AFRICA HUNTER QUEST©   

    Chapter 18 - THE GEEZER’S GENERIC HUNTING BULLETS   

    Donny saw GG look at him with a 1000-yard stare. He could almost hear the Old Man’s brain clutch disengage, with the attendant idling of his mouth.   

    D:  I don’t want to know for my personal cookie-cutter application. I want to know so I can better understand what you have told me based on your Africa experience. Those bullet selections will likely demonstrate how you have linked your test results to that experience. I suspect that your bullet performance objectives are the same, regardless of chambering. But after our conversation this morning, I am convinced that the generic bullets you believe are capable of that performance are very dependent on those chamberings because of likely impact velocity extremes. I want to solve my chambering and bullet selection problem by either arguing or agreeing with your bullet selection logic based on whatever bullet performance criteria I will ultimately select, and the knowledge you shared. Your knowledge and database; my decisions.   

    GG was skeptical. The Pilgrim’s snark and defiance were clear impediments to the transformation from “tell me the answer” to “help me understand so I can decide for myself” that had apparently miraculously occurred in less than two minutes.  Yet the youngun had said all the right things the right way. Hell, football teams did extensive walk-throughs to learn new plays. His request was really no different than a walk-through. “The animals would be better served if my reasoning were understood and at least considered in the Pilgrim’s decision process,” thought GG.   

    GG:         Fair enough. What I’m going to tell you is for plains game only. Dangerous game is an entirely different subject with way different bullet performance criteria.   

    D:  Agreed.    

    GG:         Some background and context are necessary to better understand my bullet selections, some of which have nothing to do with the testing I have just completed.   

    My primary Africa chamberings are 375 H&H and 358 Winchester. My 358 Winchester is a ballistic twin of a traditionally loaded 35 Whelen. Most of the bullets

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I selected for each chambering prior to testing are ones I will continue to use. The gel testing only reinforced their effectiveness that had been confirmed by my Africa field experience.   

    Consideration of the 300 Winchester as an Africa chambering alternative is what caused me to do the testing. This chambering had considerable demons that needed exorcism. After I tell how I arrived at my 375 H&H and 358 Winchester bullet selections, I will focus on my 300 Winchester. My primary objective has always been to stop the animals with absolutely no consideration for meat preservation. Period. I believe in hitting them hard and hitting them in the heart. I reasoned that if I did that, the animals would drop at the shot more likely than not. At worst, a speculated maximum 100-yard travel distance after the shot.   

    John Taylor’s KO concept resonates with me. Bullet weight and momentum rule. In my professional engineering world, ignoring decades of in-country practitioner experience like Taylor’s would get me stripped of my credentials while being sued out of existence.    

    Robertson, another in-country expert with decades of experience, made assessments and recommendations that only reinforced Taylor’s guidance. To him, I interpret a bigger bullet is always better. If caliber and chambering must be pumped up to accommodate bigger, so be it. Once he has established the bullet weights, he talks specific bullets. I have yet to read anywhere in his books that the 200-grain, 30-caliber bullet “W” from manufacturer “Y” shot from a 300 Winchester has better terminal performance than a 250-grain bullet “X” from manufacturer “Z” shot from a 35 Whelen. He selects his bullets only after he has established what he believes is an appropriate weight for that caliber and chambering.   

    The focus of ‘bigger’ for both Taylor and Robertson is simply bullet weight. Bullet weight is the foundation of my empiricism for estimating game weight. Thus, the first step for vetting any of my chamberings will always be to use my empiricism to check that the bullet weights available in that chambering’s caliber are compatible with the weight of the game I intend to hunt at reasonably assumed distances. If it is, that establishes the operating range of impact velocities within which the bullet must perform. The generic bullet design can then be selected based on that likely impact velocity range.   

    I never knew Africa hunting would be a ‘thing’ with me. This all started with me wanting my son to accompany me on a bucket-list Cape buffalo hunt. That precipitated fabrication of my magnum-length action hunting system in 375 H&H.    

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    Bullet selection for the 375 H&H was a no-brainer. For dangerous game, Robertson believes that a 350-grain bullet elevates the terminal performance of the 375 H&H to another level. Ignoring a recommendation like that from a veterinarian that has a PH day job would be just plain stupid. I ran the numbers for estimated game weight, and a 350-grainer bests a 300-grainer deemed suitable by Robertson for dangerous game by over 400 pounds at the muzzle.   

    There was only one 350-grain bullet available here in the U.S. This same bullet was also loaded and commonly available as off-the-shelf ammo. It is a bonded-lead core generic design, a fact I paid no attention to at the time. What did catch my eye, however, was the bullet manufacturer referenced a recommended impact velocity range of 1900 to 2400 fps. My load was at a muzzle velocity of 2340 fps and had produced a 5-shot group less than ¾ inch at 100 yards. As far as I was concerned, all the boxes had been checked.   

    I wanted my son to hunt plains game with his short-action system. One of his barrels was chambered in 358 Winchester. He also wanted to hunt kudu. Robertson recommended a 250-grain bullet out of a 35 Whelen for hunting kudu in the bush. My son’s 358 Winchester is also a ballistic twin of a traditionally loaded 35 Whelen.   

    A traditionally loaded 35 Whelen is the ballistic twin of a 350 Rigby or a 350 Rigby Magnum, a classic Africa medium bore that shot cup and core bullets. I selected a 250-grain cup and core round-nosed bullet that had the presumed advantage of busting brush. I worked up a load for him that had a muzzle velocity of 2460 fps. I remember at the time that it was very similar to the stated muzzle velocity of 2400 fps for a 250-grain bullet from another Africa classic, the 318 Westley Richards. His load produced a 5-shot group less than 0.6 inches at 100 yards. Good to go.    

    My son took three animals, all with no drama. He shot both his kudu and a bush pig on the shoulder. The pig flopped around and ended up no more than 10 yards from where it was shot. The kudu made it to about 50 yards before it piled up. He lunged the bush buck and put a nickel-sized hole on the off-side. The bush buck sprinted between about 150 to 200 yards before dropping. At the time, I wasn’t smart enough to pay attention to whether his bullets were even retained in the pig or kudu, let alone perform autopsies in the skinning shed. All I cared about was that his hunts had been successful. Bottom line: the classic Africa approach of big and slow worked like a champ on plains game.    

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    With the buffalo, however, I was paying attention. Mine actually weighed over 2000 pounds. That’s literally a ton of whup-a$$. There was a video of my shots on the buffalo. The PHs played the shots over and over in slow motion, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The first broadside shot was a high shoulder shot that a subsequent autopsy indicated had entered through the shoulder, pierced the near-side lung, took out the plumbing on top of the heart, pierced the far-side lung, and was retained by the far-side hide. The body wave on the animal’s hide created by the 350-grain bullet’s impact was incredible. It looked like a mini tsunami.   

    The impact partially staggered him, and he cantered off for about 30 yards. The reason I say ‘cantered’ is because in most of the TV videos of shots taken on Cape buffalo using a 375 H&H with a 300-grain bullet, the buffalo has reacted like he had been poked up his a$$ with an electric cattle prod prior to sprinting off. Compared with these videos, the impact from the heavier 350-grain bullet had been obviously more effective in debilitating the animal.   

    The buff stopped at about 30 yards. He was broadside, and his body language said he was having a really bad day. I hit him again with a 350-grain solid. His knees flexed like he wanted to collapse, but he stiffened them back up. He then did something I had never seen before or since: he slowly inclined his body backward like he was going to sit on a stool. He thought the better of it and tried to right himself. He couldn’t, then just keeled over. No death bellow. I think he was dead when he hit the ground.   

    Both the PHs that were with me were ecstatic. They had never seen a buffalo react like that to a shot from a 375 H&H. One said that the 350-grainer made the buffalo ‘sick’. As far as I was concerned, I had just seen a poster child validation of Taylor’s KO concept. Once again, big and slow was golden.   

    When I got back to the U.S., the bite of the Africa bug resulted in a full-blown fever. I wanted to go back and hunt plains game. I already had a dangerous game bullet with the 350-grainer, so there was no need to select a 300-grainer to do double duty for dangerous game. What to do?   

    For me, the 375 H&H chambering for Africa plains game was a no-brainer. Hitting them hard meant using a 300-grain bullet. Hitting them in the heart meant it had to be accurate because the shots would now likely extend well beyond 100 yards. I subjectively defined ‘accurate’ as a 3-shot group less than ¾ inch at 200 yards, knowing that there could be bodacious wobble on the sticks that would adversely affect field accuracy and limit the range at which I took the shot. With that group

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size in mind, my natural inclination was to select a cup and core generic design, as that is the undisputed winning generic design of both short and long-range benchrest bullets.   

