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]
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%2F84-85||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]A Father’s Gift
By Michael Arnold
“Popular or not, however, the .35 Whelen is a great cartridge…Shame on me, to this day I have not taken a .35 Whelen to Africa, but I haven’t changed my opinion: Loaded with 250-grain bullets, it would be one of the very best choices for thornbush hunting.” (Craig Boddington, Safari Rifles II)
“You can hunt anything in North America with this rifle.” With those words, my Dad gave me his lovely custom-built, .35 Whelen Improved rifle. Stocked by a man named Bill Hall, it was emblazoned with a ‘Diamond-H’ insignia below the beautifully-engraved, silver pistol grip cap. I honestly could believe that my Dad was giving away this rifle. He had begun collecting Bill Hall rifles many years before, and had accumulated quite a stash. In fact, my Dad had mentioned over the years that Ruger management had tried to recruit Bill to come and work in their custom-rifle shop. I don’t know if this was legend or not, but like my Dad, I had fallen in love with Bill’s workmanship as soon as I held my first Diamond-H rifle.
Though almost always a gruff and serious person, my Dad could also be very generous. As I sat entranced by a detailed examination of ‘my’ rifle, he handed me something that meant as much as the firearm itself. He presented me with a set of custom dies and a handwritten sheet containing reloading instructions garnered from many years of his own experimentation with the rifle. Included in the instructions were the steps he used to neck-up .30-06 brass to .35 caliber. He had also noted that I could skip the use of .30-06 brass by simply purchasing .35 Whelen ammunition and fire-forming it in the rifle.
As far as I know, my Dad never shot an animal with the .35 Whelen Improved. I know for a fact that, during his many years of hunting, he never killed anything larger than a Texas Whitetail, and that his deer hunting was done with a Belgian-made Browning chambered to 7mm Remington Magnum. So, his declaration of the effectiveness of this .35 caliber rifle for large, tough, and sometimes aggressive animals must have been derived from his own knowledge of ballistic coefficients, etc., as well as information garnered from gunwriters such as O’Connor, Keith, Page and Boddington. Many years later, I found that he was very accurate in his assessment when I watched a 6-point bull elk quickly succumb to a single shot fired from this rifle. That elk represented what I like to think of as a ‘heritage-quest’. My Dad once told me of an unsuccessful elk hunt in Colorado. Though he did not see a bull, he did describe watching cow elk coming out of a fog that limited visibility to mere yards. After many decades, my Dad was still saddened by his failure. So, my pursuit of a bull elk, with the rifle given to me many years before, was just as much a quest to fulfill my Dad’s dream as it was my own. Sadly, my Dad passed away a number of years before I was able to complete his and my dream of collecting that trophy bull.
Fast forward over a decade, and I was planning my first African safari. As suggested by my older brother, we were heading to South Africa to hunt with Blaauwkrantz Safaris. Very early in the planning stage, I decided I wanted to take my Dad’s rifle to Africa. I don’t know if he ever considered trying to organize an African safari, but I know that he voraciously read of the exploits of those who did. So, his rifle would go where he never could, or would. And, to prove my Dad’s conclusion concerning the capability of the caliber to handle big-boned, muscular animals, I wanted to take a zebra – a species that writers from Ruark to Boddington have pointed to as one of the toughest of the tough.
The goal of taking an African animal using my Dad’s – and now my – .35 Whelen Improved rifle was fulfilled late on the afternoon of May 19, 2018. Like the two elk before, the effect on the 800-900-pound animal was immediate. In fact, as I came down out of the recoil, chambering a cartridge as the muzzle dropped, I found that the zebra had literally dropped-to-the-shot. The 250-grain Nosler Partition impacted high on the animal’s shoulder, and according to my PH, Arnold Claassen, it collapsed without a twitch.
Dad, you were right. This caliber is amazingly effective on large, tough species. I really wish you were still around, so that I could tell you that in person.[/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%2F84-85||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17732,17733,17734″][/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%2F52-53||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]Limpopo Sable – Black Magic
By Peter Ryan
New Zealand to Africa sounds easy but it isn’t. I’ve made the journey a dozen times now, and it’s always a relief to walk in the door at Afton House, my overnight oasis in Johannesburg and launching point for so many safaris over the years. After 28 hours on the move a hot shower, a cold beer and a good steak is paradise.
The next day I’m in the Limpopo. After the cool greenery of a New Zealand winter, the bright light and red dirt of Africa is a shock to the eye, but a good one. Familiar sights wash back into the mind as the Cruiser churns its way through deep dust…knobthorn, sesame trees, blackthorn, camel thorn, raisin bush. Here we go again. It’s obvious straight away that the Limpopo has been in drought. The browsers can hold on, but by September the grazers will be in trouble. There is buffalo sign too, with plenty of them on this block wherever there is rough grazing and thick cover.
