Oct 12, 2018 | News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F30-31||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]Some thoughts and insights into egg-collecting
By Dr John Ledger
In an article in The Guardian in 2012, writer Kevin McKenna expressed his surprise when he saw a BBC nature programme called Autumnwatch where Sir David Attenborough admitted to being an egg-collector in his early years. He was being interviewed by Autumnwatch presenter, Chris Pakham.
The two men were debating why so few young people in the United Kingdom were getting involved with nature.
“I’m out there all the time and I just don’t see the boy that I was and you were,” said Packham. “That’s a disaster in waiting, isn’t it?” And then Sir David said: “Yes, and part of the reason for that is that it’s no longer legal to be a collector. I openly admit that I collected birds’ eggs.”
McKenna: Sir David Attenborough collected birds eggs? I was quite overcome, for I, too, had collected birds’ eggs and have been made to feel like a pariah ever since. And a leper too. It got even better as Sir David added: “I knew when the right moment was to take one, and the bird would lay another, so you didn’t damage the population. I learnt a lot.”
The Scottish government and all those myriad outdoor agencies upon whom it lavishes millions tell us how beautiful are our big open spaces and how gorgeous are our fields and forests. Yet teachers won’t take children to them because of the risk assessment. So wouldn’t it be splendid if responsible egg-collecting could be introduced into the curriculum? We could limit the collectible eggs to the 20 most common or garden species like blackbirds, song thrushes, robins and chaffinches. And you wouldn’t need to go into the Highlands for them. Most of the wee birds like these lay a couple of clutches a year, so a couple of eggs here and there wouldn’t be missed.
We’d leave the eagles and the ospreys alone.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/11/kevin-mckenna-nature-egg-collecting
In South Africa it is illegal to collect birds eggs without a permit from the appropriate government agency at provincial level, and such a permit will rarely be granted unless the activity forms part of a scientific investigation by a suitably qualified researcher.
Egg-collecting has pretty much been criminalised by the authorities and demonised by the popular conservation media in most western countries. This has effectively stamped out what used to be a widespread activity in many countries, practiced by numerous young people who later became prominent conservationists or natural history communicators and educators like Sir David Attenborough himself.
In my own case, I grew up on a South African farm where my brother and I, along with the children of our farmworkers, made up a motley band of barefoot urchins, who scoured the countryside like primitive hunter-gatherers looking for food. We each wore a catapult around the neck, and the pockets of our shorts bulged with ammunition; suitably-sized and weighted roundish stones collected along the footpaths as we made our way to the hunting grounds.
We hunted birds, but we were not without ethics, because the golden rule was that whatever we killed we had to eat. We learnt rather quickly that a dove grilled over an open fire was quite delicious, whereas most brightly-coloured and insectivorous species certainly were not. The collective firepower from our catapults was quite formidable, and the accuracy and range that some our fellow-shooters could achieve was remarkable.
We never graduated to air-rifles, I think because my father thought they were a bit too lethal and that the urchins might get too big for their boots and forget their code of ethics. Apart from some nice twelve bore shotguns my father also had a nifty little over-and-under Remington, with a .22 long rifle above and a dinky .410 shotgun below. It also had a plastic stock, which was really gross, but that never worried us one bit. My father used the .22 for dealing with the feral cats that bothered his chickens, and would occasionally use the little shotgun to bag a Swainson’s Francolin for the pot.
My brother and I were occasionally allowed to take the Remington on a hunt, which was a huge privilege, and we mostly looked for francolins which were good to eat. My brother was a great shot, but an accident at school with a cricket ball left him with a dysfunctional right eye. He quickly learnt to shoot left-eyed, and on one memorable occasion dropped a running Swainson’s Francolin with a .22 bullet in the head. But just once, mind you! He probably forgot to move the little round selector on the side down to shotgun mode, but what the heck, we still talk about that shot around the fire fifty years later…
I graduated from the catapult classes and started collecting eggs. Like the young Attenborough, I learnt to study birds and their behaviour in order to find their nests. Spotting a bird flying with a twig or a feather in its beak meant it was building a nest, and sometimes hours were spent in observation mode to pin down the exact location. When I went to high school I met other boys who were also collectors, and we spent many, many happy hours cycling and walking in pursuit of new additions to our collections.
Over the years I built up a very attractive collection of eggs, some of them objects of great beauty which sat on white cotton-wool inside glass-topped drawers, each egg with a neatly-written label indicating the place and date of collection. But for me, each egg also represented an indelible memory of exactly where and how it had been collected; what challenges of tree-climbing had been overcome, the wet and filthy road culverts that were climbed down to reach a nest, and the horror of sticking your hand deep into the nesting burrow of a Pied Starling and touching a snake skin that the birds had used to embellish their boudoir!
