Indholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2021 i Man Magnum

EVERY time I cross the bridge over the Sundays River my eyes automatically gaze northward towards the area anglers call the koppie, and old memories come flooding back. You see it was on those distant river banks that I shot my very first duck. On that rainy day in 1960, three of us had permission to hunt on a farm that ran from the river up over the escarpment and beyond. We were still rank amateur hunters, though we had shot some guineafowl, francolin and quail. So there we were, three soaking wet young fellows, keen as mustard, plodding through the dripping bush hoping to get a shot at… heck, anything. In the late afternoon, while my friends chatted with the farmer, I took my old Greener 12-bore double down…

THE Mauser C96 (Construktion 96) pistol, also commonly called the “Broomhandle pistol” after the shape of its grip, was designed in 1894 by the three Feederle brothers working at the Mauser factory and was patented in 1895 in the name of the famous Paul Mauser. It was Mauser’s first commercial attempt at an automatic pistol and was recoil operated. Production began around April of 1897 using the 7.63mm Mauser cartridge, and continued for 43 years. With a total of more than 950 000 produced, it was the world’s first commercially successful high-power semi-automatic locked-breech pistol and although they were large and heavy, and expensive to make with multiple intricate machining operations, these pistols were of very high quality and reliability. The C96 was the best pistol available at the time…

SAVE 25% Get 8 printed issues of MAN MAGNUM to an address in SA for only R420 International rates on request OR Get 8 digital issues of MAN MAGNUM for only R390 Why subscribe? 1. You’ll never miss an issue2. You’ll be able to maintain your collection3. You’ll never miss out on our great competitions Subscribe to the Printed Magazine To take out a NEW subscription or to RENEW a subscription: • Email: subs@media24.com or• Call 087-353-1300 (for international subscription rates call +27-21-065-0033) or• WhatsApp 087-353-1333 or• SMS ‘MAGNUMSUBS’ to 32361 with your details and one of our agents will contact you (R1.50 per SMS) Subscribe to the Digital Magazine To read MAGNUM on a device of your choice, subscribe through ZINIO or Magzter. Go to www.zinio.com/za/man-magnum-m6928 or www.magzter.com/ZA/Media24/Man-Magnum/Fishing--Hunting/ and follow the…

WANTING to relax before a very important meeting the following day at Bath, two cousins set out on the afternoon of the 15th of September 1864 for a bit of partridge shooting at Neston Park in Wiltshire, England. A gamekeeper, Daniel Davis, was with them, marking birds and picking up for them. They were walking about sixty metres apart, when one of the shooters placed his gun against a two foot high stone wall and proceeded to climb over. What happened then is rather sketchy; official reports are vague and at most unreliable. A shot went off that entered the man’s chest just below the armpit, shattered his lungs and severed the arteries around his heart. He was still lucid when his two companions reached him. “Don’t move me,” were…

ARE you considering becoming a professional hunter? This wonderfully funny article might put you off… or (unbelievably) might propel you towards your chosen career in some odd way! Fred Mouton’s hilarious cartoon brilliantly depicts the action in the article – you can almost see it happening in your mind. Fred Mouton has been bringing humour and his amazing artistic talent to the pages of your favourite magazine for many decades. As part of celebrating 45 years of publishing, we have created a collection of what we think are the best of Fred’s cartoons that have appeared in Magnum over the years. See page 11 to find out about this publication which will be on sale from September. Quill Pro Quo By Cliff McNaughton Illustration by Fred Mouton Published: September 2007…

Mystery Knife I refer to your July 2021 issue, page 70. The knife Bernard Stiglingh picked up next to the Nwanedzi River is a “Best”. It used to cost about 2 shillings and six pence. – Colin Stephenson, Eastern Cape Editorial August 2021 I take exception to your statement, “Yes, there were those who broke the law by firing on looters and using unnecessary violence, and they should be prosecuted.” What you are saying is that law-abiding citizens should stand back and watch their property and indirectly their livelihood destroyed by a violent and undisciplined rabble. Yes the modern liberal law says that you should use ‘minimum violence’ to defend your life, this law is unjust and should be changed to allow one to use whatever force is necessary not…

MOST of us have read about the San people outfoxing an ostrich by dressing in an ostrich skin then using a stick to hold up the skin’s neck and head in an effort to get within bow-and-arrow shooting distance. I can relate to this. During a hunt in the Kalahari of southern Botswana, I was going for gemsbuck on my own, and had to abort two stalks that morning because I had been detected. After a break and tinned brunch in the shade of a magnificent camel-thorn tree, I realised that I’d entered the usually unproductive period of the hunting day so started working my way back to my bakkie. Crossing a low, sparsely vegetated dune, I suddenly noticed a small herd of zebra in a shady patch at the…

