South Africa was very isolated during the 1970-80's and not much was known by foreign hunters about hunting in South Africa those days. The game ranch concept was also not established at that point. However, I grew up on a cattle ranch next to the Kruger National park and was in the privileged position early in my life where hunting was part of everyday life for survival...for the ranch owners and their workers. So, reading books and articles about hunting interested me from an early age in my life. Back then there was a famous gun writer/guns store owner, the late Dr. Lukas Potgieter, who was considered by many those days as the most knowledgeable person in South Africa regarding hunting and more specifically hunting rifles. He was also the author of various books on these topics and as I remember he also wrote a weekly article about hunting and hunting rifles for an agricultural magazine the "Landbouweekblad" at the time. In the one series of articles he did some research on the topic "best all round caliber rifle". I remember many people those days couldn't wait to read his next article, and as he narrowed down the various calibers for hunting in Africa, only 3 remained in the race, the 9.3x62 Mauser, the 375 H&H, and the 338 WM. Dr. Potgieter concluded in his last article that if you only want to have one rifle in Africa the 338 WM would be his choice. He based his choice on various outcomes of his research, and hunting experience of many years in Africa. I wish I could still have those articles...it would have been precious...
