What are the toughest plains game animals??

[zephyr]

what have we found out ...IF.... in a alternate world you are able to shoot the same animal 10 different times in the same spot with the same rifle and load you would get 10 different responses.

 

[Randy F]

+1 for Waterbuck. Resilient beast with a stubborn streak about going down on his own terms.

 

[KMG Hunting Safaris]

On my recent hunt one of the hunters lost a waterbuck. When I talked to him he said that he had hit it but that the bulled didn't expand. I asked him what bullet he was shooting and it was a Barnes TTSX. I then asked him how he knew that it didn't expand when the animal wasn't recovered? He didn't have a answer to that.

Many here will know that I am not a fan of TSX/TTSX on Personally, I think there are better choices.
I never used to mind them on plains game, until last season. I always say, TSX/TTSX is a good bullet for a good shot.
Ask me how did I know that you were using TSX/TTSX on my previous question to you....

 

[KMG Hunting Safaris]

what have we found out ...IF.... in a alternate world you are able to shoot the same animal 10 different times in the same spot with the same rifle and load you would get 10 different responses.

With TSX/TTSX, this is a real possibility...LOL

 

[JimP]

Many here will know that I am not a fan of TSX/TTSX on Personally, I think there are better choices.
I never used to mind them on plains game, until last season. I always say, TSX/TTSX is a good bullet for a good shot.
Ask me how did I know that you were using TSX/TTSX on my previous question to you....

I've been using the TTSX bullets out of a number of rifles for over 25 years and have had zero animals get away or even travel very far until this past year on a kudu. On that shot it was a double lung shot with one lung completely destroyed and the other partially. All other animals that I have used them on have either dropped on the spot or traveled less than 100 yards. I just wish that I could recover a bullet just so that I can see what it looks like and judge it's performance on a game animal.

Some people don't like Swift A frames, other hate Nosler Partitions, then there are all the other bullets out there that hunters have a love hate relationship with. It's just the fact that I have found that if the shooter does his job of placing the bullet into the correct area of the intended target that the target isn't going to go very far.

Way too many hunters blame the bullet when a animal doesn't go down right away when they should be looking at their shooting capability and placing the bullet into the correct spot. I once was of that frame of mind while hunting here in North America. I will say that a Rocky Mountain Elk is just as tough to put down as any African plains game animal out there, but when I was using old cup and core bullets I found that if I did my part then the animal wasn't going to go very far.

 

[MTA]

Many here will know that I am not a fan of TSX/TTSX on Personally, I think there are better choices.
I never used to mind them on plains game, until last season. I always say, TSX/TTSX is a good bullet for a good shot.
Ask me how did I know that you were using TSX/TTSX on my previous question to you....

Hey Marius, which bullets would you suggest? Its pretty hard to find swift bullets right now over here

 

[mdwest]

Hey Marius, which bullets would you suggest? Its pretty hard to find swift bullets right now over here

I’m a dyed in the wool ttsx/tsx guy… they fly very accurately in every one of my rifles… and I’ve never had a problem with ballistic performance… the key is you need to have a bit of speed on them… if you’re impacting below about 2200 fps you may run into problems…

That said… Barnes bullets seem to be almost as hard to come by lately as a-frames around here… every time I see a box in one of my caliber/weight combos I grab it.. but there hasn’t been a whole lot of grabbing opportunities over the last couple of years…

Thankfully I’ve got enough on hand in all of my primary calibers to last me for several years… but.. they’ve gotten scarce enough that I’ve been thinking about trying out the new hornady monometal option… I see shelves full of hornady bullets pretty much everywhere I go..

 

[KMG Hunting Safaris]

Hey Marius, which bullets would you suggest? Its pretty hard to find swift bullets right now over here

Hey Shawn, any of the premium lead core bullets. They do substantially more damage than the mono metals, and keep in mind, we are not in the meat hunting market. We are the animal recovery market. Whether that is D.R.T or giving our hounds a chance to bay a wounded animal, we need to give ourselves the best chance.
We are very lucky to see all types of equipment come through camp, from binoculars, scopes, different bullet combinations. I would like to think that we see these various types of equipment work more than the average guy. We hunt on average 200-250 days every year.
Nosler Accubonds are very good for plains game. Although we've never had any let us down from the Nosler Partitions, I would prefer them to retain a little bit more weight, but up to now, zero problems.
Sierra Gamekings, if you can find them. That is what I use personally.
Certainly don't need Swift A Frames for plains game, although I use them in my double rifle.
I used Federal Fusions for about 2 seasons. Recovered a few. Although they never let us down, the ones that I recovered were quite mangled. I can't recall what brand the bullet was. This was a couple of seasons ago.
There are many other brands that I have not mentioned that we dealt with such as TBBC as well. We had numerous hunters during the 2022 season that had issues with the Barnes. They were zipping through the animals with minimal damage. One that comes to mind was an Impala that the PH could not even call a hit on. This out of a 300 WM which should be almost hitting an Impala off its feet. Found the ram stone dead about 60 yards away. These are the types of scenarios that I am talking about.

