Indholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2020 i Man Magnum

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has drastically changed our economic landscape. Job losses and hardship are part of the so-called ‘new normal’ as we struggle to win back ground lost and the billions wiped out during the past few months. The print media are no exception and hundreds, if not thousands of people within the industry have been retrenched as magazines and newspapers have closed their doors. Thanks to your support, at Magnum we were fortunate to keep the wheels turning. We have felt the pinch, but unlike some titles, we have managed to survive the worst and can continue to produce your magazine. However, we have had some changes forced upon us and, as you might know by now, we are down to producing eight editions per year. It has been…

TOWNSPEOPLE CAN BE naïve at times. Many who live in settlements, villages or towns amid surroundings where wildlife occurs, appear to think the wild animals will just naturally stay away. I once stood in the garden of a distraught couple whose beloved little dog had disappeared. For discretion’s sake, I attributed the dog’s disappearance to wandering or theft while I stood blocking their view of the paw print of a large female leopard in the damp soil. I thought it best not to frighten them. We also had the occasional black-backed jackal and spotted hyena coming into the village next to a game reserve on the Zambezi River. Leopard, too, were irregular visitors, and I knew from past experience that these had a taste for domestic cats. Later, the village…

BY THE TIME I took my first step in search of an old dagha boy a game arm in Limpopo, I knew everything a man could learn aboutt buffalo hunting from textbooks, old scripture and the internet. I had scoured all the resources, compared shot placements of experts and had already formed own idea of what to do if thin should go wrong. At that moment I was the ultimate textbook buffalo hunter. I was comfortable with my rifle, a Blaser in .375H&H, paired with a case full of handloaded 300gr Barnes X-bullets – carefully developed with the expert help of Craig Rosser of Lekana Gun Shop in Polokwane. I was as ready as a plains game biltong hunter of many years could be for this ultimate challenge. Blackie’s main…

IN 1946/47 MY father was working for the Tanganyika Game Department under the supervision of George Rushby. His job was to supervise regular uniformed game scouts and about twenty to thirty local hunters who used their own muzzle-loaders. The objective was to eradicate all game along the Tanganyika/Northern Rhodesia border, on the Tanganyika side, creating a ‘corridor’ across which no rinderpest-infected animals could travel into Northern Rhodesia. Dad was in charge of a 20-mile section east of the Sumbawanga Abercorn Road down to Lake Tanganyika. Our little house was close to the road. There was no access road into the section west of the road, so a 50-mile stretch had to be overseen by means of foot-safaris once a month. On these treks my father would meet up with the…

MOST OF US are familiar with vacuum-packed foodstuffs – a system used by fresh-produce packers to ensure that refrigerated foods last much longer, and that frozen foods do not suffer ‘freezer-burn’ due to air being trapped inside the bag or container. The ChromeCater ET-2500 is a small household vacuum sealer that enables you to vacuum-pack enough game-meat, biltong and wors to last, safely frozen, throughout the year till next hunting season. It can be used for any foodstuffs including fish, fowl, fresh vegetables and herbs, preserving all for longer at appropriate temperatures, whether refrigerated or frozen, and also at normal ambient temperatures for appropriate periods, such as for daily school or work lunches, picnic lunches and camp food. The sealer uses 85-micron thick, soft plastic tubing to form plastic bags…

THE RED AND white Hornady box, recently received from Guns & Bows for testing, contains 50 rounds of 40gr Lead Round Nose Varmint Express .22LR at an advertised velocity of 1 070fps. Hornady said the ammo is manufactured for practice and competition shooting on its behalf by CCI. Many agree that the .22 Long Rifle cartridge is still the most popular cartridge in the world. It uses a heeled bullet; meaning that the bullet is the same diameter as the case and has a narrower ‘heel’ that fits into the case. The popularity of the .22LR is attributed to its low recoil, lack of noise and inexpensive pricing. It’s ideal for a wide variety of applications such as recreational shooting, plinking, training or practising, and .22 rimfire competitions. It is…

GUN-OWNERS, ESPECIALLY collectors living in damp climates fight a perpetual battle to keep gun-safes dry. A few years ago, I had a near disaster; my wife bought a device for dehumidifying cupboards – a fairly large, plastic, partitioned container with a perforated top. The upper compartment held muthi of some sort that drew moisture out of the air, condensing it into water which it stored in the lower compartment. I put it in my safe and later accidentally tipped it over, spilling out the water. Had this happened unnoticed, I shudder to think… Carel de Jager, who has long been at the helm of the KwaZulu-Natal chapter of the South African Arms and Ammunition Collectors’ Association (SAAACA), has come up with the best solution I have yet encountered, which he…

Ruark and Sandgrouse In my article, “Sandgrouse in the Seventies” (August 2020 edition) I referred to a 1950s black-and-white documentary movie made by Robert Ruark while on safari in East Africa with Harry Selby. It contained scenes of shooting sandgrouse at a waterhole, and I mentioned that while the – probably black-faced – sandgrouse were noticeably bigger in body than our local Namaqua sandgrouse, they flew in smaller flocks, and that Ruark would have thrilled to see Namaqua sand-grouse flying together in their hundreds. I based my comparison on the scenes shown in the film. I subsequently learned that the movie scenes were not representative of the shooting that Ruark enjoyed in East Africa. I’d forgotten I had the book, Ruark’s Africa, a collection of articles that Ruark wrote for…

