Buffalo bosses and Buffalo horn length, of course!

I wonder if increasing due to the pressure of more and more hunters wanting an African Cape Buffalo if the PHs aren't pushing more and more clients into accepting soft bossed buff bulls?

A question - when does a cape buffalo bull's bosses usually fully harden? And when is a cape buffalo bull considered to have reached maturity?

I will be as interested in the answer as you.

I was impressed with my PH in Zimbabwe this year. He said they simply don't hunt herd bulls. They hunt dagga-boys. Everything we stalked was 10+ years old. The one I killed was 12-13 years old according to the game scout.

It certainly seems to me that we are seeing more and more soft bossed buff in the pictures posted here on AR. So I think you're right in that PHs might be pushing clients to shoot buff that they perhaps shouldn't. On the otherhand, as long as the client is happy, I guess it doesn't really matter.

Personally, I'd prefer to have a hard bossed buff with shorter horns, rather than a soft one with longer horns.

If it were me I would rather take a bull with fully mature bosses with a narrower spread then a wide, soft bull.

Hard boss, matured bull with good curl and "character" to the horns is ideal. I too have noticed many pics. of recent trophies that don't meet this standard. Wouldn't be my choice, but to each their own. Sometimes I suppose reality sets in and folks take what they can find within their time frame.

Some people may be like I was last year on my first buffalo hunt. I went in wanting a hard bossed bull. The first day we saw and could have take a wide (est 42") bull but with soft bosses and I passed. On the the last afternoon (1:45) of the hunt we took a 38" hard but with not so big bosses (12') bull. I was very happy, but if at say 3:00 that afternoon and uncessuful I had the opportunity to take a bull with soft bosses in all honesty I think I would have pulled the trigger.

My directions to the PH were very simple. "I want only bulls that are over-mature." I went on to say that I did not have a width goal, but that I like good bosses.

In the Selous, it seemed that 40-inch buffaloes were pretty rare - I only saw one the whole 16 days of hunting. Neither PH claimed to have seen any other 40 incher while I was with them, even though Saeed "saved us" a putative 42 incher.

We saw one scrum cap dagga-boy that I wanted, but he was too wily for us - and moved across the river.

Hunting lone bulls does not mean you will get an over-mature bull. Most dagga-boys are just getting back into condition to re-join the herd - and the breeding competition. They cycle in and out of the herd. The scrum cap was the only bull we saw that the PH thought was never joining the herd.

Unlike most buffalo hunters, I couldn't care less about the width of the horns! I'd far rather take a 37" 38" bull with deep drop, and nice tips that kick back well, with a hard boss, than a 48" bull that has a 5" wide hairy patch between the bosses, and little drop. There are examples of Cape Buffalo that are old, but the bosses do not grow together. I have a bull that is 39" with 16" bosses, that when lieing on the ground the boss were only 2" apart, and felt hard,with no hair between them, but after boil the bosses lost a good 1, 1/2" off each side, leaving a 5" gap between the bosses. Luckily, I had good pictures, so the taxidermist could put the lost horn back. This bull was not young, and he scored one inch short of the book minimum. His horns had already started to wear down at the tips, with the left one almost 5" shorter than the other one. This bull would still be walking around Africa, if he hadn't charged us at close range out of the weeds, when we got too close for his comfort, without knowing he was there. He was alone, and angry at everyone, but not injured in any way we could determine! This bull is a trophy, because of the way he was taken, not because he had anything other than "MEAN" to justify his demise, but man it was close! Even if he had been a two year old,or a cow, he would have been a trophy. Some buffalo never grow together, no matter how old they get.

So to me what makes a trophy has more to do with character,and how he was taken on the hunt, than any measurement, !

Scrum-cap bulls are a something I wouldn't shoot unless he was about to kill someone,or we needed bait. That is, however, a personal thing, and not a put down on anyone else's choice. Like my soft top bull both are trophies to the hunter,who takes them, because one is their choice of targets,that are sort of rare, and the other is in self defense, and the tape measure isn't important at that moment. In fact, never is important to me!

Can recall the second buff I took. It was in western Zimbabwe with Horst Isselbacher. A 300 grain Barnes-X from my .375 did the job, fired just inside the shoulder as it quartered on.

Wonderful spread, but the boss was just too soft to think of doing a skull, much less a shoulder mount. Thought more on it and, instead of a mount, cut the horns off to make drinking horns, had two cradles built to rest a horn full of beer (mead if you can find it), and now have left and right-handed drinking horns. (They hold 16 oz. of beer each). Nice accessories in the trophy room/library.
Regards

On my cape buffalo hunts my main requirement was hard full bosses. On the first hunt I took an old boy with good bosses but very short horns. I had a second one on quote so hoped for another but it didn't happen.