THROUGH the years, I have been able to test various precision rifles, and I know that the whole package, with adjustable stock, competition barrel and a good action, does not come cheaply. This had me wondering what can be achieved on a budget when it comes to assembling a rifle capable of engaging targets out to 1km, and which can also be used for, say, voorsit hunts. To start with, I wanted to select a budget factory-built rifle that has the potential to consistently shoot 1MOA groups. Gert van der Vyver, a friend from the time we attended university together, recently bought a Remington 700 ADL Tactical in 6.5 Creedmoor. As these rifles will presently set you back about R12 000, and given the good reputation of the Model 700…

IT’S more than a decade since I first hunted the rain forest of the Congo basin – the region known in colonial times as French Equatorial Africa. Over the years I have hunted mostly in the savannah regions of east and southern Africa but, forest hunting was not new to me. When younger, I pursued buffalo on control, high in the Aberdare’s in Kenya which, because of the elevation, could at times be cold, wet and miserable. Here in the lowland rain forest, it was hot, wet and almost unbearably humid. I had been there for a couple of days and made one solo excursion of not more than perhaps a kilometre, into the dark, damp, gloomy jungle. In that short walk I saw no mammals, but the birdlife was…

THE story you are about to read is true – only the names have been changed to… uhm… spare embarrassment to innocent people involved. During the mid-1990s, the local media were describing crime as “out of control”, South Africans were “arming themselves to the teeth”, armed response security services had become a growth industry, and residents were becoming “prisoners in their own homes”. In short, South Africa was “sick of crime”. A notorious armed robber, Sam Mac-Tavish (not his real name) of no fixed address, had long been sought by the law for several house-breaking charges, armed robbery and rape. He was very street-wise, did not hesitate to threaten his victims with a gun and he always managed to evade arrest, much to the exasperation of the police. For Sam,…

MR NICHOLAS YALE Nicholas Yale, founder of Nicholas Yale cc, one of our oldest and most respected elders in the industry, died on Tuesday 20 July 2021 aged 97. He was always addressed as Mr Yale in his presence, and affectionately and respectfully as “Old Man Yale” by the industry and his customers. I met him initially as a customer in the early 1990s and later he, and his business, became a client of my practice. He was a salesman at heart and loved engaging with customers. He had both a common touch and very personal ability to relate to people. My family and I, when my son was very young, bumped into him in Cape Town. After that he always enquired after my son and insisted he present himself…

THE bright flames of our refuelled campfire penetrated the darkness to draw flickering reflections from the oiled metal of my battle-scarred .300H&H propped against a tree-stump nearby. This caught Dave Lincoln’s eye. “You shoot pretty well with that old workhorse,” he said. “Well,” I replied, “kind of you to say so, but I’ve had it long enough and shoot it often enough to know its trajectory out to 300 yards or so. Most hunters who know their rifles do pretty well with them.” “True,” agreed Dave, “As the old saying goes, beware the man who has but one rifle.” During this conversation, I brought up Karamojo Bell’s story of his wanting to get rid of 6 000 rounds of .318 ammo of which three out of every ten misfired. Every…

MANY years ago, my wife Win and I lived on Nampini, a beautiful 25 000 hectare ranch on the Zambezi River near Botswana. We had some cattle on the ranch, but the unfortunate animals were continuously being attacked and killed by lion and leopard. The area was populated with big and small game, including plenty of these predators, so it was a losing battle trying to protect the cattle. Lion were the chief culprits, but leopard certainly made their mark as well. The thick bush and reed-banks were ideal leopard habitat. They were exceptionally large specimens, and the biggest leopard I shot there weighed over 100kg. Apart from the lions, leopard would quite often take calves and sometimes even young animals up to eighteen months old. One specific calf-killing big…

WHEN I was fifteen, a friend granted me unrestricted use of his Brno De Luxe .22 Hornet. Until then, I’d mostly been a shotgunner, along with air-rifles and rim-fire .22s within their range limitations. We placed a one-gallon paraffin can 200 long strides off – further than any shot I’d ever taken. I set the Brno’s rear sight, went prone and squeezed off three shots. The Hornet’s 45gr bullets brought back three deeply satisfying clanks. My respect for Brno rifles took immediate root and rapidly grew during my use of that little rifle. Prior to WWII, German, Austrian and British-made hunting rifles faced little competition in Africa. However, when production of Oberndorf and Suhl Mausers ceased after that conflict and post-war economic woes largely destroyed the British sporting rifle industry,…

MOST boys who grow up on a farm learn to shoot before their tenth birthday, usually with the family air rifle (in my case a pre-1920 BSA underlever), then progressing to Dad’s .22 (a Brno) and finally graduating to a centre-fire hunting rifle for their first ‘big game’ (Uncle Keith’s 7x57 Musgrave on a blesbuck). In most cases though, the lessons learnt while shooting starlings and mouse-birds in the orchard with an open-sighted air rifle, are soon forgotten once you get a taste for telescopic sights. For those fortunate enough to have been involved with school Bisley-style target shooting, the reliance on telescopic sights might have been delayed for a while, but eventually nearly all the biltong hunters you’ll meet around campfires, at shooting ranges, or hanging about in gun…