I graduated from egg-collecting to bird-ringing (or ‘banding’, the term used in the USA). This provided endless pleasure as the skill of trapping birds, marking them with bands and hoping you would hear about what happened to them subsequently, was a great way of developing great young naturalists and ‘citizen scientists’ (a term only invented many years later). Imagine my absolute delight and sense of achievement when two Barn Swallows that I had originally banded as a schoolboy on my father’s farm were found in Russia and in Poland!
I subsequently went on to complete a degree in Zoology and a career in wildlife conservation, and served as Director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust for 17 years. My early interest in nature and the environment was sparked and nurtured by egg-collecting, some rather primitive hunting, and mostly of course by spending time in the countryside, learning to understand, outsmart and eventually hold a beautiful piece of nature’s miracle, biodiversity itself, in your hand.
As schoolboy egg-collectors we believed that it would not be right to take all the eggs from a nest. So if there were two eggs in the nest of a dove, for example, the first-finder would take one and we would leave one. Likewise if there were three eggs, we would only take one, although there was always a bit of a dilemma there, especially if it was a coveted species. And for species that only laid one egg, the dilemma and sense of guilt would be quite painful. Four eggs would see us each take one and leave two for the bird. A guineafowl nest can hold up to 20 eggs, so there was no issue here. We only kept a single egg of each species in our collections, and that was deemed sufficient.
We read about other egg-collectors who would take an entire clutch for their collection and indeed more than one clutch if they were really serious. We thought this was highly unethical, but we could have spared ourselves the fretting. Most bird species will simply start again if they lose a clutch of eggs, and will lay replacements, especially if they were lost early in the incubation cycle. Some species will even lay two or three replacement clutches if they are having a hard time at the hands of nest predators.
Our noble sentiments at leaving the birds with some eggs were mostly misplaced. By visiting the nest in the first place we would have left signs that could be read by a mongoose, a crow, or a snake, and they would have quickly taken the eggs we had so considerately left behind.
In most birds the eggs are the most expendable stage of the life cycle. In the wild, a host of predators actively seek out nests to eat the eggs or the chicks. It seems many species are geared to deal with this threat by re-laying, or double-clutching as the behaviour is technically termed, or even triple-clutching. The number of eggs that a female can produce in this way is remarkable, and indeed it is this talent that we harness in our egg-producing chicken farms.
There is a famous, diminutive Cape Robin-Chat living at the Delta Environmental Centre in Johannesburg. She was first captured and banded on 25 May 2000, and was subsequently recaptured and given a colour ring, and has been sighted regularly in the same locality, most recently in July 2018. She is at least 18 years old now, and has been breeding every year. This species first breeds at about two years, so she might even be older than 18. But let’s assume she has attempted to breed every year for 18 years, and assume that she loses one batch of three eggs every year and lays a replacement clutch. In 18 years she has possibly laid 108 eggs, and still occupies the same territory. This means that rather few of those 108 eggs have produced breeding adult birds, and it would not have mattered very much at all if some had been taken by egg collectors.
The phenomenon of double-clutching has been used with great success to bring the California Condor back from the very brink of extinction. In 1987 no birds remained in the wild, with only 27 in captivity. These surviving birds were intensively bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding and using double-clutching to increase the numbers of eggs that could be artificially incubated. Starting in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then the population has grown and as of December 2016 there were 446 condors living in the wild or in captivity – a truly remarkable achievement.
By removing each egg as it was laid, one researcher was able to induce several Sharp-shinned Hawks Accipiter striatus to lay 15 to 18 eggs during a one-month period. It is evident that many raptors possess the potential to lay more than one replacement clutch in a season.
It is thus evident that egg-collecting under strict control could be sustainable, and a valuable means of educating and interesting young people in nature and biodiversity conservation, as suggested by Sir David Attenborough and The Guardian writer.
Unfortunately, the strict control and proper checks and balances are unlikely to happen in the increasingly imperfect world in which we live. The commodification of wild birds’ eggs would simply add more pressure to the threats they already face from human activities. The late advent of wind farms in South Africa now poses a major new threat to a host of bird species, many of them slow-breeding raptors, threatened species, or migrants that are supposed to be afforded the protection of the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species.
Regrettably egg collecting is thus no longer a viable activity for young people any more, but their interest in nature and the environment can instead be ignited by photography, bird-banding and, of course, hunting.
