Hunting on a road less travelled

Stalking in an area of Botswana that has been closed off since the 1960s illustrates how much buffalo can offer to both hunters and the local community

- THOMAS NISSEN

When Mark Longhi Andreasen was offered the chance to stalk buffalo in Botswana in early 2022, he quickly agreed. The country’s president had reopened hunting in state-owned areas two years earlier following his election in 2018. At the same time, he granted hunting rights in several new concessions where bans had been in place since the 1960s. It was one of these freshly reopened hunting areas that Mark would visit.

Sightseeing

The region is blessed with a good population of big game — elephants, leopards, lions and buffalos — which offered the party a great sightseeing experience on the trip’s opening day. Mark had also spotted buffalos, but wanted to wait for his Blaser R8 Ruthenium with .375 calibre H&H mag to arrive before trying to take one of the enormous beasts. The South African authorities had, it seemed, decided to make things difficult by holding the rifle in exchange for tax.

Luckily, Mark had a week’s stalking ahead of him, so the delay wasn’t too troubling. In addition to admiring the local wildlife, the group spent the first-day putting tyre tracks on the sandy roads so that the following morning they could easily detect fresh signs of buffalo herds or lone bulls — ‘dagga boys’, as the locals called them — that had crossed the road. Once they found such tracks, they could pick up the stalking from there.

Towards evening on the first day, they happened upon a collection of buffalos, but Mark firmly rejected the offer of a borrowed rifle. He was determined to wait until he had his own gun in his hands. Like most stalkers, he believed using his own rifle would be safer and make the occasion more memorable.