When I got up the next morning I was hurting. On this kind of hunt, it’s very normal to wake up a little sore after a hard day, but this went beyond that. My legs, especially my right ankle and calf, felt weak and unstable. After getting dressed I walked over to where the dogs were chained up. I wasn’t the only one hurting; Buster’s feet were really torn up and he could hardly stand. Booie was in better shape and seemed ready for another day. Jake, who had been on the bench the previous day, was ready to go.

After breakfast, we headed up the Moose Creek trail to check the baits. The dogs didn’t smell anything of interest at the Camp Bait, so we pressed on to the Trout Creek bait. By the time we got to the top of the ridge my legs were just about done. And we hadn’t even started hunting yet.

The bait site was torn up again when we got there with lots of fresh scat. As the dogs started casting around, you could tell by their body language that there was fresh scent. As they cast further out, Michael and I waited to hear that first bawl. Jake struck the track and Booie soon joined him – and it didn’t take a GPS to see that they were headed straight through the re-prod on the west side of the ridge.

Michael tracking the hounds' progess through re-prod on his GPS

We stood at the edge of the bait site and listened to the chase unfold. “They seem to be headed towards the third bait,” Michael said as he watched their progress on the GPS. “Where is it?” I asked. He pointed to the northwest. “That way about a mile and half.”

We waited for another 20 minute or so when Michael said casually, “According to this, they’re treed.”

“Where?” I asked.

“In the middle of all of this re-prod.”

“Well, at least it isn’t uphill,” I said grabbing my pack. “You lead the way.”

Trying to navigate in a specific direction through the stuff is almost impossible. In places, it’s so thick that it truly is impenetrable. We worked our way through it as best we could, often walking on fallen trees like balance beams. After a half an hour we really weren’t much closer to where the GPS said they were treed than when we started. As we took a breather, Michael checked the GPS again. “Are they still treed?” I asked.

“No, they’ve left the tree and now they’re down by the trail again.”

I honestly felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

“OK, so what now?” I asked.

“We need to get out of this stuff. If we head north on this contour, we can follow the next drainage down to the trail and that other bait.”

With that, we started working our way north and eventually came to some more open terrain. I know Michael was frustrated that his dogs weren’t holding the bears in the trees and I was just about spent. As we made our way down to the trail, I had serious doubts if my legs would last for another day. Getting to the main trail raised my spirits a little bit as it meant no more side-hilling for the day.

After finding the dogs, we started back to camp. Along the way, I spotted a large morel mushroom. “They grow all over in here,” Michael said. “You should see it after a fire.” I picked the mushroom and put in an extra lunch bag I had in my pack. As we walked back to camp, we filled two bags full of fresh mushrooms that we found growing on the side of the trail. We hadn’t caught a bear, but at least we’d have a tasty snack for dinner!

Morel mushrooms were a common sight along the main trail

When we got back to camp, we found that Mike had arrived to do some camp maintenance. That night, over a dinner of mountain lion cutlets, they came up with a plan for the next day. Michael would take off first thing in the morning with the hounds and see if he could strike a fresh track. Mike and I would take the horses and refill the baits. If Michael got on a good track, we could then ride as far as possible. It sounded like a good plan to me. At minimum, I hoped it would give my legs a rest.

Mike and I were just leading the horses to the camp bait when we got a call from Michael that they’d treed a bear. “Is it a big one?” Mike asked him. “Yup,” was the reply. “Well, we better get you to the tree!” Mike said as he started leading the horses back down the trail.

We followed the main trail for about three quarters of a mile until we came to the second drainage north of the bait. Mike stopped the horses and listened. Very faintly, I could hear hounds up the ridge. “Just keep walking up and follow your ears,” he said to me. I’m going to keep going and get the baits refilled. I’ll meet you guys on the way back.” With that, he started up the trail with the horses and I started up the ridge to get my bear.

It wasn’t that steep in the beginning, but as I got closer it started getting much steeper. My legs still weren’t recovered and I soon had bad cramps, especially in my right leg. But I could hear the hounds above me. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other,” I thought to myself.

When I finally reached Michael and the dogs, they had the bear treed in a large fir about 40 feet off the ground. The beautiful chocolate colored bear was lying on a horizontal branch just staring down at the dogs. After taking a few pictures and some video, Michael leashed the dogs so I could shoot. The dogs need to be leashed in case the bear is still alive when comes out of the tree. If dogs jump on a wounded bear, they can get really torn up in a hurry.

With the dogs restrained, I centered the sights of my pistol directly between the bears from legs and squeezed the trigger. The shot landed true and the bear started slowly rolling off the limb. “Hit him again,” Michael said. Having lost a bear before because I didn’t want to put an extra hole in the hide, I didn’t need much encouragement. I put another shot in behind the shoulders, then a couple more for good measure. When the bear fell out of the tree and rolled down the ridge, it was already very dead.

The bear eventually came to a stop when it hit the roots of a fallen tree. When we gathered around it, I think everyone, dogs included, was really happy to finally have some success.

While bears weigh less in the spring, their coats are at their best this time of the year. This bear’s coat was in perfect condition without a single rub mark.

After taking a few pictures, we got to work skinning and quartering up the carcass and packed everything back to camp. That night, we had a couple of toasts, simply to “the bear.”

Michael with the skinned out hide

My flight from Minneapolis to Missoula was a bit rough, but I made with all of my gear intact. The Delta ticketing agent gave me a bit of grief because my bag was a few pounds overweight and because she didn’t know their rules for transporting ammunition. Having a copy of the airlines regulations on firearm and ammunition transportation with you is always a good idea, as ticketing agents are often not familiar with their own regulations.

It was cold, windy and rainy in Missoula. Dark clouds hung over the mountains. It felt a lot more like fall moving into winter than late spring. I had arranged to stay in a bed and breakfast in Corvalis, a few miles from Hamilton, which is where I’d be flying out of the next day. I talked to my pilot that night, and he said to meet him at his hanger at 9:00 and we’d play it by ear – nobody every really knows what the weather will do in 12 hours…

It was still windy but clearing up some when I got to the hanger. They radioed camp, and camp confirmed that the weather there was fine. It seemed as though if we got past the initial pass, we might able to make it. With that, we loaded up the plane with camp supplies, hay cubes, and my gear and were off.

The Selway is unique in that it’s the only Wilderness Area in the United States with a landing strip. All Wilderness areas have prohibitions against engines and wheeled devices, but the ranger station at Moose Creek had been grandfathered in when the area was designated Wilderness. It’s nice because it saves a 20-30 mile ride in on horse.

Camp was located at the junction of Moose Creek and the Selway River in a stand of firs and pines. This comfortable camp consisted of several large wall tents, shelters for the dogs, a shower, corral, and outhouse. The only permanent structures were the corral fence and the outhouse, as everything else needs to be taken down and taken out at least once a year to comply with forest service regulations. When we landed, my guide Michael Richie (Mike’s son) was waiting for us on the runway with Rin, the bear-treeing border collie.