    At the time of the 300-grainer selection, poor bullet performance due to an inappropriate range of impact velocities was not even on my radar. A 375 H&H and 300-grain cup and core bullet were supposed to go together like peas and carrots. I naively assumed that upgraded materials and computer-controlled manufacturing techniques had enabled new-age cup and cores to perform better than they had in Taylor’s day. Through two load development iterations, a 3-shot group less than ½ inch at 200 yards with the 300-grainer only reinforced my presumed wisdom in its selection.   

    On my next trip to Africa, the performance of the 300-grainer on the first two animals did nothing to dispel my illusion of its invincibility. We began my scouting property for kudu. The landowner was with us and said he needed to refresh his meat supply to feed his staff. Between my PH and the property owner, they spotted an animal that looked to be no bigger than a starving Laboratory retriever. It was so far away, I had trouble finding it with my scope cranked up to 10 power. No one had a range finder. I wagged a holdover of about a foot and a half above its shoulder and squeezed the trigger. I regained my site picture as rapidly as recoil from a 375 H&H will allow, but couldn’t find an animal. My PH told me that what he had just witnessed was the worst display of shooting he had ever seen.   

    We continued to drive in the direction of where the animal had been, with me thinking “Why bother?” The truck stopped next to a bush, and the tracker got out of the truck to collect what I later found out was a female steenbok. I had spined it and it had dropped to the shot. Most of that was lost on me because of the heated exchange in Afrikaans between my PH and the property owner. The range had been so far that neither had identified it as female, with each passing judgment on my shot after looking through high-end German binos. I later back figured the shot was at least 400 yards. Dumb-a$$ luck.   

    The second animal was a bush buck. These critters love habitat adjacent to rivers. We spent a day and a half walking and stalking adjacent to the Limpopo River, sometimes at the river’s edge. We finally flushed one, and I got a shallow -angle, rear quartering shot at a little over 100 yards. The animal staggered forward less than 5 yards and dropped. The bullet was a complete pass-through. Two shots, two flops, no recovered bullets.   

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    I didn’t know it at the time, but that bush buck hunt caused the first leak in my selected 300-grainer’s balloon. The vegetation next to the river was very thick. I was third in line behind the tracker, then the PH. It’s tough to see anything ahead of you when you are third in line, regardless of the vegetation. Because I couldn’t see anything in front of me, I had already begun to fixate on the ground as they periodically did. However, I really didn’t know what I was looking at.   

    The vegetation on either side of us looked like bamboo shoots that extended well over head high. I remember thinking how odd it was that there was this broad path through seemingly impenetrable vegetation that required no machete work for the tracker. Very un-Africa. It was then I looked down and saw circular holes about 10 inches in diameter that extended about an inch or so into the moist silt. Adjacent to those 10-inch circular holes were ones no more than about 3 inches in diameter.   

    The Great White Blunder eventually arrived at the conclusion that he was looking at fresh hippo tracks of Mama and her youngun! I was an un-spry geezer with arthritic knees, third in line, last to see anything. I was the only one with a rifle, loaded with a bullet that I later determined would have likely only pissed off Mama. It was no longer a “walk in the park, Kazanski”. I may have had a top gun, but it was armed with an equivalent of a pi$$-ant air-to-ground missile instead of a smart bomb. Note to file: 350-grainer; don’t leave home without one.   

    I have since hunted on property with either rhino and/or buffalo thought to be infected with Rinderpest. Low odds of a confrontation, but the odds are not zero. Having a chambering that can be loaded with a bullet that offers something other than a laughable token deterrent to over a ton of highly agitated whup-a$$ is something that should be considered by anyone hunting in Africa.   

    I eventually got a broadside shot on my kudu at about 150 yards. The kudu sprinted less than 90 yards and then piled up. The shot had been on the shoulder, but an autopsy revealed that it did not penetrate in a straight line. In fact, it was retained by the hide on the far side at least a foot to the rear of the far-side shoulder. The autopsy showed that the bullet had been deflected by a near-side rib bone and had veered about 45 degrees toward the kudu’s rear. I had perforated both lungs and broken a far-side rib. But the real headline news was the jacket had separated from the core. The jacket had come to rest less than an inch behind the core. The hiss of air leaking from my 300-grainer’s balloon had about become a whoosh.   

    My Nyala presented a front quartering shot at about 200 yards. He dropped at the shot. The autopsy showed the bullet had taken out the heart, had gnawed completely

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through about three far-side ribs, and had come to rest in the far-side hide. As with the kudu’s bullet, the jacket had separated from the core at the core’s termination point.    

    While I stood there in the skinning shed pondering the 300-grainer’s performance, the owner of the lodge where we were staying came in to pass judgment, and a harsh judgment it was. The salty Afrikaner, in his mid-50s, pronounced “Way too much meat damage. Your bullet is unacceptable. You should use a 235-grain solid copper bullet.”   

    Although I knew that the meat of all the animals taken was processed and sold, that was the first time I was made aware that anyone was actually concerned about meat quality and volume. I reexamined the Nyala’s carcass to assess meat condition. The ol’ boy was quite right. The meat mangling was prolific.    

    On the flight home, I tried to put the 300-grainer’s performance into perspective. The final assessment is very cliché, but it fell into ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’ categories. The good: the bullet was indeed accurate; I hit whatever I was aiming at off the sticks. Three of the four animals had dropped at the shot. The fourth only traveled less than 90 yards.   

    The bad: its boat-tail spitzer shape gave it the potential to deflect off bone at a yet-to-be-determined frequency. The jackets from the only two bullets recovered had separated from their cores.    

    The ugly: it mangled meat. It likely wouldn’t stop a charging hippo or other big ‘uns that weighed a ton or more.    

    D:  Not exactly a glowing testimonial.    

    GG:         Exactly. When I got home, I worked up a load for a 235-grain solid copper bullet.    

    D:  What?! If you were gonna gel test a solid copper bullet, why didn’t you test that one?   

    GG:         Because I ultimately decided it was a solution in search of a problem.    

    D:  You’re gonna have to explain that one.   

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    GG:         First, and in the context of the time frame that I did it, the 235’s 3-shot group at 200 yards was only about 1¼ inch.   

    D:  Only?! That’s pretty damn good. It is, after all, a hunting bullet.   

    GG:         My bullet, my performance objective, my accuracy criterion. The group produced by 235-grainer is actually three times greater than the accuracy of my 300-grainer. That’s kinda like saying you would be happy with a 150-horse power at the rear wheels of your truck when you could have 450.   

    D:  Makes sense, I suppose. I’m just not skilled enough as a hunter seeking the heart as a target to fully appreciate that degree of accuracy.   

    GG:         Second, I sensed paying any homage to meat preservation potentially detracted from the terminal performance that is desirable for stopping an animal. Although I didn’t use the words ‘wound cavity’, I intrinsically believed that the carnage I was looking at in the skinning shed went hand in glove with stopping the animal. I was paying quite handsomely for what was hanging on the meat hooks. I considered the meat as salvage value gravy for the property owner.   

    Third, I rediscovered what Taylor had to say about jacket-core separation being a non-issue.   

    D:  And I suppose your solution for a runaway freight train on four legs is a 350-grain solid?   

    GG:         Bingo. And that brings me to the final reason why I didn’t do testing on the 235-grain solid copper bullet. I was considering the 358 Winchester as an alternative to my 375 H&H, and needed a 35-caliber bullet that at least paid some homage to stopping a runaway train, or at least a runaway dump truck. Solid copper bullets have a strong reputation for penetration. I wanted a bullet that could potentially penetrate the boss of a buffalo or at least crack, maybe even separate the spine rather than go splat. If it also had reasonable wound cavity potential, so much the better.   

     The prospect of only one 35-caliber bullet serving as a trophy bullet, meat-hunting bullet, and dangerous-game stopper was too much to let pass by. That is why I focused on the 35-caliber solid copper bullet for the gel testing rather than the 375-caliber, 235-grainer.   

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    D:  (Again smirking) So am I correct in concluding that in spite of what many hunters would consider totally unacceptable bullet performance, you continued to use the 300-grainer?    

    GG:         Yep. Neglecting the hail Mary shot on the steenbok, I’ve taken ten other animals with it at distances from about 90 to 350 yards. I’ve hit the heart eight times, the lungs once, and the spine once. Six animals dropped to the shot. Four traveled less than 90 yards. Even with a limited statistical sample population, that performance is excellent.   

    D:  So, you hit some animals in the heart and they still managed to run?   

    GG:         Yep. Blue wildebeest and zebra are tough critters. Hell, they’re all tough. I blew out a ewe impala’s heart with the 300-grainer, and she still managed to run about 90 yards.   

    D:  You said you put poly-tips on a 350-grain, .375-caliber match bullet. Why did you fiddle with that given the performance of the 300-grainer?    