Dr John Ledger is an independent consultant and writer on energy and environmental issues, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. John.Ledger@wol.co.za[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F30-31||target:%20_blank|”][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17786,17787,17788,17789″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Oct 12, 2018 | News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F118-119||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]PH Dylan Homes – From camera to gun
African Hunting Gazette: Tell our readers a little bit about your personal background and where/how you grew up.
Dylan Homes: I was fortunate enough to be brought up in a farming environment. Hunting and fishing was the highest priority from a young age. I spent some time in the Eastern Cape as well as Natal for most of my life. I began my career in the hunting industry in 1998 and have enjoyed all of it.
AHG: How and why did you become a PH? Who have been your most influential mentors?
DH: I answered an advertisement in the newspaper for a position as a videographer. I had never seen or used a video camera, but I answered anyway. A few days later I was filming my first safari and the rest is history.
I have been very fortunate to share a camp fire with a lot of great people in my time, but I have to say that most of what I know and have achieved in the hunting industry is all through Mark Haldane.
AHG: What countries have you hunted and where are you currently hunting?
DH: I have hunted Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Australia, Alaska, and South Africa. I am currently hunting in Mozambique as well as wing shooting in South Africa. I will be doing a wing shooting safari to Zimbabwe later this year.
AHG: What is your favourite animal to hunt and why?
DH: Bushbuck – they are special animals. You must know what you doing to get your clients good trophies consistently. I personally enjoy hunting them as well.
I am also very keen on wing shooting. Conducting good wing shooting safaris is no easy task, but I believe we have the right formula.
AHG: What guns and ammo do you use to back-up on dangerous game?
DH: I have a Merkel 140AE in 470 and use Hornady DGX, 500-grain ammunition.
AHG: What guns and ammo do you recommend for clients for dangerous game? For plains game?
DH: A .416 REM with Hornady ammo is a good combination for clients on dangerous game. On plains game, the rifle he shoots the most at home. A well-placed shot with a familiar rifle is hard to beat, within reason, obviously.
AHG: Tell us about what you consider to be the greatest trophy you’ve taken with a client.
DH: A bushbuck we hunted in an open area in Natal. Saw him on the first day and could not get a shot at him. Three days later we found him again and he gave us an opportunity. Paul took him on 11 September 2001. He was a beautiful bushbuck. He measured 18 6/8 if memory serves me correctly, and had a wonderful shape.
AHG: What has been your closest brush with death while hunting? As you look back, is there anything you should have done differently?
DH: I was helping a professional hunter look for a buffalo that his client had wounded. After several hours of tracking in thick vegetation the buffalo charged from 10 metres. I was fortunate to drop him at four paces with a shot to the brain. I do not believe there is anything I would have done differently, the situation ended well.
AHG: What qualities do you believe to be most important to achieving success as a PH?
DH: Honesty, Reliability and Dedication.
AHG: And what qualities go in to making a good safari client?
DH: Practice shooting off shooting sticks, be prepared, and ask as many questions as you like before you leave home.
AHG: What one thing would you suggest to your hunting clients to help improve their safari experience?
DH: Try to relax, experience the beautiful places you have paid a lot of money to get to. Trust your guide – he wants you to have a good time.
AHG: Have you noticed any significant changes in the hunting industry over your years as a PH? Any changes in the clients over that time?
DH: Safaris are much shorter; time constraints are creating pressure-cooker safaris. I think clients have not changed much – the industry has changed the client’s expectations, especially in South Africa.
AHG: What can the hunting industry do to contribute to the long-term conservation of Africa’s wildlife and of hunting itself?
DH: Stand together, clean our act up properly, and root out those who disrespect nature and give our industry a bad name.
AHG: What advice would you give to a young man or woman interested in a career as a PH?
DH: Find a reputable outfitter and request to spend some time in the industry first. Find out if it is really what you want to do because it’s not all “charging buffalo and big tips”.
AHG: Any final words to our readers?
DH: Respect nature. Respect the animals we are making a living off, and respect each other.
Keep safe and happy hunting.[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F118-119||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17770,17771,17772,17773″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Oct 12, 2018 | News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F60-61||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]Zambia Spots
By McKenzie Sims
As the plane taxied down the runway, I had one thought in my mind. I was leaving my home state of Wyoming, heading for the Dark Continent for another adventure, another great safari, and what would be my second hunt for one of the great cats of Africa – a leopard.
After a long layover in Dubai, I boarded a plane to Lusaka, Zambia, and after clearing my rifles and bags, I loaded onto a small commercial flight to Mfuwe airport where I was met by Leslie Long Sr. A short hour’s ride later in the dark, I was at the camp. My friend Mark Peterson and his father had been in camp for the first fourteen days of the season, and had already collect-ed some fine animals. His dad had hunted leopard for the entire two weeks but had spent most of the hunt waiting for a leopard he had wounded in the early days of his safari. Mark was scheduled to fly out on my first day, and spent that morning retrieving a bushbuck that got into the thickest of scrub the night before.
