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 CHAPTER IV

HUNTING THE AFRICAN BUFFALO

The buffalo is different from any other kind of animal in Africa. A lion prefers not to fight a man. He almost never attacks unprovoked, and even when he does attack he is not vindictive. The elephant, like the lion, prefers to be left alone. But he is quicker to attack than the lion and he isn't satisfied merely to knock out his man enemy. Complete destruction is his aim. The buffalo is even quicker than the elephant to take offence at man and he is as keen-sighted, clever, and vindictive as the elephant. As a matter of fact, the domesticated bull is more likely to attack man without provocation than any wild animal I know, and those who wandered on foot around the bulls on our Western prairies in the old cattle days probably experienced the same kind of charges one gets from African buffaloes.

Nevertheless, despite all these qualities, which are almost universally attributed to the African buffalo, I am confident that the buffalo, like the elephant and other wild animals, has no instinctive enmity to man. That enmity, I am sure, is acquired by experience. I had an experience on the Aberdare Plateau with a band of elephants that had seen little or nothing of man, and until they learned about men from me they