After getting everything stowed away, I joined Michael in the cook tent where I had a ton of questions. Richie Outfitters is unique in that they offer three distinct hunting methods out of the same camp: hound hunts, baited hunts and spot and stalk. In addition, each hunter can take two bears and the tags for them are only $31.50 a piece. For my hound hunt, he explained to me in short order how things should work. He had three active baits out in the field. In the mornings, we’d walk or ride to the baits with the dogs and see if the dogs could strike a bear off of them. If the dogs didn’t smell anything they liked at the baits, we could just continue down the main trail following Moose Creek and hope to strike one that way. We would start first thing in the morning, and try not to release the dogs on a chase any later than 2:30 in the afternoon. When you start at 6:00 in the morning, letting the dogs go late can lead to a very long day, as I was to find out later.

As we were sitting there waiting for the plane to make its return trip with our cook and Michael’s hounds, the radio crackled. On the flight in, there was an issue with the hounds and they had to turn back. We wouldn’t be getting the hounds until the next day, which meant that we wouldn’t be able to hunt with them until the third day of the trip. Michael immediately apologized and said that if I needed some extra days to fill my tags, I could hunt free of charge until I did so. It was only the first day, and I already had a good feeling about this trip!

That afternoon, Michael asked me if I wanted to hunt over bait since we didn’t have the hounds. I told him that while I don’t have an issue hunting over bait, I’d prefer to wait to hunt with the dogs. He said that he needed to go and re-bait each location and asked if I wanted to come with, and that we could either ride or walk, depending on what I wanted to do. I asked him how far it was and he said about seven miles round trip. Seven miles sounded like a good warm up, so I suggested that we walk it instead of riding so I could stretch my legs a little bit. I said this not realizing that each bait was at the top of a ridge. This wasn’t just a leisurely seven mile hike, this would involve climbing some steep ridges.

The three of us (Michael, Rin and myself) left camp and headed to the first bait (“the Camp Bait”). The climb up didn’t look that steep, but within a few minutes my calves were burning and I was breathing a lot harder than normal. By the time we reached the top I was winded. As I stopped to catch my breath, Rin took off and within a few seconds was barking up a storm. A yearling bear had been at the bait when we got there and Rin had him treed. I didn’t know that collies would tree bears, and thought that the ease in which we treed this one was a good sign. “Extra days to hunt? This is going to be a piece of cake. I’ll have my tags filled in two days…,” I thought to myself. Boy was I wrong, especially in thinking that it would be a piece of cake! After getting a few pictures, Michael leashed Rin and we backed off. The young bear scurried down the tree and took off up the ridge behind bait.

Since there was still plenty of oats in the steel bait drum, we didn’t need to add bait. What Michael did do was a burn. Gathering up some small twigs and sticks, we made a small fire. Once it was burning, Michael poured some used restaurant grease on to it and let it get going. Before the grease completely burned, he smothered the fire with some fir boughs. This created huge amounts of smoke which smelled distinctly like french fries. This smoke was carried to the top of the ridge system by the up-slope daytime wind pattern. Since bears tend to travel at the tops of the ridges looking for food, this is a great way to get multiple bears working one bait.

From the Camp Bait, we headed to Trout Creek, where Michael had a bait in the saddle between two ridges. If I thought the climb to the first ridge was bad, I hadn’t seen anything yet. “Why does he have to put them a thousand feet above the !@$%$ trail?” I thought to myself as we hiked up the steep slope. When we finally reached the bait, I learned a new word – re-prod. I think re-prod is short for “reproducing forest.” After a burn the pines and firs spread their seeds in a thick carpet. The young trees come up thicker than spring dandelions. While that sounds innocuous enough, it’s not. Re-prod is pine trees from seedling size up to about ten feet high packed in so tightly that you can barely walk through them. If that’s not bad enough, they’re all growing in and on snagged-up deadfall (which you can’t see because it’s so thick) and near vertical slopes. Re-prod is, to be perfectly frank, really nasty shit. But bears love re-prod.

This bait had been hit pretty hard. It was obvious from looking at the scats that there were multiple bears coming in. It was a great spot. To the south was the top of a low ridge with Moose Creek below. To the east (where the trail came in) there was several hundred yards of fairly open, level terrain with good grass. To the north was a much higher (1400 feet or so) ridge. And to the west….to the west was a near vertical drop of 1000 feet covered in re-prod. We did another grease burn and headed back to camp for some dinner.

In our tent, I noticed that Michael had a scoped rifle. Since we wouldn’t be able to run the hounds the next day, I asked if I could borrow his rifle and we could do some spot and stalk hunting. He said that sounded like a great idea and that he also had a new predator call he wanted to try out. The next morning, I was sore when I woke up. Despite everything I did to try and get into shape for the trip, my ankles and calves just weren’t ready for the shock of side-hilling. After breakfast we headed south, up the Selway River about three miles and set up on top of a high ridge that overlooked fairly open forest on three sides. By the time we got there, my legs were feeling better. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we started picking apart the hillsides with our binoculars.

After glassing for about an hour, Micheal fired up his predator call using a fawn in distress sound. After about a half an hour of on and off calling, Michael pointed across the valley in front of us to the opposite ridge. I couldn’t see anything with my bare eyes, but knew exactly where to look with my binoculars to see what he was pointing at. On the opposite ridge about 800 yards away was a bear. Bears are hard to judge when you’re close. At 800 yards, it’s very difficult. But, from what we could tell, he was roughly shaped like a big bear. We tried to coax him closer for about 20 minutes. He stood there looking in our direction, then finally took off over the ridge in the opposite direction. He didn’t smell us, and he definitely couldn’t see us, so I’m not sure what spooked him. He must have heard something he didn’t like. We stayed and glassed into the afternoon, but didn’t see anything else besides a couple of deer.

When we got back to camp that afternoon, we were greeted by three barking hounds; Jake, Booie, and Buster. With the dogs finally in camp, I had high hopes for the next morning.

We left early the next morning with Buster and Booie. The first place we checked out was the Camp Bait. The dogs milled around casting for scent, but didn’t find anything they liked. As we were headed up the main trail towards Trout Creek, Booie let loose with a bawl and took off towards the river. Buster soon joined him and within a minute, the howls of the hounds were echoing through the valley. Michael has GPS collars on his dogs, which not only show where they are or how fast they’re going, but can also tell you if the dog is treed given the position of its head. They’re pretty amazing. We waited for a minute or two, then took off down the trail to hopefully cut them off. They made it across the trail before we got there and we could hear them heading up a ridge.

Here’s where it gets difficult. These ridges are steep and the soil is loose. Except for a few game trails, you pretty much have to bushwhack your way through the tangles and blow-downs. Up the ridge we went, and within a couple of minutes my calves and lungs were burning and the sweat was pouring into my eyes. Michael made it to the top a lot faster than I did. When I finally made up, he was looking down the backside of the ridge with his hat behind his ear trying to get a feel for where the dogs were.

“Did they catch him?” I asked as dropped my pack. “Nope. They’re on their way back.” he replied.

