I'm sure a curmudgeon will be along shortly to school everyone on how Africa should only be hunted with timber & blued rifle, leather & canvas clothing/accessories...and wearing a pith helmet.
I’m here! I’m here!
I know what chassis rifles are and there may be a use case in Africa for them, but I haven‘t seen that use case in my travels.
Beyond tradition, beauty, and enduring quality, there is a reason that people buy those low-comb stalking rifles and shoot low power scopes.
The odds of a long shot in Africa is really slim. The odds of someone with a chassis rifle botching the shot or delaying the shot-opportunity is greater for a variety of reasons.
Low comb guns with ultra-low rings and a straight tube or small-bell magnification scope is faster. If I had a chassis rifle or any of the modern high comb rifles on my safaris I would have lost a LOT of shot opportunities.
Topping-off a magazine may be more arduous if it uses a drop box magazine. A crawling stalk with a magazine sticking out is harder.
There feed is rarely as good as alternatives because many of them are push feed and their test cycling is often evaluated from a shooting bench.
Their safeties are usually designed in a pleasing manner for bench shooting rather than for rapid, instinctive shots in the bush.
In the Boddington study of ALL shots in Africa in all regions the PHs operated in the responses, the average kill shot was at 38 yards. That’s averaging in those 200 yard shots on buffalo in the Okavanga and that 500 yard springbok shot in the veldt by a guy playing sniper. 38 yards. By the time someone with a chassis gun and the corresponding huge telescope in high rings gets on sticks, gets the 80x zoom turned down to 1x, the game is long gone or tipped off to all the movement.
And yes, I like fine guns, pith helmets, cartridge belts, the smell of cordite, and good engraving so I certainly have my biases. My biggest bias is against gun marketing because it caters to what will sell, and the american public wrongly assumes the British gun makers were idiots and therefore their designs are all antiquated. In reality, the British gunmaker’s designs were when there was infinite skilled labor and costs allowed them to create a level of quality for particular purpose that was unmatched. The Germans improved upon that with their action designs and then the Americans improved upon that with the superior safety designs. In the end, there is a reason these designs still pervade African safaris rather than something made by Gunwerks out of carbon fiber with an absurd optic and a 20 round magazine.
But yes, you can bring a chassis gun to Africa if that will enhance your experience, even though it will likely reduce your success in many applications.