    GG:         Terminal performance paranoia. I wanted to hunt springbok, but also in conjunction with zebra. At the time, hunting zebra meant using my 375 H&H with the 300-grainer. But shot distances on springbok are typically at least 300 yards. The impact velocity of the 300-grainer at 300 yards would be about 2150 fps, and the impact velocity at 350 yards would be about 2050 fps. At those impact velocities, I could expect wound cavity generation to fall off significantly because the muscle density and thickness of a springbok would likely not offer much potential for bullet expansion. I was concerned that the 300-grainer would only punch a caliber-sized hole in these little guys, potentially having to track them some distance well beyond 90 yards. I wanted a way more frangible bullet for grenade-like performance to reduce the prospect of an extended track.   

    D:  Based on what you now know, would you have used the 300-grainer?   

    GG:         Yes. But without ever using the tipped 350s, I wouldn’t have the field experience to justify tipping and testing the 30-caliber 240s. What I saw with the 350’s pretty much confirmed what I envisioned their performance would be and confirmed an important terminal performance conceptual principle.   

    D:  Which is?   

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    GG:         The more frangible the bullet, the more you need to slow it down to perform acceptably. In this case, slowing it down so it penetrated well.   

    D:  Kindly bass-ackwards to the current thinking where the notion of more velocity is universally considered to be a good thing. I’m beginning to understand with cup and core bullets that more velocity can be a bad thing.   

    “Finally,” thought GG.   

    GG:         Good for you.    

    D:  What performance did you envision for these .375-caliber, 350-grain cruise missiles?   

    GG:         Turning the boiler room into goo.   

    D:  Did they?   

    GG:         And then some. I had four shots at distances of about 180, 300, 310, and 365 yards. Impact velocities ranged from about 2260 to 2100 fps. Three of the four shots were full-on broadside through the heart. These little guys are only about 8 to 9-inches wide across the shoulders, so I was expecting no recovery of any bullet. On the broadside shots, the exit holes were 50-cent piece to silver-dollar size in diameter. All the springbok dropped at the shot.    

    However, the result from the front quartering shot was the real eye opener. The springbok was at about 310 yds and the impact velocity was about 2140 fps. The bullet’s pass-through zippered open the back half of the springbok’s rib cage. It looked like someone had taken a router with a 1-inch diameter bit and sliced through the hide and ribs. When the tracker rolled the animal onto its stomach for pictures, it opened the ribs up to allow a gut pile to form adjacent to the animal. Total penetration was assessed to be at least 16 to 18 inches before exit.

        D:  Gawd!    

    GG:    At the time, my PH said performance like that was good enough for a zebra. Maybe so, but close-range performance, say less than 100 yards, may have been dicey. A zebra’s muscle density and thickness could potentially have made penetration into the boiler room problematic at such a short range. I was glad I had brought my 300-grainer load for zebra.   

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    D:  So, you have bullets for both long range and short-range plains game trophy hunting and dangerous game hunting. If you include the 235-grain solid copper bullet for meat hunting, it sounds like the 375 H&H would be jam up and jelly tight for hunting anything in Africa.   

    GG:         Yes. But there is another bullet that I haven’t mentioned.   

    D:  Another bullet and load?! What on earth can that be for?!   

    GG:         After I had seen how the tipped 350 had performed, I hypothesized that it was bullet frangibility that was the key to dropping an animal in its tracks rather than a combination of factors that included the bullet’s punch or KO. I was thinking in the analogy of warp-speed, varmint bullet performance on coyotes.  Stopping them every time had become dogma. I was hitting the heart; now all I felt I needed was the right grenade. I got sucked into the high velocity, hydrodynamic shock vortex, something I will never do again.    

    D:  What happened?   

    GG:         I tried a .375-caliber, 270-grain cup and core boat-tail spitzer that blogsperts said was frangible. Cranked out a load with a muzzle velocity of 2780 fps. Shot six animals with it, all heart shots except one. Impact velocities ranged from about 2525 to 2300 fps, which is right in a cup and core’s wheelhouse. Of the five heart-shot animals, only two dropped. Two ran less than about 90 yards, and one ran greater than about 175 yards. No bullets exited.    

    D:  Any explanation of why the 270-grainer was apparently not as effective as the 300-grainer?   

    GG:         Part of the explanation is where the explosion occurred. The 270’s deformed length was significantly greater than the deformed length of the 300’s. That indicated to me that the real violence occurred on the near side of the boiler room rather than in the center. There was only one autopsy I got to see. The near-side lung of a red hartebeest taken on an obtuse-angle, rear quartering shot seemed to have taken the majority of the hit as indicated by the volume of bloodshot meat. The shot was at about 250 yards, with an impact velocity of about 2360 fps.    

    GG:         Did the 270-grainers performance significantly color or shade how you view the liabilities of a cup and core bullet?   

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    GG:         Depends on what measuring stick you use. My measuring stick was an unobtainable drop-at-every-shot-to-the-heart. If you use that measuring stick, a cup and core bullet failed. If your measuring stick is a recovered animal and a head on the wall, a cup and core bullet was jam up and jelly tight. Even with the 270-grainer I had stayed within what I believe is a cup and core’s impact velocity sweet-spot, and it performed satisfactorily in terms of a recovered animal. In a head-to-head bullet comparison with the 300-grainer, I believe that the 270’s lead metallurgy is not as stout as the 300’s. The 270-grainer appears to be more at home with the typical North American practice of shots to the lungs, but was only satisfactory instead of excellent like the 300 for shots on the shoulder.    

    D:  You always ask me to summarize my impressions of a topic. How would you summarize your bullets for your 375 H&H?   

    GG:         The 300-grain cup and core is my all-around bullet for plains game out to 300 yards. I would take any shot except rear quartering from 30 to 120 yards. I would take any shot angle at distances from about 120 to 300 yards. All shots could be off sticks.    

    At 300 yards, the impact velocity drops off to about 2100 fps, and I would begin to have concerns about wound cavity volume. I would take shots beyond 300 yds with the tipped 350-grain match bullet. It has shown the potential for devastating terminal performance at that distance. I would take only broadside shots with the tipped 350-grainer. The shooting position would determine the range to which I would shoot. For example, 300 to 400-yard shots could be taken seated off a bipod. Anything farther than 400 yards would have to be prone.   

    The 235-grain solid copper bullet would be put on trial on a meat or cull hunt. I would put a poly tip on it to make sure it damn-well expanded. I would take any angle shots out to about 250 yards, as that is the distance where impact velocity falls below 2300 fps.    

    D:  Trial?   

    GG:         Absolutely. I speculate the 235’s terminal performance would likely be different than the 300-grainer’s.   

    D:  How so?   

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    GG:         I expect animals shot with the tipped 235-grainer would travel farther after the shot compared to the 300-grainer. Meat damage with the tipped 235 would likely be less, but maybe not enough to justify its use.   

    D:  (Smirking) You never ran any tests with a tipped 235-grainer. How can you arrive at such a conclusion?   

    GG:         The 35-caliber and 30-caliber solid copper bullets I tested were from the same manufacturer as the 235-grainer. Each struggled to achieve a wound cavity volume that was competitive with bullets of other generic designs. With the 35- calibers, the large-tipped 225-grainer had a bloodshot wound cavity volume from about 6 to 31% less than its two, 35-caliber cup and core competitors. For the 30-caliber, 165-grainer, the blood-shot wound cavity volume was about 26% to a whopping 56% less than all the other 30-caliber bullets tested. Therefore, I would expect the tipped 235-grainer to exhibit less wound cavity volume than that produced by the 300-grainer with correspondingly longer animal travel distances after the shot. I have no idea what those travel distances might be or if they would concern my PH.   

    The other performance issue would be a qualitative assessment of meat damage from shots into the lungs. Although rear quartering shots are routinely taken, broadside shots into the lungs are far more prevalent. If there was no appreciable difference between the 235 and 300-grainer in the volume of meat destroyed, I would hands down use the bullet that resulted in less travel distance after the shot.   

    D:  The 300-grainer?   

    GG:         If the physics involved and the gel test results actually mean something, yes. Greater punch and likely more wound cavity volume.    

    D:  So, what you are saying is that even though the numbers indicate the field performance of the 300-grainer would likely be better, you would do a field trial to confirm?    

    GG:         Absolutely. The test results and the numbers ginned from those test results have no worth unless they can be used to reasonably predict field performance outcomes. I can calculate and speculate all I want, but speculation is not reality.  Reality is not only what I can see, but what experts have repeatedly seen. That is why a PH’s feedback is so important in calibrating the process and the numbers derived from that process.    

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    D:  And what role would the 350-grain bondeds and solids have?   

