Indholdsfortegnelse for Mar/Apr 2024 i Man Magnum

I WAS sharing a fire with my old friend Royce Buckle, who’d been a professional hunter in East Africa during the ‘golden age’ of safaris. The conversation drifted to hunting literature that had emanated from those times, and I remarked that I had lapped it up as a youth but as I got older and learned more, I sometimes wondered about the veracity of some of the stories I’d read. Royce was a very experienced elephant hunter, so I related one such story to him. “I can’t remember the name of the book or the hunter who wrote it, but one anecdote stuck in my memory. The details of how the incident came about also escape me, but the hunter, who for some reason was unarmed, found himself within spitting…

WHEN Covid hit the world in 2020, Francois Fourie, an engineer and avid hunter and shooter, got frustrated by the sudden scarcity of mono-metal bullets in South Africa. What products did reach our shores suddenly carried huge price tags, making them less attractive to local shooters. Francois decided to design and produce his own mono-metal bullets, thus Axe Bullets were born. They are available in calibres from .223 to .510". Francois wanted an affordable, accurate bullet suitable for bushveld and long-range hunting. It had to expand reliably, penetrate well and retain most of its weight. Penetration is important, since bullets that exit result in quicker blood loss and easier blood trails to follow. Axe bullets are lathe-turned from red copper by a reputed Pretoria manufacturer with a long history of…

SOUTH Africa has some of the finest terrestrial gamebird shooting in the world. Our varied partridge and francolin species offer some of the most challenging shots imaginable, not to mention our crafty guineafowl which can outthink and outmanoeuvre even experienced hunters. To offer some of my friends and colleagues the pleasurable experience of shooting over talented dogs, I approached Leslie van der Merwe Safaris to organise a shoot for me. Leslie is a highly experienced wingshooter and a regular contributor to shooting magazines. He recently won a prestigious international competition with his cookbook. As the date approached, I nervously watched the weather reports. A cold front was expected to reach Gauteng over the weekend of the shoot, and with trepidation I noted that strong winds were predicted for the day…

THE Dutch first settled at the southern most tip of South Africa in 1652 and by the end of the 1600s, their trekboere were already penetrating the interior, encountering and naming ever more animal species. However, a further 100 years and more would pass before the ubiquitous impala was first recorded. In 1805, Lichtenstein, the German zoologist and explorer, sighted a herd near Kuruman in the far Northern Cape. He wrote, “We also met a flock of that beautiful species of antelope, hitherto unknown to me, which is called by the Beetjuas p’halla.” By ‘Beetjuas’ he meant the Bechuana, now called the BaTswana. Impala did not occur south of the Orange River, nor in the Eastern Cape – the Xhosa had no name for this species. The Dutch named…

THE three of us sat in silence as we scanned the hillside facing our shooting position. It was four o’clock on a fine winter afternoon and the opposite slopes were bathed with a golden wash by the slowly sinking sun. Although our shooting arc was at eye level, some 250 yards away the thorn-scattered area swept steeply upwards until it reached the towering rocky summit far above us. Just to have something different to look at, I raised my binoculars to study the rocky heights and a movement caught my eye. Although a thrill of excitement ran through my body like an electric current, I said as calmly as I could, “Boys, you won’t believe this, but I’m looking at a beautiful bushbuck ram.” Fearing I would lose the image…

THE year was 1984. I was hunting in one of the well-known hunting blocks to be found in the southern sector of Zambia’s Kafue system along with a friend, and very experienced hunter, who was guiding his 19-year-old daughter on what they hoped would be her first buffalo kill. The area held all the common game species you could wish for including exceptional sable, roan, eland as well as the big cats, buffalo and elephant. Most of us, as resident hunters, had buffalo as top of the list. The area supported good numbers of breeding buffalo herds as well as splinter bachelor groups of bulls which could vary from loners to small herds of up to ten animals. There was an interesting variety of landscapes including some big thickets where…

IN 2019 John Rigby & Co introduced a new series of rifles called Heritage. The concept is aimed at collectors and only 50 rifles of each model will be produced.Each model in the Heritage range will be named after a famous hunter. The first Heritage model was called the W.D.M. Bell after the famous Scottish adventurer and elephant hunter. Bell was an exceptionally talented rifleman who, by virtue of his ability, effectively used relatively small cartridges for hunting African big game. He became known as Karamojo Bell after the name of an area in present-day Uganda. In view of the rich history behind the rifle calibre and the man who named the special edition, I was very keen to get my hands on a Bell rifle. I borrowed one from…