Meanwhile PH Jason Stone and I went out in search of zebra to get us four baits. We found zebra pretty early in the morning, but it took a little time of playing hide-and-seek to finally get a shot. We arrived back in camp in time to say goodbye to Mark and his father. After eating a great lunch made with puku, we loaded up the zebra and set off to start the baiting process. The first afternoon was spent traveling from spot to spot, dragging and setting baits. That night I went to bed, my head full of thoughts and questions. Would a cat hit that night? Or would we be spending lots of days checking baits, re-dragging, replenishing and setting up new ones? Only tomorrow would tell.
We woke early the next morning, had breakfast, loaded the truck and started our routine of checking baits. We had high hopes that a cat had hit one because of the number that had al-ready been on baits while Mark’s dad was hunting. When we arrived at the first one it was easy to see from the truck that nothing had hit, so we turned around and made the thirty-minute drive to bait number two. Again, no cat. It was the same for the others, so it was 0 out of 4 on the first day.
Back at camp for lunch. Because none of the four baits had been touched, we needed to start planning to set up more that afternoon, and Jason had picked out a big bull hippo out for me.
Its incredible body size and lumps that hid its tusks would produce up to ten baits. This bull would be perfect! But the hippo had other plans. In 18 days of Jason being in camp, this would be the first day that he would not see it.
However, we needed bait, so we went out in search of impala. We took one, and drove far in-to the concession to set up a fifth bait, and returned to our first lot to re-drag them before dark. As we refreshed our last one, just as darkness was falling, we could hear the faint but unmis-takable call of a leopard in the distance. This was a hopeful sound. But the excitement wasn’t over. Not 500 yards down the road, a large herd of buffalo crossed over in front of us. That was a cool sight! I really like seeing buffalo. Then 100 yards further on, a big male lion walked down the road straight in front of us in the headlights. Then he ambled off. As we passed the spot where he left, there was not only him, but another big male as well, standing at the edge of the road. What a way to end our second day!
Day 3 started the same as previously. The first three baits we checked showed no sign of an-ything feeding. But as we pulled up to bait #4, known as the “lucky tree” we could instantly see that it had been well hit! The entire zebra leg and back half of the ribs were gone. A cat had hit it, but it was the wrong cat… tracks around the tree showed that it was a lioness. So we decided to look for the hippo, and as we drove off, not 100 yards down the road and lying 50 yards away near a small pan were the two culprits that had enjoyed our zebra the night be-fore. After some photos and a video, back to camp we went.
Later, we found the hippo, but in the hour and a half of sitting, not once did his entire head come out of the water to present a shot. We needed more bait, but this hippo was not cooper-ating. As we had lunch and discussed the problem, the truck arrived from checking the last bait, and Usuf the driver walked in holding two small sticks, indicating the track size of two cats that had fed. One looked to be promising – a big cat. We quickly finished lunch, drove back to the tree, and Jason inspected the tracks.
“It looks like a worthwhile cat to sit for,” he said. “We must sit tonight.” We headed back to camp to gather all the stuff needed to be back in the blind by 3:30. The plan was to get dropped off at the blind and get the chairs and everything set up while the trackers did a re-drag.
We arrived at the blind to the sounds of alarmed baboons in treetops just down the creek bed – a given indication that a cat was close. We quickly and quietly got off the truck, set up in the blind, then the truck left us in silence. The sporadic alarm barks of baboons gave some reas-surance that maybe the truck had not spooked the cat. About thirty minutes passed, and apart from the baboons, all we could hear were birds and the occasional hippo from the river. Then we heard that distinctive grunting from the dark thick cover beyond the blind. The rough, saw-ing sound became louder and louder as the cat moved closer, until we could hear it just be-hind the base of the tree, below our line of sight because of the high bank of the creek. Ten minutes later, a leopard was in the tree.
It was a beautiful cat, but it wasn’t our cat. It was a female, and she began eating, and fed for what seemed to be hours. Meanwhile, the male was still grunting and calling from the thick brush. Thirty minutes later she turned and slipped out of the tree. Light was starting to fade and we had only 20 minutes of shooting light left. Suddenly Jason tapped my knee, indicating that the giant tom we had been waiting for had appeared in the tree. Then his hand applied pressure… shoot when ready. I wasted no time. I settled the crosshairs behind the leopard’s shoulder, squeezed the trigger, and the cat fell out of the tree. All was suddenly silent. Then 10 minutes later Jason called the truck to come in. It was already getting very dark when it ar-rived. Everyone was on high alert. Jason told me to stay back as they went to look under the tree. Armed with torches and weapons – a rifle and a panga from the truck – they headed in.