    GG:         I would have a couple of each with me, just in case I am hunting on property that has four-legged freight trains. I’ve taken two plains game animals with the 350-grain bonded-lead core bullet. Both dropped at the shot. There would be no penalty on plains game performance out to 200 yards by using these land torpedoes.    

    That pretty much wraps up the bullets with 375 H&H unless you have any questions.   

    D:  Nope. But I see a potential trend beginning to emerge. No single bullet is asked to do a variety of specialized tasks. Is that a fair statement?   

    GG:         Exactly. Bullets are tools. I want to use the right one for the right job at hand. Right now, the 300-grainer is my set of combination wrenches; I believe it will work in a lot of situations, but not all. I’m not embarrassed to bring loads with different bullets for defined hunting scenarios.   

    D:  Aren’t you concerned about multiple zeroes?   

    GG:         No. I have target turrets on most of my hunting scopes. I have a laminated DOPE sheet taped to the stock. But at the end of the day, the 300-grainer with a 200-yard zero would likely be used over 90% of the time.   

    D:  And no urge to find a better standard than your 300-grainer?   

    GG:         Nope. There are probably several that could do better, but ‘better’ would likely be by degree, nothing to really get concerned or excited about. The 300-grainer is kindly like my 20-year-old pickup that I was sad to see go. Predictable. Dependable, always did what I asked, even when I sometimes asked for a little too much. With the 300-grainer’s accuracy, there is no better feeling in the world than knowing if you can get a crosshair on an animal’s shoulder, it’s toast.    

    D:  So, tell me, what is going on with your stealth Whelen?   

    GG:         The path to that chambering being considered as a worthy replacement to the 375 H&H for either a trophy or cull-hunting chambering was long and convoluted.   

    D:  (Smirking) Why am I not surprised?   

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    GG once again filtered the snark.   

    GG:         The path to excellence always is. If it isn’t, you probably have done something bad wrong or left too much performance on the table. Failure is the best teacher, and I have been taught well.    

    The Pilgrim didn’t get the message. He continued on with his snark.   

    D:  The only image that comes to mind about anyone even considering a 358 Winchester as a substitute for a 375 H&H is Don Quixote jousting with a windmill. I keep having to remind myself that you likely got the windmill to capitulate.   

    GG had to remind himself that the snarky little bastard was likely trying to jokingly give him a compliment. Not even close.   

    GG:         Pursuing the path of a 358 Winchester being considered as a worthy substitute for my 375 H&H was nothing short of an epiphany for me.    

    D:  How so?   

    GG:         The 358 Winchester is the focal point for me coming to terms with what I consider ‘stop’ to mean.    

    Donny’s eyes got big. This was serious Juju for the Geezer.   

    D:  (Smirking) This I gotta hear.   

    GG:         I knew the 375 H&H with the 300-grainer was good, warts and all. Was there a reasonable alternative chambering and bullet with success documented by Africa experience that could produce comparable results?    

    My son’s 358 Winchester had an indirect connection with the 350 Rigby and the 350 Rigby magnum, a common medium bore of the day that Taylor held in high regard. Ballistically, the performance of my son’s 250-grain cup and core round- nose bullet kindly sat in the middle between the 350 Rigby with its 310-grainer and the Rigby magnum with its 225-grainer. His chambering and bullet had exhibited no drama in its performance. Other than with the bush pig, no animal had been truly stopped like had occurred with the 300-grainer.   

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    In Taylor’s book, he says the Rigby magnum with its 225-grainer never had the press afforded to the 375 H&H and the 318 Westley Richards, but it deserved “every bit as much”. He said this combination also showed the same tendency to produce shock that the 375 H&H did, but to a “somewhat lesser extent”. He concluded by strongly recommending the 350 Rigby magnum for Africa use, calling it “one of the best of the medium bores”. To me, that is about as strong an endorsement for any chambering and bullet combination as anyone can reasonably expect. Taylor had identified a 35-caliber, 225-grain rock that needed kicked over to see what was underneath.   

    However, Robertson never once mentioned the use of a 225-grain bullet in any reference to either a Whelen or other 35-caliber chambering. When Robertson referred to 35-caliber chamberings, it was typically in the context of bushveld conditions where he said moderate to modest muzzle velocity with a 250-grain bullet was preferred. These recommendations were for a kudu, zebra, and blue wildebeest where he talked about an any-angle shot for a kudu and a round-nose bullet for a zebra. A blue wildebeest and zebra typically both make the top five in animal toughness as ranked by the PHs that I asked. Thus, the idea of taking a 250-grainer off the table and directly substituting a 225-grainer seemed iffy.    

    Nathan Foster is obviously fond of the 35 Whelen. Foster is also obviously fond of bullets that give terminal performance in line with the ‘stopping’ category. In his 35 Whelen knowledge base, he has positive things to say about a particular 225-grain cup and core boat-tail spitzer. I also noted that he liked the field performance of the 250-grainer my son had used. Testimony from practitioners who apparently have limited vested interests from manufacturers resonates with me.   

    I ran impact velocity numbers on the referenced 225 and 250-grainers. The 250 round-nose was kindly running out of gas by 200 yards, with an estimated impact velocity on the order of about 1900 fps. I had traveled around South Africa enough to know that shots between 200 and 300 yards were more prevalent than Taylor lets on in his book. Even my limited experience in terrain with heavy brush conditions indicated that shots between 200 and 300 yards presented themselves on a frequent enough basis that just using the 250-grainer would limit opportunities. Estimated impact velocities for the 225-grainer were about 2200 and 2000 fps for 200 and 300 yards, respectively. I assessed these impact velocities would produce terminal performance reasonable enough to consider the 225-grainer as a stable mate to the 250. So, from the git-go, the 358 Winchester had a mandatory two-bullet tool kit and a shot- distance limitation of 300 yards.   

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    And so it went. The 3-shot group at 200 yards I got from the 225-grainer was less than 0.6 inches. The 3-shot group I got from the 250 grainer was right at ¾ inch at 200 yards, an accuracy gift that I gratefully took. With this accuracy in hand, I decided to give both bullets a go to comparatively assess their field terminal performance. I took my 358 Winchester to Africa several years ago prior to any gel testing.   

    There was a hidden agenda with using my 358 Winchester. It has a 21-inch barrel instead of a 24-inch like my 375 H&H. I was keen to see if a 3-inch shorter barrel made any difference in the frequency of hand-to-hand combat with brush that was customary for the American practice of carrying a rifle in the bush with a shoulder sling.    

    I was slated to be in the brushy Limpopo Province to hunt gemsbok, zebra, and blue wildebeest. All three needed to be hit well and hard.    

    Just like with the 375 H&H and 270-grainer, the results wound up being categorized as the good, the bad, and the ugly, with bad and ugly being aided and abetted with a healthy dose of jerk-on-the-trigger stupid.   

    The first animal up was a blue wildebeest. These critters are, in a word, squirrely. They are prone to seemingly unprovoked spasms of movement, most of which involve galloping a small distance. This is bad enough when they are in their own herd, as it gets the others in the herd stirred up as well. But this species tends to embed itself in herds of other, less-frenetic species like impala and zebra. This periodic violent movement gets the collective herd stirred up and mobilizes dozens of extra eye-sets trying to figure out what is going on. Even though the wind was in our favor on most of the wildebeest stalks, we were busted multiple times because one of the other animals literally saw us and bolted with enough emphasis so that all of them did.   

    The vegetation on this particular property was some of the thickest I had ever experienced. The good was that navigating the 21-inch barrel through it was a comparative snap to what I knew would have occurred with a 24-incher. The way gooder was the wildebeest I finally shot only traveled less than 90 yards. The Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” that housed the bad and the ugly was that I actually hit it.   

    The wildebeest I shot was embedded with a small herd of impala. All the animals were in an uncharacteristically small clearing completely surrounded by thick

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vegetation. We were shielded from the animals by about 40 to 50 yards of thick stuff. The prevalent vegetation dictated that the presumably brush-busting, round- nose 250-grainer be used.    

    My wildebeest was about 20 yards beyond the brush in the cleared area, giving me a front quartering shot. He knew something wasn’t right, and was giving the brush we were hiding in the stink eye. I was on the sticks and could see no hole in the brush through which to thread a 250-grain needle. I suspected the animal was likely to bolt in the next several seconds, so I let her rip. After all, a round-nose bullet at moderate velocity is supposed to bust brush, right?   

    Not really. There was a satisfyingly loud ‘thwop’ after the shot. The wildebeest sprinted and then shortly piled up.    

    When I got to the animal, I looked for the bullet hole on the shoulder. Not there. But the most prevalent blood puddle I had ever seen and have not seen since was collecting at the base of the animal’s neck. The proper unit of blood measure was ‘bucket’. I looked closer and found a rectangular-shaped hole in the hide about 1½ inches long and around 3/8 inch wide. It was about 4 inches low and 6 inches to the left of where I had been aiming. The bullet’s traverse through the brush had induced so much yaw that its trajectory had been altered and it entered the animal sideways. So much for the fairy tale that a round-nose bullet at modest velocity could successfully bust brush.   