 

[KMG Hunting Safaris]

I’m a dyed in the wool ttsx/tsx guy… they fly very accurately in every one of my rifles… and I’ve never had a problem with ballistic performance… the key is you need to have a bit of speed on them… if you’re impacting below about 2200 fps you may run into problems…

That said… Barnes bullets seem to be almost as hard to come by lately as a-frames around here… every time I see a box in one of my caliber/weight combos I grab it.. but there hasn’t been a whole lot of grabbing opportunities over the last couple of years…

Thankfully I’ve got enough on hand in all of my primary calibers to last me for several years… but.. they’ve gotten scarce enough that I’ve been thinking about trying out the new hornady monometal option… I see shelves full of hornady bullets pretty much everywhere I go..

Dave, one of the hunters that I keep mentioning where we had problems was running his 180gr Barnes TTSX out of his 300 Win at around 3040 fps. Would that be too fast?

 

[Paul G]

Zebra is the animal I've seen lost the most. That being said they don't seem to run far when they're sick unlike Eland or WB.

 

[Greenhorn]

Perhaps I should have also mentioned...shot with Hornady Interlock Light Magnum--so possible bullet failure?

I'm not knowledgeable about that cartridge. But possibly, lots of variables at play in these situations. I used to run Hornady ammo in most of my rifles and recently switched to Nosler and Swift Ammunition. So far, Really pleased with their performances

 

[mark-hunter]

I'm a new hunter. Just wondering which plains game animals are the hardest to bring down. From my experience, I think it might be blue wildebeest??

I shot one of each most typical plains game species in Namibia. Ranging in size from steenbock, through zebra up to cape eland. 3 safaris. And I lost none. (calibers used 375 H&H, and 300 H&H)

So I cannot tell from my exact experience.
But my PH tells me that animals most frequently lost due to wounding are oryx and blue wildebeest.

From three safaris, on the other hand, as other hunters were in camp, as a witness I can tell you from 3 groups of hunters, oryx was really lost few times, we found one skeleton of blue wildebeest, (shot by previous client), last hunt on quartering shot one sable was lost, one zebra, 1 or 2 kudus. Sable was lost due to poor bullet placement, and at least two oryx lost with good shot due to poor quality soft point bullet, in 300 wm.

In any case, choose good bullet, practise from sticks, and consider oryx and wildebeest as tough game.

Below, photo of blue wildebeest shot by previous client, and found by my PH and me, some weeks later.

 

[mdwest]

Dave, one of the hunters that I keep mentioning where we had problems was running his 180gr Barnes TTSX out of his 300 Win at around 3040 fps. Would that be too fast?

I’m not sure… but that sounds like a possibility…

I load my larger calibers like 375 and 416 to about 2400-2500 fps.. and smaller like 270, 308, 30-06, 35 Whelen, etc to ranges between 2500-2700… and get consistent performance…

I haven’t tried the ttsx in any 30 or 7 magnum speed calibers yet….

 

[Nhoro]

I reckon wildebeeste takes top honors but I would chuck in a giraffe, so far un-mentioned. They dont die easily and can cover ground while they are on their feet. And you get more bad shots on them cos they are big and lungs are small and far forward. I watched one take 10 shots-8 375 and 2 lott solids and it still took 10 minutes before it had no reflexes. 7 th shot was the ph and brought it down then 3 more chest/ heart shots and the ph still had to sit on its head till it was dead.

