skulls, I see no way to get a bullet of any caliber into the brain by shooting down the ear hole! Maybe mine are freaks, but the horn completely covers the ear channel, on mine. Even to reach the ear base one would have to be shooting from just under, and in front of his chin, and lying on the ground shooting up at a buffalo with a 22 lr is not my idea of fun! The base of the ear is visible from the rear,and above but fired into it from behind would only go through the ear base, and into the skull just behind the eye, and the brain is in the back of the skull. I'm sure any shot to the ear would tend to make a Cape buffalo Bull madder than a hornet! I pass, thank you! The skull just to the right, or left of the center skull ridge, from above, and behind the horn boss might get through,the mussles, and hide,however, are quite tuff right there, but as someone already said the only way I would attempt it, anyway is for him to be on top of somebody, and I had no other choice!

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..Mac >>>===(x)===>
DUGABOY DESIGNS
Collector/trader of fine double rifles, and African wildlife art

[This message has been edited by MacD37 (edited 08-26-2001).]

Not a sensible question.
Hugh.