As the orange sphere slowly disappeared behind the horizon and the trackers were loading my beautiful trophy Cape buffalo bull I could finally allow the tears to flow down my cheeks and sign off on the final chapter to this hunt. Let me recap this story for you.

 Chapter One brings us to the Republic of South Africa, for a safari back in August of 99. Here we, my husband Tim and I, meet our outfitter Charl Watts of Caracal Hunting Safaris.  We had a wonderful first safari harvesting 14 animals in less than 8 days of hunting. But most rewarding was the friendships we made while we were there, and that's where the journey began.

I have chronic Lyme disease, which I have to brave daily with its effects. Charl came up with a brilliant plan for me to challenge myself physically and see if I could fight this disease by attempting a Cape buffalo hunt. The added benefit to this was that no woman had ever embarked on hunting the dangerous game of Africa; I would be the first. 

I hired another good friend Ray Cook, as a personal weight trainer and the grueling comeback began. In September of 99 I hit the first set of weights and by April of 2000 I was pulling 75 lbs on my bow.

 Along with getting ready physically, I was talking with experts who had already bowhunted the Cape buffalo. I worked on combining the South African regulations of kinetic energy, with the findings of Ed Ashby's Momentum Theory and came up with an idea for optimum penetration for women at shorter draw lengths. This took months of prep work with my husband and me testing the penetration factors. 

Plus I had the pleasure of sitting in on the design of the broadhead, in conjunction with Muzzy. High Country built a special bow that allowed for optimum foot-pounds of energy at a lower draw weight and Easton designed a specific arrow to match the regulation criteria of 700 grains of weight.

After all of this was accomplished, my bags were packed and I was embarking on the next Chapter.

This chapter showed to be successful, yet not. This was my first attempt at Black Death and it was astonishing to be in and around these large creatures. I had many shots at smaller bulls, but my team and I decided I would only shoot a mature hard-topped bull. One bull in particular gave me the perfect broadside shot at 15 yards, but I was not allowed to hunt this magnificent bull that we came to call bull 57. 

But as this story goes on, you see the significance of this bull.

This phase brings us to my spirituality; the driving factor for me throughout this entire hunt. When I became so ill with Lyme, I turned to alternative medicines and the study of the Native American way of life. The more I studied their religion and beliefs the more I adopted it into my everyday life. I even named the Muzzy broadhead The Great Spirit.  Who better than He to lead my arrow to its final destination. 
 I found myself dreaming and having visions of this Cape buffalo, one of which ended up coming true in a full-out charge that I will explain later on. I believe at times my hunting party thought I was pretty much off the old rocker, for my strong stance with my spiritual beliefs. But as it turns out, this played a very important role in the final chapter of my story.

This brings us to the hunt. This is so exciting: hunting Black Death in the thick brush of Africa. One would think that an animal so large would be easy to spot - how wrong that can be. At times the animal would be standing less than 10 yards away, unseen. This first attempt had been unsuccessful, and my first endeavor in April was finally coming to a close, without a harvest.

Back to Phalaborwa in July, where we'd try again. The first few days showed some promising sign as we were given permission to hunt bull 57. I had already nicknamed this bull My Spirit Bull and was thinking he was the one I would harvest. But I could be so wrong: what this spirit bull taught me was so much deeper. In the quest of being the first woman to harvest a Cape buffalo, we seemed to lose the light of the true meaning of the hunt. You could cut the tension in the camp with a knife and frankly as a hunt goes, it wasn't a whole lot of fun.

 Every time I thought of maybe bending my own personal ethics just a hair, bull 57 somehow would have been the receiving animal of the arrow. I can remember sitting one day and saying, Yes Great Spirit, I am getting your message's I had come to the understanding on that day, I was not going to harvest my Cape not now, not this year anyhow.

From here we traveled down to the Free State where we harvested a beautiful maned lion. The lion is what brought me to Africa to begin with; in all honesty this was my dream come true. This hunt was a great experience other than I had caught flu and was running a high fever. The harvest was a success, but the overall enthusiasm of the team seemed to be lacking.  At this time I noticed the stress of harvesting the buffalo had overwhelmed the success of the lion, I then realized we had this all out of perspective.

Going back to buffalo camp where Charl had come down with the same flu I had in the Free State. On this first morning I am hunting with the back-up PH and tracker, leaving Charl behind. 

One year ago I had written a letter to Charl about the vision I had. In this vision, the buffalo charges me on the ground. Charl was to stand by allowing me to become the warrior I needed to develop into. As we rounded a bend, low and behold - there stood a lone buffalo in front of us. 

