“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…

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.

“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.

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.

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.

62 gr – 3284, 3267, 3228 – group size 1.2 inches
63 gr – 3292, 3286, 3280 – group size .7 inches
64 gr – 3300, 3315, 3300 – group size 1 inch
65 gr – 3308, 3325, 3325 – group size 1.1 inches

None of these loads showed signs of excessive pressure. While I don’t claim to be an expert, I think that going from a magnum to a standard rifle primer made a lot of difference. I decided to go with the 63 grain load, now it was time to try it on game and see how the bullet performed.

The first animal I took with it was a whitetail buck. He was broadside at 350 yards. The bullet passed completely through, taking out the top of the heart. At the shot, the deer reared up on his hind legs and fell over backwards. Since it was a pass-through, I have no idea how much weight the bullet retained, but the exit wound was about the size of a dime.

The next day, I wanted to shoot a doe for some extra meat. I spotted a nice one at the edge of the woods at 250 yards. She was quartering away at about 45 degrees, so I held for the offside shoulder and squeezed. She ran about 25 yards and piled up. When I got up to her, there was no exit wound, but she did have a bump under her skin on her offside shoulder. After making a small cut, the bullet popped out.

It was a nice day and I had plenty of time, so I did a little digging in the gut pile after I dressed her out. The bullet entered her flank, went though her stomach, tore out a big piece of liver and went through most of the front shoulder, but didn’t hit the main joint.

The recovered bullet weighed 81.6 grains, which is 62.7% of the original weight. The total penetration was somewhere between 1.5 and 2 feet.

With our six month anniversary coming up, I had to act fast. I was in a local sporting goods store looking for a rifle for her and noticed that they had a Remington Model 7 Youth Model in .260 Remington on the clearance rack. I bought the rifle along with a 3-9 Leupold and gave it to her as a gift to celebrate our six-month anniversary. (I also gave her diamond necklace to make sure that I didn’t end up sleeping on the couch for a few weeks.)

Over the next couple of months, I started teaching her how to shoot with my old Daisy BB gun. While she wasn’t Annie Oakley, she did OK with it. After she got comfortable shooting the BB gun, we moved up to a .22 rimfire, which gave her a chance to start using a scope. I developed a nice mild load for her .260 using a 120 ballistic tip. After thinking about it, I decided not to have her practice with the .260. Her form with the .22 looked great, and I didn’t want her to develop a flinch. I just told her that the .260 worked exactly like the .22 and she didn’t need to bother practicing with it.

Where I hunt in Minnesota, the deer are very plentiful. This is where I fill my freezers with venison every fall. Most years, I have all of my tags filled in the first half hour of the season. I had a stand that overlooked a small clearing that I hunt on opening morning every year. Unfortunately, this stand wasn’t big enough for two people, so two weeks before the season I drove up north with $300 worth of lumber and built a stand for the two of us to use, complete with walls, a roof and a nice bench.

Jordan worked as a bar maid in a German bar in Minneapolis and had to work until close the night before opener. To get to our hunting property from where I lived was about a three hour drive, so I picked her up from work at 2AM and drove through the night to get us there by first light. As we drove through the snow, I was both excited and apprehensive. I really wanted to make sure that she had a positive experience. I hoped she wouldn’t get bored, cold or feel bad about shooting a deer. While this was just another weekend adventure to her, it meant a lot more to me.

She was sound asleep when we arrived at our hunting shack. I gently shook her awake and told her that we needed to go. When I opened the door of my truck, I was hit by a blast of very cold air. It had stopped snowing and cleared up, but the temperature was dropping. She didn’t say much as we got our gear together. I don’t know if she was just tired or nervous.

I love sitting in my deer stand waiting for the sun to come up. This was actually the first time I’d ever shared a stand with another person. As we sat there in the moonlight, we could hear deer moving around in the woods; the leaves crunching beneath their feet as they fed on acorns. The deer kept on getting closer and closer. While I couldn’t see them, I knew that they were within a couple hundred yards of us.

