Blue Wildebeest

The blue wildebeest is the animal African professional hunters call the poor man's buffalo, and the nickname is not about price. It is about what happens after the shot. Wildebeest are heavy through the shoulder, thin-skinned over a dense muscle wall, and possessed of a nervous system that keeps them upright and moving long after the hit was fatal. More marginal shots get lost on wildebeest than on anything else on this list.

They look assembled from spare parts and they are better for it — a slate-gray body with darker vertical brindle stripes over the shoulders, a heavy shaggy beard and mane, a broad cow-like face, and horns that sweep out, down and then hook up in a shallow boss. A mature bull is dark-faced, thick-necked and carries a worn boss that reads clearly at distance. They are herd animals, they run in groups, and they are curious in a way that gives you a second look more often than most animals here will.

Shot placement is the entire conversation on this animal. Take the broadside shot, put it tight into the shoulder rather than behind it, and use more rifle than you think the size demands — a .30-06 is a sensible floor and a .300 magnum is not overkill. Do not take the quartering-away shot at a wildebeest unless you are very confident. Get it right and the animal goes down inside fifty yards; get it slightly wrong and you spend the rest of the day in brush you would rather not be in.