I had a couple of failures just this past October while hunting in the Caprivi.

I had a custom .416 Rigby along as back up to my primary elephant rifle, a .500 A2, and for use on plains game. With a Swarovski 1.25-4x24mm scope on top, the .416 was printing three shots into MOA groups at 200 yards with boring regularity before I left.

At sight-in on the first day in camp, I wasn't even on the paper at 75 yards! No predictable response was achieved when I adjusted the windage and elevation knobs. Finally, we removed the bolt and tried bore sighting it at 25 yards. It quickly became clear that the scope was a no-go. Somehow, the thing had broken in transit and the reticle had developed a will of its own.

So, I had to take the scope off and rely on the iron sights. Later I took a zebra at 125 yards using the iron sights, but that leads me to my second failure of that trip.

To get within range of the zebra herd containing the old stallion I was after, we had to crawl for several hundred yards along the Namibian bank of the Chobe River. The dust there, just below the crest of the bank, was the consistency of talcum powder and was sticking to everything, including my rifle. I did my best to keep the action covered, but as I later found out, a lot of that dust got into the trigger mechanism.

The rifle worked though, when it counted, and I killed my zebra. But as we walked up on it, I unchambered the live round from the barrel, closed the bolt, and pulled the trigger. Nothing. No click. So, I emptied the magazine and worked the bolt several more times. Same result each time. No click.

The dust had gotten into and mixed into a thick paste with the oil inside the trigger mechanism and gummed it up to the point where the sear lever was permanently stuck down.

All I could think was, thank God that I discovered this while walking up on a dead zebra instead of when expecting a killing shot on an elephant!

Lessons learned:

1. Always bring an extra, pre-zeroed scope. (This was the first trip in my life that I didn't follow that rule and you see what it got me!) Or at the very least have back up iron sights on the barrel--in this case, the irons saved the day.

2. In dry and dusty conditions, no oil is too much oil--and always bring tools and cleaning equipment along with you, just in case. (As I always do, on this trip I had them along and was able to get the .416 up and running again in short order.)