Crunch
Crunch
Crunch

Something changed. Instead of the sound of deer meandering around, it sounded like they were all moving on one direction. Checking my watch, it was three minutes before legal shooting light.

“Get ready,” I whispered. “They’re coming.” Jordan picked up her rifle, rested in on the wall of the stand for support and peered through her scope.

“I don’t see any,” she said. “Just wait, they’re coming.”

Then I saw the first deer, a doe. She was walking down the trail about thirty yards in front of us. “I see one!” she whispered. “Don’t shoot, it’s a doe.” I whispered back. Behind that doe came another , and another, another. In all, ten deer walked right in front of us in a single line. None of them had horns. As they passed by, I thought I could hear one more following them.

“Just wait, I think they’re might be a buck following them,” I whispered to her. As I peered into the woods, I saw another deer. It was big bodied and following the same trail the does had been on with its nose to the ground.

“That’s the buck. Shoot him when he’s right in front of us.”

As the deer got closer and closer, I strained to see its antlers. When it was finally right in front of us, I realized that it wasn’t a buck, just a very big doe.

“Wait!” I hissed right as she squeezed the trigger. At the shot, the deer dropped in its tracks.

“Shit, that wasn’t a buck.” I said to her. “It’s ok though, I have a doe permit we can use on her. Good shot honey!”

“Is it dead?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s dead. You center-punched it.”

“That’s good. I was afraid it might suffer.”

“Nope, you killed her dead on the spot.”

As we were talking about how dead the deer was, I saw its leg twitch.

“It’s moving,” she said.

“Yeah, sometimes they twitch a little after they’re dead. It’s no big deal.”

No sooner had I said this when the doe raised its head. A second later she hauled herself up with her front legs, her back legs dragging as she started pulling herself away from us. Grabbing the rifle out of Jordan’s hands, I centered the crosshairs on the doe’s neck and squeezed the trigger. At the shot, she went down again.

“Is it dead now?” she asked me.

“Yup. Now she’s dead.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Your first shot was a little high. You hit her through the spine. She’s dead now though.”

As I sat there hoping that Jordan wasn’t too traumatized at my having to shoot her deer again, I saw it’s leg twitch.

“Oh, shit.” I thought to myself. “Please be dead.”

It wasn’t.

And it proved that it wasn’t as it started bleating. Very few things sound worse than a dying deer. It almost sounds like a baby crying.

Jacking a fresh shell into the rifle, I realized that the only shot that I had would be right through the head. My mind started racing. “OK, first the deer gets up and I shoot it again. No problem. Now is laying there bleating, and if I shoot it in the head, its head is going to explode. She’s going to be so traumatized that she’s never going to want to go hunting again.”

Time to make a plan.

As fast I could, I climbed down out of the stand and ran over to the downed deer. I had my .44 in a shoulder holster, which I quickly drew and fired a round into the deer’s heart from about three feet away. The bleating stopped.

As I got back into the stand, I just about wanted to cry. I felt horrible for the way we’d killed that deer. Granted, it was a better death than Mother Nature ever gives a deer, but it was still not very pleasant.

“Is it dead now?” Jordan asked, looking straight into my eyes.

“Unequivocally, yes,” I said looking right back at her.

“That’s good,” she said. With that, she leaned her rifle in the corner, leaned her head against my shoulder and went to sleep.

“Huh, that’s interesting,” I thought to myself. “She should be crying her eyes out right now.”

A couple of hours later my dad showed up to see how we did.

“You guys sure did a lot of shooting this morning,” he said as he walked up. “Did you get anything?” Without a word I pointed in front of us.

We got out of the stand and walked up to where it was laying. As the three of us looked at the dead deer, the first words out of Jordan’s mouth were “Wow, they have really pretty eyes.”
I thought about the look in those eyes as I had fired the last round into it from point blank range. “Don’t tell me how pretty their eyes are,” I replied rather crossly. “Let’s get her dressed out.”

