The Rifleman's African Heritage, Rifle Hunting (Fall 1998)

An African safari offers the opportunity to hunt and/or photograph a variety of species for less than the price of an Alaskan brown bear hunt.

It surprises me to hear American deer hunters, keen to add pronghorn, elk, caribou and other North American game to their adventures, profess disinterest in African hunting. “Who would want to shoot an elephant?” they say, or “Sure I’d like to see those great herds of wildebeest and zebra someday, but I have absolutely no interest in hunting all those odd-looking antelopes.”

Come on.  No interest in exploring the most famous hunting destination in history?  No interest in hunting the world’s greatest diversity and abundance of horned game?  No interest in following in the footsteps of some of the greatest hunters of the past two centuries?  No interest in hearing elephants trumpet, hippos bellow, wildebeests grunt?  No desire to shiver as the lion’s roar filters through the flimsy canvas of your tent?

One might be tempted to accuse such fellows of provincialism or limited imaginations, but I think something else holds them back.  Cost.  Average working Joes, imagining the great cost of an African safari, have convinced themselves they really aren’t interested anyway.

Too bad.  You might be selling yourself short, missing out on the greatest predatory experience in the known universe and mistaken about the expense.  While Africa is more costly than a back-yard whitetail hunt, it can be less expensive than an Alaskan moose hunt and provide a whole lot more hunting, shooting, trophies and adventures.

“Is that a good one?” I whispered into my guides’s ear as we hunched under the thorn trees on my first morning of hunting in Africa, watching a troop of warthogs approach, their upturned tusks gleaming.

“No.  Too small.  See.  Sows with nearly grown young.  Maybe a boar will bring up the rear.”  The gray hogs tip-toed across our front, sticking their flat noses here and there for morsels until they passed into the brush.  “Let’s go,” Rusty Labuschagne said.  The atheletic professional hunter clicked his tongue, glanced to right and left, and waved forward his outriding native trackers.  We were hunting the unsettled valley of the Shangani River in Zimbabwe, dry in the winter season but still attracting varied game that prowled the sandy course for shallow wells dug out by warthogs.  The cool, dry air, desiccated ground and thorny scrub brush were comparable to the habitat of a south Texas ranch but much richer in game.

“Tsessebe,” Rusty said, pointing with his chin to a half dozen chestnut-colored antelope in a meadow.  We kneeled at the edge of the brush and lifted our binoculars.  The beasts were the size of a large mule deer but lankier with horse-like necks, glossy pelts, black blazes on long noses and swept-back, ribbed black horns.  High withers sloping down to low haunches suggested speed, and indeed tsessebe are considered by many the swiftest antelope on the Dark Continent.

“What’s that behind them?” I asked as I caught motion of an animal the color of a summer whitetail.

“Impala.”  A small herd fed nervously along the wooded edge of the meadow-like white-tails back home.

“Hey, there’s more warthogs coming out of that tall grass.”

“Yes, and do you see that ostrich there?”

So it goes in Africa, an unending parade of new and fascinating herbivorous beasts bedecked with curious and lovely horns and tusks and striped hides.  Who could resist such variety, such proliferation?

Before any rifleman writes off Africa as too foreign for his blood, he should consider that it shares with North America a common heritage in the development of the modern sporting rifle and the tradition of wilderness big game hunting. Shortly after discovery by Europeans, both continents became the focus of subsistence hunting that blossomed into the market hunting and finally and fortunately, conservation sport hunting.  Here the game was whitetails, bears, elk, bison and later pronghorn, mule deer, and bighorn sheep.  In Africa it was elephants, rhinos, hippos, bonteboks and at least two dozen more antelope species plus such magnificent predators as lion and leopard.  Elephant hunts fueled development of 8-, 6- and 4-gauge muzzleloaders.  Whitetail hunters pushed the envelope for superbly accurate midcaliber flintlocks that reached their pinnacle in the Kentucky longrifle.  Then pioneering mountain men, having come up short against elk, bison and especially grizzlies, hurried the evolution of .50- and .54-caliber Hawken-style rifles.  Commercial bison shooters proved the precision long-range power of the breech loading Sharps cartridge gun from 1868 through 1880.

In Africa. Hunters like Selous and Bell were pivotal in advancing the use of modern, small caliber cartridges for taking even the biggest game.  Bell, renowned as “Karamoja Bell,” the greatest commercial elephant hunter of all time, shot the bulk of his more than 1,000 giant pachyderms with a 174-grain solid fired from a bolt action 7x57mm Mauser military cartridge at 2,300 fps – this at a time when conventional wisdom called for .577 big bores and larger.  By perfecting his shooting skills and taking only brain or heart shots, Bell advanced the modern sporting rifle/cartridge quickly.  By the turn of the century, old Frederick Selous, who had hunted Africa from 1871 to 1880 with big-bore rifles, including a 10 bore, was using the 7mm Mauser to take nyala bulls in Zululand.

