Man Magnum June 2021

AS you read this, the draft Firearms Control Amendment Bill has probably been debated at length, and hopefully your anger has subsided somewhat. Reading the proposed amendments had my own blood boiling as it was clearly written by someone who is totally out of touch with reality, or simply out to anger and/or put law abiding gun owners at a disadvantage. However, the best thing to do is to stay calm and affirm our determination to fight this with all we have. Before I discuss what we can do about it, let’s look at some of the proposals. • To be in possession of reloading equipment will make you a criminal. • You will no longer be allowed to have a firearm for self-defence. • If you are not in…

Congratulations Magnum! Without a doubt Magnum is my favourite read and I must congratulate you on your 45th birthday. I am not sure how many titles have reached this milestone but to me it says a lot about Magnum getting things right. I am sure there are other readers who, like me, wait in anticipation for my monthly “fix”. Not knowing what I will get to read about in each issue certainly keeps things fresh. Some months I devour all the articles, while in other months I might skip over one or two that hold less interest for me. I am never disappointed though … until I realise that I have to wait for the next issue! Keep up the good work and the great magazine. – L Adams, KwaZulu-Natal…

L-X Firearm Lubricant Taking care of your firearms is an ongoing task. New on the market in the gun care line is L-X Firearm Lubricant from Lubrication Engineers in Johannesburg. This month’s issue features our Test on L-X oil. We tested it on a piece of steel and used it on both handguns and rifles – see page 35 for the full report. L-X works on firearms to clean dirt and contaminants from exposed metal surfaces and displaces moisture from metal pores. It also lubricates and reduces internal friction. The lubricant comes in a handy bottle with a nozzle which helps get the oil where it needs to be on your firearm. To stand a chance of winning a bottle of L-X oil, send an email to competitions@manmagnum.co.za with your…

DIRK LUETHI and I were in the Khomas Hochland of South West Africa, on the game ranch Hochvels owned by the Kieckebusch family and run by professional hunter Heiner Kiekebusch, a master gunsmith trained in Germany. Beneath a star-studded sky, we were enjoying a fire with Heiner’s retired parents, Herr and Vrau Kiekebusch, who were enthralling me with tales of farming in that wild country long ago. Herr Kiekebusch’s parents had farmed in the remote northwest (now Damaraland) during German Colonial times. Elephants, rhinos and lions roamed the farm – Herr Kiekebusch’s brother was killed by a lion. His father, as a young man, was accidentally shot through the bowel by a friend with a 9mm pistol. He was transported in a wagon over bumpy roads for many hours to…

EARLIER this year Magnum ran a pair of my articles that are directly related to the one you a reading now. The first was on Taurus’ new TX22 pistol and the second was a Battle Royale of compact pistols equipped with electronic dot sights. For those readers who have not perused the two aforementioned articles, I believe it would be informative to repeat some advantages of using an electronic dot sight: 1. Faster targeting – once a target is acquired, it is easy to quickly centre the red dot on the target and fire the gun. There is no need to align the sights and take time to aim. In addition, this type of sight works better than standard sights when taking aim at a moving target. 2. Unrestricted eye…

MY FIRST real hunt was a big disappointment. I was about nine years old and my father considered me strong enough to walk for several hours in the bush. Before that, I had just wandered in the bush close to where we lived in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, shooting doves with my airgun. There was always great excitement when my father returned from a hunt with a kudu, or an impala or two, in the back of the Land Rover. I watched as the animals were gutted and skinned – and I kept the horns. I would climb into a large wild fig tree to hang the horns in the branches where ants and nature would clean them out. This hunt was about an hour’s drive from where we lived, on a…