A lot of people think that hunting with hounds is a sure thing. That’s not even remotely the case. A bear can flat out-run a hound, and in the mountains they can out-climb them and go through rough country that dogs can’t get through. We were to experience this repeatedly over the next few days. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

It was about 10:00 when we got the dogs back and got back on the trail to Trout Creek. After climbing two ridges already, my legs were feeling it. After another couple of miles of walking, we got to Trout Creek and stopped for a quick drink before doing the long climb up the ridge to the bait. There’s a well-maintained, switch-backed trail that goes up the Trout Creek drainage. Compared to what we had been on so far that morning, it was relatively easy walking; we weren’t taking a step forward, then sliding one back, climbing over deadfalls, etc. But it’s still a steep climb of 1000 feet of elevation. When we finally made it to the bait, the dogs immediately struck a track and took off. They took off to the north, through a patch of re-prod and then up the highest ridge, another 1400 feet above the bait.

After waiting a few minutes, we started following the dogs. As we came through the re-prod at the bottom of the high ridge, Michael checked his GPS. “They’re treed,” he said. “How far?” I asked. “About 500 yards.” Normally, it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to cover 500 yards…except when the first 200 yards forward includes climbing 466. We were about halfway up when Michael checked the GPS and then told me that the dogs were on the move again. The bear must have jumped the tree.

“Which way are they heading now?” I asked. “East, towards the creek.”

“OK, so does that mean we don’t have to keep going up this !$%*# hill?”

“Right. We can just follow this contour around the other side of the ridge.”

With that, I got to give my quads and calves a rest from climbing and start torturing my ankles with side-hilling!

We followed the contour another mile or so up into the Trout Creek drainage and then stopped for lunch. From looking at the GPS, we could see that the dogs had chased the bear quite a ways up the drainage, but from the way they were moving now, it seemed as though they’d lost the trail. We were hoping that while we were eating, they’d eventually come back and find us.

That didn’t really work out, so Michael suggested that I stay put and give my legs a rest while he rounded up the dogs. He showed up about an hour later with two very footsore and tired hounds. With the dogs gathered up, we started the five mile trek back to camp.

It was about 4:00 when we were walking past the trail leading to the Camp Bait. “I want to check and see if anything has hit it since this morning,” Michael said. With that, he leashed the hounds (Rin was still loose) and we headed up the trail. Earlier, Michael had told me that he really doesn’t like to let the dogs on a track much after 2:30. These chases can take hours, followed by more hours of trying to find the dogs. If you let the dogs go in the afternoon, it can make for a really long day.

As we were approaching the bait site, Rin took off like a bullet right past the bait. Both hounds were suddenly whining and straining at their leads in the same direction. Within a minute, Rin was barking furiously. “He may have him up a tree. He only barks when he can see the bear,” Michael said. “Let them go!” I said, suddenly re-energized. With that, he turned the two hounds loose and they took off like a shot.

It was soon apparent that Rin didn’t have the bear treed. We could hear the hounds barking as they chased it down into a creek drainage, then up the drainage, then finally up to the top of the ridge behind us. As I stood there looking up at the top of the ridge, I suddenly realized how tired I was and how shot my legs were. But, you don’t kill bears by not following the dogs. We started up the ridge, which alternated between patches of deadfall and steep patches of loose dirt and gravel. “Go on ahead. I find you when I get to the top,” I told Michael. I was moving, but not very fast. As I got to a particularly steep slope, I dug my feet in and took a breather. As I laid there, I could faintly here one of the hounds. But not on the ridge above me, on the next ridge over.

“Michael, I can hear one of the dogs,” I said into the radio. “Yeah, that must be Buster. I have Booie up here with me.”

“It sounds like he’s on the opposite ridge.”

“Roger. We’re probably not going to catch this one. You can head back to the trail. If you see Buster, grab him.”

Hearing that, I relaxed and just slid down the side of the mountain a piece.

I was just above the bait when I spotted movement. It wasn’t a bear, it was Buster. He was about a 100 feet above me standing in a deadfall.

“Come on boy!” I called to him. “Buster, come!” No response. “Come on Buster, don’t make me come up there. Good boy!” Still no response. Then, he actually looked like he might go the other way.

“God $%#^$, get your $&$!*! down here you stupid #$&#! dog before I *!$%!% shoot you!”

That didn’t work either. I’ve always said, if you start to think you’re an important person, try telling someone else’s dog what to do. With that, I started climbing back up the hill, swearing like a sailor the whole way.

I made it back to camp with Buster about a half an hour later. We’d been on our feet for about 14 hours. A cold beer never tasted so good!

Bears fascinate me. They always have. And while I’m usually a very lucky hunter, when it comes to hunting bears I’ve had just about everything the can go wrong go wrong at one point or another. I’ve hunted bears by spotting and stalking them in Montana and on Prince of Wales Island numerous times. I’ve also hunted them over bait in Minnesota and Canada. But what I had never tried was hunting them with hounds. So this past winter, while suffering from an extreme case of cabin fever, I contacted Mike Richie of Richie Outfitters in Salmon Idaho. Mike outfits in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area and is a dedicated houndsman. After talking him a couple of times, I sent in my deposit for a May hunt.

While I had never hunted the Selway before, I have hunted the Bob Marshall several times. I figured that one wouldn’t be too much different than the other and that they’d both offer the same sort of challenges – steep ridges choked with blow-downs and brush. For a flatlander like me, getting in shape was going to be really important. Chasing hounds is very strenuous and I wanted to be able to enjoy my upcoming hunt, not have a heart attack on the side of a mountain!

The other thing that I decided was that I wanted to do the hunt with an open-sighted handgun. Since the shooting should be fairly short range, the portability of a handgun sounded very appealing. I had killed a couple of bears and a deer with my S&W 629 over the years, but had sold it a couple of years ago because I never used it anymore. Time to buy a new toy…

Since I hadn’t really been paying too much attention to the current trends in handgun hunting, I started doing some research. I had just about decided on trying to find a first generation TC Contender in either 30-30 or 7-30 Waters when I discovered John Linebaugh’s website and read what he had to say about Ruger single-action revolvers, the .45 Colt, and hard-cast lead bullets. Everything he had to say made a lot of sense to me, so I now had another option I was interested in – the Ruger Bisley Blackhawk.

I walked into GunStop, bypassed the reloading supplies (where I usually spend most of my time) and went straight to the gun counter. They had one Contender with a .221 Fireball barrel, but that was it. Moving to the next case, something caught my eye. On the bottom shelf was a slightly used Ruger Bisley .45 Colt with a 5.5 inch barrel. The price was about $200 less than what I was expecting to pay, so within a half an hour I was on my way with a new gun and the dies, brass, powder and bullets to go with it.

To get a feel for the gun, the first loads I started with were standard .45 Colt loads, not the heavy ones recommended for hunting. 7.5 grains of Unique and a 200 grain cast bullet proved to be a very cheap, accurate and comfortable load to practice with. After getting comfortable with it, I decided to make a few changes to see if I couldn’t improve both the performance and looks of the revolver. I made the following modifications:

- Replaced the factory grips with elk antler grips from Patrick Grashorn.
- Replaced the stock base pin with a Belt Mountain #5 base pin.
- Had the cylinder throats reamed to a consistent .4525 inches by Cylindersmith.com.
- Replaced the rear sight blade with a One Ragged Hole aperture sight.