Bell and Frederick Findlay, another turn-of-the-century advocate of the bolt-action 7x57mm Mauser rifle/cartridge, also cheered its quick, slick, dependable action even in the face of dangerous game traditionally taken with double rifles.  In his book, The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter, Bell describes an instance in which he met three buffalo “at close range in high grass” and laid the trio flat with three shots inside “four or five seconds” with his “.276” using solids, one presumes 174 grains.  During a rhino charge, while employing a long-action bolt rifle firing what he described as the .350 Mauser cartridge (probably the 9.3x62mm Mauser), Bell short-stroked the tool and missed his chance, further cementing his relationship with the short 7x57.

At this time hunters in the States were enamored with lever rifles, challenging deer and elk with surprisingly anemic rounds such as .25-20, .38-40 and .44-40 Winchesters.  The .30-30 Winchester, then heralded as a flat-shooting powerhouse, generated 700 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) more muzzle energy than the once highly regarded .44-40 Winchester, yet today is considered inadequate for elk.  Even after America’s defeat at San Juan Hill under the withering rapid-fire of Spanish Mausers, our hunters were slow to embrace rifles with those odd handles protruding at right angles to the action.  Not until the US military adopted the 1903 Springfield and Americans, Stewart Edward White and Teddy Roosevelt carried them to Africa chambered in .30-06 did the tide turn.  If the bolt action .30-06 was capable of shooting to 300 and 400 yards and taking the likes of kudu, eland and buffalo, it just might suffice for Virginia whitetails and Wyoming mule deer.

With so much history and hunting rifle development intertwined with Africa, it seems only natural that today’s American sportsman would entertain interest in what remains the best big game hunting destination in the world.  In places like Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, one can hunt for a week, take an elk-sized kudu, a whitetail-sized blesbok, a pronghorn-sized impala or springbok, a warthog or bush pig, a little duiker and a steenbok for about $4,000 plus airfare, generally around $2,000 these days.  That’s a total of $6,000 for the privilege of hunting six species, seeing a dozen more and enjoying the exotic adventure of your life.  Or you could book an Alaska moose or Dall sheep hunt for the same $6,000 and pay another $500 in license fees plus about $700 for airfare and hunt one species.

As just another average working Joe coming out of rural South Dakota, I, too, held the dream of Africa at bay, refusing to flirt too intensely with it when I heard its siren song.  As the years added up and I learned more and more about the affordability of southern African hunting, I allowed my heart to go pitter-patter, just a little.  The logistics of such an undertaking still threatened me.  Then Cabela’s Outdoor Adventures showed me how simple the process was.  No visas necessary.  No advanced paperwork for importing rifles or ammunition.  No long series of inoculations.  Direct flights.  Your professional hunter meets you at the airport.  Finally, I leaped and discovered the most incredible hunting of my life.

“Impala!  That’s him.  Let’s go!”  After two days of glassing and assessing dozens of strikingly handsome impalas, we had finally seen our quarry.  The ram of rams.  His swooping black horns seemed to flow back over his rump like ribbons in the wake of his leaping run.  Rusty moved quickly into the mopane woods.  Flickering motions ahead suggested the fleeing herd.  I couldn’t imagine we’d catch them, but that is why one hires a PH in Africa.  They know the game.  You don’t.  Just as I know elk behavior from long experience, so Rusty knows impala.  Slipping tree to tree, always watching ahead, lifting his ever-present binocular to pick out details, Rusty led us along the spoor.

“That’s him.  Beside that tree.  Looking right at us.  See him?  Shoot.”  I did and we had our ram, the most graceful, beautiful little antelope in Africa.

A half hour later Rusty spied an impressive gray duiker sporting 4-inch horns, the equivalent of a 30-inch mule deer.  Keeping to cover, we slipped ahead of the elusive antelope, caught it crossing an opening at 40 yards and collected our second animal of the morning.  An hour later, we fell behind a troop of tsessebes and sorted out a splendid 15-inch bull.  By noon, we’d added a big boar bush pig with heavy, 5-inch tusks.

At the risk of sounding like a game hog, I report these facts to emphasize the abundance of game and shooting opportunities common to African plains game hunting.  Nowhere in North America can you legally hunt, let alone expect to shoot, four big game species in a day.  African hunting is absolutely incomparable, yet entirely within the ethical bounds of conservation game management.

In Zimbabwe hunting concessions have become so financially rewarding that cattle ranchers are selling off their domestic animals in favor of indigenous wild game.  These natives more efficiently utilize browse, require less maintenance and fetch a higher price at market.  They are as wild as the pronghorn and mule deer on any western ranch.  They are, however, the property of the landowner, and he may harvest and sell them.  Thus he gets double gain for each animal.  The hunter pays a hefty trophy fee and meat fetches going prices at the local market.  Most importantly Africa’s indigenous species again flourish in their native habitats.

