Is Water Buffalo good eating? Son-in-Law has been offered a cull hunt here in the States.

Just wanted to know if they tasted good?

Water buffalo is delicious meat with some fat in the muscles ,you must prepare it with salt and if you want a bit of pepper and cook in a barbecue ,but dont cook too much it must be red a juicy ,tell me then about your opinion.juan

Rusty: A cull hunt here in the States? Doesn't your son-in-law need a backup .450/400 double in the hands of his bride's father?

Bill,
That thought has occured to me and about 6 of my DRSS Brothers!

Rusty

Water buffalo is fine enough meat, similar to beef. Like all animals young and tender is nicer. The fillets in an older beast should be fair enough (ie tenderloins in Americano). The fillets (from three animals) plus some backstraps were all I could bring back from my cull hunt last year (ie flying home), but they are still in the freezer!

Have fun.

Where is the cull hunt taking place? I've also been looking around for a Water Buff cull hunt here in TX. I'd love some info!

The only water buff hunt i know of is in S Flordia. About 4 G's. Lost the link. Will post
it if Found.

The place to hunt buff in South Florida is J&R Outfitters with Joey O'Bannon, check out the website. He's also a PH in Tanzania for Cape Buffalo. I've read some great stuff about the place. It's probably the best Water Buff place in the U.S. There are tons of places here in Texas that have them. Most places only have a few though, maybe a dozen or so. Some places do have more but I'm looking for a cull hunt for an old bull with worn down horns. Something under $1,500 all inclusive. I don't have much hope of finding one that cheap.

I spoke with O'bannon at SCI, he said all of his mgmnt bulls had been shot.... I was thinking about doing a mgmnt bull hunt for the meat, expereince and especially the price.

Guess it'll have to wait

Help me out! What kind of water buffalo has these thick short and stout horns?




from Sporting Destinations

The kind we have in the Americas. Philipine type.

The Asiatic ones in Australia have sweeping horns.

Thanks. Are these larger or smaller than the more commonly seen Asiatics?

I like the large head. Arethese bigger than the other sub-species? They appear to be at least stockier.

A few folks in Texas will have Asiatic buffalo, but these are not the ones on sell for $2500. They are usually $5500-8000.

The problem is they take forever to get big sweeping horns.

Size about the same, or within 400 of eachother. Either one of them will be bigger than any cape buffalo that ever lived but won't quite touch a Plains, Asiatic, or Woods bison.

People keep claiming that Asiatic Bison or Gaur are the biggest bovine. I have seen so many 2500 and bigger plains and woods bison I would have to disagree.

I would say 1700-2200 pounds would be a good weight for a water buffalo. There will be some bigger and some smaller but those are good solid waterbuffalo weights.

Most of the trophys of water buffalo have this type of horns these are mediterranean buffalos ,in past post you can see harafballi buffalos too ,i have special pacckages for water buffalo at very good prices .juan

Juan, I am very interested in this hunt, especially with these different looking buffalo. I was never really satisfied with the buffalo in some other parts. Where do the Australian buffalo come from compared to these?

Juan--

Do you have more photos of bulls taken by your hunters?


OKAY! I TRIED TO LOOK UP THE DIFFERENT SUBSPECIES OFTHE WATER BUFFALO AND COULD NOT MAKE HEAD NOR TAILS OF IT. THE RIVER BUFFALO, THE SWAMP BUFFALO, WAIT WAIT THE MEDITERRANEAN BUFFALO. SEEMS SIMPLE UNTIL YOU REALIZE THEY USE THREE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS FOR THE SCIENTIFIC NAMES! HERE IS THE TEST, SEPERATE THIS OUT AND POST A PICTURE OF EACH OF THE SUBSPECIES AND WHERE YOU CAN HUNT THEM?

There ar probably 20 different breeds of domestic buffalo around the world. The Australian bulls with the sweeping horns are also feral domestic buffalo, same as the ones in South America, Florida, and Texas.

Most of them come from India, SE Asia, and the Philipines. I beleive the buff from OZ are Indian, but not sure what bloodline.

quote:

There ar probably 20 different breeds of domestic buffalo around the world. The Australian bulls with the sweeping horns are also feral domestic buffalo, same as the ones in South America, Florida, and Texas.

