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kind of like opening a new book. There are just so many aspects to it in terms of the ballistics
and the calibers and bullets and everything like that and, of course, once we decided to go to
Africa that issue became a much bigger part of my life.”
So, you have chosen a .375 H&H to take with you. What went into your decision making and
what kind of rounds are you taking with and what are your thoughts about solids vs. expanding
rounds, etc.?
“One of the reasons I want to take a .375 H&H is that [it] is kind of a classic African caliber
and it is a little bit like going dry fly fishing with a 5 weight rod or something like that. It is
kind of what you do. It was a rifle that I thought that I could carry and that the recoil would not
be too much for me and everything like that. I had the rifle made by a company called the A
Square Company. The rifle has a fairly broad butt to it and it is fairly heavy and the recoil is
manageable.
In terms of the bullets, I began to read some of the African literature on this and it became
apparent to me that the people that hunt over there really are in favor of not having extremely
fast bullets because the shots are not at a long distance but [favor] pretty heavy bullets and they
actually like a lower speed bullet than the high velocity magnums. What I brought is 40 solids
and my understanding of it is that the advantage of a solid is that since they don't expand they
are actually in many ways not as damaging although they will penetrate a lot. I also brought
some bullets that are sort of moderately expansive bullets. The A - Square ran out of what they
have in their sort of moderately expanding bullet and so I got some Hornady rounds and it
turns out that the .300 A Square solid and the .300 Hornady expanding bullet really are pretty
much the same [flight], at least at 200 yards. I thought that was pretty good. There is some drop
to this caliber that is about 3 or 4 inches between 100 yards and 200 yards but I think that
should be manageable and hopefully they are not really long shots.”
Any thoughts, having been out hunting your antelope and also going on your elk hunting, how
you feel that was worthwhile as far as your African trip in preparation for this long trip?
“I think that as I have hunted with a rifle I've gotten better at it. It is different and despite the
fact that I had shot a lot earlier in my life, how to set things up and how to brace yourself, and
how to judge distances and what power to have the scope on and things like that are all things
that are not necessarily intuitive and I think that, at least in my case, I am certainly not an expert
rifle hunter by any stretch of the imagination, but I am better than I was. I think that I have a
better feeling about things now. For some reason I have a tendency to shoot too high - I just
don't want to be short, I guess.”
Well, that of course is what even the famous African hunters have said, shoot low in Africa
because you do tend to shoot high and even John Taylor, the great expert of African rifles
[who] certainly wrote the classic on them, said that until he realized he was shooting high, he
was missing a lot.
“Well that certainly is my tendency and I think that hopefully I can at least mentally
overcome that - we will see if I can overcome it in hunting.”
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