Can't say the videos lack for financial support.
Hell, its great youre even trying to make videos of your hunts. Most times it's stills taken after the fact which are still fine trophies too.

Many thanks for sharing all these fine things and hunts with us.
I'll get some computer knowledgible person over here to help do these things you suggest. Seems whenever I try to do such end up trashing the system.

George

I have added a couple of videos we have taken with a GoPro Hero 3 camera from the air.

5:01 duration for first, and 5:46 for the second aerial view drone video.
No seconds of time lost. Videos work.

The Flat Earth Society is crazy, for the world is definitely spherical in the view from the drone.
No birds tried to fight or mate with the drone?
Walter did not try to stick his finger in a propeller under power?

quote:

Originally posted by RIP:
5:01 duration for first, and 5:46 for the second aerial view drone video.
No seconds of time lost. Videos work.

The Flat Earth Society is crazy, for the world is definitely spherical in the view from the drone.
No birds tried to fight or mate with the drone?
Walter did not try to stick his finger in a propeller under power?

The funny part is the birds did not seem to be too scared of it.

They would not move until the drone got very close to them, despite all the noise it was making.

Walter was on his best behavior this year.

He did call Dillon a "bastard" when Dillon threw a knife at him!

It was all Walter's idea.

He gave Dillon the knife and stood against a tree. He told Dillon to throw the knife above his hat.

Dillon missed, and landed the knife about a quarter of an inch next to his neck!

I will post the video soon!

That sounds like the kind of stunts bil and I used to pull when out drinking. We'd hold a half empty beer can in our open hand and let the other shoot it off with the '06 at 50 feet to 50 yds. "Damned lucky" that's all.

Old friend around here told me he loves flying in winter so he can fly with the Canada geese. Claims he can get close enough in his ultra light to almost touch them before they'd just move over to make room. Might get squawked at some. But, the flock would just move over to make room for him to join them.

Saeed: How big in your bird? Couldn't tell from the one picture I saw of it. Did you just play with it, or use to spot game with too?
Thanks.
George

The DJI Phantom Drone


George,

This is a small drone that has an attachment for the GoPro Hero action camera.

It has an air time of about 15 minutes, and the operating distance is up to 500 meters.

One has to collect the footage, then bring it back and view it on a computer.

We only used it for fun to take video from the air.

This is the most exciting trip of the year for everyone I think. even those who are not there hunting. Amazing pictures and footage with great stories on the side Thanks for sharing !

Another great hunt with Saeed and friends.
Thanks for sharing it with us.
I am looking forward to it every year.

The drone action is great!!!!! So many possibilities!! That would be a great way to wake up Walter each morning! LOL!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Walter was on his best behavior this year.

LOL. I am very happy for Tony and Dillon!!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
I am processing our video footage, and came across Tony with his rifle ready on the shooting sticks, and Dillon behind him watching a herd of buffalo feeding.

Dillon had a grass stick, which he kept tickling Tony's ears with, and Tony thinking it was a fly.

When Dillon needs his hand to look through his binoculars, he put the grass stick on Tony's hat, and then repeats the fly trick

LOL. Dillon fits right in! And apparently he's a whiz with buffalo too! Two each for Tony and Walter is no small feat!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Questions have been raised on why I have changed the scope on one rifle.

I heard so much about NIGHTFORCE, I thought I will try one.

Also, I was hoping for a little more magnification than the n8 power I have on the Leupold 2.5-8, for those long distance shots.

We tried looking through both scopes just before sunset with Roy, and sadly were disappointed not to see any difference whatsoever between the old Leupold and the new Nightforce.

In fact, it seems the Leupold had a slightly wider view when set at 8 than the Nightforce set at the same power.

Walter loved the Nightforce, so I will keep it on the second rifle, and will keep my old Leupold on my own rifle.

Thanks for the explanation Saeed. I was really wondering why...thought maybe Walter messed with one of them, or Roy broke one with his forehead (recalling the wound on his head from one of the Vincent's visits to Dubai last year!).

Keeping the Nightforce on the second rifle for Walter is a much better concession than letting him bring his Blaser!!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:

Walter was on his best behavior this year.

He did call Dillon a "bastard" when Dillon threw a knife at him!