As we approached he ran off into the brush. I was the only one that had visual contact, and had to get off the bakkie (Afrikaans word for truck) to get a clear shot at him. 

As I walked around the back of the vehicle, the bull came at full charge. 

Somehow I managed to put the truck between him and myself, and he hit it with full force with his shoulder. In making a large circle I knew he was coming for another attempt. This time his approach was with boss lowered and he hit the back tailgate with all 2,500 lbs. of muscle. He shoved his horn through the tailgate, knocking me over the seat and almost on top of him. 

Like lightning he turned and bolted away, leaving us with cloudy memories of, "What in the heck just happened?" 

 I found myself laughing and the PH turned to me and asked me what was I thinking. 

I replied, "Well, golly... I am so happy he didn't jump."

We all laughed and then recounted our own version of the event when we returned to camp and picked up Charl. 

Charl looked at me and said, "Rhonda, your vision." 

I replied, "Yes".

 It was now the last night of the safari and the pressure is on for the harvest. As the sun is setting we round a corner and there stands 3 mature bulls. The one that is closest to me is a semi soft-top bull. The decision was made that I would go ahead and attempt the shot. He was standing facing me, a shot I wasn't ready to attempt, so I waited for him to turn. 

Finally, after what seemed like hours he turned; I found myself already at full draw and released the arrow. To my dismay, what I thought I saw in my peep was a broadside animal when actually he was still in motion. 

As the arrow hit he was whirling to flee, and his neck and head replaced the arrow path where the vitals had once been. In my haste and greed to be the first woman, I produced human failure.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep a wink that night. Hoping and praying by the grace of the Great Spirit above we'd find him dead the next day, but to our dismay, we did not.

The next chapter is the hardest chapter for a bowhunter, the Coup de Grace, or doing the final shot for ethics. We had tracked this buffalo for hours to no avail. What once was a blood trail a blind man could follow had slowly thinned out. Our only alternative was to call in a chopper to locate this wounded bull. Late in the afternoon I made the call to my husband telling him I would not be accompanying him home on the airplane, that my buffalo was wounded. 

We called the chopper in, and after a couple of hours in the air, finally two lone buffalo were located. Charl was 95% certain it was my bull by a small shiny spot on his shoulder that looked like dry blood. On closer examination we decided this was the bull, for he had a large hemorrhage at the base of his boss. 

Myself being a strict bowhunter I have but only twice shot a rifle, and now I was faced with another choice. Do I take my PH's 453 Lott and shoot the bull myself, never having fired a rifle so large. Or do I allow Charl to take him out. Well, I grabbed the radio and prepared everyone for the decision that Charl would take the bull out. I heard the first shot from the cannon and I looked down at the ground, my dream had just slipped from my fingers. The second shot roared and the tears flowed down my cheeks.

Now  was photo time and I couldn't bring myself to take a photo with the bull. I didn't feel that I was the one that harvested this fine creature and gave the glory to Charl. I stood watching him, and somehow was filled with pride for him; this was a magnificent bull and a very proud friend. Even though he too was feeling the same inside about the failed attempt at a bow kill. But we had made the right decision to do it this way, I knew that for sure. 

Charl asked me if I would return to attempt the buffalo again, and I replied that this was too early to answer, my heart was breaking.

The trip home was difficult but I needed the time to heal and reflect, A few months after my return I had a re-occurrence of Lyme, having to start from square one again. We lost a cousin to a very tragic accident and I lost my great-aunt to age. Then to top it off my faithful hound Max, a Rottweiler, was diagnosed with bone cancer and I had to put him down.... and the list goes on. I have another hard road ahead of me if I am to go on with this journey to become a warrior.

No journey to be a warrior is easy. The Lyme had once again weakened my body, so I had to change my equipment. The muscles in my shoulder had broken down and I could no longer pull the extra long draw length needed to produce the 80 ft/lbs. Once again my husband and I rebuilt the bow. We shortened the draw, but now I had to add 8 more lbs to the draw weight, bringing the total up to 80#. This set off a series of events. The arrows and release had to be changed, which meant also my shooting form had to be re-adjusted back to proper form. My work had just begun.

This time the goal was changed though; I no longer cared if I was the first or the one hundredth person to harvest the buffalo. The hunt itself was important.

NEXT: Bittersweet Buffalo, The Conclusion

For more info go to: www.africanbowhunter.com

Reprinted from AFRICA'S BOWHUNTER Magazine