My dad is a doctor and always used to give my brothers and I anatomy lessons when we’d clean game. Since this was Jordan’s first deer, he did the same with her. She seemed fascinated by all of the different parts of the gut pile, and even got some blood under her manicured nails as she helped me with field dressing.

As we were driving home that night, I had to ask her. “So what did you think of deer hunting?”

“Well, deer hunting kind of sucks. It’s really cold, kind of boring and you have to get up early. But shooting deer is fun!”

“I thought that you’d probably cry when we killed the deer,” I said. “I cried when I shot my first deer.”

“Why?” she asked, truly puzzled.

I should have taken it as a sign right there. In the end, she ended up showing me even less compassion than that deer!

60 gr – 3058, 3086, 3065. Group size was 1.2 inches
61 gr – 3072, 3108, 3100. Group size was 1.6 inches
61.5 gr – 3115, 3100, 3100. Group size was .7 inches
62 gr – 3137, 3167, 3182. Group size was 2 inches
62.5 gr – 3205, 3197, 3159. Group size was 1 inch
63 gr – 3220, 3236, 3220. Group size was 2 inches

At 63 gr, pressure once again became an issue, so I stopped there.

With the Berger not delivering the accuracy or velocity I was looking for, I tried the 140 gr Sierra Gameking with the same components.

61 gr – 3145, 3167, 3155. Group size 1 inch.
62 gr – 3267, 3292, 3308. Group size .8 inches.
63 gr – 3300, 3333, 3333. Group size 1.5 inches.

At 63 grains, the last round blew primer.

With a coues deer hunt scheduled in Mexico, I loaded up a batch of the 140 gr Gamekings with 62 grains of powder and headed south.

On the fourth day of the trip, I found a nice 3X3. After missing him at 315 yards, I finally sealed the deal, hitting him not once, not twice, but three times at 435 yards. How that little deer took all those shots is beyond me. Even at that range, the damage done by that soft of a bullet was significant. All three bullets passed through with large exit wounds. There wasn’t much left of the cape…

When Winchester introduced the 300 WSM in 2001, my first thought was that the case would make a great platform for a 6.5 wildcat. Like many ideas I have for projects, this one stayed on the back burner for several years. In 2004, I finally took the plunge and decided to build something. The basis for the rifle was a stainless MRC1999 action to which was added a 24 inch stainless Lilja barrel with a 1:8 twist. The barreled action was then sent to Lone Wolf Riflestocks to have one of their Kevlar and carbon fiber Summit stocks fitted to it. When we got it back, entire action and barrel was Duracoated in black and a Leupold 4.5-14X LPS was installed.

With the rifle built, it was time to put some ammo together. Using Lee dies, I ran a bag of Winchester 270 WSM brass through the resizing die and trimmed them for length and neck turned them. With the brass prepped, it was time to start experimenting with powder. I had already decided that the Barnes 130 gr TSX was the bullet I wanted to use. My hope was that I could come up with a load that would launch this bullet at close to 3400 fps.

I started with H4831 and RL22 in my initial loads. Using 270 WSM load data, I backed off the minimum charge by a few grains, then loaded up three rounds at each .5 gr increment. Much to my surprise, I found that my starting loads showed considerable pressure signs. Back to the drawing board.

I took the rifle back to my smith and had him bore out the throat to allow me to seat the bullets out as far as the magazine would allow. With some additional case capacity, I decided to try a slower powder, RL25.

The next weekend found me at the range to try again.

My starting load consisted of:

Winchester 270 WSM Brass, trimmed to 2.095 inches and neck turned
62.5 grains of RL25
130 gr Barnes TSX
Federal 215 Primer.
C.O.L – 3.172 inches

My first three shots grouped about an inch. The chronograph gave me the following velocity readings: 3384, 3427, 3401.

It was the velocity I hoped for, but I could tell by looking at the brass that I was at higher pressure than I wanted to be. With an antelope hunt only a couple of weeks away, I loaded twenty-five more rounds, backing the powder charge back half a grain and sighted in. It was off to Montana to see how it performed in the field.

