I had never shot with sticks before my first African hunt.
I met my future professional hunter at a Game Coin convention in San Antonio, where I had been invited by John Buhmiller, my mentor as far as African Hunting was concerned. The late David Williams, of Ker, Downey and Selby, Nairobi, was my choice and I had no reason to regret it.
Dave followed me to Nashville on his way back to Nairobi, and had a chance to look over my proposed African battery and get an idea of my shooting skills from my collection of medals and trophies which I had amassed over the years. Of course, he had no opportunity to observe me in the hunting field.
At that time I had had no experience with shooting from a rest, except at varmints and very little with deer hunting, which was the only "big game hunting" I had any experience with, so I was still a question mark with Dave when I arrived in Nairobi. He wisely decided to put me to a test.
We were driving along a back country gravel road, when he suddenly stopped and indicated an animal standing in a field on his side of the Land Cruiser. He said, "We need some camp meat for the staff. Why don't you collect that kongoni?" I didn't know what a kongoni was (althouogh I knew what it was by its Afrikaans name, hartebeest,) but I readily agreed. I baled out of the car, took my rifle, a Model 70 Winchester .300 H&H Magnum, and followed my gun bearer, who was carrying a tripod, the first I had seen. It consisted of three long peeled saplings, held together at one end by a long strip of inner tube rubber. We walked toward the animal, taking advantage of what little cover there was, and when we reached what the gun bearer evidently thought was an appropriate range, he stopped and set up the tripod. I had never used one before, but I quickly grasped how it was to be used and laid my rifle across it, with the support about under the magazine, so that I could use a natural standing opsition, with my left hand out on the rifle's fore end.
I lined up the shot and fired and was gratified to see the animal go down. However, I was smoewhat shocked when we walked up to the downed beast, since the distance, as I paced it off, was close to 300 yards. Fortunatelyt, the flat shooting .300 H&H made up for my faulty range estimation.
I realized later that Dave, who had never exited the hunting car, was observing closely, trying to learn as much as possible about the stranger he was to be guiding for the next five weeks.
Evidently I passed his test, because he placed no limitations on the ranges I later took shots, and I had little difficulty with the larger African game animals. The smaller ones gave me problems, since at first I had a tendancy to over estimate the range and aim too high, which resulted in some embarrasing misses, until I caught on to estimating range correctly with them, as well.
The photo was taken on my second hunt, in Tanzania, when I was again hunting for camp meat, this time an impala. At the shot, all three of us, Dave, Kaoli and I, saw all four feet of the impala I was aiming at go streight up in the air, so imagine our surprize, when we found no trace of the animal, when we walked down to collect him. The only explanation we could think of was that once again I had allowed too much for drop and shot high and in the process fired a shot which grazed the spine, but was not fatal.
In my eleven weeks of hunting with Dave, on three separate trips, I used the support every time Dave thought it appropriate, with, except for this one exception, gratifying results. On the other hand, I took unsupported shots at greater and lesser kudu, water buck, oryx and sable antelope with success.
I took only one shot prone, at an eland at about 300 yards, and one shot sitting, at a Cape buffalo at about 150 yards, but everything else was unsupported. I have to attribute my years of International skeet shooting, with its emphasis on rapid target acquisition and trigger control as being more useful in that regard than my years of shooting standing, unsupported on the rifle range.
The photo illustrates perfectly my technique in using the home made tripod.
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