India, Sept. 28 -- Texan ranch trader and millionaire Asher Watkins (52) faced a black karma. Watkins had travelled the world for decades hunting in hundreds but, finally, he couldn't take a bull by the horns. A Cape buffalo gored Watkins through ribs and stomach while he was on a $10,000 safari in the South African bush of Limpopo province last month. The death sparked a global debate on trophy hunting, one that has in the past embroiled US President Donald Trump and his hunter sons. The Trump hunting lobby is dominant. It cites legality, economics and wildlife conservation to justify the regulated industry: culling, preventing wild lands from diversion to cash crops and ploughing hunting fees into local communities and species preservation. On the other hand, anti-trophy-hunting netizens seized upon a 'moment of poetic justice' and the delicious irony of a wealthy white 'stalker becoming the stalked'. The debate celebrated the buffalo and upheld its right to aggression against 'hunters who had contracted in dollars for a kill'. They were on a break in. Though hunting is legal and backed by big bucks and political power, its moral licence attracted verbal strictures from the court of public conscience. Hunting lore was turned on its head. Saucily! How about the buffalo settling into a leather couch by the fireplace and having the taxidermied Watkins head displayed as a trophy on the wall! Buffaloes nailing hunter heads atop a thorny tree to serve as savannah scarecrows! Or, the buffalo posting an Instagram reel with GoPro footage of the attack that got a bullseye in Watkins! African buffaloes annually claim an estimated 200 human kills, and nail more hunters than any other big species. It is termed 'Black death', 'Bush mafia', 'Widow makers', 'Nemesis of lion pride' (big cats scamper when buffalo herds sound the horn) and 'Big Boss' (horns connect by an arching bone across the forehead called 'boss', and tips can span four feet). This horn silences. No other creature packs such killer horns, and the extravagance of their handlebar curvature excels a Maharaja's moustaches. Hunters, especially members of the super-elite Dallas Safari Club (Watkins was its clubber, too), brag about shooting with a 'piece of history'. They opt for British nitro-express, double-barrel rifles of say, .600 bore, that use 120 grains of cordite to propel a bullet of 900 grains at a muzzle velocity of 2050 feet per second and packing 8400 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. These are rifles of 19th and early 20th century vintage, weighing 7-8 kgs and issue a recoil that loosens tooth fillings. One such projectile ripped through 27 inches of African muscle and bone, hurling the charging beast back on his hunkers. Watkins got gobsmacked by a contrarian piece of ballistics --- an evolutionary hulk of unpredictability, suicidal in pursuit of vendetta and soaking up bullets as big as asparagus on the charge. The 1,300 kg bull got wind of the hunters and craftily ambushed Watkins. The speed of the charge: around 35 mph. A snort and a squelch as the horns bored Watkins (other humans have had heads crushed like watermelons by the boss bone). Watkins' autopsy will reveal the ballistics of big-bore horns. After Watkins' death, Coenraad Vermaak Safaris (CVS) stated the attack on their client was "unprovoked". The bull was not wounded before the encounter. That served as a proverbial red rag.Netizens countered CVS by attributing the death to 'Darwinian karma at its best'. Others flung barbs at Trump's rump. A compilation: "Buffalo successfully defends itself against attempted murder by Texas millionaire...Too bad the buffalo can't mount his head in a luxury lodge where he sits and sips his expensive whisky...Watkins bought an adventure, what he got was an ending...Asher to ashes, dust to dust...Raging bull laid Watkins to rest in pieces...Somebody, get that buffalo a beer or whatever he is drinking...Hunting could be a real sport --- make it an even chance: kill or be killed...Trump is SOOOO tough, I think he should go buffalo hunting!" Pushed to the wall, hunters bestowed martyrdom status on Watkins: "He died doing what he loved best...He met the challenge head on, leaving this world a man of courage, faith and adventure"....