On the second day of our hunt, I spotted a nice buck on the side of a bluff with a herd of does. The rangefinder said 385 yards and the wind was still. Taking a solid prone rest over my pack, I centered the crosshairs a few inches below his back and squeezed off a round. A fraction of a second after the boom of the rifle, I heard the smack of a bullet hitting meat. He dropped in his tracks.

While the load was doing what I wanted it to do, I went back to the drawing board with two goals: find a lower pressure load and do it with a softer bullet that would perform at the greatly reduced velocity between 300 and 500 yards.

In one of my earliest memories, my dad and I are walking by the National Guard tent at the county fair on a crisp August night. To get people to stop, they have an airgun range with moving targets set up. “Hey Doc, let’s see how you can shoot!” one of the soldiers calls out as we walk by. “I’m not joining the Guard,” my dad responds. “I’m too old.” This resulted in laughs all around. I have no idea who these men in camouflage uniforms are, but it’s obvious my dad does. Soon they’re needling him for free medical advice, information on where the walleyes are biting and what his plans are for deer season. As I listen to the conversations of men, I finally can’t contain myself. “Dad, shoot the gun!” I whisper as I tug on his hand.

One of the soldiers hands my dad the air rifle and says with a smile, “This is the end the bullet comes out of.” This gets a round of laughs from everyone around. As the target moves down the track, he shoulders the rifle and there is a light pop as he squeezes the trigger. When the target is returned, there is a small hole through the bullseye. “Lucky shot,” the soldier says putting the target back on the track. “Let’s see you do that again.” Three more times the target goes back and forth in front of us. Each time, there is a small pop as the gun goes off. When the target is returned, all of the shots are in a tight cluster in the center. “That’s the best shooting we’ve seen all night,” the soldier comments as my dad hands him the rifle. Of course it is, I think to myself. My dad is the best shot in the world!

As I got older, I started accompanying my dad and older brothers on hunting trips. We hunted waterfowl in North Dakota and Manitoba, Pheasants in South Dakota and deer in our home state of Minnesota. He taught me everything he knew about calling ducks, driving a slough for pheasants, training dogs and finding the best place to put a deer stand. As I got older, my hunting interests started expanding beyond my father’s. We always subscribed to Outdoor Life, Minnesota Sportsman and Field and Stream. I read each of these magazines from cover to cover soaking up every bit of information I could.

For the past twenty years, my family has made an annual trip to northern Minnesota for the opener of the firearms deer season. While we’ve never had much luck finding trophy animals on the land we hunt, the deer are plentiful. In the years when I was starting out my professional career and my brothers were in medical school or residency, deer opener was one of the few “guy weekends” we spent together.

As my brothers started their own families and I found myself more and more focused on my career, I realized that the time we spent hunting together was some of the best family time we had and we needed to start doing more of it. Five years ago, I met a rancher in SE Montana who has some prime hunting land on the Little Powder River. We soon developed a friendship and an annual trip or two to hunt deer and antelope have become part of my normal hunting season. Three years ago, I asked him if he would mind if I brought my dad with me to hunt. He didn’t have any objections, so the following year my dad and I put in for antelope licenses.

To get ready for the trip, I bought him a new bolt-action rifle and binoculars. I carefully developed loads for the rifle and sighted it in at 250 yards. After all these years, this was going to be my chance to teach my father a new way to hunt, as he had never hunted big game outside of the Minnesota woods and always from a stand.

October found us with a twelve-hour drive in front of us and gave us a good chance to get caught up. Over the past few years, we haven’t had a lot of one on one time with each other. While Dad’s in his seventies, he’s always been young for his age. He’s in great health and very active, but listening to him talk about life and the world, it was clear that his perspective on things had changed. In some ways he was more opinionated, in others more reflective. His pride in “his boys” and what they had accomplished was very clear, but there was also a twinge of his own mortality in his words. For the first time, I realized that the number of days I have to hunt with my dad is fixed, and one day I’ll use the last one.

