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"Henry Harpending on how not to hunt a Cape Buffalo"

18 Comments -

1 – 18 of 18
Anonymous Peter said...

Some years back an elephant at a circus in Honolulu killed its trainer and went rampaging through the city streets. It absorbed something like 75 bullets from police pistols before it finally collapsed. Even then it wasn't dead, and had to be finished off with a high-powered rifle.

Imagine going after that with spears?

1/9/09, 11:59 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

As a old time Scottish safari hunter once said about shooting big game in Africa: "Get as close as you can and then 10 yards closer."

1/9/09, 12:51 PM

Blogger albertosaurus said...

When I was ten I knew that the Cape Buffalo was the deadliest of the African "Big Five" to hunt. I read True magazine. Why didn't Harpending?

It absorbed something like 75 bullets from police pistols before it finally collapsed.

I'm not surprised that that elephant didn't succumb to those 75 pistol shots. Their pacyderm hide is an inch thick. A nine millimeter pistol would barely penetrate. Elephants require elephant guns - big powerful solids that break bones.

What kind of rifle was Harpending carrying? If it ricocheted off the buffalo's scapula it was too light a weapon. He's lucky to have lived through it.

Actually the Bushmen kill Giraffe without guns. They poke them with a poisoned spear and follow them for days as they slowly die. This too sounds pretty dangerous.

I think the most dangerous prey would have been the short faced bear.

1/9/09, 1:02 PM

Blogger Black Sea said...

Quite reminiscent of Hemingway. Did Harpending's wife shoot him in the end?

1/9/09, 1:05 PM

Blogger Vernunft said...

Pistol rounds have something like one-twentieth to one-tenth of the energy a dangerous game rifle round has. Even my .45 is puny compared to a .458 Win Mag; the energy difference is something like 11 to 1, if I recall.

1/9/09, 2:33 PM

Anonymous henry harpending said...

Steve those outtakes on the website are material that our editor cut out of the book, not exerpts at all.

Albertosaurus asks "I read True magazine. Why didn't Harpending?"

I had also read True, but at the time I was at Harvard, so of course I knew better! Animals were all really gentle loving creatures deep down. Sure, predators ate prey, but only the sickly and old who really wanted to be eaten anyway. And so on.

1/9/09, 3:07 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Even my .45 is puny compared to a .458 Win Mag; the energy difference is something like 11 to 1, if I recall."


Feast your eyes upon this, the .600Overkill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGfu3Rge8Xo

1/9/09, 3:39 PM

Blogger John Seiler said...

What a great story. But they should make the type easier to read. The blue background doesn't work.

1/9/09, 4:08 PM

Blogger American Goy said...

One of my favorite books, 'Immediate Action', has a tongue in cheek passage about how the world's best trained, aggressive, fingers on the trigger soldiers were reduced to quivering bodies swimming madly for their lives when a hippo attacked and sunk their Zodiac boat.

Hippos are scary.

And 'Immediate Action' is a great book, the career of the SAS man who later became famous in the 'Bravo Two Zero' episode in Desert Storm.

1/9/09, 5:41 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It looks like they had ordinary rifles on that elephant (though they don't show the whole process)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGb-avq-Alk

1/9/09, 5:45 PM

Anonymous AJ said...

Henry: What's with the RickRoll in the agriculture section? That's sooo 2008.

1/9/09, 8:13 PM

Anonymous Richard H said...

Can you guys please make sure that this gets on Amazon Kindle?

1/9/09, 8:32 PM

Anonymous Svigor said...

Loved the story. I notice no mention of calibers. I was just reading a bit some time back on Wikipedia about the development of firearms. The stuff about the transition to smokeless powder, and the colonial African hunt for big game rounds and weapons, would've done Harpending a lot of good before going to Africa.

A while before that I read a report by an FBI guy about how gun-stupid Hollywood makes us (that wasn't the author's intent, but it was hard not to notice this fact). The take-home point was that in a gunfight, especially with pistols, one's chance of instantly dropping an opponent are quite low. If you don't destroy your target's central nervous system function (brain or spinal cord), expect return fire. Most fatal wounds leave an eternity (in gunfight time) for response, the time it takes to bleed out basically.

1/10/09, 8:34 AM

Anonymous Gene Berman said...

Back in the late '50s/early '60s,
Arthur Jones (inventor of Nautilus
equipment) filmed a guy I worked for in those days (Bo Miller) killing a bull African elephant in the wild with a single shot from a .44 Magnum pistol (it was for a TV series, "Bold Journey."

1/10/09, 8:37 AM

Anonymous Svigor said...

What a great story. But they should make the type easier to read. The blue background doesn't work.

I wish I had a link for you, but there's a great bookmarklet for FF that makes Web pages legible against their will. I've been using it like a fiend since I found it. Here's the code:

javascript:(function(){var%20newSS,%20styles='*%20{%20background:%20white%20!%20important;%20color:%20black%20!important%20}%20:link,%20:link%20*%20{%20color:%20#0000EE%20!important%20}%20:visited,%20:visited%20*%20{%20color:%20#551A8B%20!important%20}';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20{%20document.createStyleSheet(%22javascript:'%22+styles+%22'%22);%20}%20else%20{%20newSS=document.createElement('link');%20newSS.rel='stylesheet';%20newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName(%22head%22)[0].appendChild(newSS);%20}%20})();

1/10/09, 8:38 AM

Blogger Danindc said...

That elephant rampage was crazy!! Didn't anyone have a mouse to subdue it?

1/10/09, 11:28 AM

Anonymous Henry Harpending said...

In response to several comments, the rifle was a 375 H&H as I recall but I am not sure.

1/10/09, 2:24 PM

Anonymous headache said...

How often I heard this type of story in South Africa! The worst seem to be Rhinos.

1/11/09, 10:12 AM

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