This hardcover manual contains more than 800 pages with data for over 70 of the most popular centrefire rifle cartridges used today. Apart from reloading data and tables, it covers topics like Berger’s history, reloading safety measures, variations in powder lot burn-rates, the effect of cartridge overall length, G1 vs G7 ballistic coefficients, form factors, an introduction to shooting disciplines, the list goes on… This manual  contains a plethora of invaluable information not found in any other single volume. Apart from the valuable reloading data, the book is worth having for its 244 pages of additional reloading and ballistic information alone. If you have tried Berger bullets, or are considering using them, this Manual is a must-have. To stand a chance of winning the Manual, send an email to competitions@…

9MMP POLYMER PISTOLS PUT THROUGH THEIR PACES I CAN REMEMBER a time when, if you saw a police officer, you could bet cash money that the sidearm in his holster was a .38 Special revolver with a four-inch barrel and most likely a blue finish. From the 1960s the U.S. experienced growing urban violence which resulted in many police agencies switching to more powerful .357 Magnum revolvers. This all changed in 1985 when the U.S. Army adopted the Beretta 92 (M9) pistol chambered in 9mm Parabellum. It wasn’t long before police revolvers were replaced by ‘Wondernine’ semi-autos from Beretta, S&W, SIG Sauer, Walther and other manufacturers. The introduction of the Glock G17 pistol started the Polymer Revolution and today, just about every handgun maker of note offers a ‘plastic’ pistol…

Good quality gun barrel steels became readily available only after 1860/1870 and the modern idea of seamless tubing for barrels only came in after the mid-1890s A RECENT PIECE in a local shooting magazine seemed to advocate dangerous practices relating to the shooting of old-time black powder firearms. The weapons involved were those combination rifle and shotguns which are generally know as Cape Guns. My concern was that the writer did not appear to be aware of the dangers involved in using these old weapons with modern ammunition, especially those with Damascus barrels made out of twisted and welded steel, a style originating with the Damascus sword blades of the mediaeval era. Going by the writer of the article, a lot of interested shooters just took their information from the…

GAVIN SMITH OF GMS Suppressors in Caledon in the Western Cape, has been manufacturing suppressors since 1991. I received two models to test on my 7x64 Brenneke: the GMS Compact Reflex and the GMS Muzzle. The Compact Reflex is 220mm long, 65mm of this fits over the barrel and 155mm extends in front of the muzzle. Tube diameter is 44mm and weight is 535g. I immediately favoured the Compact Reflex because it’s the shorter of the two units; the GMS Muzzle does not fit over the barrel, it screws on the front. Using my hunting load (175gr Hornady ELD-X bullets at 2 660fps) and the Compact Reflex, I experienced very little recoil over an X-bag at the bench and over shooting sticks. In fact, recoil was reduced to such a…

IN THE YEARS leading up to 1820, technical processes in the manufacture of firearms changed with the introduction the percussion cap. In 1825, Louis Sellier and Nikolaus Bellot established a plant for the production of this component in the Habsburg Monarchy outside Prague. The company grew and in 1871 alone, sold 327 700 000 caps (which included rim-fire cartridges and dynamite primers), 2 430 000 Lefaucheux shot shells, 377 000 copper revolver cartridges and 82 800 brass revolver cartridges. Today, almost 200 years later, Sellier & Bellot (S&B), as the world’s oldest ammunition manufacturer, still continues to produce military and commercial ammunition. This includes a wide range of shotshells, handgun, rim-fire and hunting and precision shooting ammunition. In South Africa the ammunition and components have been available for many years…

A WHILE BACK, I wrote about a very long shot that my brother pulled off with an old single-shot .22. It was on my grandfather’s farm in the Rhodesian Midlands when we were about ten and twelve years old. The target was a guineafowl sitting on a rock atop a koppie across a tobacco field and a river. The strange part was that when we reached the bird, a tortoise was standing over it with a beak full of bloody feathers. That shot is still one of the unsolved mysteries of my life. It was a heck of a long distance. A fluke, I said; not so, my brother declared. Shooting gamebirds on the ground is taboo. In my defence, at that time, any bird shot with a gun represented…

MOST ROPHY HUNTERS visiting South Africa arrive with a wish list which includes one or more of our larger animals such as kudu, gems-buck, hartebeest, eland or zebra. The smaller but more common antelope such as springbuck, blesbuck and impala are secondary and usually collected incidentally to the client’s main quest for the game on his wish list. The client’s time is too limited to be spent hunting the lesser trophies, but if an acceptable specimen is encountered, he will usually seize the opportunity to bag it. I think this is also the approach of most biltong hunters; invariably their priority will be the larger species, the small game being secondary. However, springbuck and blesbuck on the plains, and impala in the bushveld, are our bread-and-butter animals, so any game…

At Magnum we are always looking for new articles to publish from our regular contributors and new writers. Any material that falls within Magnum’s subject matter such as hunting common (non-dangerous) species, wing-shooting, sport shooting and short stories of a humorous, thought-provoking or philosophical nature. We also accept technical articles on Magnum subjects such as; firearms, cartridges, reloading, shooting, knives and DIY projects. All material must be original and copyright-free. For hunting stories, a variety of photographs is preferred. You are encouraged to illustrate your article with photos of scenery, live game, your tracker in action, geographic/botanical/ historical features and animal spoor. Anything which you consider interesting or visually appealing could potentially be used. We aim to be as informative as possible, so try to ensure that your article can…