With these changes made, I was ready to start working on full power loads. I order two different cast bullets from Beartooth Bullets, a 260 grain WFN (wide flat nosed) and a 300 grain LFN (long flat nosed). Both of these bullets were based on LBT mould designs and cast to a hardness of approximately 21 BHN. Using full charges of H110, I was able to get velocities up to 1450 fps with the 260 grain bullet and 1333 fps with the 300 grain bullet along with more than sufficient accuracy for shooting bears at 30 yards. Many experienced handgun hunters believe that cast bullets perform the best, and by perform the best I mean create the largest permanent wound channel, when their impact velocity is between 1000 and 1200 fps. That being the case, I settled on a load of 22 grains of H110 and the 300 grain LFN for my hunting load. This load was accurate, easy to control, and gave me approximately 1150 fps.

With everything working well I started practicing in earnest. In late March I noticed that the cylinder seemed to have quite a bit of end-play. Using a feeler gauge, I checked and realized that the end-play was much more than I had realized. I called Ruger and they sent me a prepaid UPS label to return it for repair. The repairs took a few weeks, and when I received it back, I found that they had not only corrected the end-play and tightened the cylinder gap, but had also replaced the barrel and rear sight. All of this for free. Ruger really does have excellent customer service!

To get in shape for the trip, I loaded up a small pack with about 40 pounds of cast bullets and canned goods and carried it with me on five mile loop around my house 3-4 times a week. Unfortunately, a new pair boots I was asked to test inflamed some nerves in my left ankle, causing me to have to take a break for a few weeks in April. With only couple of weeks to go before leaving, I switched to running to try and boost my cardio strength.

Tags: Bear Hunting, Bisley, Hounds, Ruger, Selway

Originally published in African Sporting Gazette Volume 14 Issue 4

“He’s the one standing broadside!” was the last thing I heard George say before I centered the crosshairs on the buffalo’s shoulder and squeezed the trigger. After nine days of tracking buffalo and elephant, I had finally shot something!

My hunt started in June of 2008 when I flew from my home in Victoria, Minnesota half way around the world to Zimbabwe. I had hunted with PH George Hallamore of HHK Safaris in 2006 on a leopard and plains game hunt that had surpassed all of my expectations. Before leaving camp on the first hunt, we were already planning my second hunt for Elephant, Buffalo and Sable in the Matetsi Safari Area to take place in 2008.

When I got home in 2006, I quickly acquired a .416 Remington rifle built on a Montana Rifle Company 1999 action to use on my next trip. Before the end of the summer, I had developed two loads using 370 grain Northfork Solids and Softs at 2500 fps. With my loads developed, I had everything I needed for the trip. Now all I needed to do was wait two years!

When the plane landed in Bulawayo, I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and helpful the various airport and customs personnel were. Unlike South Africa, nobody tried to shake me down or ask for anything “extra.” The whole process of getting my rifle permits and going through customs only took about 15 minutes.

On my first trip, George had been given the incorrect time of my flight arrival and wasn’t there to pick me up. It turned into a running joke between us as we got to know each other over the next two years. Much to my surprise, I found that he wasn’t there when I cleared customs. This time, I had his phone number with me as well as a satellite phone. I could actually hear the panic in his voice when I informed him that I was waiting for him outside of the airport! Once again he was late, as he’d been given the wrong arrival time for my flight.

The drive to Matetsi took us about five hours. While there were multiple police roadblocks set up, we were waived through all of them with no issues.

As was to be expected, camp was very comfortable. They had arranged for us to stay in a camp inside of Wankie National Park about a mile outside of our assigned concession. The next morning we began driving the various roads that cut the concession into blocks, focusing our attention on the boundary between our concession and the Botswana border.

In the first week, we saw and tracked a lot of elephants, but didn’t find anything to our liking. We also tracked a couple of old dagga boys, but when we finally caught up to them, George felt we could do better. In addition to the buffalo and elephant, we also located a very good sable, which managed to give us the slip several times that first week.

By the ninth day of the trip, everyone was getting a little antsy. We were doing a lot of walking and driving, but hadn’t done any shooting. As we drove down the border road, we could see several fresh piles of buffalo dung in front of us. The soft dust of the road held the fresh tracks of at least one hundred buffalo that had just crossed into our concession from Botswana.

We hadn’t been on the tracks for more than fifteen minutes when we spotted the first buffalo. For the next five hours, we kept circling in front of them, trying to get a good look at what was in the herd. In addition to the cows and calves, there were at least a dozen hard-bossed bulls mixed in.

A little before noon, the herd arrived at Nyoni Pan, a familiar place to us as we’d been checking it for spoor at least once a day. When they arrived, the whole herd crashed into the remaining water. While they were preoccupied, George, my videographer Richard Rauch and I made our final stalk. As we approached the edge of the trees surrounding the pan, George spotted the bull he wanted me to take. After days of tracking, the time had finally come to do some shooting!

The bull was standing broadside about sixty yards from our position. Using a large Mopane tree for support, I centered the crosshairs low on his shoulder and squeezed. At the shot, I saw his shoulder collapse before he took off with the rest of the herd. “Good shot!” George said to me as he slapped me on the back. “Let’s let them settle down for a few minutes and then go find your buffalo.”

I was feeling very confident a few minutes later as we started off after the herd. “Take the scope off your rifle and make sure you’re loaded with solids,” George instructed me. “If he’s not dead, you’re going to want to be able to use your open sights.”

Richard found the first spoor from the bull, an inch long chunk of bloody bone. We followed the tracks for another hundred yards, with me expecting to find my perfectly shot bull lying ahead dead any minute. I could not have been more wrong…

After following the herd as a whole for a few hundred yards, George had the trackers go back to where he had initially been hit and start tracking him individually. With the tracks of over 100 buffalo going over the same ground, this was a very slow process. They did make some progress and managed to find blood spoor in several places. The herd had moved into a very large vlei behind the pan. The trackers were of the opinion that he was still with the herd and that we should follow them into the vlei. After some discussion, George finally agreed. He had Richard, Absent (the head tracker) the game scout and I wait at the pan while they went to go get the truck.

As the four of us sat down in the shade at the edge of the pan to wait for them to return, the game scout pointed across the pan. About three hundred yards away, a lone buffalo with a bad limp was trying to make his way towards us through the minefield of elephant tracks. “Could our luck be any better?” I thought to myself as we slowly moved further back into the trees. My wounded buffalo was coming to us!

It was obvious that he had a really buggered-up right shoulder. That was exactly where I had been aiming. As he approached closer and closer, it became clear that he wasn’t the same buffalo. The one I had shot was a wide, hard-bossed bull. This bull was both young and soft. Now my mind was really racing. Had I shot so poorly that I had a pass-through and had wounded two buffalo? What a mess!

The bull had a good drink at the pan and started back towards to vlei. We filmed him as he was drinking less than fifty yards from us and showed George the footage when he returned with the truck. He also confirmed that it wasn’t the same bull. When we looked at the footage from the initial shot, it was clear behind him, so the odds that he was wounded by a pass-through were very small. What we did know was that we now had two wounded buffalo to deal with in the vlei.

We followed the herd that afternoon until the sun started going down, but never caught up with them. We didn’t find any additional blood spoor and no evidence than an animal had left the herd. As we walked back to the truck in the fading light, everyone was quiet.

