There are five different types of buffalo in Africa, and not all of them are big and black.

By Craig Boddington

Mention the “buffalo hunters” who plied America’s plains in the mid-nineteenth century, and any bright school kid would quickly pipe up that these weren’t buffalo, but bison. I freely admit that I’m not up on the precise distinctions between the bison of American and Europe (genus Bison) and the buffalo of Asia (genus Bos), but at least we can agree that Africa’s big bovines are proper buffalo.

The African buffalo is yet another genus, Syncerus, with just one species, Syncerus caffer. They range widely across sub-Saharan Africa, occurring in several races and subspecies, with significant differences in size, color, and horn shape. This may be a surprise to many, because the most familiar African buffalo, the Cape or Southern buffalo, occupies the widest range, corresponding with the most popular hunting countries of eastern and southern Africa.

Just recently I took a lovely old Nile buffalo in Uganda. There was a photo posted on a website, and one correspondent commented that it wasn’t bad--for a cow! Yep, that got my goat. It was actually a great old bull, halfway up the record listings, but, as is typical of Nile buffalo, the horns were separated at the bases without much boss, and there was little drop. The Nile buffalo is also smaller than the Cape buffalo, about the size of a big Cape buffalo cow. So I can understand the confusion.

The Cape buffalo (S. c. caffer) is the most distinct race, as well as the most numerous and widespread. This is the largest of the African buffalo, with the largest horns. He is often described as “a ton of black fury” and such malarkey, but there’s some exaggeration there. Most references rate him as 1,400 to 1,800 pounds. I agree with this, and would add that I think it extremely unlikely for a wild Cape buffalo bull to ever reach an actual ton, but he’s still big, with horns that can reach to very wide spreads, typically joined in the center by that wonderful helmet-like growth we call the “boss.” Color is predominantly black, although calves are often brownish, and once in a while, dark brown adults—usually females—may be observed within a herd.

The helmet-like boss is the classic mark of a mature Cape buffalo bull, but as you move west across the bulge of Africa this feature becomes much less common, with mature bulls tending toward separated horns.

This is the buffalo we hunt from South Africa and Namibia northeastward to Tanzania, but there’s still a lot of Africa left over, including a lot of hunting opportunity and a lot of “different” buffalo. As you move west from Kenya and Tanzania, through Central Africa and on to the bulge of West Africa, the buffalo grow smaller in both body and horn. The horns begin to grow separately, lacking the distinctive boss, and the curve of the horn flattens and then becomes more upright. The color changes as well as you move west, with more animals in the herds being brown and red until, when you get all the way west and down into the forest zone, brown, mahogany red, and even tan become predominant.

It is possible that there are numerous types of buffalo, localized genetic pools, across the breadth of Africa, but since they are all races of just one species, there are broad transitional areas, with only regional tendencies to go by. Safari Club International’s record book, a very good current reference, now identifies five different varieties of African buffalo. Geographic boundaries are based primarily on convenience, but the separation seems sensible based on descending order of size and horn growth.

SCI measures African buffalo by a combination of total length along the outside curve, from horn tip to horn tip, “bridging” the forehead gap; plus the width of each boss at the widest place. The minimum for Cape or Southern buffalo is 101 inches, and it takes a pretty darned good buffalo to make that minimum.

Moving west, what we call the Nile buffalo (S. c. aequinoctialis) starts in northwestern Uganda, north of the Victoria Nile and along the Albert Nile and points northwest. This is the buffalo of southern Sudan and southwestern Ethiopia. Brown animals are still relatively uncommon, but this is already a smaller buffalo, maybe 1,l00 to 1,300 pounds, and the horns are starting to change. Some bulls still have the bases grown almost together, with thick bosses, but it’s more common for the horn bases to be separated. Only rarely will the curve of the horns drop below the jawline. The SCI minimum for this buffalo is just 70 inches. This is a very considerable reduction, but for hunters’ references it reflects not only smaller size, but also the reality that, with Sudan closed, Uganda just now reopened, and only a handful of permits in Ethiopia, very few Nile buffalo have been taken in the last thirty years.

These are Nile buffalo bulls, photographed in northwestern Uganda. Black remains predominant, especially in mature bulls, but the horns become flatter, with less drop to the curve. Two of these three bulls have space between the horns, which also becomes more common as you move west.

Continuing westward, the buffalo get smaller. Brown and red become more common colors, even among mature bulls. The horns grow smaller, with separate horns (rather than bosses coming together) becoming predominant. For many years we called all buffalo west of Sudan and above the forest zone “Central African savanna buffalo.” Today, referencing data that indicates buffalo continue to grow smaller as we move west, these buffalo above the forest zone have been divided into two groups. In C.A.R. and, potentially, in southern Chad, the buffalo remain Central African savanna buffalo (S. c. brachyceros), with an SCI minimum of 65 inches.

Westward above the forest zone, wherever buffalo are hunted, the new category is “West African savanna buffalo” (S. c. planiceros). These are the buffalo we now hunt in northern Cameroon and Burkina Faso, with potential in northern Togo and Ghana. Reds and browns are predominant, although some individuals may still be black. Body size is much smaller, perhaps 700 to 900 pounds. The horns are smaller, with an SCI minimum of just 55 inches, and it is very unusual to see a buffalo with bosses and horn shape like a southern buffalo. Instead the horns tend to be separate on the forehead, with the curve generally growing out and up, but almost never down and then back up.

This is a West African savanna buffalo from Cameroon. Although this is still a large-bodied buffalo, as you move west body size goes down, horns tend to separate and curve out and up, and shades of red and brown become ever more common.

I have hunted all of these buffalo, and have seen quite a lot of them. Although the actual boundaries of the buffalo subspecies are impossible to draw with taxonomic accuracy, from a hunter’s standpoint I agree totally with these divisions. The fifth race of buffalo, well, I’ve seen plenty of tracks, but I’ve only seen bushes move and the occasional glimpse of red hide. This is the dwarf forest buffalo, found in true forest from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) westward to Gabon, on westward in the forest zone to Liberia, and as far south as northern Angola.

“Dwarf” is the operative word with these buffalo, S. c. nanus. Body weight is just 550 to 700 pounds, with a height at the shoulder of just 40 to 45 inches. The horns are short and grow separately, curving out and up. The SCI minimum is 40 inches, considerably less than half the requirement for a Southern or Cape buffalo. Aside from being the very devil to hunt, the real problem with the dwarf forest buffalo is where to draw the line. East to west across their range they have a broad transition zone with larger savanna buffalo to the north, so it’s hard to be definitive. In Cameroon it’s easy; the northern areas have West African savanna buffalo; the southern forest areas have dwarf forest buffalo; and they are separated by a broad central zone with no buffalo at all. C.A.R. is difficult, because there is no clear division. True dwarf forest buffalo definitely occur in extreme southwestern C.A.R., but in the forests to the east the boundaries are unclear, and with so little hunting in so many years, we really don’t know what the buffalo should be called in northeastern Congo (formerly Zaire).

But we do know there are true dwarf forest buffalo. Right now they can be hunted in southern Cameroon, probably southwestern C.A.R., and if Congo-Brazzaville reopens as rumored, dwarf buffalo are certainly there. If I could name just one African animal I would still like to take, it would be the dwarf forest buffalo. But so far the fact that I don’t have one is not from lack of effort!