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Hunting Bullet Metrics

Apply Terminal Performance Truth

AFRICA HUNTER QUEST©

Chapter 1 - THE PILGRIM

Donny knew exactly when the Africa hunting bug bit him: December 28 at 11:07 AM. He was waiting for a college football bowl game to start and was idly scrolling through his three cable hunting channels. He was an enthusiastic rifle hunter of deer, so fishing shows and bow hunting shows were easy culls. He scrolled onto a show called “This Is Africa.” He had never seen it listed before and didn’t know what it was about. He took a chance and clicked on it, as there was nothing else on that he was evenly remotely interested in.

What popped up on the screen was a hunter carrying what looked like a double-barreled shotgun. The hunter was walking slowly behind two men, everyone in single file. They all were obviously trying hard not to be seen by an unknown creature in front of them, as they sought cover from the next available bush in a rather thickly vegetated setting. They would stop and crouch behind the bush, and the second man in line would squeeze a plastic bottle containing some sort of powder to apparently check the wind direction. Occasionally, there would be a forward camera shot on a big clump of brush, supposedly showing the animal. Donny tried to identify the animal’s outline, but he was unsuccessful. The brush was thick and he really didn’t know what he was looking for.

The threesome moved forward two more bushes. The second man in line then erected the sticks he had been carrying. He transformed the sticks into a spindly legged tripod joined together at the top with what appeared to be a rope or bungie cord. When deployed, the legs were split apart enough so that the joined juncture of the three legs was slightly below the throat level of the hunter. The hunter placed the rifle’s fore end in the crotch of the three sticks, using the tripod as a front rest.

The camera once again gave a forward view to what the hunter was aiming at. Then Donny saw it: the animal appeared to be the size of an elk, but had two spiral horns at least 4½ to 5 feet tall on its head. The animal was quartering away from the hunter. The hunter fired two shots, with the second shot no more than two seconds after the first. The animal staggered forward at the first shot, then collapsed with the second.

From the ensuing commentary and conversation, Donny figured out that the animal was a kudu. This was the hunter’s second trip to Africa, with Donny learning

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that the hunter had repeatedly tried and failed to shoot a kudu on his first trip. Donny also found out that the first man in line was a tracker, and the second man in line was a Professional Hunter (PH). He didn’t quite know what a Professional Hunter was, but he figured the second man was a guide. Donny listened intently to identify what the chambering of the double rifle was. It wasn’t mentioned, but the bores looked big, certainly bigger than the one on his 270 Winchester. He found out that the shot had been taken at about 40 yards.

When the show ended, he turned off the tv to process what he had just seen. The hunt was very primal, actively stalking an animal instead of passively waiting in a blind for the animal to show. Although he had tuned in late, he suspected that they had either spotted the kudu and started the stalk, or the tracker had identified fresh tracks and they had followed them until they could visually spot the animal. Either way, that method of hunting just wasn’t done in his home state of South Carolina, but it really got his blood pumpin’. That was so cool.

He went to his computer and found a series of Africa hunting videos on the Africa’s Sportsman Channel. He noted that the rifles used had chamberings he never heard of, such as 9.3 x 62 Mauser, 6.5 x 284 Norma, and 450/400 Nitro Express in a double rifle. He wondered how his 270 Winchester compared to those rifles in terms of its ability to cleanly and quickly take the game that was being hunted. After all, everybody knew Jack O’Conner had written that a 270 Winchester was good for elk hunting, and many of the animals looked no bigger than an elk.

He was very proud of his 270 Winchester. A gunsmith just outside of Jackson, South Carolina had trued his action and bedded it in the manufacturer’s stock. The gunsmith had also reworked and tuned the trigger, then installed a 26-inch match- grade barrel. Donny had been granted a license for a suppressor which the gunsmith had installed. The rifle was topped with a 2.3 x 18-power German scope with an illuminated reticle. His system was poster child bad-a$$.

His rifle was very accurate. He had a legitimate ‘bean field’ rifle capable of putting five shots of off-the-shelf ammo into a group no bigger than 1 inch at 100 yards. The ammo was high performance, with a stated muzzle velocity of 3200 feet per second (fps) for a 130-grain, high BC poly-tipped bullet. The stated energy was a whopping 2952 foot-pounds, certainly enough for hunting the animals he had seen in the videos.