The next morning we spotted the herd from the truck about eight miles from where I had taken my initial shot. After glassing them for about twenty minutes, the trackers were convinced that he was still somewhere in the herd. George was of a different opinion. “There’s no way a buffalo with a broken shoulder could keep up with the herd for this distance. We’re going back to where he was hit and we’re going to start over from the beginning.”

We arrived back at Nyoni around 9:30. Going to where we last found blood spoor, everyone started circling, looking for sign that we might have missed. George worked ahead, focusing on the edge of the vlei. After about an hour, he found that our buffalo had not entered the vlei with the rest of the herd, but had entered it further to the west.

As we entered the long grass of the vlei, the tracking got a lot easier. Within a few hundred yards, we found a large pool of dried blood where he must have stood and watched us the day before. Another half a mile into the vlei, his tracks were joined by the tracks of four hyenas drawn by the scent of blood. “That’s going to have put him in a VERY good mood,” Richard commented to me. “Those hyenas have been harassing him all night. He’s going to be ready for a fight.”

The deeper we went into the vlei, the higher the grass got. Soon, it was head-high. For safety’s sake, George went back for the truck. With Richard driving, I stood on the rack, providing cover for George and the trackers. After several more hours of tracking, we came to the edge of the vlei, where a dirt track separated it from a large area of scrub mopane.

“Let’s stop here and have some lunch,” George said as Richard pulled the truck onto the track. As we were eating our lunch, the game scout suddenly pointed into a large thicket. “Something big just ran out of there!” she said to George. Grabbing our rifles, we circled around the thicket. Much to our chagrin, we found the fresh tracks of our buffalo exiting the backside of the thicket. He had been laying up twenty-five yards from where we were having lunch. At least now we knew we were getting close.

After lunch, we started slowly following the tracks, with George in the lead, followed by Absent, Jameson, then me. As we entered some very thick brush, I saw Absent grab George and excitedly point into the shadows. George raised his rifle and fired a shot. We couldn’t see what he was shooting at, but we did hear the solid from his .416 Rigby ricochet off of a tree. He cycled the bolt and fired again. This was followed by the sound of our buffalo taking off through the brush.

“Did you hit him?” I asked. “I think so on the second shot, but I’m not sure where. All is could see was a small patch of black.” As we moved forward, we found a good blood trail. George’s second shot had connected, and now the tracking was a lot easier.

Given the thick cover, George and I had our rifles at ready as we followed the spoor. After another quarter mile or so, George signaled for everyone to stop. He put his finger to his lips to let everyone know to be quiet, then handed out cigarettes to everyone. After we finished smoking, George signaled everyone back up and we very slowly took up the trail. We hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when we noticed something strange. There was a lone tree in front of us that was about twenty feet taller than the rest of the surrounding brush. What made it stick out was that it was rocking back and forth,

even though there wasn’t any wind. “Get ready!” Richard whispered to me. “That’s him.” As we approached the tree, both George and Absent raised their rifles and fired. As I saw the buffalo get up, I raised my rifle to shoot, but found that Jameson had moved in between us, blocking my shot. As the buffalo turned and ran, George and I took off after him. We hadn’t gone more than another hundred yards when we both spotted him and put another three shots into him. As I fired the third shot, I saw him go down.

Heart racing and nervous fingers finding it difficult to reload, George signaled me to move up on him. We couldn’t see him through the brush, but we could hear him thrashing. We approached to about thirty yards before we could see him. He was on his side, trying to get up. All I could see was his head. Not really caring about what the mount was going to look like and just wanting him dead, I put three more solids into his head. What really surprised me was that while he was down again, we could still hear him moving. George signaled me to follow him around the thicket to get a better shot angle. As we were changing position, we heard him give a final bellow. With one more shot behind his shoulder, it was all over.

As we took pictures and finally loaded the bull into the truck, everyone was in a good mood. We managed to finish the job and nobody got hurt. I guess you can’t ask for

much more than that. At the skinning shed that night, we looked at the results of our shooting. My first shot had hit the bull in the shoulder just below the joint, shattered the upper leg, and passed through chest coming to rest up against the opposite side leg bone. It got a piece of one lung, but missed the heart and the other lung by a fraction of an inch. The best part for me was knowing with certainty that the second wounded buffalo we saw wasn’t one wounded by me. George’s first shot had been very effective, passing through the tail and ranging far into the body. These two shots, combined with George’s decision to track the bull very slowly are probably what kept him from coming at us in those last few moments.

With the buffalo in the salt, we continued our search for an elephant, but that’s another story altogether…

Tags: Cape Buffalo Hunting, Matetsi, Safari, zimbabwe

Shooting from an offhand, standing position is can be a very difficult proposition for most hunters. While I don’t have any facts to back this up, I would guess that the average hunter would have a difficult time consistently putting all of his shots inside of a ten inch circle at 100 yards. That being the case, shooting sticks, which have been very common in Africa for years, are becoming more and more popular in the United States.

In preparation for my first trip to Africa, I had purchased a set of Stoney Point Safari Sticks to get used to shooting off sticks. These collapsible shooting sticks had two legs are made out of flexible aluminum. When I practiced with them prior to the trip, I found that the amount of flex in them made them pretty much worthless. Not knowing if all shooting sticks were the same, I brought my much-used Harris Bipod with me to assist my shooting.

On my arrival, my professional hunter told me to take the bipod off of my rifle, as I would be shooting off of sticks. When I explained that I had tried in back home and didn’t like them, he asked me what kind of sticks I was using. After I explained it, he pulled out his sticks for me to take a look at. He had three sturdy fiberglass fence posts drilled and bolted together to form a sturdy tripod. After firing a few practice shots, I found that I could quickly get on target and shoot accurately out to about 200 yards. It was a very different experience than the one I had with the flimsy sticks I had back home.

A friend recently asked me whether two or three legged shooting sticks were better. That conversation led me to do some testing, as I really didn’t know what the answer was. I decided to perform the following test: Firing three shot groups, I shot from the bench (control group), then using three-legged sticks, two-legged sticks, and off of a monopod at distances of 110 yards, 220 yards, and 360 yards. The two and three-legged sticks were made out of plastic-coated metal tree stakes with the ends wrapped with athletic tape and fastened together with a piece of surgical tubing. I used a Stoney Point Polecat for the monopod. The rifle was a Remington Model 700 .243 Winchester and I used handloads consisting of new Remington Brass, 46.5 grains of RL15, Federal 210 primers and 70 grain Sierra Matchkings. Groups were measured from center to center of the bullet holes.

Here are the results. Group sizes are in inches.

The weather conditions were less than optimal for accuracy testing as the wind was gusting from 15-25 mph from behind me between four and six o’clock. It was blowing the hardest when I fired the groups at 110 yards, which I think explains the size of the groupings at that distance. I should also note that for the most part, shot dispersion was latteral versus horizontal. I believe this is a combination both bullet drift, and the effect of the wind on my body.

What surprised me the most about this test is that I was able to shoot better with the two-legged sticks than the three-legged sticks at all distances. I was also surprised at the level of accuracy I was able to maintain using just the monopod. I was able to hold for “minute of animal” out to 360 yards with any of the rests.

One thing I did not track but that I definitely noticed when shooting was that I was able to get on target much faster using the three-legged sticks, followed by the two-legged sticks and then the monopod. In a situation where having to get off a fast, aimed shot at distance is necessary, the three-legged sticks would be far superior to the others.

