Hello from Virginia

[Cody Malone]

Welcome and enjoy your trip!

 

[johnvdw]

Welcome Brant Dunn, best of luck!

 

[enysse]

Good Luck Brant, it should be an excellent trip!

 

[Royal27]

Welcome!

 

[Velo Dog]

New member, I recently purchased a hunt to South Africa at the local Friends of the NRA Dinner. I never thought I would be able to take a trip like this, Its not going to be cheap but its not as expensive as I thought.
I look forward to reviewing the forum and hope everyone will be patient if I ask to many questions. I plan on a ten day hunt for plains game and we will be going to the Limpopo region. I plan on taking a .308.
Any advice on books to read or ways to prepare will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Brant

Hi Brant Dunn and welcome to the very best hunting forum.

Books to read in preparation ?

The best of the best is / was "The Perfect Shot" by Kevin "Doctari" Robertson, he writes in this forum under the screen name Doctari505.

I have heard recently that this book is currently out of print but that the pocket version is still available.

If you only read one book in preparation for your first safari, make it that one.

Others have mentioned using only high quality bullets and that is wise council for Africa.

Even warthog can take a terrible beating and still run off if not hit well with a deep penetrating bullet.

They, among other not so huge African animals are surprisingly "impact resistant".

A PH friend of mine (John Luyt of Duke Safaris in Limpopo District) has a .308 that he uses 180 grain Swift A-Frame bullets in for Plains Game.

To quote John on this very subject: "I have never seen an A-Frame fail."

His business partner and fellow PH, Roelof Niemann, uses a 7x57 and 175 grain A-Frames for PG species.

The only other thing about rifles that I will say from personal experience in the Limpopo area is that I notice many USA hunters tend to bring over-powered scopes (6 to 18x and similar) but this is a mistake.

I prefer a fixed 3x or fixed 4x but most well experienced clients prefer variable power scopes in a 2 to 7x or 3 to 9x being common ones.

If you do bring a variable power scope, it is best left on about 3 or 4x for carry, only turning it up in the event of a long shot at a very small animal (like klipspringer across a rocky canyon, etc).

A long shot in the Limpopo area is usually no more than 200 yds and likely your safari will begin and end with no shot over about 75 yards and some at 15 to 20 yds.

Here in the USA we'd call it "deep woods hunting conditions" or "brush hunting conditions".

You're gonna flip when you see Africa.

Safe and happy hunting,
Velo Dog.