Cheers to 2025
January 5, 2025
Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of
“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity”
The story in this post was shared with me in 2016 via email and I remember saving the email for a moment when it can impact on more people than my email contacts could afford at the time.
I am convinced that you will find the story quite interesting and full of lessons especially as a leader and in the business sphere.
Here we go.
There is a story told about a professional hunter who had a friend who always wanted to go with him on one of his hunts. So one day he said to his friend, “I have a permit to go into the Zambezi Valley and hunt for a buffalo. Would you like to come with me?”
The friend was ecstatic at the opportunity.
“When do we go?” he asked.
“In about six months’ time, but before then I have to train you about hunting.”
For the next six months, the two men met every day, and they discussed and planned for the trip. The hunter’s friend was surprised by how meticulous the hunter was about everything.
He taught him about the bush, and how to survive in it. He taught him everything about buffaloes.
“You must respect the buffalo,” he said, “because it’s a very intelligent animal, and it is also extremely dangerous.”
He gave him lots of books to read, about hunting and buffaloes.
During that time, the friend also trained every day at the shooting range. He understood by then the different types of guns used to hunt buffalo. He also had to do fitness training, which surprised him.
“You can die out there if you are not fit,” his friend explained.
He was totally astounded by what he was learning about hunting.
“Until now, I thought all you do is just go out and shoot, but now I know there’s more to this than meets the eye!” he exclaimed.
When the day came, the two men set out into the wild bush of the Zambezi Valley, one of the most beautiful places on the earth. It is also inhospitably hot, and the terrain is tough.
They’d been tracking one single animal for 5 days, and the hunter’s friend was totally exhausted. He watched as his friend patiently made meticulous plans every single day. The hunter seemed to take forever, from the point of view of his friend. Sometimes they would walk, and sometimes they would sit for hours. The hunter was always looking around, scanning the bushes, not even (it appeared) always paying attention to the surrounding areas more than the buffalo.
“Why can’t he just shoot and we go home!?”
He was getting tired of this, as they walked almost 50 miles a day. He was also hungry most of the time, as they only ate rations of dried meat and fruit, most of the time. The hunter looked at the animal through his gun sight over and over every day, but wouldn’t take a shot. Sometimes they appeared so close, but he still did not do anything.
It was the fifth day: The animal was in sight again, but the hunter was going through his routine again. The friend sat in the bushes, when suddenly a rabbit appeared in front of him and he thought to himself, “At least if I shoot this rabbit, we can have meat tonight. I’m tired of dry rations.” So he pulled out his gun and fired once. The rabbit disappeared, as he had missed anyway, but so did the buffalo, and with it, the entire herd.
The hunter looked at him in total horror and disbelief!
Then he shouted, “Run, or you die!” as he took off.
They almost got stampeded by an entire herd that seemed to appear from nowhere. Also, suddenly there were lions everywhere that he had not seen before! But for the skills of the hunter, who led them both to safety, they could have died.
The buffalo was gone. The hunt was over.
They had to return home, empty-handed.
The End.
There are at least 4 business lessons I want you to extract from this story.
Afterthought 1.
The mission of the hunters was not only to kill a buffalo, but to bring it back home with them. Hunters tell me that bringing it back is the toughest part of the mission.
Afterthought 2.
Whatever you are trying to do in business, you must always be acutely aware that there are competitors out there, these are the “lions” of our story. The experienced Hunter knew they were there. He had to choose a moment when he could get the job done in such a way, that he would not have simply fed some hungry lions. This is what you call “the wisdom of the hunt”; it’s much more than an issue of timing.
Afterthought 3.
The “friend” here could be a member of your team, or staff. You must choose people who not only understand that you are on a buffalo hunt, but also what it takes to secure the prize. More often than not, you will find that whilst people will understand the vision when you start off, once the going gets tough, they replace that vision with their own narrow vision of the rabbit hunt. These are the people who start to moan and question your strategy behind the scenes. It takes great leadership to keep everyone in the buffalo hunt.
Afterthought 4.
Don’t forget the herd:
The Hunter was interested in a particular animal, and not just any buffalo in the herd. He never lost sight of that particular animal, once he had selected it. He also understood at all times that the greatest protection of a buffalo comes from the herd (the other Buffaloes). The “herd” could be the environment, or the regulators, and all those who want to protect the status quo. These are those forces that the buffalo can call on for protection. The experienced Hunter knew that the “herd” was there and had to be navigated. If it was spooked, the unintended consequences could be disastrous.
Related Posts
When the Burnt Toast Saves Your Life
May 1, 2026
Adaeze had been awake since 4 a.m.