As I waited in the truck, the five seconds of the shot kept playing over and over in my mind. Was the shot as good as it felt? Would the cat be under the tree? The lights stopped moving and I heard faint talking. Then, the relief of a loud call from Jason: “McKenzie, come look at your cat!”
I quickly scrambled from the truck, turned on my phone flashlight (a tracker had borrowed my my Surefire) and ran down the bank and across the creek to find all the guys standing in a half-circle as the tracker Dickson was drawing a beast of a cat out of some brush below the tree. We all high-fived and hugged, exchanging smiles as Dickson and Festo carried the beautiful leopard across the creek for us to take pictures. After a few hundred photos, we loaded it and headed back to camp, stopping on the final stretch to decorate the truck with tree branches and toilet paper.
The guys also built me an awesome crown out of twigs and toilet paper. Then the singing be-gan, and grew louder and louder as we reached camp. The camp staff was already waiting and ready to celebrate! As we celebrated and continued to take photos well into the night I couldn’t believe of how lucky I was to take such a magnificent big leopard like this on only Day Three! For the rest of the 14-day safari we took several other great trophies, me having the time of my life.
I can’t wait to get back to the Dark Continent and enjoy everything it has to offer!
Until then I will have a short video of this safari on my Youtube channel (McKenzie Sims) for anyone who would like to see it.
McKenzie Sims (22) from Evanston Wyoming is passionate about the out-doors. Working for the family oil and gas construction company is second hand to spending every possible minute that he can in the outdoors. Africa is one of his favorite continents, and he always look forward to returning to enjoy the last great adventure known as safari.[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F60-61||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17728,17724,17727,17726″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Oct 12, 2018 | News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F126-127||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]BIG STICKS AND SMALL CRITTERS
By Johan van Wyk
A classic big-bore rifle is certainly a legendary thing to contemplate, dream about, and use in action on Africa’s big and dangerous animals. Depending on the circumstances one might find oneself in, a big rifle may also be a very necessary accessory to have close by, especially when the big tracks and the thin blood trail starts to head for the thickest patch of mopane around. At other times, though, shooting a rifle that throws out a bullet the size of a man’s thumb is just plain enjoyable, and not necessarily because of the recoil factor, either.
Recoil, I have found, is a very subjective thing. Some folks can handle it very well while others cannot handle it at all. I’m somewhere in the middle on the subject. I have probably fired more than my fair share of heavy-recoiling rifles up to the .577 NE, and I’m still alive to tell a few tall tales, so I’m not overly bothered by recoil. However, I have also found that the biggest factor influencing almost everyone’s proficiency with a big rifle is the amount of practise they do with their rifles. And by practise I am not solely referring to spending some quality time on the range, but rather actual use in the field, hunting.
As dangerous game hunting tends to be an expensive undertaking at the best of times, there is a cheaper alternative available for most of us in the form of plains game. While some may balk at the idea of carrying a big rifle in pursuit of a smallish critter such as a warthog or an impala, there is actually a lot of merit in the idea. The first and most obvious benefit is that it instils familiarity with your big rifle, and that familiarity may just pay handsome dividends when things turn sour when some armoured beast intent on bodily harm is heading your way, and your prowess with your big bore rifle suddenly takes centre stage.
Another benefit is the fact that stalking something with a big rifle tends to be just plain fun, especially when some of the plains-game species that tend to favour more open terrain are on the menu. A few months ago I found myself crawling after a wary herd of blesbok in the mountains of a remote farm in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. My chosen rifle for the hunt was a .416 Rigby topped with a low-magnification variable-power scope and loaded with 400-grain soft-nose bullets. I’ve hunted the area previously as well, and found that picking off a few blesbok for the larder with a flat-shooting light-calibre rifle was relatively easy. With the .416 as my chosen weapon, though, the odds were suddenly slightly different.
Even with the use of shooting sticks I couldn’t really shoot the big rifle accurately enough much farther than 100 metres or so, but this distance was well outside the animals’ comfort zone so most of the day was spent in long, fruitless stalks. This in itself was a pleasure as well, as we encountered many other species along the way and saw some spectacular scenery as a bonus. Eventually, in the early afternoon, we used some dead ground to move closer to a small herd of blesbok, and a ram on the outskirts of the herd made the mistake of waiting a second or two too long before bolting with the rest of the herd. The crosshairs settled on his chest briefly and I pulled the trigger, sending a 400-grain bullet on its merry way. There was no sound of the bullet hitting the animal but the ram was down and out in his tracks. Great fun and a good end to a challenging hunt. The venison tasted great as well.