On my hunt a month ago the main targets were cow elephant preferably tuskless ones. We had taken a smaller cow, with no fee, as it had lost over half its trunk to a poachers snare. We were still looking for another cow ele which was the 'trophy' animal. We located only one herd of buffalo, about sixty animals. The PH at first thought there was a really huge hard bossed bull in the herd but as we had to look them over many times to identify him we ended up seeing all the bulls many times. In the end all the bulls were relatively immature but many had what looked to me fantastic length horns, especially through the .416s rifle scope. As we were only half way through the hunt we left them be. The ele were hard to locate which was supposed to be unusual and in the end we only took the second cow ele on the last day, so we never tried more promising areas for buffalo.

However the communal lands of the Northern Omay seem to be taking a lot of pressure from poachers and lots and lots of human activity where they aren't supposed to be. Reportedly the buffalo don't like this and make themselves scarce. The buff hunting is quite hard there.

But if I was on a buffalo hunt, I probably could be persuaded to take a good but not fully hard bull on the last or second to last day. Next time perhaps.

The buffalo in the skinning shed were probably typical of the ones we had passed up and one was a real baby - nowhere near even full grown.

Makes the goods one even more appreciatable is my opinion.

There are way too many soft bossed buffalo being shot. (IMO) That is because so much hunting is out of herds. If clients and PHs would restrict themselves to hunting dagga boys, then we would be seeing mostly hard bossed buffalo that have retired from the breeding pool.

...I have always admired the group of bulls from Saed`s 2005 hunt clip - any of them would fit nicely:

Band of dugas

Hard,Soft,Wide,Narrow - all equally dangerous. I think any Cape buffalo taken in a sporting way is a great trophy.

I have been lucky to take enough buffalo that a soft bossed bull would not tempt me no matter how wide it was. But I can see someone on their first buff hunt settling for a younger bull. If there are few old bulls in the area then the problem is too high a quota not the taking of young bulls.

465H&H

mouse,
your link asks for a password

mich it is a vid from forums:

https://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/721108671/m/232109671

so just put in as follows:

USER NAME: forums
PASSWORD: accurate

Tracking old Dagga boys is a grand sport.
ozhunter

I have to agree that there seems to be a lot of pictures of Buff with hair between their bosses lately. Many young bulls. I don't know if it is a product of too many short Buff hunts, ignorant hunters, lazy PHs or too much long range snipeing.

Mostly they seem to come from Tanzania.

This is the buffalo I shot out of a herd:




This is a dagga boy that I shot (same area, 3 years later) after half a day of tracking (and once bumping him). He was with one other:




Most people would say that the first buffalo is the better one. However, I found hunting the dagga boy much more enjoyable (and more difficult!!!).

On each hunt, we were in buffalo each day. I shot my 1st buff on the 4th day of my first safari. I shot my 2nd buff on the 3rd day of my 2nd safari.

Had the same PH (Ian Gibson, Big5 Safaris) on both trips and I don't think he would ever consider letting me shoot a buff with a soft boss.

In fact, on the first day of my first safari, I had a 40"+ buffalo in my sights at 40 yards, standing broadside with the herd. The buffalo looked really good to me and all I had to do was pull the trigger on my 458 WM (500 grn Swift A-Frame @ 2,100 fps) and not miss the easy 40 yard shot. I was basically waiting for Ian to give me the word to shoot and I then heard, "too soft, let's keep looking"

That buff that Ian passed on had more boss than many in photos I have seen posted. So, some PH's seem to care.

Tim

I have taken two bulls. The first 36" with big hard bosses, nice drop and curl back. The second was 43" with a decent drop and curl back, but it had soft bosses. I like the first one better and if I could do it over again I would pass on the 43 incher. In the future, I will only hunt old dagga boys.


You can borrow money, but you can't borrow time. Go Now.

quote:

I have to agree that there seems to be a lot of pictures of Buff with hair between their bosses lately.

That doesn't always mean they are young. This is definitely an older bull (and my official entry for the outer circle ), and he has a pretty good mohawk going up between the bosses...





That was my third and oldest buffalo (I believe) of the trip. He was taken from a small group of bulls after an awesome morning of tracking, running from elephants and a couple good stalks.

Trophy-wise, I actually had an interesting trip...

Before we started hunting in the first part of my trip (while at Saeed's camp), I let the PH (Pete) know that I was not going to be fussy about "trophy quality" as long as it was a mature, hard bossed animal. The PH understood.

