Lowvelder reported at the time how the routine euthanising of the animal went horribly wrong. English was recently able to share his experience for the first time.
When he went to the Milaleni area, north of the Nhapi Boulders to complete a routine euthanisation of buffalo in the early morning of July 26, it was with 30 years’ experience in handling big game in dangerous situations. More specifically, he had witnessed a number of buffalo attacks on humans in that time, including a number of fatal ones.
Due to the park’s worst drought ever, euthanising a number of buffaloes has become a humane management solution.
There are over 47 000 buffaloes in the park. English, who was leading the operation on the day, had euthanised three buffalo from the helicopter. While he was securing the area so that the ground team could safely move in, he was suddenly charged by one of the buffaloes.
Having previously found himself in numerous similar situations, he realised that over the short distance between himself and the enraged buffalo bull, he would only be able to get one shot off.
Waiting for the enraged buffalo and at a distance of approximately 10 metres, he fired at the charging animal in an attempt to hit the brain.
On the day, English intentionally took some soft-nose expanding rounds of ammunition on the operation.
