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A couple of personal experiences.

Hunting elephant and cape buffalo in the Zambezi Valley. Omay concession, below the escarpment between the escarpment and Lake Kariba. Primary target was cow elephants, and I was using my Jeffery .450 NE. Express open sights. Ranges on elephant very close. Brain shots. Secondary target was a cape buffalo bull.

We spotted a herd of buffalo and some ele bulls from a lookout high on the escarpment and decided to try for a cape buffalo bull. Approaching the herd, two elephant bulls kept getting in the way. They were feeding along, their bums to us. Unaware we were there. When they moved on, we approached the herd. Looked it over as it fed past. Moved parallel to the herd, again had to wait for the two ele bull bums to move on feeding. Only 20 yards aeay. Again setup an ambush on the buffalo herd. This all happened again a third time.

Examining the cape buffalo herd with binoculars was fine. But trying to make a shot on avbuff bull in the herd with he open sights of the Jeffery .450 was problematic. The PH swapped his .416 Remington bolt action with a scope for me to take a careful shot. The scope would make a difference.

Some nice long horned immature bulls in the herd. But I had insisted to the PH at the beginning that I wanted ONKY a hard bosses bull. None of these were mature hard bosses bulls. The PH said he would be in trouble if his boss knew he had not taken one of those long horned cape buff bulls.

Here a scope would have been useful shooting a specific animal in a herd. Avoiding animals in front AND behind.

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Second story.

Hunting water buffalo, again with the Jeffery .450 NE. Open express sights.

I hunted along the river by myself. My guest had left the previous day, so I hoped to get a bull for myself.

On the way to where I hoped to find buffalo mi stumbled into to a number of animals lying up directly across the river from me. They rose. One bull was fine, but a younger animal was in front, it's head covering the shoulders of the bull. I thought enough orbits lungs were exposed so took a shot. The buffalo ran off, the bull was definitely hit.

Wading the water, I crossed the river, I followed up but first marked a waypoint on my gps. Some blood and I tracked the buffalo at an angle away from the river. After a distance I spotted a dark shadow on the hill above me under a tree. Yes it was a buffalo. I don't know maybe 150 yards. It stood up I fired. A complete miss, I saw the bullet impact in the hills bank. The buffalo came running down at me. The bull meant business. He served around a tree and corrected his direction straight at me.

I fired the second barrel. No noticeable effect. Damn my rifle is now empty. "He's going to kill me" flashed through my mind. I'm going to reload behind this thin tree and run around it and hope to shoot him in the nose as he chased me around ... that was the plan. But thankfully as I got the right barrel loaded he ran past, so I fired and put another round into his broadside chest. He ran on and crashed through the thick riverine bush.

Reloading I approached the very thick bush. Lots of fresh new saplings, extremely thick.i heard something crash iff from the far side so decided to skirt the thick stuff and have sclook. Tracks and bull shit. I checkover the area parallel with the river for two or three kmd, until I reached the fence line. Decided to have some lunch and a break in the shade.

Now for it. Check back the way I had come but now close to the rivers bank. Far thicker bush. After some time I hit extremely thick bush. Checked the GPS, yes I was a hundred or two metres from my GPS waypoint again. Nothing for it but search this thick stuff. Adrenaline. Sometimes I couldn't see beyond my muzzles. I would almost fall over a black log of large rock. I thought if I find the buffalo I'll probably trip over it before seeing it. No luck, found nothing.

Deciding it would be dark soon I'd cross the river again and walk back to my Landcruiser I'd check the other side of the river. Maybe the buffalo had headed there.

After a hundred metres I found the buffalo dead in the middle of the river. I believe he had probably crashed through the thick stuff straight down the bank and died after hitting the water. A good result. I'd return the next morning and see about removing the horns which thigh deep in the river. That's another story.

Sighting equipment. Maybe a scope might have helped on that first shot where the younger animal blocked the bulls chest. Maybebinshotbthe bull too far back. I believe it was the rear of the lungs, not the gut.

While it was uneventful, ONLY open sights are any good if following up in riverine bush so thick, you can't see beyond your muzzles. And a large DG stopper rifle,

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From the Zimbabwe experience I like the idea of a scoped bolt action .375 or .404. And a double rifle in .450 NE or .500 NE. But only if one has the vintage luxury of a gunbearer. Unheard of today. But a tracker might do it.

The ,375 or .404 can be used for longer range shooting or precise shooting on DG and for plains game. The .450 DR as the primary DG rifle, follow up etc.

Some might say a.458 Lott of .500 Jeffery scoped will do both. Fair enough. But neither are double rifles. I've never seen a .500 NE DR with a scope.

As I've said before, I'd love a .375 Flanged or a .416 Rimmed (Rigby No.2 or .500/416) double rifle, scoped as an all round hunting rifle. Plains game to DG. If it regulates maybe the QD scope could be swapped for a QD dot point, as needed.

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As an aside what would be the regulation priorities?

Probably regulated for the chosen scope, and usual bullet weight, 300 or 400 grs.

Other bullet weights could be tried. A different but the same scope model, would allow one barrel to be used as a single shot, at the worst.

Second priority. A QD Red dot sight might work. But regulation would depend on trying it. Same as the open sights. If close enough is good enough at close ranges it might not matter.

I'm a bit anal retentive and like perfection. Close enough is never good enough. I'm a failed perfectionist.

In practice a good 1-5x illuminated reticle scope would probably do it all fine.

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John aka NitroX

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Govt get out of our lives NOW!
"I love the smell of cordite in the morning."
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