Another time I was sitting among the rocks of a small hill, contemplating a nice red hartebeest bull standing with his nose pointed into the breeze on an open Karoo plain stretched out below me. I was armed with a Heym 88B .470 NE, double loaded with 500-grain solids, so I was certainly in no danger of being undergunned for the hartebeest. The bull eventually solved my problem by climbing the very hill I was hiding on, and when he finally noticed me it was too late. At the shot he took off like a scalded cat, straight down the hill again and headed for the only patch of thornbush for miles.
I reloaded the big rifle and made my way down the hill as well. As I entered the patch of thorn the wounded bull erupted virtually at my feet, making space between us at a rate of knots. The double came up in a flash and I had the fleeting thought that it was much like shooting a flushing francolin as I swung the rifle and touched the front trigger. The result was nothing short of spectacular, with the bull somersaulting to a halt in a cloud of dust, stone dead. Like I said, great fun and very good practise at the same time.
Take your big rifles hunting![/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F126-127||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17756,17757,17758″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Oct 12, 2018 | News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F130-131||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]AN ARCANE PROBLEM SOLVED
By any standard, the 6.5×54 Mannlicher-Schönauer is one of the most successful hunting cartridges in history. It has been used everywhere, on everything, by some very big names in the hunting world. It’s synonymous with its original rifle, the Mannlicher Model 1903, which was so finely made that it, in turn, became synonymous with the term “gentleman’s rifle.”
Both rifle and cartridge were designed at a time when smokeless powder was new and gunmakers were feeling their way, seeing what worked and what didn’t. This applied to every aspect, from the cartridge’s shoulder angle, to barrel length, to how magazines worked (or did not.)
Cartridge magazines, and the related issues of feeding and extraction, were a particular bugaboo. The Model 1903 introduced, to the civilian world, Otto Schönauer’s rotary magazine. It is one of the most elegant systems ever designed, and was executed with all of Steyr’s legendary gunmaking skill.
As designed, the magazine was fitted to the cartridge like a custom-made glove to an individual hand. The cartridge was held firmly through every stage of its life in the rifle. In the magazine, it could not slide back and forth during recoil; as it fed into the magazine, the various parts held and guided it into place. The result of all this painstaking exactness was a rifle whose bolt operation and feeding became an ergonomic legend, and writers ran out of superlatives to describe its smoothness. We’ll call it “buttery,” and leave it at that.
If there was a problem, it was that the 1903 was too good, too exact. In their quest to have absolute control over the cartridge at all times, Steyr’s gunmakers sometimes fitted the mechanism so finely that it would feed the right ammunition to perfection, but nothing else.
The original 6.5×54 was loaded with a 160-grain round-nosed bullet, either soft or solid. Both were long and straight, with a blunt, rounded tip. The cartridge case itself, by the standards of 1903, had very little taper, but it did have some. As the bolt pushes the cartridge forward, it is held by the action rail on the left and by the blade of the spindle on the right. The nose of the bullet comes in contact with the feed ramp and gently lifts the cartridge up and to the right, out from under the action rail. Thence, it enters the chamber.
Here’s the problem: If the cartridge is not loaded with such a bullet, seated well out so that it contacts the feed ramp very early, the cartridge slides straight forward and wedges under the action rail. This can happen if the bullet is too short, seated too deeply, or has a spitzer tip.
According to the Norma handloading guide, this is not true of all Model 1903s, but it is true of some — mostly early ones — and mine is one of them. Later, presumably, Steyr adjusted the tolerances to at least allow the rifle to use bullets of different lengths and configurations. I should add that I have owned eight or nine Mannlichers in various calibers, including 8×56 Mannlicher-Schönauer (a Model 1908) and another 6.5×54 M-S (an African model.) Only the 1903 has exhibited this trait.
As long as original factory ammunition was available, the rifles could at least be used. Today, 6.5×54 M-S loaded with this bullet is almost non-existent. If you want to shoot your rifle, you have to handload, and you have to find bullets that work. Two that do are the Hornady 160-gr. RN (the traditional bullet) and the Lapua 155-gr. MEGA.
Of course, this rules out flattening the trajectory by using a lighter bullet. My all-time favorite 6.5, the Nosler 140-gr. Partition, will not work at all. Too short, and the spitzer tip does not lift the cartridge. They jam every time.