He had set up four strategically located ground blinds on his farm. The blinds enabled shots on whitetails that typically ranged from about 340 to 450 yards. Each

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blind had a sturdy bench to enable seated shots, just like at the range. His rifle had a bipod, and he used a bean bag for a rear rest. The bag supported the butt stock, and hand pressure on the bag allowed a precise hold on the deer. It was a sweet system that not only enabled meat to be acquired for the freezer, but allowed strategic culling to manage the herd.

He hated to damage his venison, so his target was the lungs. His 130-grainer exited most of the time with a good blood trail to follow. The damage to the meat was judged to be modest to moderate with the pass-throughs. On the few occasions when the bullet was retained, there was significantly more meat damage that when a bullet passed through.

Sometimes he misjudged the wind. If the wind carried the bullet into the shoulder, it was retained most of the time. When that happened, the meat damage was significant to almost unacceptable. If the wind carried the bullet into the hams, there was a chance that he would lose the deer, as the blood trail was typically poor and seemed to taper off with distance.

The videos he watched from the Africa’s Sportsman Show were excellent. In many ways, they mimicked what he had seen on the “This Is Africa” episode. There was typically a discussion of the selected rifle’s chambering and the bullet/bullets being used. The implication was that much of the ammunition was hand loaded, something he didn’t know how to do. Most of the hunts appeared to be trophy hunts, but it was apparent that some were cull or management hunts. There was often-times a discussion of the game farm’s management practices, with emphasis on sustainability. It was typically emphatically stated that harvested animals would be productively used for both meat and hides. It was very obvious that the participants respected the animals in both the hunting and management process.

He was initially concerned about the term ‘game farm’, particularly when he discovered that high fences were used at properties’ peripheries to keep the animals from free ranging. That concerned dissipated when he learned that a small tract was on the order of 2000 acres, with some on the order of 50,000 acres or more. He could see that there were no ‘gimme’ shots with animals pinned against a fence, and that walk and stalk or spot and stalk hunting methods could last days before an animal was taken.

Donny’s enthusiasm was positively stoked by the episodes he watched. He pulled up websites on the internet to gather specifics on potential hunts, such as typical plains game packages, total hunt duration, cost, and accommodations. The

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cost was somewhat breathtaking. He finally figured out that the daily fee was for both the PH (they were never referred to as guides) and the lodging. He was initially confused by the term ‘trophy fee’ and finally figured out it was the price paid to take each animal and did not include any taxidermy. Most of the sites he visited had plains game packages at less cost than the summation of all the trophy fees. Some of the packages included kudu; others did not.

Some of the packages included animals he had never heard of. The cost of the flight was formidable, and it really didn’t make much sense to fly over to Africa to take just one animal. He spent time with an internet search to decide if he really wanted to take a particular species included with the package.

He scoured the websites to get a definitive verification of whether his 270 Winchester was good for the larger animals, like kudu and zebra. He never got the warm and fuzzies on that topic. He found a site that said the 270 Winchester would be okay for deer-sized game like impala, but there was no consensus on what was considered a minimum chambering for the others. He noted chamberings with calibers greater than .277 were referenced for such animals as a black wildebeest, gemsbok, zebra, and kudu. Furthermore, most web sites tended to get PC with double-speak ‘run what ya brung’ weasel words that really didn’t inspire too much confidence.

In contrast to the disparity in recommended chamberings, all the web sites talked about the requirement for premium bullets. His bullet was not mentioned on any web site. He had thought the bullet he used was a premium bullet. After all, it had a polymer tip that didn’t melt in flight, a cannelure and an interlock ring.

Donny spent considerable time on the internet researching a potential hunting trip to Africa. In the final analysis, he was still uneasy about the fact that there was no unanimous vote of acclamation for use of his 270 Winchester on a kudu, let alone for the other large animals. He felt he needed face-to-face time with these folks so he could ask questions and respond to any of their statements.

Through dumb luck, he discovered that there was an outdoor show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in February that multiple African outfitters attended. February was a slow time on the farm, so he decided to invest several days to travel north and interview these folks.

He spent a full day at the show and interviewed four outfitters, all from South Africa. Each outfitter had from one to three representatives to talk with. They all

talked with thick accents, derived from some language he did not readily recognize. Some would occasionally lapse into this language to talk among themselves. It made Donny mildly uneasy, as there was the possibility that they were crafting and deciding upon political responses to the questions he was asking.