    A skinning-shed autopsy revealed that the bottom half inch or so of both heart chambers had been sliced through. There was literally no bottom in both heart chambers. I remember standing there slack jawed, amazed that any animal could travel any distance after being hit like that. Warrior indeed. I had been stupid to take the shot.   

    Next up was the zebra. By definition, that was to be taken with the 250-grainer based on Robertson’s recommended bullet weight and the presumed short shot distance because of the thick vegetation. I never considered taking any ammo on the stalk that was loaded with the 225-grainer. Stupid move number two.   

    We stalked this particular zebra herd for over three hours. The wind was swirling and we were busted multiple times. We trailed them deep into the property to a spot where cosmic forces had a harmonic convergence to cause mistake number three, the real humdinger.  

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    We had been fighting thick brush for the entire stalk. Then, for no apparent reason, the brush that had failed to achieve a height of 8 feet had morphed into actual trees. The tress were 30 to 40 feet tall. The canopy from the trees was so thick that no vegetation other than grass and widely spaced dwarf brush could grow. We found the remains of a wart hog and my PH pointed out my first leopard track. It was beyond surreal, if that is possible.    

    It was about noon. The tracker spotted the herd a little over 300 yards away. They were taking their noon break in the shade, directly adjacent to a large clearing. The trees were relatively widely spaced, allowing for only limited concealment. The tracker and PH crawled while I butt-scooted to a log on the ground that offered reasonable concealment.   

    The PH reconned the herd and identified my target. The log offered support similar to a bipod, so I decided to take the shot from there. That was when ‘stupid’ totally paralyzed any remaining cognitive reasoning I possessed.   

    My scope had been set on 3 power, typical for the brushy conditions of the Limpopo. Any adjustment was typically to a lower power so I could better identify an animal masked by the brush. The zebra was broadside, standing beneath widely spaced trees, easily seen with the naked eye. Yet I cranked the scope up to 10 power, wishing I had more because the shoulder looked small.   

    I held on ‘the’ spot and let her rip. There was an ensuing highly muffled, less than satisfactory ‘thwop’. I had lost the sight picture due to recoil, but the PH said the zebra had slightly ducked his head, indicating a hit.

        D:  You hit low, didn’t you?   

       GG:         You betcha! Not only that, my zero was 150 yards, so I really hit low!   

       D:  Do you know what the distance was?   

       GG:         I paced it at about 230 yards.    

       D:  Ouch.   

      GG:         When I stood up and started to walk to the spot of the shot, I immediately had a Han Solo “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” moment. Within 10 yards of travel, I knew I had badly misjudged the distance and had hit way low. Hell,

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I hadn’t even considered the distance during the shot preparation. As I walked, I thought “6 inches low, at least.”   

    The paced distance confirmed the “oh $#!+”: 230 yards. If the aim had been true, my ballistics program predicted an impact about 6½ inches below the center of the heart, likely somewhere on a shoulder joint. If I had yanked it, Gawd knows where I hit. The estimated impact velocity was about 1950 fps, so slow the zebra could have seen it coming. I was certain I had produced a train wreck of epic proportions.    

    There was a melee of tracks in the sandy soil. No blood. Without a word, both the tracker and my PH studied the ground for some manner of clue. Reading body language, I deduced that none was found. My PH told me to wait under a tree while he and the tracker did a recon. I literally looked up into the tree, knowing I would see a leopard. It was that kind of karma, all bad.    

    I stood there in complete silence for about 10 minutes, totally isolated and alone. It was awful. I kept scanning the perimeter of the clearing’s tree line for my connections back to civilization. I didn’t know where I was nor what direction was ‘rescue’. I was the Great White Blunder on full display. A two-legged hors d’oeuvre, completely dependent on expertise I knew absolutely nothing about.    

    I caught sight of my PH on the far side of the clearing. He was motioning me to join him. I dog-trotted over and he told me the tracker had found the zebra’s trail. There was blood. The PH was matter of fact. No telegraphing of good or bad news. The prospect of redemption was not a consideration given the severity of the FUBAR. It was like I was in the middle of a swiftly moving current, and the current would dictate the outcome, not me. For a control freak, not easy to go with the flow.   

    The tracker had followed the herd. The PH had circled the clearing’s periphery to check for a solitary departure indicative of a wounded animal. My zebra had run with the herd for what I estimated to be at least 300 yards before peeling off on its own. The tracker had contacted the PH about his discovery via cell phone. That was about the last time any electromechanical or voice waves were transmitted between the two. Everything else appeared to be telepathy.    

    We found the tracker waiting patiently at the peel-off point. The PH pointed to the ground and said “Blood.” He was pointing to a dollop no bigger than the eraser head of a pencil. He dabbed his finger into the dollop, completely obliterating it. He examined his finger and said “Bone; that’s good.”    

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    I stood there slack jawed. The surficial soil was fine silty sand. The man had just differentiated bone fragments from sand grains. Holey buckets.    

    The slow, seemingly foot-by-foot ground examination then began. The primary trailing method was from the animal’s tracks. A small dollop of blood would periodically show up. With distance, I noticed that the dollops began to occur more frequently, every once in a while, expanding to a nickel or to a quarter-sized splotch. At the first quarter-sized splotch of blood, I dabbed in my finger and examined the result: a prevalent frequency of small linear bone shards compared to the round mini-pellets of sand. Bone indeed.   

    There were intervals of about 50 to 75 yards where I could see no blood. This inferred interval of no blood was followed by a very short interval of a larger number of relatively big blood splotches. It was as if the flow of bone-laden blood had tried to self-seal with periodic bone dams. The bone dams then broke, allowing the collected blood to spurt. The frequency of the larger splotches increased. I allowed myself to consider the possibility that we would find the animal.    

    Then the blood stopped, immediately followed by the trail intersecting an ‘animal interstate’ at least 10 yards wide. All manner of tracks was plainly visible. Without a word, the PH broke right and the tracker broke left to investigate. I stood there and watched as each searched the ground for clues. They reconvened and the PH pointed to the right. The tracker pointed to the left and muttered a few words in Afrikaans. The PH shrugged his shoulders and we moved to the left, following the tracker. “Universal truth,” I thought; “Never argue with your expert.”    

    We followed the animal interstate for about 50 to 60 yards, then abruptly turned right, back into the general direction we had been trending. It was then that I realized the wind had been at our back, and we were once again heading downwind. The zebra was in DEFCON 5 ever since it had split off from the herd, using its sense of smell to assess vulnerability to the rear. It had apparently winded us. In response, it had cut 90 degrees to the left, traveled about 60 yards, then cut back to its original, down-wind track. Incredible.    

    Within about 100 yards, we encountered more blood, this time a significant spurt. The tracker had slowed down even more and had begun to crouch slightly as he methodically and carefully placed his feet. Suddenly the tracker and the PH froze in unison. The PH quickly positioned the sticks. As tail-end Charley, I couldn’t see clearly in front of me, but the stick placement meant they had found the zebra and it was a doable shot.    

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    As I carefully walked up to the sticks, I saw the zebra about 150 yards ahead. It was to be a right rear quartering shot at an extremely shallow angle. The zebra appeared to be spasmodically quivering. I got on the sticks and let the second shot go. At the ‘thwop’ of the impact, the animal lurched forward and ran less than about 300 yards ahead and again stopped. We dog trotted up and once again the PH positioned the sticks, this time for a shallow angle left rear quartering shot. My shot was again at about 150 yards. Instead of just quivering, the animal had begun to noticeably shake with the effort it took to remain on its feet.   

    I took the third shot and heard the tell-tale ‘thwop’. Then I stood in awe as the zebra just stood there, quivering and spasming violently, unwilling to go down. The PH circled to the left to get me into position for a fourth shot, this one a full broadside. He once again positioned the sticks. As I took aim, the zebra collapsed. It had been a little over two hours since the first shot to the third, one of the worst two hours of my life.    

    When we rolled the zebra onto its stomach for pictures, I could see that my first shot had impacted on what appeared to be the shoulder joint itself, about 7 inches or so below my aim point. I realized then that my accuracy requirement wasn’t an esoteric flight of fancy. The bullet impact was right where it should have been given the unconscionable bust in range non-estimation. Any less accuracy would likely have resulted in a bullet impact where it would not have been as debilitating or even debilitating at all.   

    Excessive political spin, admittedly. But I needed to tell myself I had done at least something right.   

