AFRICAN INDABA

13    Call For A Debate – Scoring The Horns Of The African Buffalo

Gerhard R Damm

Ronnie Rowland’s and Kai-Uwe Denker’s articles should serve to re-open the debate about hunting as management tool for buffalo again. We have already lost far too much time since Kevin Robertson and Winston Taylor wrote their articles in 2007. I have discussed the presentations of Ronnie Rowland and Kai-Uwe Denker with African Indaba contributor Peter Flack at length over the telephone and he has penned down his comments below. Both of us consider it important that the readers of African Indaba, especially the large crowd of passionate buffalo hunters, share their views on this critical issue. We also need to hear comments and views from professional hunters, taxidermists and trophy measurers. You can all contribute towards finding a practical and most importantly ecologically sustainable solution.

Buffalo hunting in African bush and savannah is one of the last great hunting adventures. The tense and adrenalin pushing hours of tracking without knowing what will happen when tracker and tracked meet, the search for an old buffalo warrior who has survived many seasons, lion attacks, hunters’ and poachers’, the old bush ghost who has spread his genes as nature demands, and the final meeting make up an adventures for many campfire nights. It’s the search, the hunt and the pure excitement which make buffalo hunting so addictive. I firmly believe that most of those who have been bitten by the bug will accord highest honors to an old thirty-eight incher after an honest hunt. I am not talking about the future stories of 50 inchers from South Africa’s intensive breeding operation, although I am unfortunately certain that we will be regaled with wild buffalo hunts from South Africa. Let’s just hope that they don’t forget to remove the ear tags from the poor beast before posing for the photo!

Peter Flack’s Comments:

I hold Messrs Denker, Liedtke and Rowland in high regard and have read their proposals carefully. While I think they make a most useful contribution to the debate, with the greatest of respect, it might not take us all the way to the goal many of us share with these gentlemen, namely, the design of a measuring system which will both be adopted by the major trophy record books (a requisite, I believe, if the system is to become accepted by amateur hunters) and, at the same time, have the effect of persuading hunters to stop shooting buffaloes before they have past their breeding age and concentrate on those that have. My concerns are the following, namely:

1. The proposed system is open to abuse when it comes to judging the age of buffaloes as there is a subjective element to this.

2. A number of inexperienced hunters and official measurers, no matter how hard they try to be accurate and objective, will simply lack the knowledge to be able to judge age correctly.

3. Even official measurers with the requisite experience will find it difficult to verify age, firstly, because there is the necessary 30 day drying out period and, secondly, they will not usually have the opportunity to see the animal in the field and photographs are often inadequate.

4. In which case, what does an official measurer do – refuse to register the trophy or register one that has been inaccurately scored (as opposed to inaccurately measured) because the age and, therefore, the multiplier, has been incorrectly determined?

5. A way around this, however, may be to say that no multiplier will be applied to the measurements unless it can be demonstrated by means of photographs submitted to a measuring panel of at least three official measurers (of which the majority view will prevail) that the buffalo falls into one of the three multiplier categories.

The proposed system adds to the burden of judging trophies accurately and, while many amateur hunters may have a good idea of what a buffalo with a 38 inch spread may look like, there are not many, myself included, who would know what a, say 110 inch, buffalo would look like after its horn and boss lengths have been multiplied by 1.12 which may, in turn, lead to resistance to change.

Having said this, if North American hunting guides and their clients can apply almost equally complicated measuring systems to wild sheep and goats, which are smaller and usually shot at far greater distances than buffaloes, then there is no reason why African PHs and amateur hunters alike cannot learn to do the same over time to bovines here if the spirit is willing. And it should be. The goal is such an important and worthy one.