The beauty of a top safari outfit is the quality of their hunting grounds. This block is family-owned and was one of the first to convert to game way back in the 1970s. They don’t buy animals in, and they don’t push it hard, just one hunter at a time taking off very conservative numbers. The pickups by the skinning shed are staggering – many are mature males that simply died out there of old age. There are usually a dozen or so mature sable bulls roaming freely across the block, with just one or two taken off each year. It’s a class operation from start to finish.
It’s good to catch up with Hans ‘Scruff’ Vermaak again, boss at Coenraad Vermaak Safaris. We’ve hunted before, for buff and plains game up in the Kalahari, for bushbuck in the tangles of KwaZulu-Natal. I know his family, in fact his young son Caleb was at my shoulder when I took a lovely nyala bull last year. We muck around taking pictures and talk rugby, and play spot-the-wildlife and generally mess around like a couple of teenagers. Safari life is a fine thing.
The rifles I’ve taken on previous trips have been seriously retro, but then again I’m a bit of a dinosaur myself. There was a sweet little BRNO model 21 in 7×57, a ZG-47 in .30-06, a .375. Today I’m carrying an old Husqvarna, the one with the lovely Mauser 98 action made for them by FN. It’s in 9.3×62, a classic bushveld caliber. Restocked in New Zealand walnut, it’s come up a treat. South African old- timers will understand these sentimental choices.
I’m running Norma’s 285-grain Oryx load, and the whole outfit is topped with a Swarovski Z6 in 1-6. Does it shoot? Checking the zero I put two shots down, the first one bang on line but a touch high. The second – Scruff and I can’t find until we walk up. It has cut the first to make a single ragged hole, better than I normally shoot and not bad after twelve thousand kilometres of air travel. Let’s go hunting.
Confession time. I’ve hunted several Cape buffalo, water buffalo in Australia and a lot of the “royal” antelope, but few things get me as excited as a serious warthog. Cheap and cheerful they may be but big pigs still make my palms sweat. In the shade on the edge of a huge pan we watch sows and youngsters come and go, but no real ivory. Many times we walk into promising country only to have the breeze swing and watch high tails steaming off into the bush. Tomorrow is another day.
Tomorrow passes and we’ve started to get a bead on where we need to be, not just for warthog but a seriously good impala holding lots of girls. It’s mid-June but the rams are still running hot, and this one is something special. He doesn’t move far but they don’t get that size by being silly. Through the scope I get one look at long tips surging through the bush, but no shot.
So we have two species patterned, and soon the last one on my wish list. We scout up the odd sable bull, then suddenly there he is, a dark shape camped in the shade. Predictably he doesn’t like people much and drifts away into the thickets. If we retreat quietly he may still hang around the general area – sable sometimes do. Then again sometimes they don’t and I fall asleep that night wondering. He looked pretty special.
Back on the big pan the next morning a female warthog drifts by, and suddenly there’s a solid boar right behind her. They trot by and it’s time to get serious. I mess up the sticks a little and an unseen sow is right onto us. She hits the alarm button, and what was going to be a set-up shot at 150 metres suddenly isn’t. The big boar is trotting hard now, that pace when they are just about to really hit overdrive. It’s now or kiss him goodbye.
The dot swings past the dust trail, past the pumping hams, through the big-boned head. Squeeze and keep swinging. What feels like a long time later, the whock of a solid hit floats back. Not ideal but he’s anchored. Go again. And all of a sudden there’s my first head of African game taken on the run. For all those years of supposed experience my hands are shaking. A good game animal should always be worth that much.
Time to work on that ram. Ernest Hemingway once created a character who was asked how he went bankrupt. “Gradually…then suddenly” was the reply. Working on a great head of game is often like that. You work hard for days, try hard not mess it up, then all of a sudden things fall in your lap.
That ram is bigger than we thought. He’s at a hundred yards but completely surrounded by a staggering number of ewes front and back. Talk about charisma, he must be the George Clooney of impalas. The sticks are up and I’m looking squarely at him. He’s clear behind now, but right in front of his chest two females are facing nose to nose, blocking any shot.
We wait. They stand. An ear flickers. The ewe on the left looks backward, the space where her head was creating an opening to his shoulder, then just as quickly she looks forward again. Checkmate. Another nervous wait. She twitches, then back in place immediately. More seconds trickle by, finger on trigger, deep breaths, and ignore the tension creeping into stiffening muscles.
