Dangerous Game Hunting course at African Wildlife College -Buffalo : Part 1 Practice

[Gert Odendaal]

Good day to all the members:
Here follows a thread regarding a Dangerous Game hunt course with specific the buffalo in mind .Here is a description of what the course entails from Dr. Kevin Robinson , author of the Perfect Shot book/video.

Hi Gentlemen, Kevin here.

Myself, Gawie Lindeque and Pieter Nel are looking forward to having you join us.

When plan to make this a memorable, rewarding and exciting experience for you.

We will be spending a lot of time out in the veld – I mention this incident to help you prepare mentally.

This will be the real deal gentlemen!

OK HERE IS WHAT TO EXPECT:

We will set up a camp for you on our shooting range.

The shooting range is unfenced – and so you will be sleeping out in the greater KNP!

There will be 3 x double tents, each with two sturdy stretchers and matrasses.

There will be a large military type tent for shades and to act as a dining room,

and a kitchen tent with lock-up space for your food. The baboons are also hungry – do not leave out anything to tempt them.

There will be a watercart, there is a toilet and we will also set up a shower for you.

We will supply all the cutlery you will need, pots pans, knives, forks, cups, braai grids etc

but please realize that it is a self-catering weekend. We will also supply a few solar lanterns but if you want better lighting,

please bring your own 12 V or diode strip lights.We will supply camp chairs and tables and some firewood to get you started

but you all need to bring wood as well. We do not supply / offer any form of refrigeration so please bring your own or ice boxes.

The shop at Orpen Gate is about 12 km away where you can purchase additional ice, wood, and basic necessities.

The toilet is close by but it will be necessary for you all to bring a good torch for midnight trips to the loo –

this is lion, leopard and hyena country remember.

Your firearms will have to be secured in the college’s gunsafe until used, but one of our trainers, either Gawie or Piet

will also sleep at the shooting range. He will be armed with a .458 should any problems arrive.

Please try to arrive mid-afternoon’ish on day of the course so you can get unpacked and settled in time for a sunset game drive.

We will kick off the next morning with all the classroom stuff – I will be presenting lectures on buffalo

ecology and the hunting thereof. Shot placement, calibres/cartridges/bullets, trophy assessment etc will all be covered in detail.

If we start early enough I can have this all done by lunchtime. If so we will spend the afternoon in the veld.

With buffalo and some elephants around we hope to be able to get you all to each do some approaches in both species.

The next morning will be spent on the shooting range where we will see how you handle your large bore rifles.

This will be basic shooting technique, shooting off sticks, sitting and ‘uit die vuys’ and 25 to 50 m.

This is essentially to test the function and reliability of your rifle and to evaluate your big bore rifle shooting performance.

We have yet to find a course attendee’s whose rifle that did not have a problem so please do not be offended

if we are honest and critical about the rifle you bring.

If it has a problem or some fault, we will find it – hopefully it won’t.

Absolute minimum calibre 9,2 x 62 mm – hope you’ll all bring something larger.

Please also bring your ammo belt, binoculars etc because we will want to see how you carry all this stuff while out in the veld.

You need to be dressed as if you are actually hunting so we can see ‘if it all works’

We take such things seriously because our lives depend on them! (the buffalo stopping incident mentioned above is a prime

example of this) We will be in the veld doing approaches, tracking etc. in the afternoon.

On the last day of the course we will shoot our life-like courses – buffalo.

There are 6 targets in total and some will be shot a couple of times so I suggest you bring at least 2 boxes of ammo for your rifle.

If you are serious about this, bring the ammo you would actually hunt with, not cheap practice stuff.

The shots are very life-like with the shooting distances varying from about 15 to 60 m.

Shots will be taken from all the ‘usual’ veld positions

Remember this is a big bore dangerous game course so no large high-power scopes.

It is likely to be hot so please bring good hats and sunscreen.

And good walking shoes/boots because we will be walking in the veld.

And neutral clothing.

Please also bring the completed college registration form AND a copy of your ID. See attachment

This is so that we can register you with the SAWC – a necessity for the issuing of an attendance certificate.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me – my contact details are below.

Remember you’re doing this to learn and have fun! So lets make it happen!

Kevin

We are a group of six participants, I got the participants together for a training session today, focusing on cycling the rounds( dummies ) through the action as fast as possible. Today we did the cycling procedures as well as sighting in the rifles with scopes. I shot my 404 Jeffery today , open sights at sixty meters.

