Hunting Savanna Buffalo With Aimpoint Red Dots

The last day in Burkina Faso, we tracked a group of bulls for miles in the Equatorial heat. In the late morning, we caught up with five bulls feeding in open forest. These were West African savanna buffalo, small in body and horn. When the biggest bull went behind a termite mound, we closed to 80 or 90 yards. I got on sticks, and when he came clear, I pasted him on the shoulder with a 300-grain DGX.

He took the bullet hard and almost went down. He regained his balance, turned, and accelerated into full gallop straight at us. Open ground and steady, I let him come a few yards. With his head still up, I hit him under the chin, in the middle of that broad black chest. That stopped forward progress. When he turned, I hit him where neck joins shoulder, dropping him.

I was using an Aimpoint Hunter on a Montana .375 H&H. My main takeaway was how easy and simple the shot was with the bright, bold Aimpoint red dot shining like a beacon on the bull’s chest. That was 10 years ago. Since then, I’ve done much more buffalo hunting with Aimpoints.

The buffalo is my favorite African animal, second worldwide to our beloved whitetail. The African buffalo shares with our whitetail keen senses and a love for thick cover. The buffalo adds size and strength plus the ability to turn the tables. Although I’ve had friends killed by buffalo, I’m not afraid of them. A buffalo is not “black death.” He is admirable and magnificent.

Shots at Buffalo

When you hunt buffalo, the dream isn’t to face a charge. We hope for a nice, close, exciting encounter, facing off with the bull of a lifetime at 40 yards. That doesn’t always happen. The African buffalo has good eyes, sharp hearing, and a keen nose. He is also a herd animal. You may find a lone bull, but in a mixed herd or bachelor group, you must defeat lots of eyes, ears, and noses to get a close shot.

There are no long shots on buffalo. The risks are too great. On buffalo, 150 yards is a long shot. The longest I’ve ever made was 165 yards. We were caught in the open with nowhere to go. That was pushing it. The wonderful thing about the Aimpoint is they’re ideal from bayonet range to 200 yards. 

The last time I hunted buffalo in Namibia’s Caprivi, PH Dawid Muller and I got ahead of a big herd moving through wide-open grassland. I didn’t think we had much chance, but we made for one small clump of brush in their path. We huddled against a lone tree while the herd passed, some cows almost close enough to touch. Finally, a bull brought up the rear. I was shooting an Aimpoint Micro H-2 on a Sabatti .450-3¼” double. The bull veered away from our tree; I had to step out into the grass to get a clear shot at 25 yards.

My wife Donna’s first Aimpoint buffalo was in the big swamps of coastal Mozambique, using a Micro H-2 on the .375 barrel of a Blaser R8. We had a huge herd with lots of bulls on the far side of a short-grass savanna just beyond 100 yards. Using a scoped .375, I shot a nice bull, and we saw him go down. As often happens, the herd ran just a few yards and stopped. We crawled a couple dozen yards, and another nice bull came to the edge. Donna had practiced shooting with red dots but never used them on game. It didn’t matter. She put the bright dot where it needed to go, hit her bull hard, hit him again, and we had two fine bulls down. 

Average shots vary from place to place and depend on your luck. I’ve taken a few buffalo in Namibia. Despite open grasslands, my average isn’t more than 20 yards. In the thick cover of Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, my average shot has been 60 yards, a comfortable and effective distance.

In the last 20 years, I’ve done a lot of my buffalo hunting in the swamps and floodplains of coastal Mozambique. It’s a different deal there with big herds, lots of eyes and ears, and often caught in open ground with no way to get as close as we’d like. There, where Donna took her first Aimpoint buffalo, I’d guess the average is about 90 yards. Only rarely must we stretch to 150 yards. 

Aimpoint Advantages

With an Aimpoint, distance doesn’t much matter. For many of us, part of that imagined encounter with the buffalo bull of our dreams includes taking him cleanly with an iron-sighted heavy rifle. That’s nice when it happens, but there are three strong reasons why the red-dot sight is superior to iron sights for buffalo.

First is distance. If you’re fortunate to get the 40-yard shot, it shouldn’t be a problem. Double that, and you’re on the ragged edge of most people’s ability to accurately place shots with iron sights. At 100 yards on maybe the only chance you have, it’s too far for iron sights. A magnifying scope is always a sound option for buffalo, but a red-dot sight is lighter and more compact than any scope.

Second is the touchy matter of expertise and visual acuity. I learned to shoot with iron sights and used them throughout my military career. However, I did my first hunting with magnifying scopes. Absent military experience, younger folks may have no experience with irons or the expertise to use them.

Father Time is against us. Open sights require the eye to shift back and forth in three focal planes: Rear sight, front sight, target. Aperture or peep sights reduce this to two, as the rear aperture fuzzes out, but we still must resolve front sight and target. As we age, we lose visual acuity, and our eyes become less flexible to focus back and forth. The magnifying riflescope and red-dot sight are the same in this regard. The eye focuses in one plane: target. We superimpose the reticle or red dot on the target and squeeze the trigger.

I still hunt with iron sights and love classic doubles and vintage lever-actions, but my abilities aren’t what they once were. There was a time when I was confident with iron sights past 100 yards. Those days are over. Recognition of this drove me to the Aimpoint for buffalo. Optical sights look silly on a classic big-bore, but I’d rather be efficient and not pass shots. 

