THE AFRICAN BUFFALO.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5220, 23 December 1927, Page 1

THE AFRICAN BUFFALO.

MOST DANGEROUS BEAST. Writing in the “ Wide World MagJn zine ” on big game shooting, Captain C. Lestock Reid says of the African buffalo : “ I am convincedjdyj;, without any exception whatever, the buffalo is the most dangerous, of all big game in the'world.. When you are hunting him, he is often hunting you, and it is quite an open question which is hunting the better. He will hide behind a bush —not a difficult feat, for his size; consists of bulk rather than height—and spring out on you like a nightmare player in a. perilous, game of peep-bo; he will fetch a wide circle and come on you ’from behind; he will ‘tree’ you for hours on end ; he is up to all manner of tricks when alive, and like Kipling’s Fuzzy Wuzzy, ‘E’s generally shammin’ when he’s dead.’ Ip. the ultimate resort, when your last cartridge is expended or jammed, you can, it is said, save yourself frpm a buffalo by lying flat; he cannot get at you with those enormous inwardcurving horns of his, and, like a horse, he will not willingly tread on a human body. Every hunter knows that theory; the doubtful brobiem as to whether the buffalo knows it I have, thank Heaven, neiver had cause to solve by experiment.”