During the course of the interviews, Donny found out that each was a registered PH. Actual course work, graded tests, fields trials, and an apprenticeship were associated with awarding of that title. He was impressed. He was not favorably impressed, however, with his probing about the applicability of using his 270 Winchester on the hunt. He purposely left his question open ended: “What chambering do you recommend for hunting kudu?” There was absolutely no consensus. Each of the four gave a different answer: 7mm mag with a 175-grain bullet; a 30-06 with at least a 200-grain bullet, a 7.62x51 with a 165-grain solid copper bullet (he really didn’t know what that was); and a 35 Whelen with a 250- grain bullet. The bullet manufacturers they named were only vaguely familiar. He never had known that anyone even made a solid copper bullet.

Each time a PH responded to his open-ended question, they noticed he was disappointed with their answer. They all then asked what rifle he had or would like to use. Their answers mimicked the PC song and dance he had read on web sites. They all emphasized that the use of a 270 Winchester on a kudu really depended on good shot placement and a quality bullet that penetrated. He was disappointed to learn that the manufacturer of his bullet did not seem to be held in high regard, as its bullets were assessed to both penetrate poorly and lose way too much weight.

He was surprised that ‘good shot placement’ meant hitting the animal’s shoulder to debilitate mobility and to both take out the heart as well as perforate both lungs. When he asked them if they were concerned about meat damage, they all said “No, not for trophy hunting.” The intent of the shoulder shot was to kill the animal as rapidly as possible to enhance the prospect of recovery. Donny was stunned to discover that if he wounded an animal and it wasn’t recovered, he was obligated to pay the trophy fee, regardless. This ‘gotcha’ may have been present on the web sites he visited, but it certainly wasn’t put in neon lights like it was in these discussions.

A couple of the outfitters tried to get him to commit to a hunt with a cash retainer and booking dates by offering a show-only discount. But there had been too many surprises during the interviews for him to feel comfortable about moving forward with the hunt. Furthermore, he still needed to resolve the taxidermy issues. Although each outfitter recommended in-country taxidermy companies that they said had proven records of satisfactory performance, it seemed like too much of a

leap of faith to commit. The lack of ‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ control in the taxidermy process was a worry. He knew he needed to fully process what he had seen and heard in the interviews, and that would likely take considerable mull time.

The mull time during the 10-hour trip back to South Carolina gave no closure. If anything, more questions with no definitive answers kept popping up, rather than the surety and a clear direction he was seeking.

He was instinctively drawn to the conclusion that there would likely be no clarity to resolve the issues swirling around his head unless he talked to someone who had actually hunted in Africa. This person undoubtedly had faced similar if not the same issues, and could give an indication of likely outcome, good or bad.

The problem was who? He had no close, trusted friends who had hunted in Africa. His dad had moved to Raton, New Mexico and had become an elk hunting junkie. His father’s rifle of choice was chambered in something called a 30-06 Ackley. He wasn’t sure what that was. He did know that his dad had to hand load for it. His preferred bullet was 200 grains, manufactured by a company outside the U.S. It didn’t seem like his dad would be of much help in answering the question about his 270 Winchester, although he could likely recommend a good taxidermist.

His father-in-law was recently widowed and seemed to be on some John Dunbar/Jeremiah Johnson vision quest. He had moved to Alaska and had become consumed with caribou, moose, and bear hunting. Donny knew that he owned two rifles, one of which was chambered in 35 Whelen and the other in 375 H&H. He also hand loaded and shot a variety of different weight bullets with both chamberings. Donny seemed to recall that several of the bullets he shot were made by the same manufacturer as the one his dad shot. His father-in-law seemed to embrace hand artillery for his hunting, so the bullets were heavy and the muzzle velocities not all that impressive. Donny doubted that he would be of any help at all, even if he could reach him. Either by design or happenstance, his father-in-law had no cell phone or internet service.

The only person he could think of that could potentially be of help was someone who was a member of his gun club that he had heard of, seen a couple of times, but had never met. Rumor had it that the man had been hunting in South Africa several times. He was old and a grouch. Everybody called him GG, short for grouchy geezer.

Donny had heard too many stories from his friends not to know that GG was a pain to deal with: abrupt, one moment taciturn, the next spewing techno-gibberish that no one had ever heard of, much less understood. When he got into one of his pedantic ‘spew modes’, it was almost impossible to get him to shut up. One of Donny’s friends had said it succinctly with a sly grin: “Never ask GG a question unless you really want to know the answer.” Still, if GG could answer his one simple question about his 270 Winchester, the juice would be worth the squeeze.