Step 1 :
Sighting in the scoped rifles all were .375 H&H Magnum rifles at sixty meters: All rifles were sighted in..my open sights 404 Jeffery was on the spot as usual...this rifle shoots much,much more accurate as what I am able to shoot.
Shooting range :

Ian Rautenbach;


Jacques:


Gert van der Merwe:


Jacques `s son:
Next step was to simulate shooting at buffalo from different distances ranging from sixty to fifteen meters. The sixty meter distance was shot from a shooting stick. The thirty meter distance from a kneeling position free hand without support and the last was from fifteen meters standing without support.
We setup a crony to see what our velocity of the loads was.
Jacques in action:
Next up was Gert van der Merwe:

A dead buffalo:
Ian Rautenbach was next:


Positive extraction, good cycling:

Good results:


The man with the 404 Jeffery was next:Load: 400 gn Impala bullet, S386 , 72 gn
Muzzle climb:

Sixty meters: Open sights


Thirty meters open sights:
We did end the practise session with some planning around the logistics of this trip. I will get the participants together for another round before leaving for the Kruger National Park.

[Gert Odendaal]

Here is a video about the Elephant hunting course:

[Gert Odendaal]

Update:
Members, we are nearly completed with our preparations regarding this Dangerous game hunt course. I will spend this week re-loading for the course and do some cycling practice with dummy rounds. It really is something I am looking forward to participate in.
This is the animal we need to learn about to track, hunt and do a proper shot placement on.....we will approach the buffalo on foot and see how near we can get to the buffalo to put a laser beam on it`s vitals for shot placement...

[Gert Odendaal]

Update:
Members, I will be commencing with the re-loading process of the 400 gn Impala bullets I will be using on this up coming course.

Time will be spend on off hand shooting at fifty/thirty and fifteen meters and cycling the rounds through the action.

Will upload some photos of this process as well.

[Gert Odendaal]

Had some time available to do some reloading...I am using 400gn Impala solid bullets , 74gn S365 at about 2100 f/s...
It is a mild load and nice to shoot..the 404 Jeffery shoots much more accurate than what I am capable of ....all shooting will be done from different positions at buffalo targets placed strategic around the dry river bed where the shooting range is.
As Dr. Kevin Robinson said, they want to find fault with our shooting /cycling of rounds and accuracy while doing these shooting exercises ..
I hope to disappoint him in some of these aspects...
Rounds laying there, have just cycle all loaded round through the action, to make sure all rounds are feeding flawlessly...


Loaded and ready:


I will be taking my .458 Mannlicher Schoenauer with to do some off -hand shooting as well...just for the fun... I want to work on using my ghost ring aperture sight during this course...

[Sarel JN]

Hallo Gert.

Ek is seker die Mannlicher gaan die 1st geweer wees wat sonder foute die toets gaan slaag. Laat weet my asb.

Groete

Sarel

[Gert Odendaal]

Hoe bedoel U nou Meneer????My 404 Jeffery gaan ook die eerste geweer wees wat nie foute gaan he nie..soos die .458 Mannlicher Schoenauer ...die twee gewere sal foutloos wees..die skut agter die gewere is die een wat foute gaan wys...

Sarel, ek sal laat weet..ek sien nou baie uit na die kursus...

[Gert Odendaal]

I did some re-loading for the .458 Mannlicher Schoenauer , I used gas checked cast bullets , 520 gn , S335 ,67 gn that will give me around 1900 f/s..the cartridge over all length is 83.2 mm , this will be a nice load to shoot in these practice conditions...these rounds feed extremely smooth through the rotary action of the rifle. I did some adjustments on the ghost ring aperture as well and will do some fine tuning tomorrow at the farm when shooting a few rounds to zero the ghost ring at 50 meters.






A few photos of the rotary magazine the .458 Mannlicher Schoenauer has, somewhat different than the Mauser action :
P1010075_zpsnzuriwyr.jpg

[Gert Odendaal]

Members, my apologies for this new turn of events..it seems Photo-bucket has gone haywire??I wonder what is going on..please let me know if you know..I thought Photobucket was designed to store our photos for uploading it on the threads we created on our forum/other forums ???? This does not make any sense... Well, it seems I would need to store my photos on another photo storage facility...any recommendations????

[iB.PoPo]

Members, my apologies for this new turn of events..it seems Photo-bucket has gone haywire??I wonder what is going on..please let me know if you know..I thought Photobucket was designed to store our photos for uploading it on the threads we created on our forum/other forums ???? This does not make any sense... Well, it seems I would need to store my photos on another photo storage facility...any recommendations????

Hi Gert - photobucket has now changed their TOS to charging an annual subscription for hosting images that you want to imbed on third parties. Please follow this link for more info:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/0..._3rdparty_pgs/

If you search "Free Image Hosting" on google I am sure you could find an alternative to photobucket.
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