While I didn’t fire nearly enough groups to consider this test to be scientific in nature, it did give me a much better idea of the increased accuracy potential of the three different types of sticks.

Tags: Shooting Sticks

Originally pubished in Safari, Volume 35, Number 2

“We’ll meet you back here at dark,” I said to the driver as I unloaded my gear out of back of the truck. My guide Alex had already shouldered his pack and was adjusting the straps. With a smile and silent nod Alex, I shouldered my own pack and rifle, and we began the long walk up the ranch road toward the small mountain.

Alex and I had been hunting hard for the last three days. The camp, run by Kirk Kelso of Pusch Ridge Outfitters, was located on a ranch just across the Mexican border southeast of Sasabe. With seven hunters in camp, three hunters had already tagged out, with two of the deer grossing over 110 inches. This was my first time hunting Coues deer. The hunters in camp who regularly hunted these diminutive whitetails told me that I was hunting with the best outfitter there is for finding big Coues deer.

The first morning of the hunt, I was amazed by my guide’s ability to spot game. I’ve been hunting since I was big enough to hold up a rifle and have always prided myself on my ability to spot game. The first morning, Alex was spotting deer all around us as we glassed from the top of a ridge. He would spot deer with his bare eyes that I could barely make out with my binoculars. I was working on getting my spotting scope set up when Alex suddenly got very interested in a deer he saw moving down a draw about 800 yards across from us on the opposite ridge.

“Muy Grande!” he whispered quietly. After looking at the deer (which I still hadn’t spotted) a few seconds longer he asked to use my spotting scope. The deer had moved out of the draw and was now moving across the side of the ridge. “Look,” he said gesturing to the scope. I immediately picked out the deer and cranked up the magnification. His wide 4X4 rack went past his ears and had good length. “I think he is 110, maybe 115,” Alex said, still examining the deer with his binoculars. “What do you think?” I was barely an hour into my first Coues hunt and was being asked if a Gold Medal deer would be adequate for me. “Let’s go,” I said as I picked up my rifle.

We headed straight down a very steep slope on a faint cattle track with Alex confidently leading the way. When we reached the bottom, we jogged several hundred yards across the flats separating us from the opposite ridge before reaching a dry creek bed. Alex stopped and began studying the slope in front of us, the glassing difficult as the sun was just coming over the top of the ridge. “There he is!” Alex exclaimed. I quickly extended the legs on my bipod and moved up behind him. “Where,” I asked, desperately trying to pick out the deer in the thick brush. “By the ocotillo,” he replied. I couldn’t help a sarcastic smile as I looked at the slope in front of me, covered by hundreds of ocotillo stalks. “Show me,” I said as I moved closer behind him. “There, by the ocotillo,” he said again, pointing about half way up the side of the ridge.

Looking through my binoculars, I suddenly spotted the deer moving parallel to us. I quickly ranged him at 345 yards. Knowing that the shots could be long, I had my 7mm Remington was sighted in dead-on at 300 yards. Moving ahead a few yards, I was able to use the creek bank to position my rifle correctly to shoot up the 45-degree angle to the deer.

Taking a couple of deep breaths, I tried to steady my breathing and pulse. As the deer suddenly stopped, I held the crosshairs about four inches below his back and squeezed the trigger. “You missed!” Alex exclaimed. “Where is he?” I asked, panicking, as I tried to find him again in the scope. “At the top,” Alex said as I began scanning the skyline with my scope. Thinking I would never see him again, I was relieved to see him at the top of the ridge looking down at us. I was just about to squeeze the trigger a second time when he turned and disappeared over the mountaintop.

I looked over at Alex, who while still smiling was obviously disappointed. Every hunter wants to impress his guide with his hunting and shooting skills, and I was suddenly feeling like I had a lot to prove. Not being used to shooting up and down mountains, I hadn’t accounted for the steep, upward angle of the shot and shot over the deer’s back.

We hunted hard for the next three days, seeing a lot of deer, but nothing like the one from that first morning. The nights were cold and the rut was heating up. Everyone was seeing a lot of deer. As Alex and I got to know each other better, I felt more comfortable speaking my poor rendition of Spanish. This allowed us to communicate a lot better and I was starting to feel like we were a team.

On the third night as we were gathered around the fire waiting for dinner, I noticed Alex talking with the ranch cowboy. Later that night, he told me that the cowboy had suggested we try a specific mountain that had oaks on top of it.

As we walked toward the kidney-shaped mountain, I realized that while the lower parts were covered with ocotillo, mesquite and cholla, there were oaks stretching for several miles across the top.

We slowly worked our way up the road, stopping frequently to glass. In between the brush at the bottom and oaks at the top, thick grass covered the sides the mountain. Surprisingly, we had only spotted a couple of does and a javelina when we came to the end of the road. Finding a cattle trail, we continued to gain elevation. After hiking for another hour, we finally reached the oak-covered top.

I was surprised to find that top of the mountain was actually fairly flat. After pausing for a few minutes to glass the area we had just come through, we decided that we would work our way around the edge, making a big circle that would bring us back to where we were supposed to meet the truck.

For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, we slowly edged around the mountain, stopping to glass any place where we had a good view of the slopes below. It was early afternoon as we crossed a small saddle leading to the point of the mountain farthest from where we had been dropped off. In the shade of the oaks, we noticed a small spring had created an area of lush, green grass. In that grass was a scrape. As we looked at the scrape, I saw what to me looked like a fawn track. Alex saw it at the same time that I did and got very excited. “Muy Grande!” he whispered. “I think this buck is very close.” Looking at the small track, I honestly thought he was kidding. I grew up hunting deer in Minnesota, where a mature buck will usually be over 200 pounds. This track looked like a small fawn’s to me.

“Be very quiet,” Alex said as he began moving out of the oaks to a small finger of rock that looked out over a long draw. Slowly, he moved out further and further out, gaining a better view of the draw as I followed close behind. When we reached the end, I realized that we were at the edge of a small cliff that dropped about 75 feet below us. I was scanning the far reaches of the draw through my binoculars, when Alex suddenly grabbed my arm and urgently whispered, “My grande! Shoot!” Right as he said that I caught the flash of a deer at the far end of the draw. Thinking that was the buck, I dropped into a prone position and tried to find the deer in my scope.

This didn’t seem to make Alex any happier, as he was trying to yank me to my feet. “Muy grande, you must shoot now!” he said even more urgently. Still thinking that the deer was at the far end of the draw, I tried to get back into a prone position. Finally realizing that I was looking at the wrong deer, Alex pointed to the huge buck walking into the brush below us about 30 yards from the base of the cliff.

I stood, hoping to get an offhand shot at him, but he was completely concealed in the bushes. “Muy, muy grande!” Alex again told me. “Very big deer! Very, very big deer!” Seeing him that excited told me that this deer was something special. I could have shot him at bow range if I had been paying attention, and now he was lost somewhere in a brushy draw. I couldn’t help but feel that I’d blown it for a second time.

For the next few minutes, we intensely glassed the draw below us. A flash at the far end caught both of our attentions at the same time. The flash was the buck’s antlers in the sun. I dropped prone again, and found him in the scope just as he moved into a small clump of bushes about 400 yards down the draw.

