The INNER FORCE

The wind is very good, right in our faces.  The buffaloes mingled, completely unaware of us crouching in the grass.  Then Nixon says, “There he is.  There is the bull.  Get up, rest on this bush and shoot him.”  I look through my scope into an opening in the bush.  I see wide thick bosses, the heavy upper portion of a buffalo bull’s horns.  I see his massive head, but his body is just a black shadow camouflaged with the bush.  I realize a Cape buffalo is probably the only animal on earth capable of killing you after it’is dead.  Even with a heart shot, the momentum of the charging buffalo could still steamroll over you like a runaway eighteen wheeler on a mountainside!

Nixon is whispering to me from my left to take him through the shoulder.  I draw a mental picture of where shoulders and bone structure would be in the black silhouette.  I lower the cross hairs to that location. The trigger is squeezed, the report of the .416 kicks into my shoulder and the 400 grain hollow point is propelled into the mighty beast. The first shot slams into the beast is paramount, with the force of a Kansas tornado hitting a farm house.  He is visually rocked. His legs quiver back and forth buckling. He appears to be going down.

I eject the shell and work the bolt forward solidly jamming the next round half-in half-out.  We are definitely not in the Land of Oz, but in a rapidly real and deteriorating developing situation.  I am struggling with the weapon to free the jammed round and chamber it.  Although perhaps only a split second, I finally clear the shell and slam the bolt on the next round.

Although only a split second has gone by, I look up to see the bull is running broadside to my right.  This part I do not remember, but I pull up and shoot instinctively.  I do not remember aiming or pulling the trigger, but later realized this shot hit him high in his right front shoulder.

This shot got his attention.  This shot made him realize where the attack was coming from. It made him understand that he had been challenged to a duel to the death.  The bull was willing to meet this challenge.  Without hesitating while in full stride , he swung his head towards me and his 2,000 pounds of muscle and mass followed his head. This is when. The charge began. I felt like a stalled UPS truck parked on the tracks with a freight train barreling down at me at 70 mph. The mail was definitely about to be delivered.

This is what I remember vividly; his eyes met mine; when the blue-eyed one connected with the dark eyes of the enraged bull.  There were no whites in his eyes but- just bright red.  I could see the fires of hell in his eyes.  They were filled with hate and for a very justifiable reason seeing as I had just waged war upon him.  The second shot was supposed to be delivering the wrath of the devil to him. But instead it merely enraged the powerful beast, changing the ominous stare of his eyes as they turned to the raging fires of hell!  He had turned the tables on me, as he directed his power, hate and wrath upon me in an inevitable charge. Insert 36 drawing buffalo face

The bull was coming for me at forty yards…a distance he could cover in less than three and one-half, maybe four seconds.  At that moment, the blue-eyed one at that moment stood there with his gun at his side with the bolt open; the spent cartridge laying on the ground, chamber empty; and the third and final round tucked in the magazine waiting for its orders, waiting to be called to service.

This is when I had the adrenaline rush you only get when your life is in eminent danger was taking over my body. The blood coursing through my arteries, filling my brain with oxygen; clearing my mind of everything else in this world.  For those who have been here understand how at times like this unfold and your brain starts to function at ten or fifty times its normal rate.  The power of your mind makes the world stand still.  What is happening around you begins to transpire in slow motion. I have been here before, only floating to the ground with concrete block floating around me as I am thinking at what seems like a normal rate but indeed is at light speed.

I see the bull coming as I raise my gun.  This unfamiliar weapon must now be an extension of my body, my mind and my soul.  I feel the bolt grab the last round as it slides smoothly into the chamber.  The bolt locking down behind it.  The bull is at thirty yards now.  We are separated by two maybe three seconds of time.  This beast is like a nuclear warhead speeding towards my ship.  A freight train barreling down the tracks to which I am tied.  It is a time when panic or fear means almost certainly either injury or death.  My mind speaks to me, “Take your time. There is still plenty of time. Aim carefully. You have to brain him.  It is your only shot.”

The gun’s stock is on my shoulder as my eye comes to the scope.  The bull is now at twenty yards, one or two seconds of this game still remaining. My cross hairs bear down between his eyes below his bosses.  I see sweat spraying from the right side of his head.  He is at ten