Selby and Ruark looked at each other, then sat down to smoke a cigarette. As the minutes wore on, Ruark became more and more anxious about what was to come. Then Selby invited him to accompany him as he went after the buffalo — a serious compliment as you know if you’ve ever been in that situation. Ruark steeled himself, checked his .470, and off they went. The tracking took some time. It probably seemed much longer than it was, but that’s the way these things work, as they crept along, expecting a charge at any second.
Finally, they came upon the buffalo, dead in its tracks, facing away. He had died as he fled, and not even contemplated a classic m’bogo ambush. Ruark noted that his horns were bigger, but “it’s the first one, the smaller one, that I have on my wall.”
Forty years later, I faced a similar situation on a two-part safari that began in Tanzania,