By accident, I came across another bullet that works like a charm: Lapua’s 140-gr. Naturalis. Here is a case of pure serendipity. Because the Naturalis is copper instead of lead, it is long for its weight, so it can be seated to the right length to function and still be held firmly by the case neck. As well, it has a very blunt tip, and the shoulder of this tip comes in contact with the feed ramp right where it should. Cartridges feed like a dream. And, being lighter, they can be loaded to higher velocity to flatten the trajectory a little bit and lengthen effective range.
The original Naturalis (NPL6101) worked beautifully, and I was kicking myself for not laying in a supply when I heard that it had been redesigned to be more streamlined. This, I assumed, would compromise its effectiveness. However, the new bullet (NPL6203) works every bit as well, in spite of having a slight taper and a curved nose.
For anyone with a Model 1903, who wants the pure animal pleasure of using one of the best hunting rifles ever designed, but also wants more modern ballistic performance, this is the answer.[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F130-131||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Oct 12, 2018 | News
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F76-77||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]The Lion Charge
By Frank Paino
As a young kid growing up in Brooklyn, I always longed to be outdoors. I had a quiet life and I was always looking for activity. When I was about twelve years old, the movies Th e Snows of Kilimanjaro and King Solomon’s Mines came out. I thought they were great movies on Africa, but I never imagined I would go there.
The closest I got to an outdoor lifestyle as a kid was going upstate in the summertime. My father was
originally from upstate New York; he met my mother when he came to New York City to see the doctors there for an injury to his leg that occurred while he was playing ball. My father’s family still lived upstate, and every summer as a kid I was allowed to spend a month up there. My father’s brother was a welder, and every afternoon I would wait impatiently for the factory whistle to sound and for my uncle to come home from work. He would take me out while it was still daylight and we would do some shooting. I wasn’t allowed to have any fi rearms at home, so this was very exciting for me. Th ere was a time when my other uncles from Brooklyn went a little bit upstate to shoot a .22 rifle. No one could hit what they were shooting at, and they finally let me try. I hit it with one shot. This was my opening to ask my father if I could get a .22 and leave it at my uncle’s house so I could use it when he and I went out shooting.
My father had a small produce store in Brooklyn where I worked, delivering orders for five dollars a week, and that’s how I paid for my first .22. I also wanted to take a Hunter Safety course, but my father didn’t want me to. I told him it was free.
He said “You’re never going hunting, so why bother?”
I told him again it was free, which was important since we never had any money and lived in an apartment. He finally relented and said I could take the course.
There was a small camera and gun store about four blocks from my father’s store and I was constantly topping in there. I became friends with the owner, Frank. Every September Frank and his friends, who were all small business owners, drove to Wyoming to hunt mule deer and antelope. While they were gone, I would often stop by the gun store to ask Frank’s wife, Jenny, how the hunters were doing. Eventually Frank got tired of having his gun store broken into and he sold the business and moved his entire family to Wyoming.
At that same gun store, I met another friend, George, who owned a produce place. I told him that one of these days I would like to do a hunt in Wyoming. He had money and said, “You arrange the hunt, and we will drive to Wyoming in my Lincoln Continental.” Th at was the first of my hunting trips.
I eventually got a job at a bus company in South Jamaica, Queens, and drove a bus for ten years before becoming a supervisor. I worked all the overtime I could, going for weeks with no days off. It took me twenty-six years to get a Sunday off, and twenty-eight years to get a Saturday and Sunday.
I read an article by Ken Elliot of Hunting magazine about a hunt he had done on the Vermejo Park Ranch in New Mexico for bull elk. Th e article inspired me, and I booked an elk hunt at Vermejo. I hunted at Vermejo every other year, about four times. While there, I met many hunters with wide hunting experience and I always asked them about Africa. A few of them told me it was too dangerous there. I finally realized if I kept making elk hunts every other year, I would never get to Africa.
I often purchased books from Safari Press, and one day I got to speak with the owner, Ludo Wurfbain. I mentioned to him I would like to go to Africa. Ludo suggested I attend the Safari Club International (SCI) convention in Reno, Nevada. I told him the outfitter I was thinking of going with, and Ludo said he was booked with that same outfitter, that same year. Ludo said, “Come to the convention and I will introduce you to him.”
I made the trip to Reno, and Ludo introduced me to George Angelides, the owner of Tanzania Safaris in Arusha, Tanzania. We got along very well and things started to fall into place. George suggested I hunt in two different areas of Tanzania during my hunt, since certain animals are only in one area. I booked the safari with George for the following year, 1991, which gave me some time to get the money together. I was concerned about jet lag, so I arrived a week early and stayed in the Mount Meru Hotel in Arusha.