Not because she was anxious — though she was — but because this trip felt different. After eighteen months of follow-ups, phone calls, and PowerPoint presentations polished to a mirror shine, the deal was finally ready to close. An investor meeting in Abuja. A partnership that would change the trajectory of her small but gutsy consulting firm. She had triple-checked her flight, her documents, her outfit. She had prayed. She was ready.
The Loudest Person in Every Room Is Often the Most Afraid
April 28, 2026
When he told his father, Dare’s first response was a sigh. Then: “I told you to practice more. I told you months ago. You don’t listen. You never listen.”
There was no “I’m sorry, son.” No pause to let the boy simply feel the loss of the thing he wanted. Just a swift, seamless pivot to what Temi had done wrong — and, by extension, how Temi’s failure was evidence of Temi’s failure to take his father’s wisdom seriously.
You Only Heard One Side. That’s the Problem
April 28, 2026
I want to tell you something that took me embarrassingly long to learn. Not because the idea is complicated — it is not. But because it cuts against something deeply wired in us, something we are rarely honest enough to admit.
Everything You Were Too Embarrassed to Google About Mid-Life Crisis
April 28, 2026
You are somewhere between forty and fifty-five. You looked in the mirror recently and had a thought you immediately dismissed. Maybe you googled something at 2am that you would never say out loud. Maybe you bought something expensive and impractical and told everyone it was an investment. Or maybe you just feel — quietly, persistently — like the life you built was supposed to feel better than this by now.
Chekhov’s Gun
April 28, 2026
Anton Chekhov was a Russian physician and playwright — a man trained in the discipline of diagnosis before he became one of the most precise storytellers in the history of world literature. That combination of sensibilities matters, because the principle he articulated in the late nineteenth century was not merely a rule of dramatic craft. It was an observation about the nature of significance itself. About what it means for something to be present. About the relationship between introduction and consequence.
Fear Is a Prison with Invisible Walls
April 28, 2026
There is a prison that has no concrete walls, no iron bars, no guards posted at the gate. Nobody built it for you. Nobody sentenced you to it. And yet, for many people, it is the place they spend the better part of their lives — circling its perimeter, brushing their fingers against its invisible boundaries, and quietly retreating each time they feel the edge of something that might require more of them than they believe they can give.
The Closed Fist
April 25, 2026
Picture a hand holding sand. The tighter the grip, the faster the grains escape between the fingers. Ease the grip — open the palm, allow the hand to become a vessel rather than a vice — and the sand stays. This is one of the oldest paradoxes of leadership, and one of the least learned: that control, pursued too aggressively, produces the very loss of control it was designed to prevent.
The Growth Trap
April 25, 2026
There is a version of ambition that builds. And there is a version of ambition that consumes. From a distance — and especially from inside it — they look almost identical. Both are energetic. Both are forward-moving. Both speak the language of vision and possibility. The difference only becomes visible later, usually at the point of fracture, when what was built begins to come apart under the weight of what was promised.
The Frontline Disconnect
April 25, 2026
There is a particular kind of organisational absurdity that most people who have ever worked in a company will recognise immediately. It is the policy that was clearly designed by someone who has never had to implement it. The restructuring that looked elegant on a slide deck and chaotic on the ground. The customer-facing process that was overhauled by a committee that has not spoken to a customer in years. The directive that arrives from above, fully formed and non-negotiable, that causes the people closest to the work to exchange a look — the kind of look that says, without words: they have no idea what we actually do here.
Burnout Is a Leadership Failure
April 23, 2026
We have built an entire mythology around exhaustion. In boardrooms and business culture — perhaps nowhere more so than in the high-pressure, always-on professional culture many of us inhabit — busyness has become a currency. To be tired is to be serious. To be overwhelmed is to be important. To be burning out, quietly, is somehow proof that you are fully committed.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Discover more from Akin Akingbogun
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
10 thoughts on “The Buffalo Hunter Story”
Hmm. So deep a message,so so deep.
Kudos Akin
Sir , it’s quite interesting,yes it take great leadership to keep everyone in the Buffalo hunt.
This is aptly put and a must read for the everyone particularly those in the business world. Thanks for sharing .
Great lessons
Lots of lessons that you can apply in business strategy.
Thanks for sharing your thought.
I enjoyed this thoroughly. It’s full of lessons.
Thank you for sharing.
You are most welcome
Very interesting and educating. Job well-done sir .
This is sooo deep.Why do I feel like i just read several chapters of a book on business strategy in this short story… Lol
Pingback: Most Read Blog Post -2020