    Circumstances prevented me from having a skinning-shed autopsy. The tracker presented me with only one bullet that the skinner had recovered and given to him. The bullet had no mushroom and looked as those it had been crimped with plyers at its cannelure. The skinner hadn’t told the tracker where he retrieved the bullet, and the tracker hadn’t asked.   

    D:  Murphy was messing with you on the hunt, and it sounds like he skinned the zebra himself. What do you think happened?   

    GG:         Gross speculation. I think I was presented with my first bullet on the shoulder. I don’t think the bullet got beyond the shoulder joint, as indicated by the way it deformed. Its impact likely cracked and shattered enough bone to send the

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shards into the near-side lung. The 35-caliber entrance hole was large enough not to self-seal, and it offered a conduit for blood from the damaged lung to exit. The zebra’s effort to get the damaged joint to function was likely off the charts, causing the heart and lungs to work extraordinarily hard. The effort accelerated the blood loss. Beyond that, I am truly clueless.   

    D:  What happened to the bullets from the two rear quartering shots?   

    GG:         No clue. Probably somewhere in the rumen, a place where a skinner is not going to ‘go fish’. I think because the 250-grainer I used had a round nose, it expanded quicker upon impact, causing it to penetrate less. My gel testing showed me that about round-nose bullets.   

    D:  Sounds like a witch doctor put a curse on you. Did you ever use the 225-grain boat-tail spitzer to break this string of bad luck?   

    GG:         You are being more than kind by calling any of this bad luck. The jerk on the trigger was the reason for most of the 250-grainer’s not-so-flattering story line. That being said, I actually felt I needed relief and did switch to the 225-grainer.   

    I gave it a go on my gemsbok. Long story short: I got a front quartering shot at about 130 yards. Took out the plumbing on the top of the heart. The gemsbok dropped and turned into a quivering lump of jello. My PH said he had never seen a gemsbok react like that. I suspect that I affected the animal’s nervous system in some unknown way to get that kind of effect. Nonetheless, the bullet’s terminal performance made me feel good after my buffoonery on the wildebeest and zebra.   

    D:  (Smirking) But the 225’s performance wasn’t enough redemption, was it? The fact that you spent so much gel-testing effort with a 250-grain cup and core flat-base spitzer as well as multiple tests of a 225-grain solid copper bullet implies some kind of purgatory for both you and your 358 Winchester.   

    GG:         Very astute speculation and absolutely correct.    

    The plane trip back home was not pleasant. As a hunter, I had made two very bad decisions associated with taking my shots. I tried to shield the 250-grain round nose from the political collateral damage embedded with both the wildebeest and the zebra. The fact that these two animals were ‘in the salt’ carried no real relevance at the time because of the measuring stick I insisted on using.    

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    D:  Which was?   

    GG:         ‘Stop’ meant drop at the shot. I was unwilling to accept anything less. Based on what I had seen with the 375 H&H and the performance of both my son’s and my own 358 Winchester, I believed the 375 H&H with some magic bullet was the tool necessary to produce consistent drop-at-the-shot terminal performance. With the 358 Winchester, it had occurred only once in a total of six attempts. I considered what had occurred with the 225-grainer on the gemsbok to be an aberrant outlier that likely would not ever be repeated. I then decided I would pursue my drop-at-the-shot vision quest with my 375 H&H and the 270-grainer I previously discussed.   

    D:  So, the hunt with the 375 H&H, 270-grainer occurred after the 358 Winchester hunt?   

    GG:         Yes.    

    D:  Then whatever caused you to resurrect the 358 Winchester for consideration as an Africa chambering?   

    GG:         Recognition and acceptance of a different definition of ‘stop’.    

    D:  Which is?   

    GG:         Pile up within 150 to 200 yards of where they stood at the shot.   

    D:  What prompted that cosmic definition revision?   

    GG:         The concept of cull hunting for the collective benefit and well-being of the herd. I wasn’t killing for myself; I was killing to enhance a resource. Big psychological difference.    

    D:  I get it. But a green weenie wouldn’t.    

    GG:         Unfortunately, no. They have yet to understand that there is no assisted- living facility for zebra or other such critters. Although striped horse meat doesn’t taste like chicken, it ain’t bad.    

    D:  So, pure and simple, it was the notion of culling that got you to reconsider your 358 Winchester?   

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    GG:         Yes. But the 250-grain round nose had to go, if for nothing else than it was now obsolete and no longer on the shelf. It needed to be replaced by another 250-grainer, as that was Robertson’s baseline bullet weight for 35-caliber chamberings. The fact that my 250-grain round nose hadn’t ‘busted brush’ worth beans was the first dirty mark for a round-nose bullet profile.    

    The published BC of any bullet tends to be a minor consideration for me, but the sedate muzzle velocity of my 358 indicated a higher BC was preferable to keep the bullet from running out of steam by 200 yards, bullet drop be damned. That meant a flat-base spitzer could potentially improve terminal performance beyond 150 yards out to 200 yards. Finally, the penetration potential of any round-nose bullet when used in a rear quartering shot had become suspect. Not being presented with two such bullets from my ill-fated zebra hunt had become significant and indicated a potential terminal performance issue.    

    The 250-grainer I finally selected seemed to have acceptable performance based on online posts from the folks who hunt primarily in Alaska. As long as it wasn’t pushed too hard, this cup and core bullet apparently performed well on bear and moose. With the puny boiler room of the 358 Winchester’s case, pushing any 250-grain bullet ‘hard’ was difficult to imagine.    

    I ran numbers on it. If I replicated the muzzle velocity I had achieved with the 250-grain round nose, the impact velocity of this 250-grain spitzer would be about 2235 fps at 135 yards. More importantly, its impact velocity at 200 yards would be about 2130 fps, close to a 200 fps increase over the 250-grain round nose. Not only that, the spitzer would likely support a 175-yard zero, one I preferred and had become accustomed to for use in most areas of the Limpopo.   

    D:  And the 225-grain solid copper bullet?   

    GG:         I was paying homage to the PHs who preferred the use of solid copper bullets. Prior to running the gel tests, it was reasonable to speculate that it could be a worthy substitute for the 250-grain spitzer cup and core I had selected.    

    D:  Do you have any field experience with any 35-caliber bullets you tested?   

    GG:         Only the 225-grain cup and core boat-tail spitzer I used to take the gemsbok.  

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    D:  So how would you summarize your current assessment of your 358 Winchester and the bullets you have tested?   

    GG:         If the 375 H&H is a broadsword, the 358 Winchester is a cutlass. As you already know, the 250-grainer was the bullet contest winner. In terms of accuracy, the 250-grainer produced a 3-shot group less than 0.7 inches at 200 yards. This accuracy is not nearly as good as the 300-grainer, but is better than my arbitrary accuracy criterion of ¾ inch.   

    In terms of terminal performance, the 250-grainer is an overachiever compared to the 300-grainer. It out penetrated the 300-grainer by 8 inches and had a blood-shot wound cavity volume within about 11% of it. The 250-grainer would likely be the go-to work horse for my 358 Winchester. The 250-grainer had over 60% more penetration than the 225-grainer and over 40% more wound cavity volume. The 250-grainer won’t punch as hard as the 300-grainer, so I expect a drop- at-the-shot frequency to be less than the 300-grainer’s, to the point of it not occurring. That being said, I really can’t see an animal traveling over 150 yards if I do my job and put the shot on the heart.   

    In my mind, the 225-grainer is a good range extender for the 358 Winchester that should provide satisfactory performance at ranges from 200 to 300 yards, provided no rear quartering shots are taken. Its accuracy for three shots is less than 0.6 inches at 200 yards, indicating I should be able to make heart shots out to 300 yards from sticks.   

    My field experience on the gemsbok indicates it is capable of drop-at-the-shot performance. However, such performance is not likely to occur at impact velocities beyond 200 yards. At those distances, animals would likely travel a ways before dropping.   

    A large-tipped solid copper 225-grain bullet would be put on trial just like the .375-caliber, 235-grainer. I would ask my PH to assess its field performance compared to the 250-grainer’s. It wouldn’t be used for shots over 250 yards. It would serve as my pseudo-security blanket on property with hippo, rhino, or buffalo.   

    D:  So, that brings us to the 300 Winchester?   

    GG:         Yes. The problem child. My PH friend and his tracker hate it. Robertson never endorses it for use in the thick stuff. Even in the wide-open spaces, bullet weights of 200 and 220 grains are typically referenced, not the 180-grain maximum

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that seems to be this chambering’s predominant upper bound bullet weight in off-the-shelf ammo. The inference is the Afrikaners are telling the Americans that a 300 Winchester with a 180-grain bullet likely won’t cut it. Those PH opinions, coupled with my indirect, secondhand experience with this chambering on the wildebeest with a 165-grain solid copper bullet and a 300 RSAUM on a wildebeest with a 150-grain cup and core deer bullet are compelling enough reasons to have let any consideration of a 300 Winchester as an all-round Africa plains game chambering just die in a pile. Doing that, however, would deny the success it has achieved here in the U. S. That being said, I have direct, personal experience with this chambering that didn’t turn out so well. 