 

[MTA]

Hey Shawn, any of the premium lead core bullets. They do substantially more damage than the mono metals, and keep in mind, we are not in the meat hunting market. We are the animal recovery market. Whether that is D.R.T or giving our hounds a chance to bay a wounded animal, we need to give ourselves the best chance.
We are very lucky to see all types of equipment come through camp, from binoculars, scopes, different bullet combinations. I would like to think that we see these various types of equipment work more than the average guy. We hunt on average 200-250 days every year.
Nosler Accubonds are very good for plains game. Although we've never had any let us down from the Nosler Partitions, I would prefer them to retain a little bit more weight, but up to now, zero problems.
Sierra Gamekings, if you can find them. That is what I use personally.
Certainly don't need Swift A Frames for plains game, although I use them in my double rifle.
I used Federal Fusions for about 2 seasons. Recovered a few. Although they never let us down, the ones that I recovered were quite mangled. I can't recall what brand the bullet was. This was a couple of seasons ago.
There are many other brands that I have not mentioned that we dealt with such as TBBC as well. We had numerous hunters during the 2022 season that had issues with the Barnes. They were zipping through the animals with minimal damage. One that comes to mind was an Impala that the PH could not even call a hit on. This out of a 300 WM which should be almost hitting an Impala off its feet. Found the ram stone dead about 60 yards away. These are the types of scenarios that I am talking about.

This is good news as I use Sierra Gamekings almost exclusively right now. Their performance for me has been outstanding. For some reason I was under the impression that all copper was the way to go for most African PG animals so much so that I was about to start developing a load for my 300WM using 175gr Barnes LRX.

I know I told you that I would be renting a rifle from you in May but I think I am leaning towards bringing my own.

I’m a dyed in the wool ttsx/tsx guy… they fly very accurately in every one of my rifles… and I’ve never had a problem with ballistic performance… the key is you need to have a bit of speed on them… if you’re impacting below about 2200 fps you may run into problems…

That said… Barnes bullets seem to be almost as hard to come by lately as a-frames around here… every time I see a box in one of my caliber/weight combos I grab it.. but there hasn’t been a whole lot of grabbing opportunities over the last couple of years…

Thankfully I’ve got enough on hand in all of my primary calibers to last me for several years… but.. they’ve gotten scarce enough that I’ve been thinking about trying out the new hornady monometal option… I see shelves full of hornady bullets pretty much everywhere I go..

I am hoping the CX line is successful. I will say that their interlocks have worked great on WT for me in the past. Id need alot of feedback from others on the CX before I felt confident enough bringing it on a trip to Africa though

 

[YancyW]

I shot a Blue 4 times with a 280, the third shot was a running shot and I hit him in the jaw. He stopped for a second to look back and I was able to finally get a 4th that was on the money. The first two both existed through both lungs, not perfect shots, but within the range of "good". I would say we tracked for probably 90 minutes or more after the first two.

 

[R.M.C.]

what have we found out ...IF.... in a alternate world you are able to shoot the same animal 10 different times in the same spot with the same rifle and load you would get 10 different responses.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Terminal ballistics are pretty hard to pin down. I've seen it all my life on whitetail deer. I've literally gut shot deer and had them drop in their tracks and I've double lunged deer that went 200 yards. You just never know what they're gonna do sometimes.

 

[MAdcox]

In my (very limited) experience- it was my Zebra.
I'm sure Blue Wildebeest can be very tough but I have shot two that went down quickly. Both shots were spot on. My first Zebra, the shot was almost spot on- what I would have considered good shot placement on a Whitetail at home- he required 3 hours of tracking and two follow up shots.
My worst day following an animal was a big Gemsbok bull- but it was a very poor shot placement due to a deflection. Tracker and PH still got me back on to finish the job but it was all my fault on that one, but they tell me Gemsbok can be tough as well.

 

[BRICKBURN]

Dave, one of the hunters that I keep mentioning where we had problems was running his 180gr Barnes TTSX out of his 300 Win at around 3040 fps. Would that be too fast?

He's running near the max or at it.

A couple of my experiences with tough animals using TTSX.
https://www.africahunting.com/threads/making-my-way-to-barnes.36029/

 

[TOBY458]

From my experience, the 375 with your typical 300gr premium/buffalo bullets, doesn't seem to kill PG/deer/pigs as quickly as you'd expect from faster moving smaller caliber rifles. They seem to punch through the animal without doing as much damage as usually seen from something like a 300 Magnum or similar, with softer bullets. I'd expect this to be less pronounced the heavier you go up the scale in body weight. Something like an Eland would seem to provide more resistance to the larger 375 bullets, and give adequate expansion. In fact, every smaller animal I've ever shot with a 375, except Baboon, has ran some distance before going down. This includes deer, pigs, Impala, Kudu, Gemsbuck, BWB, Waterbuck, Bushbuck and Blesbuck. However, my Eland never made it out of sight when shot through both lungs. Same for three Australian Water Buffalo. Don't get me wrong, when shot placement was correct, nothing ran very far, except a Zebra I shot that made it over 300 yards with a double lung hit. So, I'd say bullet construction and velocity play a fairly big role in dropping PG on the spot, or very nearly so.