On the second day of following and bumping a herd of buff, we managed to sneak in on them as they bedded down. We spotted a very old bull with worn horns bedded about 80 yards from us in some thick cover. While trying to sneak (belly crawl) in on him, some other buffalo busted us and the herd (or a part thereof) took off again. After catching up and bumping them a couple more times, they started to settle down and bed again. There were a couple older bulls and a few young ones in the part of the herd we were following. We couldn't get in on them where they were bedding, so the PH decided to back out and circle around. He actually did a very masterful job of moving the bunch of us through that noisy cover, to the point where he, Don_G and I were able to sneak in on where we thought the bulls should be laying.

The PH finally spotted a group of bulls bedded in a thicket. On of the bulls had a number of scars on his side, including one very wide scar that ran almost from his backstrap to his belly. Based on that, the PH decided he was one of the older bulls. So we waited for a shot opportunity. After a short wait, a couple young bulls got up and moved on, leaving this bull alone in the thicket, which was about 70 yards off from us. When he finally stood up he was quartering towards us, 90% obscured by brush. We could see the hooks of the horns but couldn't get a real good look and time was not on our side as he was about to move. I could see a decent shooting lane to a vital area so the PH said to take him. The bull dropped in his tracks at the shot. It turned out I had actually hit a thick branch, but luckilly the bullet continued on a straight path and hit the bull where I had aimed it...right at the junction of the neck/shoulder. This is the bull...



As you can see, this bull is still soft. You could feel that its boss was not as hard as your finger nail. Alan Vincent figures this bull is 6 or 7 at the most, and is a year or two from being completely "hard". The PH (Peter) was fooled by the scarring on the buff, which was particularly easy to do since we had just seen a couple old bulls in the group. In the end it doesn't matter....I'd have preferred an old bull, but stuff happens....this one was well hunted and they are all trophies! And your first is always great, no matter what!

Here is the cleaned skull (not boiled though)...



My second bull came on the first day of hunting in LU5. We spent an afternoon trying to move in on a herd of buff that was out feeding in an open field. The herd had a few decent bulls in it, but nothing really old...Alan was careful to make sure that there was a mature bull or two in the crowd, though. We ended up doing a lot of crawling, crab walking, butt scooting, etc to get in on the herd, and just before dark I got a 140'ish yard shot at this bull...



You can see that this is a mature, hard bossed bull, in the prime of his breeding life.

Here is another pic, taken the next morning. He goes over 39" apparently. I think its pretty darn nice...



Here's a pic of the boiled out skull...



So, I managed to run the gamut of buffalo bulls, from young to old with a nice mature bull in between. A couple of bulls from herds and a classic dugga boy hunt. Not exactly the nicest lookin "trophies" ever, but they make me happy.

Cheers,
Canuck

Nice bulls Shumba and Canuck!
In my first and so far only buffalo hunting experience, my PH saw a bull he felt was what we were looking for and told me to shoot, which I did. He was a good representative buff for the area and I took him. On my next hunt, I plan to be more selective. So if an immature 45 incher comes along I will hold for the scrum cap dagga boy. So hard beats long and soft every time

I think the trophy is in the eyes of the beholder. IMO, anything less than a 6 pt elk looks pitiful when mounted. I have seen plenty of caribou that are dinks. Hell, I have a deer many of you would wonder why I had mounted.

With respect to buffalo, I like a deep drop and width. I don't particularly like the buffalo that have wide spreads because the horns have no drop whatsoever.

But again, I don't understand the amount of attention spent discussing soft buffalo.

Is anyone willing to post some photos of their own softer buffalo photos, especially the "intact" photo and a boiled out photo?

Also some "hard" buffalo photos of the same?

As an educational aid.

Someone who has shot a lot of buffalo might be willing as they probably have shot a bit of everything, from soft to truly great bosses and everything in between.

So in regard to the bosses. Do the horns start out longer and then shrink to be shorter with a bigger boss?

How do the horns grow in Length and width?

OK here is an immature cape buff bull I photographed in Addo Elephant Park this year.

quote:

Originally posted by sierrabravo45:
So in regard to the bosses. Do the horns start out longer and then shrink to be shorter with a bigger boss?

As a buff matures, his boss hardens, the horns drop, and the tips get worn. A mature bull beyond breeding age will have a shorter spread than he did when he was younger and softer.

I've never been to Africa after Cape Buffalo.

But when I go, I will shoot whatever bull the PH tells me to shoot.

But only after telling him that an old mature bull is my goal and could care less about score or spread. So I guess I'm in the hard camp.

quote:

Originally posted by 500grains:
As a buff matures, his boss hardens, the horns drop, and the tips get worn. A mature bull beyond breeding age will have a shorter spread than he did when he was younger and softer.

I hope you don't mind me expanding on the "spread":

The older a buff get's the more the tips wear down. The "spread" measurement is taken from the widest point on the outside of the horns and this probably doesn't change until the horns wear down to this point. The "tip-to-tip" measurment changes as the tips wear.