Eventually she swings her head to look behind and the shot breaks instantly. The sight picture is lost in the recoil, but Scruff is hammering my back and shouting, “Down! He’s down!” I see a white belly, and breathe a long, shaky whistle.
No ground shrinkage here. He’s an honest 26, heavy with it and a beautiful shape. Calming down after the pictures I suddenly realise its Father’s Day. I think about my son and daughter so far away in New Zealand, and then my own father. The hat I’m wearing belonged to him. It’s good in open country, a bit tricky in thick thorn, but I take it as a memory of him and the hunting days he gave me.
After an evening session on doves, a new dawn breaks and it’s time to start working on sable again. Would the bull we saw still be around? Only one way to find out.
After some scouting and a couple of smooth stalks, Robert the tracker points. It takes time, but there’s definitely a bull out there. We need him to turn in profile, and after a few minutes he does. No doubt about it, game on. The cover is thick with no chance of a shot – all that thorn would just eat up a bullet. The morning breeze isn’t helping, a kick of dust shows it swirling, never heading the same way twice. I frown. Scruff frowns. The bull starts to move. We flank him as best we can, just over a hundred yards out, moving forward to look for an opening. There is one, maybe six metres wide. Now we wait.
I’ve lost him in the thick stuff and so have Scruff and the trackers. More waiting and the minutes begin to stretch out. Doubts play on your mind. Did he wind us? Has he turned?
If you have to think long and hard about whether a game animal is a trophy, he isn’t. The great ones announce themselves. The bull walks through a small window of bush and it’s clear in a split second that he’s magnificent. In a minute he should appear in the ambush set-up. That’s a minute for something to go wrong, for the nerves to build.
It doesn’t take that long. Suddenly he’s there, out in the open but covering ground. A few more steps and he’ll be gone. Then three things happen in a blur.
Tracking him in the Swarovski, I whisper to Scruff but before the word is even finished he’s made a sharp little noise. The bull pauses broadside and the shot rings out. All three things went down in the same second – it was just as slick as that. An easy shot in the end, if there is such a thing, and that’s the way it should be. That big slow Oryx bullet lands right on the point of the shoulder. The bull goes a handful of yards and is down.
I’ve watched and photographed sable for 20 years now, but this is only the second I’ve raised a rifle to. (My first was up in Zimbabwe, but that mount was destroyed in the earthquakes that struck New Zealand in 2011.) I’m still sad about that loss…but a scarred-up 46-inch sable has a way of cheering you up for a long, long time.
A bit of rough math, and it occurs to me that today is exactly my 100th hunting day in Africa, if you string them all together. Lord knows what that cost – I don’t want to know, that way lies madness – but let me say this: I can’t think of anything else that would have been half as much fun. I wouldn’t swap those memories for anything.
Events blur into one on safari. More doves, and a lovely Beretta at sundown. Guineas and francolin. The beast of a male honey badger that scuttled across the track right in front of us. The tracks that tell the story of a wildebeest calf stuck in mud until the hyenas dragged him out. The high kopje that looked out over a waterhole, and a tawny shape hiding nearby – caracal, a huge tom.
Why go on safari? In truth it’s all these things. Speaking for myself, I never go to Africa just to shoot at something. I go because if I did not, some part of me might wither and die.
That’s why.[/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%2F52-53||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17719,17720,17721″][/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%2F26-27||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]Swazi Hooded Sweatshirt
Swazi launches The Hood Sweatshirt
Respected around the globe, award-winning cult hunting clothing brand Swazi Apparel has unveiled a stylish and practical polar fleece – The Hood.
Providing warmth and protection against the elements, the hoody’s stand-out feature is a long zip which makes it quick and easy to take on and off.
Made in New Zealand at Swazi’s factory nestled under the Tararua Mountains, The Hood is made from 280gsm polar fleece. It is long cut to retain warmth, and comes with a handy zipped chest pocket.
Davey Hughes, founder and creative director at Swazi Apparel commented: “I believe a lot of innovation comes from necessity. The Swazi team is made up of a lot of hunters, who are out in the field, wearing our gear all the time, so they understand the requirements for a good outdoor garment. I was camping out on a really windy, cold morning, wearing one of our global favorite garments, the Swazi Bush Shirt which has been in our stable for 23 years, when I came up with the idea to add a hood. The Hood was designed to act as an extra collar, stopping the wind going down the back of your neck, and that’s where the name came from.”
RRP: $125
Sizes: S-XXXL
Colors: Black, Olive or Tussock Green
For more information, visit www.swazi.co.nz[/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%2F26-27||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