We had a clear view of any exits from the clump of bushes with the exception of the east side. If the buck decided to leave the clump of trees and head east, it would take him over the spine of the ridge, put him in the next draw and we would have no way to see it. We waited for another 45 minutes for the deer to come back out. Alex assured me that the deer was still there and was bedded down in the brush. However, as the sun began to set, the wind would change direction, putting our current position directly upwind. He suggested that we change our position and wait for the buck to come back out into the open. We gathered our gear and began working our way to the west, hoping that the winds would stay in our favor.

On the next ridge to the west, the best vantage point was covered with sharp stones and cactus. I got my rifle and spotting scope set up and we began the long wait for the deer to make his appearance. After lying on the uncomfortable ground for another two hours, I asked Alex if he thought the deer was still there. “Si,” he said. “I think he will come out when the sun goes down.” He then reiterated that this was a very big deer and I should make sure that I didn’t miss him when he came out. Talk about icing the kicker!

The sun was just dropping below the horizon, when Alex spotted the deer. Looking through my scope, I saw him standing exactly where he gone into the small clump of bushes. He was now standing broadside and nibbling on some leaves. Trying not to look at his rack, I centered the crosshairs just behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. “You missed!” Alex exclaimed. Cycling the bolt, a feeling of panic was joined by a racing heart. The deer hadn’t moved at the shot. Finding him in the scope again, I held for the same spot and fired another round. “You missed again!” Alex said, the panic and frustration also very clear in his voice. My stomach tightened into knots as I cycled the last shell into the chamber. I had completely lost my sight picture and was trying to find the deer in the failing light when Alex nonchalantly said, “Oh, you got him. He just fell down. He’s dead.” I have never heard sweeter words.

By the time we worked our way to the deer, we only had about 15 minutes of light left. My hands shook as I slowly closed my fingers around his antlers, which had five points on one side and four on the other, plus eye guards. “He is very big!” Alex exclaimed. “Yes he is!” I replied as I gave him a big hug. Looking at the deer, I found two holes about an inch apart just behind his shoulder. How a 90 pound deer takes two shots through the chest from a 7mm Remington and doesn’t show any signs of being hit amazes me.

By the time we had a picture of the deer and had him gutted out, it was completely dark. “Do you have a flashlight?” Alex asked me. “No, I left it in the tent,” I replied. “Do you have one?” I asked him. “No,” he said as he shook his head. After briefly discussing the situation, we decided that instead of taking the curving five-mile route we had taken to get to our current location we would take a short cut, hopefully cutting the distance down to about two miles.

Using a small piece of string to tie the deer’s legs together, Alex slung the deer over his shoulder like a purse and took off down the side of the mountain. Carrying both of our packs and my rifle, I did my best to try and keep up as we bushwhacked our way through the cactus and mesquite. After about forty-five minutes of battling our way through brush we were tired, sweating, scratched and bleeding. Stopping to take a breather and pick some of the cactus spines out of our flesh, we began discussing whether or not we were going in the right direction. The moon was not yet up, so the only light we had was from a few stars above. After discussing the issue for a few minutes and not coming to an agreement on which way we needed to go, I decided to trust my guide’s judgment even though he wanted to start going uphill.

Picking up our loads, we walked about twenty yards up the next hill and were rewarded with finding ourselves on a ranch road! We were a long way from where we were supposed to be, but decided that eventually someone would find us. Alex laid the deer down in the road, then reclined back, using the deer for a pillow. Joining him, I lamented the fact that we were out of both food and water.

Smiling, Alex asked me to hand him his pack. Rummaging around inside of it, he produced a single can of Budweiser. “I save this for celebrating,” he told me as he opened the 100-degree beer and handed it to me. Taking a swig and looking up at the stars, I couldn’t help but think that it was the most satisfying beer I’d ever had.

Tags: Coues Deer Hunting, Mexico, Sonora

Let’s face it, with the exception of certain new technology products, most things generally get more expensive every year. Ammunition is no different. Over the past few years, the cost of both factory loaded ammunition as well as reloading components has skyrocketed due to increased commodity prices and increased demand. While I knew that prices have rising the past few years, I didn’t really realize how much they’ve gone up until I found Cabela’s 2005 Master Catalog while cleaning out a closet the other day.

Looking through the catalog made me long for the “good old days” of 2005! I went through and compared the pricing on a couple of common calibers and loads from 2005 to what was on Cabela’s website today.

As you can see, the price of ammunition has gone through the roof. It makes me glad that I handload all of my centerfire ammo. Everyone knows that you can handload centerfire ammo for pennies, right?

I paged forward in the catalog to the reloading components section and priced out the components I’d need to load the same ammo. When I did the same comparison, I found that reloading components have actually increased in cost (from a percentage basis) more than factory ammo.

In 2005, assuming that a person already had reloading equipment, the cost to load 100 rounds of 30/06 ammo that would be similar to Remington’s Express product would have been around $50.89 or $10.17/box. Use your own brass instead of buying it new and your price drops to $31.40 or $6.28/box. Since you could buy it loaded for $11.99, taking the time to load it yourself wasn’t putting much of a value on your own time.

Today, to load that same ammo would cost you $77.62 ($15.52/box) if you had to buy the brass or $45.63 ($9.13/box) if you have your own brass. That’s still not much of a cost savings. So does it still make sense to load your own ammo?

With a single-stage press and weighing out each charge individually, it takes me about three hours to load 100 rounds of centerfire ammunition. So, taking the time to load standard, non-premium ammo doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re doing it because you enjoy it. Where handloading can provide a significant cost savings is when you want to use premium bullets. This is especially the case in magnum cartridges and when you have your own supply of used brass.

For example, one box of Winchester Supreme .300 Winchester Magnum cartridges loaded with 180 grain Nosler Accubond bullets will cost around $39.99. Those same cartridges can be loaded for $15.87 a box if you have your own brass, or $25.06 a box if you buy it new. Either way, this is a significant cost savings.

So when does it make sense to load your own? From a pure cost standpoint, most people will be better off just buying ammunition off the shelf. Here’s my reasoning:

1. The average hunter probably shoots less than two boxes of centerfire ammo a year.
2. You can buy ammo for the most commonly used centerfire cartridges (30/06, 270 Win, 308 Win, 30-30, 243) just about anywhere. If you watch, you’ll probably find it on sale
somewhere for less money than you can load it yourself.
3. The most commonly hunted big game animal in the United States is the whitetail deer. The average whitetail weighs about 150 pounds and is typically taken at ranges under 100
yards in most places. They aren’t bullet-proof and do not require premium, heavily constructed bullets to kill them. Ammunition manufacturers know that most of their centerfire
sporting ammo is going to be used to hunt deer, and they construct their bullets for optimum performance on deer-sized animals. When was the last time you heard about
somebody experiencing bullet failure using a 30-30 with factory ammo on deer? Cup and core bullets have been killing deer for a long time. They work just fine at non-magnum
velocities.
4. The quality and variety of factory ammunition available today is much higher than even ten years ago. While it’s hard to beat a finely tuned handload in accuracy, I’ve seen a lot of
people shoot very respectable groups with even the non-premium lines of ammunition available today.