On government game reserves and hunting concessions, comparable to our wilderness areas, hunting license fees and trophy harvest fees fund management of game and postpone conversion of wilderness into villages and garden plots.  While applauding all African efforts at setting aside wild areas, pragmatists realize that, unless Africa’s exploding human population is checked, it will inevitably swarm over every last vestige of wildlife habitat.  In the end babies, maize fields and cooking fires, not sport hunting, will destroy wild Africa.

For today, at least, herds on government conservation lands are carefully monitored to prevent overharvest.  Some species such as sable and roan have always been relatively rare and harvest quotas are limited.  Other species such as impala and springbok often need to be culled even after the sport hunting harvest to prevent overpopulation.  Thus, shooting four or five or even a dozen species in a day is not an ethical lapse but a reflection of the success of game conservation and the fecundity of Africa.

“This is a good bull,” Rick Lemmer said as he squatted over tracks in the dust.  “Let’s keep going to the river.”  We were still-hunting through a narrow jungle in the shadowy haunts of nyala antelope, royal game in the era of the great Zulu kings.  Killing one was an offense punishable by death.  Under Shaka’s rule most offenses were punishable by death.  Nevertheless, nyala were by nature rare and would today be even rarer if not for their reintroduction and protection by ranchers throughout Zululand, the east-central part of South Africa.

“Female.”  Rick stopped.  He stared at the far slope through a gap in the foliage.  I raised my binoculars and saw the cow colored like a summer whitetail.  Lovely white stripes ran down her sides like paint.  She fed out of sight, and though we waited many minutes, no dark gray bull showed.  Not that day.  But another.

“Bull nyala!” I whispered.  “Rick!”

“I see.  Young one.”  We were perched on an open mountain slope overlooking a lush river valley.

“Here comes another!”  A second bull, this one much darker with longer spiral horns, stepped from the brush.  Within a quarter-hour two more bulls appeared, splendid in their shaggy coats and shining horns, but impossible to stalk from our exposed, elevated position.  “Tomorrow,” Rick said.

When my chance came it was almost too easy.  We were slipping through a thicket toward a grazing meadow.  “There’s your bull,” Rich whispered.  It was 80 yards away and turned to look at us just as my crosshairs settled on its shoulder.  The 180-grain Grand Slam killed it instantly before it could turn and flee.

Selecting just the right rifle and ammunition for African hunting is a welcome task for the serious shooter.  One gets to pour over books and magazine articles, reloading manuals, trajectory charts and gun catalogs.  Is the Winchester Model 70 “controlled round feed” action more dependable than the Remington 700?  Is the Ruger Express Rifle a better buy than the Savage Safari Express?  Would a Browning A-Bolt in .300 Winchester Magnum be ideal for gemsbok in Namibia or would the lighter recoiling .25-06 Remington Sako suffice?

Here is your chance to hunt with rifles and ammunition you seldom get chances to employ stateside.  With the diversity and abundance of game you can experiment with everything from 55-grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claws in a .220 Swift for duikers, impala and springbok to 400-grain Barnes X-Bullets in a .416 Rigby for eland and buffalo.  Or maybe you’d rather wring out your wildcat .338-06 with Winchester Fail Safes or the new Partition Gold slugs?  What not try that Winchester Model 94 Big Bore .356 Winchester on kudu and warthogs in the brush?  How about a mixed bag safari with that falling block .45-70 you’ve been lusting after?

You can make yours a hunt with buckhorn open sights, peep sights or the latest variable scope.  The traditional African glass is a 1.5-4x, but even in the thorn scrub of Zimbabwe, hunters are finding value in more powerful variables for sorting out small antelope from their busy surroundings.

The point, fellow rifle hunters, is this: Africa is not too expensive, not too difficult, not too exotic and not just for the wealthy.  Anyone with a passion for hunting, for shooting, for adventuring in the great wild places still left to us in these waning days of freedom deserves to hunt Africa.  Investigate the possibilities.  Make it happen.  You only go around once.

Hunting consultants for Africa

Contact:  Don Terrell at Wings, Inc.  [email protected] 803-424-6107 Cell

Contact:  Keith Atcheson, Jack Atcheson & Sons, 3210 Ottawa Street, Butte, MT 59701

Phone 406-782-2382, Fax 406-723-3318

Contact: Russell Selle, Cabela’s Outdoor Adventures, 812 13th Avenue, Sidney, NE 69160, Phone 800-346-8747, Fax 308-254-3658

The Rifleman's African Heritage

Rifle Hunting (Fall 1998)

By Ron Spomer