Culling lessons

American Handgunner, July-August, 2009 by J.D. Jones

Lynn Thompson's DVD, Death Down Under, shows 100 animals being taken and 50 of them are Asian buffalo. This isn't what you would consider a "hunting video. It's obviously a culling operation and as the cover says, it may be extreme for some viewers. It does give real world experience in animal reaction to various hits and educates the viewer on what to expect. You can see video clip samples of it on the coldsteel.com website.

It did remind me of some unusual experiences I had in Australia hunting buffalo during the years the government was attempting to eradicate them. My first trip was in 1986 and we helicoptered out into Arnemland about half a fuel-load worth in a Bell Ranger. After finding a suitable population of buffalo, we lauded and made camp for three days. It was necessary to move in three days as odors were becoming unpleasant. In those days you could haul all the amino you wanted to via commercial airlines so I brought plenty. I experimented heavily with a lot of calibers in the Contender and .44 Magnum revolver, mainly with my 320 grain cast bullet.

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Charges--yes a few, but only because I was trying to provoke them. Walking across a grassy field one day, some bulls got up from their naps at about 30-40 yards, took a look at me, stuck out their noses and began to trot toward me. A brain shot was nearly impossible, and the story goes these were charges and animal speed would increase, and the head would drop to put the horns to work at the last moment.

I chose not to find out if this was true and dropped to one knee and shot them in the heart at 15-20 yards with the .375 JDJ. Every one turned into a left fishhook and went down quickly. These animals had never seen a human before and my feeling was they were simply curious of those upright animals. My PH and others maintain they were legitimate charges. We still disagree.