    D:  Direct?! You mean you used one to shoot an animal in Africa?   

    GG:         Yes. In yet another Great White Blunder moment, I had not taken enough 375 H&H ammo with me to exploit the opportunity given to me by this particular blesbok. The PH who managed the property lent me his 300 Winchester, and thus afforded me a firsthand teaching moment.    

    Stop and think about who I said owned a 300 Winchester: a PH. Not only did he own one, it was his favorite chambering. The real jaw dropper was his primary load used a 190-grain cup and core bullet! One of the Afrikaner ‘chosen’ was consorting with the devil and a cup and core minion!   

    I had tinkered enough with my empiricism to know that a 190-grain bullet weight was compatible with most plains game animals at reasonable distances. But I had yet to decide on 2700 fps as an upside shoulder impact velocity for cup and cores. Regardless of any analysis numbers, the repeated, demonstrated field performance of this combination had to be acceptable or the PH would not be using it.   

    We were hunting in the Orange Free State province of South Africa, and the vegetation on most of the properties that we hunted was not as thick as in the Limpopo. Not only that, there were grassland areas that seemed to stretch forever. Blesbok love these wide-open spaces. The property we hunted on for blesbok had broad grassy valleys between cobble-strewn hills several hundred feet tall. Vegetation on the hills was grass with widely scattered, low-height brush. Cover was limited, and we had to work to get my shot. We were busted several times due to detected movement. Keeping sound down would normally have been an issue because of the cobbles on the hills, except the wind was blowing so hard that it effectively muffled the buffoonery that was going on that could be attributed to my bad knees.    

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    I finally got a shot at about 200 yards. I heard a muffled ‘thwop’ and saw my blesbok sprint away with the herd. The herd only went about 50 yards where they stopped and turned around to contemplate what had made the strange sound. My blesbok was an easily identified white one. He seemed to be looking at me asking “Is that all ya got?”   

    I knew then that I had badly misjudged the wind and had likely hit him in the lungs. He was now front quartering, so I took another shot with a far more aggressive wind-hold WAG. The animal dropped at the shot. Success. Kinda.   

    We walked up on the blesbok. It wasn’t dead. As it looked at me, I’d swear it was saying “If I could just get up, I’d whip your sorry a$$.” The tracker grabbed its head with one hand and used the other to cover its nose and mouth in an effort to suffocate it. No way. The PH then took out his 9-millimeter pistol and shot it in the neck. It took about 10 seconds after the shot for his lights to go out. Lordy.   

    My first shot was back on the lungs like I suspected. I honestly don’t remember if the bullet exited. The second bullet had found at least some of the plumbing on top of the blesbok’s heart, based on the impact location and the volume of blood coming from the entrance hole. Again, circumstances prevented a skinning- shed autopsy. I foolishly didn’t ask for any retained bullets. There was no real need at the time because consideration of a 300 Winchester for Africa was off my radar.   

    D:  I don’t know what a blesbok looks like. How much does one weigh?   

    GG:         About 150 pounds.    

    Donny sat there in silence. GG noted that the expression on his face was a mixture of astonishment and disbelief.   

    GG:         Still think your 270 Winchester and your 130-grainer are good for kudu?    

    D:  That blesbok is about the size of a magnum white tail on my property.    

    GG:         Yep.    

    D:  A 300 Winchester and a 190-grain cup and core should have turned that blesbok’s lights off PDQ. Why didn’t it?   

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    GG:         I really don’t know. Nathan Foster says that the manufacturer of that bullet designed it specifically for the 300 Winchester. He feels that its use is applicable for game weighing between 200 to 400 pounds, out to about 550 yards. The impact velocity at that yardage is about 2100 fps. That is 300 fps above the lower bound of 1800 fps he typically assigns for cup and core bullets. That intel suggests that the metallurgy of that particular bullet is probably pretty stout. If that is so, the location of my first shot in the lungs likely didn’t offer enough resistance to get the bullet to expand very well. The wound cavity may not have been very large. The other factor could well be the animal’s adrenaline at the time of the first shot was off the charts because we had been busted twice.   

    The PH whose rifle I borrowed had told me that clinical studies by South African veterinarians indicated that the average Africa plains game animal could secrete up to five times the adrenaline of game animals from other continents. Nothing I have ever seen on my hunts would cause me to doubt that.   

    My second shot was on the shoulder. The increased muscle mass may have been sufficient to get the bullet to expand better as indicated by the blesbok dropping to the shot.    

    D:  So, if I understand this correctly, PH opinions, circumstantial evidence, and direct experience all indicate potential fundamental problems with the 300 Winchester. What happened that you now consider it to be potentially worthy as an all-around plains game chambering, kindly on par with a 375 H&H? Sounds like you found a different religion by rolling around on the ground amongst the snakes.   

    GG:         (Smirking) You mean even considering light and fast to be as good as big and slow?   

    D:  You got it!   

    GG:         (Grinning like a Cheshire cat) I slowed down my 30-caliber bullets.   

    D:  What?!   

    GG:         I use a 22-inch barrel instead of 26 inches. That reduces muzzle velocities about 100 to 120 fps.    

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    Donny couldn’t believe what he had just heard. The Old Man was in need of serious professional help. The whole idea of a magnum chambering was to max out velocity, not find an excuse to reduce it. It made no sense unless . . .   

    D:  You had some premeditation of the bullets you were going to use, didn’t you? You were trying to reduce the muzzle velocity so that impact velocities of those particular bullets fell within some likely arbitrary impact velocity range. Correct?   

    GG:         You are catching on, Pilgrim. That was part of the consideration and strategy. But the major consideration was associated with the conversations I had with my PH friends concerning cull rifles and bullets. Those conversations forced me to consider other ways of measuring successful terminal performance, ways that were acceptable to them but not necessarily to me. It was a “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than you have dreamt of in your philosophy” type of revelation.   

    I wanted my 300 Winchester to be an all-around plains game chambering just like my 375 H&H. That meant shots potentially from 0 to 400 yards or beyond. The long-range bullet selection was easy: the 240-grain tipped match bullet. However, the direct experience I had with the tipped .375-caliber, 350 match bullet indicated that the safe bet was to slow the 240-grainer down to mimic impact velocities that had been successful with the tipped, 350-grainer on the springbok. That reduction in desired impact velocity precipitated the 22-inch barrel, not a bad thing at all when trying to carry a rifle through the thick stuff.   

    The terminal performance at short range shots was where the 300 Winchester had apparently received all the bad press from the Africa professional hunting community. In this case, short range meant shots less than 250 yards. These shots were the bread and butter of any Africa hunt. The selected bullet absolutely had to work at short range to prevent a tracker from wearing hiking boots.    

    Serendipity had given me a peek at two legitimate short range terminal performance failures of the 300 magnums: one with the 300 Winchester and the 165-grain solid copper bullet, and the other with the 300 RSUAM and the 150-grain cup and core bullet. Both had been trials by blue wildebeest, with the verdict convicting the chamberings instead of the bullet’s generic design being incompatible with applicable impact velocities, the jerk on the trigger, or both.    

    Serendipity had also given me a front-row seat to what could well be testimony of the ages: a PH using a 300 Winchester with a cup and core bullet as his preferred

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system. The reason it was preferred was because the 190-grainer met his terminal performance expectations at impact velocities associated with the typical ranges at which he shot. The financial circumstances of this particular PH allowed him to select and hand load literally anything he wanted. The fact that he had chosen this particular combination was beyond compelling; it was mandatory that I understand why.   

    As I have said, my first order of business was to assess the game weights the 190-grainer could take. When I got home, I fired up my ballistic software and estimated that game weighing on the order of 700 pounds could be taken at 200 yards and on the order of 600 pounds at 400 yds. As the wildebeest trials had indicated, short range performance was apparently significantly affected by high impact velocity. My printout indicated an impact velocity of about 2775 fps at 100 yards for the 190-grainer. At the time, I didn’t know the true significance of that number, but believed it was not excessive. Besides, vegetation and terrain in which he typically hunted indicated that a shot as short as 100 yards would not occur very often, and 2775 fps could be considered a good upper bound impact velocity.   

    D:  Even so, pretty much within spittin’ distance of your 2700 fps value you finally decided on for cup and core bullets used on broadside shots on the shoulder.   

    GG:         Exactly. A shot out to 400 yards would have an impact velocity of about 2300 fps. Both short-range and long-range shots produced impact velocities within what I subsequently determined to be a cup and core’s wheelhouse.    