The ones seen above are in South America, but they are said to be of the River Buffalo variety. these are not considered feral, but rather wild. However, I agree with the Aussie buffalo. Yes, there are breeds as in beef cattle, but I am not talking about those, but rather the ones used for introduction, which from the readings last night are different. The ones seen in Argentina were much different looking, and when looked into are from the clean waters of rivers and in a different range from the others.

Here is a site that seems to list most species:
http://www.csew.com/cattletag/

They are all feral!

Just like our wildboar in the states.

Pure wild buffalo don't exhist but in very few places. The water buffalo in Australia and South America were both introduced as domestic stock.

Weather the locals call them feral or not is up to their own stupidity.

quote:

They are all feral!

Understood, but just like our pigs in the US, they really are not all feral! In fact, here in California, there are wild domestic pigs, Spanish boars, French boars, Eastern European boars, Russian/Siberian boars, and the crosses. Only the wild domestics, and maybe the crosses can be considered feral, regardless of the fact that the game agencies lump them together. The rest are EXOTICS, just like the fallow deer down the road. Next time one of you goes out to shoot boar/feral pigs in California just ask yourself if your shoot an escaped pig from farmer John's grandfather or if your after pigs turned loose by the Spanish sailors, or if your in an area where boars were shipped in specifically for hunting and they might have come from the German, French, or Russian country sides.

So, the buffalo are the same thing, and I know that a lot of the introdcued buffalo come from domesticated animals, but were they domestic breeds of water buffalo, or domesticated wild buffalo. If they are domestic wild animals, I would like to know where this EXOTIC came from, if it is a domestic breed, I would like to know what wild subspecies it was domesticated from. These really are not hard to do, if you look at where the breed originated.

I know that a few of the locations where buffalo have been introduced, they used at least some animals that were supposed to have come from true wild buffalo populations. Now today that would be difficult since they are in Reserves, but prior to the 1960s this was still occuring commonly.

Where did Argentina get thier buffalo? Just curious. I have done a lot of work with introdcued species, especially the wild/feral boar, that is why I ask these questions.

You can see a lot of buffalos taken in willy1953 posts and my posts ,in steven seiberts safari post you can see a photo of a rare old harfballi and a ,mediterranean buffalo both gold medals sci ,the origins is in buffalos imported from Brazil some of them crossed the rivers and gone wild there are wild buffalos in Corrientes ,and Formosa the rest are in hunting ranches .The hornes are like in the mediterranean buffalos like a cape buffalo without the boss they never get the wide size of the australian buffalo another subespecie .Juan

quote:

Originally posted by D99:
They are all feral!

Just like our wildboar in the states.

Pure wild buffalo don't exhist but in very few places. The water buffalo in Australia and South America were both introduced as domestic stock.

Weather the locals call them feral or not is up to their own stupidity.

Why you think we are stupids because we call them ferals?

Feral animals are not the ones that escaped from captivity and become wild ??

L

The Australian water buffalo species is often referred to as Timor buffalo. I believe they were brought here from Timor in Indonesia.

They were domestic stock released when settlements such as the one on the Cobourg Peninsula were abandoned.

"Feral" means a domestic animal that has gone 'wild' breeding in the wild. It can take many generations for wild features to become the 'norm' such as the 'razorback' features of some feral pigs in Australia.

There are true wild water buffalo still in India and parts of SE Asia.

The domestic water buffalo is a very common animal through out Asia.

The Mediteranean water buffalo renowned for mozzarella (splg?) cheese has been domestic for a couple of thousand years.

quote:

You can see a lot of buffalos taken in willy1953 posts and my posts ,in steven seiberts safari post you can see a photo of a rare old harfballi and a ,mediterranean buffalo both gold medals sci ,the origins is in buffalos imported from Brazil some of them crossed the rivers and gone wild there are wild buffalos in Corrientes ,and Formosa the rest are in hunting ranches .The hornes are like in the mediterranean buffalos like a cape buffalo without the boss they never get the wide size of the australian buffalo another subespecie .Juan

Thank you all! Jaun, I appreciate the additional information to look into.

quote:

Originally posted by D99:
Size about the same, or within 400 of eachother. Either one of them will be bigger than any cape buffalo that ever lived but won't quite touch a Plains, Asiatic, or Woods bison.