While I started with that Aimpoint Hunter on a .375, a couple years later, using the Italian Contessa detachable mount, I put an Aimpoint Micro H-2 on my Sabatti .450-3¼” double. It is awesome. Using the Blaser saddle mount, I put the same Aimpoint model on a .375 barrel for the Blaser R8. Both Donna and I have used it for buffalo.

A third advantage is light but not the reason you’re thinking. Unlike whitetails, it’s unusual to get low-light shots at buffalo. In the early morning, you’re looking for tracks. In the late afternoon, buffalo are moving and feeding. However, when the light starts to go, it’s time to leave them. Nobody wants to look for a wounded buffalo in the dark. 

Open sights require good light, and night vision deteriorates as we age. Magnifying scopes with good glass admit more light, enhancing vision at dawn and dusk and in deep shadow. So do high-quality reflex sights like the Aimpoint.

There’s another factor to hunting buffalo (and bears and boars). Dark animals, especially in dark shadows, confound the human eye, making it difficult to visualize the proper aiming point. The common aiming error is to shoot too high on the shoulder. I’ve seen it happen so often that I think it’s an optical illusion caused by the huge black shoulder. An illuminated reticle on a magnifying scope helps tremendously. However, at the distances buffaloes are shot, that big, bright Aimpoint red dot seems to make visualizing shot placement much easier.

Bachelor Bulls and Mixed Herds

In 2017, I took two Nile buffaloes in Uganda with a Blaser .375 and Micro H-2. Both were anomalies. Early one morning, we saw an excellent bull feeding toward a nearby park boundary. He’d be gone if we waited for full light. We came up in thick trees, still shadowed and so dim that the red dot was turned way down. At about 30 yards, the Aimpoint was bold and bright against black hide.

Up in the northeast corner, Uganda’s Karamoja District has the darndest buffalo hunting I’ve seen. Kidepo National Park, on the Sudan border, has a huge buffalo population. At the right time of year, there’s lots of water in the hunting area to the south, and bachelor groups keep coming and going. The typical Nile buffalo bull is a bit smaller in body and horn than the southern Cape buffalo. However, with Kenya over a big ridge to the east, Karamoja has big bulls. You must be patient, and with a second buffalo on license, we could be picky.

We sorted through countless bachelor groups looking for a bull with the magical 40-inch spread. At the end of the hunt, we glassed five bulls drifting through acacia forest. The sun was touching the horizon but wind good, so we hustled. We caught them walking past at 100 yards, the best among them nice and wide. Against a red western sky, the Aimpoint dot was like a beacon on black hide. I hit him well more than once. We needed him down right there, and he was.

With both those bulls, there wasn’t enough light for iron sights. I could have used a low-powered scope but didn’t need the magnification. Don’t throw away your binocular, as there are differences between hunting small bachelor groups and picking a bull out of a herd.

One hot midday in coastal Mozambique, PH Mark Haldane and I crawled as far as we could, got set up on a big herd at the usual 80 yards, not a blade of grass between us and a mass of buffalo. I got on sticks with the Sabatti .450-3¼” double with Aimpoint. There was an exceptional bull facing us on the outside of the herd. They had seen us and were nervous, a shimmering black mass in blazing sun. Every time the bull moved, I had to relocate him, switching between rifle and binocular. Standing with rifle on shooting sticks, this proved impossible.

They were so tightly packed I couldn’t have shot even if I was certain. Eventually, they broke and ran to the right. As bulls often do, the big boy lagged behind and came clear. In that bright sunlight, I had the red dot turned all the way up and saw the bright dot clear on his chest when the front trigger broke.

Newer double rifles are usually modified to accept optical sights. Our Heym 88B in .450/.400-3” predates that advancement. I was reluctant to modify it until gunmaker JJ Perodeau in Oklahoma showed me his solution. Perodeau milled small, almost invisible dovetails into the sides of the rib. An Aimpoint S-1 shotgun sight now clamps on solidly. That Aimpoint has a big, bold 6-MOA dot. We only use that rifle for big stuff at close range.

Last year, it had its maiden voyage hunting buffalo in South Africa with Jose Maria “Chico” Marzal. Tracking in dense mopane, we fought shifting breeze for three days and finally got onto a small herd in thick stuff. The wind then swirled, and they crashed off. As sometimes happens, they must have run into a wall of human scent and came crashing back. Instantly, Chico put up the sticks. About 10, mostly cows, thundered straight to us, pulled up short, and a nice bull stood broadside at 30 yards.

I can still see iron sights for a shot like that, but I can’t tell you how fast it was to get on that buffalo with the extra-bold red dot. Center of shoulder, one-third up, at the shot, my bull ran to the left, and the rest of the group exploded with him. I’m fast with a double but, even at that range with the Aimpoint, not fast enough. I could see the bull, but other buffalo were all over him, no way to fire. The crashing subsided, and we waited a while then advanced carefully. Our bull was down and out in thick stuff.

This year, I went against common sense and took an older, express-sighted double .470 buffalo hunting because I wanted to use that rifle one more time. There was no real trouble, but I struggled to get the correct sight picture. I think I got that out of my system. For what buffalo hunting remains to me, I’ll stick with that sweet-shooting Heym and its even sweeter Aimpoint red dot.