On our first day of hunting we slept in, still a little tired from the long drive the day before. We grabbed an ample breakfast of eggs, pancakes, bacon and thick, black coffee at the local truck stop then drove out to the ranch. Within minutes, we spotted our first herd of antelope. “Do you see one you like?” I asked as we glassed the herd of about twenty animals. A lone buck looked back at us from the group of does. My dad said that he thought the buck looked good, but after looking at him some more, I thought we could do better. Besides, it was a warm, sunny fall day and I wasn’t ready for his hunt to be over so soon.

As we drove the ranch roads, we stopped and glassed several more herds. All of the herds had one or two bucks in them and all of them were about the same size. My dad has never been much of a trophy hunter, so he was getting a little frustrated with me for not letting him shoot one of them. “I think we should go back and shoot that first buck,” he said as we sat on the tailgate of my truck eating our lunch.

When we returned to the spot where we had seen the first buck, we found that the herd had moved further back into a series of draws. “That’s good,” I said. “It’ll be easier to sneak up on them.” Using the contours of the land for cover, we were soon within about 200 yards of the herd. “We can’t get any closer. You’re going to have to shoot from here,” I told him as I pulled out my rangefinder. “They’re smaller than deer and a lot closer than they look. Hold dead-on for his heart.”

As I watched through my binoculars, he squeezed off the first shot. The buck’s head snapped to attention and he stared right at us as in ones and twos, the does started running up the draw. Another shot rang out. This time I saw dust fly on the hillside far behind the buck. At the shot, he took off with the rest of the herd for parts unknown.

“I think you shot over him. I know you didn’t hit him,” I said as I watched the antelope go over the crest of the hill. “No biggie, there are a lot more.”

As we walked back to the truck, we discussed the shot. In all the years we’ve hunted together, I can only think of a one or two times where my dad had missed a deer. We both decided that it was just because he wasn’t used to shooting at antelope and wasn’t used to shooting his new rifle yet.

Over the next few hours, the scene replayed itself several times. Each time, I would get us into place within what I had thought was easy shooting distance, which would be followed by one or two misses. The sun was starting to set when we pulled into the last section of the ranch we hadn’t hunted yet. As we came over the crest of a hill, we spotted a lone antelope on top of the next ridge. A quick glance through the binoculars showed that he was a mature buck. Normally, I would have just set up for the shot from where we were stopped. But given the difficulties we’d had earlier in the day, I wanted get us as close as possible.

The plan was simple. This was the opening day of the season and this antelope probably hadn’t been shot at yet. Trucks are a common sight to the animals and at this point in the year, I didn’t think that he would see the truck as a threat. “Dad, I’m going to drive right up to that antelope. When I get about a hundred yards from him, I’m going to turn the truck broadside to him and stop. Then, you get out and shoot him.”

The plan worked like a charm. I drove straight at him until we were a hundred yards away, then turned the truck broadside and cut the engine. Dad got out, leaned over the hood and squeezed off a round at the curious antelope. At the shot, he turned and walked over the crest of the hill.

It took a couple of seconds for me to realize that he had missed again. Filled with a combination of frustration and disbelief, I jumped out of the truck and motioned for him to follow me as I started jogging up the side of the hill.

Reaching the top of the hill, we quickly spotted the buck in a small wash at the bottom of the hill. “That’s him,” I said pointing. Dad extended the legs on the bipod on his rifle and took aim. The rifle went off, shattering the silence of the evening. At the shot, the antelope looked up at us, but didn’t move. Another shot, and still the antelope stood staring up at us.

“That’s it,” I thought to myself. “We’ve spooked every antelope on the ranch and still haven’t killed anything. I’m going to go back to the truck, get my rifle, and shot the S.O.B. myself.” As I turned to start back to the truck, I saw the antelope slowly walking away from us. I was about half way back when another shot rang out, this one followed by a loud slap of a bullet hitting meat. “Finally,” I yelled out and looked up to the sky for a quick moment of thanks.