    D:  Sounds like you had a blueprint to follow.   

    GG:         Yes and no. The bullet weight checked out, sure enough, but what I had seen firsthand with my blesbok caused me to wring my hands. That terminal performance took a while to satisfactorily sort out.    

    D:  How so?   

    GG:         Understand that at the time all this was unfolding, I was still fixated on whether dropping to the shot with pretty much every shot was feasible. During that particular hunt, all the 375 H&H shots up until the blesbok had been with the 270-grainer. The results, as you know, were judged to be less than stellar. The first shot on the blesbok with the 190-grainer had been into the lungs, with the animal seemingly laughing at it. Even a shot pretty much on the heart hadn’t immediately

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switched off its lights. Although all the animals had been recovered, I was unwilling to call the hunts successful because I had only stopped a paltry few.   

    Later in that hunt, my PH friends introduced the 308 Winchester with the 165-grain solid copper bullet as being the preferred meat-hunting and cull-system tool. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a 308 Winchester with a 165-grain anything would not drop a blue wildebeest with a shot to the lungs. I then realized that both the 300 Winchester with the referenced 190-grainer and the 308 Winchester with the referenced 165-grainer were being used to produce what they considered to be the satisfactory terminal performance associated with ‘kill’, not ‘stop’. In a nutshell, I hadn’t yet let go of my drop-at-the-shot terminal performance measuring stick.   

    D:  You still haven’t, have you?   

    GG:         Not really. From a PH’s perspective, the only relevant metric is a recovered animal. Time to death is of no real consequence. A blood trail is key to recovery, as ground conditions are sometimes not compatible with actual hoofprint tracking. Thus, pass-through penetration is far more important than wound cavity volume. I’m still trying to reach some middle ground where the bullets I use have sufficient penetration for a blood trail, but produce enough wound cavity volume to make any tracking end relatively quickly, not like my two-hour saga with the zebra.   

    D:  So, am I to conclude that when you finally focused on a short-range bullet for your 300 Winchester, you leaned more toward a trophy, on-the-shoulder application rather than a cull-into-the-lungs-at-any-shot-angle application?   

    GG:         Sort of. I figured if I got reasonable penetration on par with the 300-grainer and good wound cavity volume, the bullet would serve both purposes.    

    D:  So, how did you go about selecting the short-range bullets that you tested?    

    GG:         The generic design first had to pass conceptual muster. I had arrived at a 2700 fps upper bound as an impact velocity because that opened the door for consideration of cup and core bullets. I wanted to punch the animals hard, so the preferred bullet weight was 220 grains. A 22-inch barrel would likely drop the muzzle velocity of a 220-grain bullet to about 2700 fps within 50 yards or so.    

    D:  That 22-inch barrel seemed to facilitate checking lots of boxes.   

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    GG:         Yes. The 220-grainer I initially selected was the cup and core round nose. I figured it would hit harder and open up quicker than a spitzer, something I thought was desirable for culling with lung shots. Penetration was an unknown. Testing was needed to assess its potential capability on a rear quartering shot. Other than that particular shot-angle consideration, I had every reason to believe it would do very well on both shoulder and lung shots. I was trying to use old school that had never really let me down.   

    I learned a long time ago that even the best conceptual analytical process can go up in smoke. $#!+  happens. Mother nature and physics always have the final say. I needed a Plan B bullet just in case, one that was uber conservative and would keep hiking boots off trackers. Plan B was originally a 220-grain dual-lead cell, the old gold-standard generic design. However, Robertson is fixated on a bullet’s weight retention, and would specifically call out this generic bullet’s exclusion from considerations based on this performance metric. As I had no test data to speculate otherwise, I honored the man’s credentials and experience and decided to look elsewhere.   

    Since that decision, the gel testing has convinced me that bullet weight loss can be pretty much a non-issue. If I had tested this particular 220-grain bullet, I may have not had to look any further. If there is any bullet testing remorse associated with this entire testing program, it is that I never tested a granddaddy, 220-grain dual-lead cell bullet.   

    D:  So, what bullet was the Plan B bullet?    

    GG:         A 200-grain bonded-lead core bullet that Nathan Foster speaks highly of. I really wanted a bonded-lead core bullet that weighed 220 grains for more punch. The manufacturer of the 200-grainer I tested has no 220-grainer, but had published a recommended impact velocity range for the 200-grainer. That was strong.   

    D:  And the 180-grain bullet? Was that Plan C?   

    GG:         Unplanned, but yes. As I have already said, the 200-grainer kindly disappointed me a little on its penetration, and I wanted to test a 30-caliber bullet highly regarded in that metric.   

    D:  So how did all this turn out?   

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    GG:         I first tested the 220-grainer round nose. It had reasonable total wound cavity volume, as it finished sixth of all bullets in that category. Its total penetration, however, was anemic. It finished last in that category, 5 inches less than the 300-grainer.    

    I tested the 200-grain, bonded-lead core next, simply hoping to achieve better penetration. As I have already indicated, this 200-grainer wound up being an overachiever, finishing third in the bullet competition. However, its penetration was only 23 inches, 1 inch shy of my 300-grainer benchmark.   

    The 180-grain, dual-lead cell bullet with the bonded front cell was next in the testing batter’s box. It came through in terms of penetration, out penetrating the 200-grainer by 4½ inches; 27½ to 23. But its total wound cavity volume was 23% less. It was about a 20% swing in parameters for the 180-grainer; it penetrated about 20% more but with a 23% reduction in wound cavity volume.   

    D:  So, which of the ones tested did you select to be your short-range bullet for your 300 Winchester?   

    GG:         The 200-grain bonded-lead core.    

    D:  Even though it failed to achieve at least the same penetration as the 300- grainer?   

    GG:         I decided one inch shy is close enough. Besides, it will also be on trial.   

    D:  With the 180-grainer?   

    GG:         Yes, in the form of off-the-shelf ammo. It will also be on trial with off-the-shelf ammo loaded with a factory-tipped 165-grain solid copper bullet. Regardless of any test results, I respect the opinions of the PHs and want to see how bullets I have selected measure up to what they recommended out of hand.   

    D:  You haven’t said anything about the tipped 240-grain match bullet? Will you take it?   

    GG:         Yes. Its test results exceeded my expectations big time. I tested it at 135 yards, at least 100 yards less than I expect to use it. Even when over stressed by the impact velocity at that shorter distance, it finished fourth in the bullet competition.   

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    The reason I tested it at 135 yards was I wanted to see if it tanked in terms of penetration. It most certainly did not tank. It penetrated 20½ inches, only 2½ inches behind the 200-grainer. It out-penetrated the 30-caliber, 220-grainer, a legitimate hunting bullet, by 1½ inches. I would expect its penetration at 250 yards and beyond to be comparable, probably greater because of a corresponding decrease in impact velocity delaying its mushroom formation. Its wound cavity volume should likely be way greater than any 30-caliber bullet at the same distance. Its punch at 450 yards is greater than the punch of the 200-grainer at the muzzle.               

    D:    You called your 375 H&H a broadsword and your 358 Winchester a cutlass. You never did say what your 300 Winchester is. I expect the word would be something like ‘rapier’. I have no idea if you have disguised your final selection in some manner of a ‘Goldilocks’ scenario. So, my question is this: if you give yourself multiple trips to Africa to allow the field trials you claim you need to critically evaluate the two alternative chamberings, which one do you speculate will wind up being ‘just right’ for a dedicated, all-around plains-game trophy and cull rifle?       

    GG smiled faintly. The attitude of the snarky little bastard chapped him. But there was no denying he was a sharpie when he wanted to be. GG felt obligated to honor the technical merit implied by the Pilgrim’s analysis and question, even though his style points kindly sucked.   

    GG:         The little engine that could, the 358 Winchester. That 250-grainer is more than likely just a plain humdinger. Penetration comparable to the solid coppers. Wound cavity volume comparable to the 300-grainer. All from a 21-inch barrel.   

    Donny was surprised by the answer. He had wanted the Old Man to squirm trying to conceptually defend big and slow. But at the end of the day, GG’s answer was based on his contest’s winning bullet. “Technical merit,” thought Donny. “He didn’t know how the contest would turn out, regardless of the testing method or how he initially set up his scoring metrics. He thought his 300-grainer would win, maybe even wanted it to. But it didn’t. He honored the contest’s results, bogus, stacked, or legitimate.”   

    D:  When you were talking about the tipped 240-grainer, you said it had more punch at 450 yards than the 200-grainer at the muzzle. What do you mean by ‘punch’?   

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    GG:         When you ask me to explain how I derived my empiricism, you will find out.   

    D:  I need some relief. This has been like drinking from a fire hose. Could we talk about your empiricism next Wednesday morning?   

    GG:         You’re on.   

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