“DRUK met jou regter-elmboog hier op my skouer,” het die professionele jagter vir my seun, Chris, gesê. Die stel selfgemaakte skietstokke uit elastiese kerriebos-latte (Salvadora persica) was stabiel genoeg, maar die ram het op 230 treë afstand gestaan, skuinsdwars na vore, en met die .30-06 Ruger Hawkeye met sy 180 grein ammunisie onder ’n slegs-sesmaal vergrotende ou Lynx teleskoop was dit dalk net te ver vir ’n gemaklike skoot oor die stokke. Ek het nog nooit die begeerte gehad om onder leiding van ’n professionele jagter te jag nie. Daarvoor is ek hopeloos te gesteld op my vryheid om self te besluit. So het ek sekerlik al baie foute in die jagveld gemaak: diere gemis wat ek moes raakskiet, kanse gevat wat ek eerder moes laat verbygaan, trofeebokke oorgesien tussen…

CAN you feel the vibe? The long awaited hunting season that is given its annual kick-start at HuntEx is just around the corner. HuntEx 2024 will once again display a host of the most-wanted products and services for hunters, shooters, people with self-defence needs, and for outdoorsmen and-women. HuntEx 2024 will be spread over five venues within the Gallagher complex, utilising 23 000m² of under-roof exhibition space. HALL 2: Firearms, Optics, Gear, Accessories, and Wildlife Art In Hall 2 the focus will be on firearms dealers and-manufacturers. New is the addition of Turkish shotgun and handgun manufacturers. Here you will also find some of the best optics manufactured in the USA and China – the latter will be exhibited by the Chinese manufacturers themselves, all looking to find a market…

Last year when we asked Frank to be Subscriber of the Month in Magnum, he was delighted to accept. Sadly between the time of asking and now, Frank has passed away. We are publishing his response to our request in his memory. Frank lived in Gauteng but loved to hunt in the Winterton area in KwaZulu-Natal and did so often from 1968. His favourite calibre for hunting was a Sako .264 Rem Mag and he used hand-loaded 140gr Sako ammo. From the age of 8 years old, Frank was taught to hunt by his father, using beaters and dogs in the Mooiplaas area in the Eastern Cape. Frank hunted at least once or twice a year for impala and kudu for table meat. His last hunt was in July 2023…

SHARP STEEL The article on old bayonets in the July/August 2023 Magnum opened a rusty old box in the attic of my memory. At Que Que High School in Rhodesia (as it was then), where I was a boarder, the House Master, told me to report on Wednesday afternoon to the parade square and armoury. Shortly afterwards came the introduction to what we all called the ‘303’. The rifle in those days was the SMLE Mark 1. On the range, a drum of water was boiled and then after shooting, the barrel was washed via a funnel, pulled through to dry it and again to oil it. As a hunter from a very young age, I was on the school shooting team. The cadets were trained to British Army standards,…

My quarter-century quest for quality… AS A young boy I hunted my first bushbuck in the Eastern Cape. To this day it remains one of my fondest memories and one that I will treasure forever. On that day, an enduring quest for bushbuck took root within me. However, it took me almost 25 years to finally succeed in hunting only the second ram of my life thus far. As I lay there on the sandbank next to the Mogalakwena River, I gazed through my scope at a bushbuck ewe that was leisurely browsing, oblivious of my presence. Gradually she moved away into the thickets and disappeared from my sight. I was hoping that a ram would appear and follow her. This was the fourth day of my trip and the…

THE .22lr cartridge might be 137 years old, but it is still very much alive and well today. In fact, it is more popular now than ever before and most manufacturers now produce rifles in this calibre. For most of us, our shooting journey started at a very young age, probably with grandpa’s old, but trusted .22 rifle. There have always been good bolt-action .22 rifles to choose from but today we are truly spoiled for choice with quality .22lr semi-auto rifles as well. One such rifle is the Derya TM22, which was designed by Rock Island Armoury in the USA and which is manufactured in Turkey. Over the past couple of years, Turkey has become known for producing wellmade, high-quality firearms, from shotguns and pistols to a wide variety…

“SO LONG as a species has value, and people are prepared to pay to hunt that species, it will be well looked after.” The aforementioned quote may sound clichéd, but it remains a truism. I believe that, as ethical sport hunters, we need perhaps to revisit our definition of sport hunting and trophy hunting. If you ask non-hunting members of the public to describe their mental image of hunting, you can bet they’ll say it’s one of macho men indulging in disgusting blood-sport purely for the sake of killing. Well, that is the sort of response I would get here in the UK if I were to pose the question. Some, perhaps, may even say the animals have absolutely no chance against high-powered rifles, especially if they are being hunted…

NEW PRODUCTS KAHLES K328i 3.5–28x50i TACTICAL SCOPES When the first competition and tactical rifle scope from KAHLES was launched in 2007, the specific requirements and standards were similar to those of the rifle scopes available for hunting. Since then, much has changed with regard to user behaviour and product requirements. Now a completely new technical platform has been developed specially to meet the demands of modern sports and tactical rifle scopes with the reticle in the first focal plane. This has redefined the boundaries of what is technically possible. The K328i 3.5-28x50i models offer 8x zoom with perfect optical performance across the entire adjustment range, revolutionary optical design with a 40% wider field of view than on previous models, an exceptional eyebox, maximum precision, illuminated reticles in the first focal…