When I got back over to my dad, I saw the antelope laying dead a long way from the wash. “You got him,” I said with a big smile on my face. “Yeah, I finally just aimed right for his heart and it dropped him.” “Where had you been aiming before?” I asked, puzzled. “Well, they looked like they were so far away so I’ve been holding over the top of them. I guess they’re really not that far away.”

Pulling out my rangefinder, I did a quick check on the distance. “That antelope is 315 yards from this spot. Now do you believe me that you can hold dead-on out to 300 yards?”

We walked down the hill in the fading light, the sun painting the landscape in pastel hues of orange and pink. As we admired the fallen antelope, the smell of sage and goat filled our nostrils. “He’s a good one?” dad asks, as he runs his hands over his horns. “Yeah, he’s a good one,” I reply with a smile. “One I’ll never forget.”

In the core of my being, nothing (except maybe sex) feels more natural. Instinctually I know it’s one of the things that I’m meant to do. It feels far more natural to hunt (and kill) than it does to sit in endless meetings or spend hours in front of a computer. Trying to explain that to someone who’s never hunted is difficult.

In our increasingly urban society, with school shootings and gang violence a part of the everyday news, hunters feel the need to play down the essential violence of our sport. “I just like getting outdoors” or “I really do it to hang out with my buddies” are explanations I’ve heard many hunters sheepishly give non-hunters when questioned about our sport. Worse yet is “It’s just an excuse to get out and drink beer with the guys.” We use terms like “harvest” and “take” instead of kill to describe what we do. We play down the essential act, the essential consummation, of our sport.

I realize that everyone hunts for a different reason. Maybe for some it really is just an excuse to get out of the house or spend some time with friends. Honestly, I don’t really care what a person’s reasons are for going afield, but by definition hunting involves killing. If killing something isn’t a possibility when you go out, then you’re not hunting. You’re hiking or wildlife viewing, both of which are noble endeavors in and of themselves, but they’re not hunting.

I have a great respect for the animals I hunt. I do everything in my power to ensure that my kills are as quick and painless as possible. Unfortunately, sometimes they’re not. In nature (and I’m a part of nature) death is not always painless or quick. When I make a kill, I sometimes feel a sense of sadness at turning a beautiful animal into meat. But in the end, that’s the way every living thing ends up. Whether it’s by my bullet or arrow, or disease, starvation, injury or old age, everything eventually dies. It’s the cycle of life and our species has been a part of it for at least the past 30,000 years. I can’t comprehend how people can say that humans hunting and killing is unnatural. It’s unnatural for us not to do so. We’re just another of many predators that inhabit this planet.

Our sport continues to come under increasing pressure from many well meaning, but uniformed people. When questioned by these people, if we act embarrassed by our actions we’re sending the wrong message. Hunting is our birthright and we shouldn’t be embarrassed by enjoying it. Personally, I’m proud to admit that I like to kill.

For my hunt, I chose the Lemco Conservancy in Southeastern Zimbabwe. Lemco encompasses approximately 700,000 acres and is home to over 35 game species including all of the Big 5. Hunters can stay in any one of seven permanent camps that offer first class accommodations and excellent food. For this hunt, I was based out of the Ripple Creek camp on the northwestern corner of the concession.

Formerly a cattle ranch, Lemco has become one of the best areas in southern Zimbabwe for plains game as well as buffalo. But what Lemco is best known for is its big leopards. Since this was my first safari, I wanted to hunt an area with quality plains game that would give me a good shot at taking leopard. After talking to George, I felt confident that if we worked hard I would come home not only with a good bag of plains game, but also big leopard.

Accompanying me on my trip was videographer Tyge Floyd of Fulldraw Outdoor Media. Tyge has filmed numerous African safaris and is an accomplished bowhunter. On top of that, I can’t think of a better guy to share a camp with. He was often the first to spot game and was always willing to help out hanging baits.