So when does it make sense to handload?

1. You shoot more than a couple of boxes of centerfire ammunition a year and:
a. If the cartridges you shoot are anything “magnum” or require the use of premium (match, bonded or mono-metal) bullets to perform properly
OR
b. You shoot an uncommon caliber for which commercial ammunition is not commonly available.
2. You enjoy handloading.

If you don’t fit into either of the categories above, watch for sales on ammunition, as that’s going to be the cheapest way to keep shooting.

Tags: Centerfire Rifle Reloading, Handloading

We spotted these two impala mixing it up one morning at Lemco. It still amazes me how fast they can move.

Tags: fighting, Impala, lemco, rutting, zimbabwe

If you drive through Ripple Creek for a day, you will see hundreds, if not thousands, of Impala. These sleek antelope travel in bands of five to five hundred. On the first few days of the hunt, I harvested eleven antelope for baits. As Impala rams age, they hit a point in mid life where their horns are as long as they will ever be. As they continue to age, they wear down the tips of their horns. While their bodies get larger and their horns gain mass, the overall length begins to decrease. These large-bodied, stubby horned rams are ideal for bait as they are typically past prime breeding age and provide the most meat for you money.

While hunting bait impala on the first day of the hunt, we spotted an exceptional trophy impala at dusk. He was about four hundred yards from the road in a large flat. The second we stopped the truck, took off at a run. “Tricky bugger,” George said as we watched the ram sprinting across the flat. “He’ll be here again. Impala’s are territorial.” For the next nine days, we looked at thousands of impala, none of which were the size of what we started referring to as “The Big Impala.” We returned to the same flat every night at dusk for a week looking for him, but he eluded us. On the ninth night as we sat glassing the herds of impala trying to spot him, I asked George if there was a possibility that he might have moved out. “Maybe Pete,” he replied. “But more likely he’s out there somewhere in the brush and we can’t see him. Or maybe the cheetahs ate him yesterday.” The day before, the flat, which usually teemed with different species of impala, had been completely empty with the exception of a few giraffe. We later found the tracks of two cheetahs crossing the road.

“Let’s try him in the morning,” George said as the sun set. “He’s not used to us seeing him here and we might be able to surprise him.” The next morning, we began glassing the flat as the sun was just coming over the horizon, painting everything with a golden glow. As we were driving to a new glassing point, we heard a tap on the roof. George immediately stopped and pulled out his binoculars. “There he is!” he exclaimed. “Is it The Big Impala?” I asked. “Yes, let’s go!” The Big Impala was with a group of females and moved into the brush. Taking Absent and Tyge with us, we slowly moved into the brush after them. After stalking them for several hundred yards, we spotted them in an opening, feeding away from us. George set up the shooting sticks and I quickly found him in my scope. “Two-hundred eight-three yards,” George whispered as I steadied the cross hairs on his shoulder. As the rifle went off, I saw him flinch before he bounded into the brush. “You missed,” George said quietly as we watched the rest of the herd bound off. “No,” I replied. “I hit him. I saw him flinch at the shot.” “I don’t think you did, Pete,” Tyge chimed in. “I didn’t hear the bullet hit.”

“Well, if you think you hit him, lets go make sure you didn’t,” George said as we began walking to where they had been standing. After searching for over an hour, we were unable to find any sign that I had hit him. No blood, no hair, nothing. “Don’t worry, Pete,” George said consolingly. “He’ll be back again.” “I could swear that I saw him flinch when I shot,” I insisted. “But, even if I did, it doesn’t look like we’re going to find him.”

We returned that night and again started sorting through the hundreds of impala milling about. “Is that him?” I asked pointing to a distant brown dot across the plain. “That’s not him, but he’s pretty good. You have two on license; I think we should go after him.” Once again we were sneaking across the plain, using the occasional trees for cover. The impala knew we were there, but didn’t run. They began feeding away from us into thicker cover. After slowly following them for a few hundred more yards, we finally had a clear shot at the big ram. I set up on the sticks and centered the cross hairs on him. He was facing directly away from us with his head down feeding. “Wait until he turns,” George instructed me. I took a deep breath and slowly released it to calm my heart. The distance was about 150 yards. The ram suddenly stopped feeding and looked directly back at us as I felt the breeze on the back of my neck. He took one step to the left, giving me a strong quartering away shot. I placed the cross hairs on his flank, aiming through him for his off-side shoulder.

I heard the bullet hit as I squeezed the trigger. After a sprint of about thirty yards, he piled up in some brush. “Good shot!” George exclaimed as he slapped me on the back. As we approached to fallen ram, the first thing I noticed was that while his horns we long and sharply pointed, he was not nearly as large bodied as the other rams we had taken for bait. “The ones with the biggest horns typically don’t have that big of bodies,” George explained to me. “They’re usually very average sized. The really big-bodied impala tend to have shorter, thicker horns. We moved the ram into a more open area and took some of the best pictures of the trip with twilight sky as a background. “Now we just need to find The Big Impala and you’ll have two for your trophy room!” George said as we carried the ram back to the truck.

The next night, we again returned to the flat behind camp to look for The Big Impala. As the sun was setting, we spotted him with a group of females as they moved into a patch of thick brush. The winds were swirling, so there was no way we could make the stalk. The thick brush was at the base of a large Kopje. Kopje’s are very similar to the buttes you find in the United States, except they’re typically solid rock. The face of the kopje rose straight up a hundred feet before leveling off at the top. “If you can climb, I think we can actually get up the back side and come across the top and get a shot at him. Are you up for it?” George asked. I said that I was and we took off in the cruiser making circle around to the backside of the giant rock. When we got to the back side, I noticed that it also rose almost straight up to the top. “Let’s go!” George said and he and Absent and I began climbing up the side of the face. Climbing require both hands and I soon fell behind, trying not to smash my rifle scope, binoculars and rangefinder against the rocks while climbing. Noticing that I was falling behind and that the light was fading, George and Absent began climbing back down to assist me. George took my rifle and range finder, Absent my binoculars and we again headed up the side of the rock.

When we reached to top, we were able to quickly cross to the other side. In the fading light, we spotted The Big Impala and his harem of females feeding about a hundred yards from the base of the Kopje. While he had been spooked and running every other time we had seen him, he was now relaxed and feeding, feeling secure in the thick brush. Using a tight sling, I laid prone at the edge of the rock and dropped him with a single shot. “Finally!” George exclaimed. As he took off down the side of the nearly vertical slope like a mountain goat. I looked at Absent with an uncertain expression on my face. “Let’s go, Boss,” he said with a grin. “I take your gun for you.”

Handing my rifle to Absent, I began working my way down the steep face. Surprisingly, I managed to get to the bottom without breaking anything. “Nice, eh?” George commented as we looked down at The Big Impala. His lyre-shaped horns were shiny-black and sharply pointed. “He’s a fantastic impala.”

As George and Absent posed the impala for pictures, taking advantage of the setting sun for a backdrop, I looked him over. There was a spot on his back where the hair was shaved off in a straight line. When I reviewed the footage from when I thought I hit him the first time, you can actually the bullet crease him right over his back.

Tags: Impala Hunting, lemco, Safari, zimbabwe