George was on safari with another client, and his wife, Gill, invited me to their home for dinner. Their children, Michael, Kathryn, and Nicholas, were young then. During the week, Gill sometimes had one of the men on their staff take me into Arusha to buy souvenirs. I was anxious to start my safari. Th e Mount Meru Hotel had offices in the lobby offering tours to see the various game parks; the tours cost about $100 each. But I was counting every penny, and I figured there was no reason to go to these parks since in another week I would actually be on safari. I was taken to a small airstrip at the end of the week and boarded a small aircraft. I flew 450 air miles to the Rungwa area of Tanzania. When the plane landed, I met several friendly people there who were waiting to leave.
They had just finished their safari with George, and they told me I would have a great time.
I was fortunate that during this last safari they had been hanging baits for cats, and the baits were still up.
The first two nights in camp, I heard lions roaring all night. My tent was in the center of a long stretch of land, with George’s tent at one end and the camp staff at the other end. One night, I unzipped the tent to go to the bathroom, and when I looked out of the tent with my flash light I could see the eyes of several hyenas looking at me. I shook the canvas opening of the tent and the hyenas moved off.
The next morning George told me there was still a lion roaring by the bait tree, and he suggested we try to get him before he left the area. As we approached the bait tree, the lion heard the vehicle and took off at a fast trot. It was a split-second decision if he was good enough to take. We stopped the vehicle and I got out, and while the lion was moving away, I fired. He took off into the tall grass, and we waited a while. Then George had one of his men get behind the steering wheel, and George and I got in the back of the vehicle, which had no doors and an open back. George stood on one side and I on the other side, with our rifles ready. We drove through the long grass, expecting the lion to leap into the vehicle at any moment. When the long grass ended, we all got out of the vehicle and we began tracking the wounded lion. We were tracking for about twenty minutes when we came to a dry river bed with just a trickle of water flowing in the center. When we walked to the edge of the embankment, which was about six feet high, the lion began roaring. Th e hair on the back of my neck stood up at this tremendous roaring. They say you can hear a lion roaring five miles away in the bush, and we were right on top of this one.
We immediately backed up, and then approached to the edge again with the lion still roaring. He could see us, but we couldn’t see him. He was in the palmettos on the opposite side. We backed up again, and George said, “We will go downstream farther, and cross over to the other side.”
We did that and as we got closer to where the lion was, the trees blocked our view. George turned, looked me in the eye, and said, “If we go any farther, he will run out and grab somebody before we can shoot him.”
George told me to go back to the other side with Hamesi, his lead tracker. He told Hamesi in Swahili to get the shotgun, which was loaded with bird shot. When we were in position, Hamesi was to shoot the bird shot above where we thought the lion was. George told me to be ready, since the lion was going to come out, but we didn’t know what side of the dry river bed he would come out on. So, George stayed on that side and I went back to the original side with Hamesi.
Hamesi hid in a bush so the lion wouldn’t see him. When I was in position, standing at the edge of the six-foot-high embankment, Hamesi fi red above where the lion was roaring. Th e lion didn’t come out, but I saw Hamesi walking toward me from my left side. He speaks only Swahili, but he showed me the shotgun, which was jammed. I didn’t want to put my rife down with the lion still roaring. I saw that the follower from the gun’s magazine had caught a shell, so I was able to get my Puma knife and I used it to push the follower, which cleared the jammed shell. Hamesi went back to the bush again and fi red another bird shot round above the roaring. With that, the lion came out straight at me, and everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I said to myself, here he comes. As soon as the lion was in my cross hairs, I fi red. Th e rifle wasn’t completely up to my shoulder but I had to fi re immediately, and when I shot the scope came back and hit me above the eye. I started bleeding profusely. Th e lion turned away at my shot and I fi red again at his side as he turned. With that second shot, the lion turned again and came back at me at full charge. I fi red into his chest with the third shot and that dropped him in his tracks.
My rifle, a .378 Weatherby, holds only three shots, one in the chamber and two in the magazine. I had read that professional hunters would place two shells between their fingers to reload their double guns in an emergency, so before the charge I had placed one shell between my fingers—one was all I could manage and still hold my rifle correctly, since the shells are so large. After the third shot, I took the shell I was holding and put it in the chamber. I walked around to the back of my lion and fi red a round into his back as an insurance round. All of the shots had been killing shots, but the lion was full of adrenaline that kept him going long after he should have been dead.
George and the men came to my side of the riverbed. My lion measured more than ten feet from nose to tail and he would score No. 34 in the Safari Club International record book. This was only the third day of my first safari, and there I was, just a guy from Brooklyn. We don’t see too many lions in Brooklyn. As we say back there, “Fuhgeddadboudit.”[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F76-77||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17745,17746,17747,17749″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