Upon our arrival in Bulawayo, the first thing I noticed was that my gun case was not in the baggage claim area. When we cleared customs, the second thing I noticed was that George was nowhere to be seen. No guns and no PH. The sick feeling in my stomach was just starting to turn into a burn when George showed up a few minutes later. It turns out he had been given the wrong arrival time for our flight and actually thought he was getting there early. We quickly filed a claim with the airline for my rifles (which showed up at camp three days later) and set off on the four-hour drive to camp.

The first night, we stayed at the Nengo camp with George’s father Lou. His clients were just wrapping up their safari and had taken great trophies including buffalo, leopard, sable and kudu. The next morning, Lou and I were the first ones at the breakfast table. As I sipped my coffee, he reassured me that things would start going more smoothly once we got into camp and gave me a couple good points of advice. Specifically, he recommended that I shoot two zebras for bait as soon as possible; so that once we had cats feeding we’d be able to switch the bait from impala to zebra immediately. “If you can get a leopard feeding on zebra, you’ll kill him. Once they start feeding on zebra, they keep coming back. Then it’s just a matter of being in the blind at the right time.”

After dropping our luggage at camp, we immediately set out to start gathering baits. George lent me a 375 H&H that has been in his family for many years. His father had used it for culling buffalo and he had used it as his primary back-up rifle for the first half of his career. Looking at the stock of the rifle, its checkering worn smooth and bluing complete worn away, I couldn’t help but wonder what stories that rifle could tell.

Over the next few days, we worked ourselves into a routine of collecting, setting and checking baits. Following the advice I was given earlier, I shot two zebras the first day, and ended up shooting 10 impalas for bait. Whenever we would find a good spot, we’d hang one of the impala’s from a tree with a steel cable, then cover the animal with brush to keep the birds off of it. The ground below the bait would be cleared down to the dirt so that any tracks left under it would be visible. To finish off the set up, one of the trackers would make a drag, using the guts from the impala soaked in what George affectionately referred to as “juice.” Whenever we would shoot an animal, the trackers would put the blood, stomach contents and intestines into a 40 gallon plastic barrel strapped to the back of the truck. This particular barrel had been on the back of the truck for over a month. As the concoction fermented, the trackers would collect the scary looking black liquid that formed in the bottom of the barrel and use it as a scent lure, splashing it on the drags and the bushes around the bait sites. The smell coming from that barrel was one of those things that needs to be experienced to truly be appreciated…

By the end of the fourth day we had seven baits up, two of which had already been hit by female leopards. We had also taken a great waterbuck and eland. Our daily run to check baits entailed over 80 km of driving. That afternoon we received a tip that day that one of the game scouts had seen a large leopard near the boundary fence separating Ripple Creek from the rest of the concession. As we drove along the fence we came to a dip in a brushy area and George stopped the truck. Everybody was tired and nobody except George made an effort to get out. He walked into the brush about 20 yards and stopped, staring intently at the ground. As we got out to see what he was looking at, we all noticed that the trail was covered with huge leopard tracks. This one trail had more tracks on it than we had seen on the rest of the concession!

“He must have a kill nearby,” George said. “We won’t go and look for it, as I don’t want to disturb him. Let’s get one of those impalas up and get out of here.” We quickly hung the bait and cleared an area for the blind, anticipating that the cat would feed that night.

When we arrived the next day there were claw marks on the tree and a small amount of the impala had been eaten. We hung a quarter of zebra, attached a timer to it and set up a rheostat-controlled light.

As the trackers set up the blind, Tyge, George and I prepared our gear and got ready to sit for the evening. That evening was fairly uneventful until a swarm of bees flew in one of the windows, forcing us to make a hasty retreat out the back door. After the bees decided there was nothing in the blind they wanted, we settled back in. That evening, we saw a troop of baboons and large herds of wildebeest and impalas, but no leopard. At 8:30, we decided to call it quits and headed back to camp for some dinner.