People keep claiming that Asiatic Bison or Gaur are the biggest bovine. I have seen so many 2500 and bigger plains and woods bison I would have to disagree.

Let's cleat this up a bit...

the guar is the largest BUFFALO

the North american bison (not a buffalo) is the largest bison BY FAR as it is gigafauna... all bison native to north america are one species with, iirc, 3 subspecies on slight color and size differences

We can't compare hand fed, raised in a barn bison or buffalo to wild ones, so barnyard "freaks" shouldn't be included.


Brief note on genotype and phenotype as it relates to genetics and species.
Genotype is ALL the posibble genetic combinations (this is more than "genes" which is a superset of these) that ARE present in the individual and/or the species. There is a theoretical "total" of genes that make up a species if you took a large enough sample... that would include all current mutations, but the future ones would have to be indexed.

Phenotype - This is were people make some interesting judgements... Phenotype is the EXPRESSION of genotype as the INDIVIDUAL alone.
Let's take humans... of all the varied physical traits fround accross the global, there has not been a single case where one totaly isolated group can't bred with another... and the childern have a mixed expression of genetics. Mayans to Bushmen, inuit to muaori, ...

And those "mixed" children a mixed set of possible genes from both sides, with the ability to "randomly" express those genes in later generations, depending on single, double, and complex "dominate" genes...

This applies to horses... shires are GENETICALY compatible with minatures... in fact, the thoroughbred horse is from 3 arabian stallions bred to english coldblood draft houses... making offspring that COULD be superior to the parrent... but they don't mention the big headed, small bodied culls in their bredding program.

jeffe

A Gaur is an Indian bison (at least I can spell it correctly), and not any more a "buffalo" than it is a Bison.

This is kind of a stupid thing to argue about.

"MY BISON IS BIGGER THAN YOUR BUFFALO".

I am done, enjoy your argument without me.

Gaur are not buffalo. They are bovines of the genus bos as are banteng, yaks, and kouprey. Indeed Bos Taurus or cattle are of the same genus.

Water buffalo are bovines of the genus bubalus.

Cape buffalo are bovines of the genus syncerus.

American "buffalo" are correctly called bison, are bovines of the genus bison.


As for the questionable arguments on which species may weigh more, gaur and European bison vie for the 1000 kgs mark (surprisingly not the North American bison which is lighter on ave), but water buffalo tops it, up to 1200 kgs (per Ultimate Ungulates and the San Diego Zoo). Personally I have never weighed any of them.

quote:

This is kind of a stupid thing to argue about.

"MY BISON IS BIGGER THAN YOUR BUFFALO".

I am done, enjoy your argument without me.

I agree with D99 about this, but why did he start arguing with us in the first place? The question was simple, but the answers I got did not flesh out. Sorry, but they are not "all feral!" For those of you polite posters, thanks!

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:This applies to horses... shires are GENETICALY compatible with minatures... in fact, the thoroughbred horse is from 3 arabian stallions bred to english coldblood draft houses... making offspring that COULD be superior to the parrent... but they don't mention the big headed, small bodied culls in their bredding program.

jeffe

Now why would the english comment on meat fed to their dogs? (the usual fate of a "cull" in any breeding program)

AllanD

quote:

Originally posted by NitroX:
As for the questionable arguments on which species may weigh more, gaur and European bison vie for the 1000 kgs mark (surprisingly not the North American bison which is lighter on ave), but water buffalo tops it, up to 1200 kgs (per Ultimate Ungulates and the San Diego Zoo).

What you say is true of Plains bison but not the Wood Bison subspecies which is 15-20% larger that its southern cousin. The average weight of this subspecies in the wild MAY be slightly less than 1000 kilos but not by very much if at all from what I've seen. My wild bull from three months ago was 2100 pounds if he was an ounce and was NOT the largest bodied animal from the group of six we saw.

Best,

John

The water buffalo on Marajo Island at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil are the same type as they have in Australia. They have wide sweeping horns. I read a report that there are now 2 million of them but most are now domesticated and there is no hunting. There used to be these same kinds of buffalo, with wide sweeping horns, on the Simoni River in Guyana but they are now either extinct or a very small remnant population.


VBR,


Ted Gorsline