When we arrived at the bait the next morning it was obvious the leopard had been back as he had fed heavily on the zebra. When we checked the timer, it was stopped at 3:15 AM. It was at this point that George informed us that we would be spending the entire night, if necessary, in the blind. After surveying the area, we also noticed that the leopard had walked within about 10 yards of the blind. “I don’t know if he knows the blind is there or not, but we’re going to move it anyway,” George said. “I think he just may have been running the civets and honey badgers off the bait, but better safe than sorry.” After selecting another site for the blind about thirty yards further back, we reset everything and then headed out to check the rest of the baits.

We arrived at the new blind location a little after 3PM, anticipating a very long sit. The first couple of hours went fast as there was enough light to read, but once the sun went down, there was nothing to do except sit in the dark, try to keep warm and listen to the crickets. The night was very calm and aside from the crickets and occasional snort from the wildebeest and impalas, dead silent. At about 7:15, I realized that I shouldn’t have drunk so much water. With legs already stiff from sitting for four hours, I tried to stand to use one of the bottles the trackers had provided to us in case nature called. I almost fell through the side of the blind as I staggered to my knees. I could see George shaking his head at the amount of noise I was making. Once relieved, I zipped my jacket up against the cold and settled back into my chair for what I thought was going to be a very long night.

At 8:00, I was startled by the sound of claws on the bait tree. “Get ready, he’s in the tree,” George whispered. Heart racing, I eased the safety forward and peered through the scope. Looking through the scope, all I could see was black. I took a deep breath and whispered “Ready.” As George turned up the rheostat on the light, I slowly saw the leopard appear dead center in my crosshairs. It’s hard to describe what I felt as the huge, golden cat suddenly seemed to appear out nowhere in my scope. After all the planning and hard work we’d done baiting, I found it really hard to believe that he was actually there. The leopard was stretched out on the branch, quartering slightly away from us. He had pulled the zebra quarter up on the branch and was already feeding. As George whispered, “Shoot” I squeezed the trigger and sent a 168gr. Barnes TSX just behind his shoulder. The shot flipped him out of the tree and we heard him hit the ground. For several minutes following the shot, we could hear him rolling around on the ground and growling. Knowing how fast a wounded leopard can charge and how much damage he can inflict, it was a little unnerving to sit there and listen to him.

After having a nerve claming cigarette, we started back to the truck to get the shotgun, spotlight and trackers. We hadn’t walked more than a hundred yards when we ran into them, already carrying everything we’d need to follow up on the leopard. As we slowly inched up to the bait tree, we spotted him lying on his side directly under the bait. To my surprise, he was still alive. When the spotlight hit him, he weakly raised his head and growled at us. “Shoot him again,” George instructed me. A second shot through the chest finished him.

As we approached him, everyone was excited. My hands shook as I stroked his fur. For the trackers, it meant no more hanging baits, pulling drags and getting their hands covered in “juice.” Leopard hunting is never a sure thing, and I know George was happy to have this part of the trip concluded successfully early on. Tyge got excellent footage of the shot and I got the trophy of a lifetime. Everyone was smiling and shaking hands as we took pictures and loaded the cat on to the truck. As we drove back to camp with the trackers singing loudly, I realized that while this was my first safari, it would definitely not be my last.

Notes: While the leopard was the primary animal I hunted, I actually took eighteen trophy animals during the fourteen days I hunted at Ripple creek. This far exceeded my expectations. While I’m not an experienced African hunter, I felt the overall quality of the trophies I took was excellent. In addition to the leopard, which we measured 16.5″, some of the better trophies I took included a 54.5″ kudu, 32″ waterbuck and a huge bushpig. For a first time hunter looking for plains game, I can’t imagine a better place to start than Lemco.

My primary rifle on this trip was a Territorial Gunsmiths TGL Personal Rifle in .300 Winchester, topped with a 2.5-10 Swarovski PH. Handloads of 168 grain Barnes TSX bullets at 3200 fps completed the package. With its very good light gathering ability and a German #4 reticle, the scope worked very well for low light shooting. Bullet performance was also very good, with all but two shots completely passing through their targets.

Originally Published in African Sporting Gazette 14.1