It was all Walter's idea.

He gave Dillon the knife and stood against a tree. He told Dillon to throw the knife above his hat.

Dillon missed, and landed the knife about a quarter of an inch next to his neck!

I will post the video soon!

Can't wait for that video clip!!!

That is just plumb weird.
Is Walter hitting the bottle or what?
Forgot his psychotropic medication?

Walter, son of William "Dillon" Tell.
Did Walter have an apple on top of his head for this stunt?
Those local wild mangoes with the big pits could deflect the knife down into the top of Walter's head.

I will always remember the crew getting the shits from eating so many of those green mangoes,
collected by throwing sticks into the treetops at lunch break,
then having to bail out of the moving bakkie about a mile from camp at end of day,
so they could do their diarrheal business and walk themselves back to camp.
Maybe diarrhea is a lion repellant?

Mango has been my favorite fruit, ever since, though I must admit my father was always crazy about them,
after getting introduced to them at Ramey AFB/San Juan, Puerto Rico in the mid 1950's where I spent my first 3 years of life.

My second favorite fruit is sliced lime sprinkled with Tabasco sauce.

"Funtime" is 6:04 duration, perfect functioning.
The hunting crew were not camera shy, hamming it up with slingshots, while Tony and Walter observed?
Wish that drone would have swooped down to the river surface below the bluff.
I cannot tell if that is a row of hippos or just a dark bar/fallen timber in the river ... or algae on either side of open water ...
500 meters and 15 minutes, eh?
Certainly enough to allow a little more adventurous flying!
That is my look into the mouth of the gift horse tonight.
Thanks.

I have added a video of our driver, Lema, enjoying being the first to shoot at out shooting contest this year.

Pardon my ignorance - but where do we find the vid's?

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Graham:
Pardon my ignorance - but where do we find the vid's?

Matt,

The videos are on the first post of this thread.

I thought of putting them there in one place is easier for everyone to access.

Lema 4:59, slowest download yet, but it worked.
Lema seemed to be slow on downloading a warning from Saeed too, about scope bite about to happen.
Saeed predicted it before the first shot, but Lema did not get the message.
Language barrier or devil-may-care indifference to blood and toilet paper bandage?
Did he clobber himself with the second shot too?
Did he ever get to fire the third shot or did he forfeit the match?
Oh, yeah, did he hit anything with the shots other than his forehead on the scope?

Serious business, that annual shooting contest, aye.

Lema has stopped listening to anything I say this year.

WE had a sort of game going, of playing tricks on each other, to the great amusement to everyone else.

He even got to the stage of locking the doors of the truck any time he gets out of it

He had some problems with his accelerator - the spring that pulls the accelerator up somehow got disconnected

He did have some fun with everyone else once.

I found a piece of wood like looked like a rhino head with the horn cut off. I found a buffalo dung that looked like a rhino horn, and put on the wood.

It looked like the head of a rhino.

So I showed it to him. He was laughing so much he could not stand up!

As everyone turned up, he started guiding them, very slowly, to where the rhino head was.

He thought that was very clever.

You see, me and Lema have something in common!

I have also added a video of Tony shooting the 577 T.Rex and some close ups of our Phantom drone.

Saeed,

From how poorly Tony handled the T. rex, surely that was not a reduced load, as you so humorously cackled in the background.
Can you be trusted to reveal the minimal specifics of the load?
Honest Injun now,
what was the bullet weight, and charge weight of what powder?

If we also knew the velocity of the load, and weight of the rifle, then we could calculate just how little recoil of this reduced load reduced Tony to surrender.

What's that? It was not a "reduced load" but a "reducing load" because it reduces our heroes to laughing stocks?

I did reduce that load for Tony by 2 grains!

The load he had shot was 180 grains of VVN 550 powder, behind a 750 grain bullet, for a velocity of 2518 fps.

The rifles weighs in at 13.5520 pounds.

And as Tony probably weighed 20 times that, he should never even felt it!

I see, reduced by 2 grains of powder from the maximum load.

Recoil energy was 175.1 ft.lbs.

Recoil velocity was 28.8 fps

The 12 Gauge From Hell can do much better.

Congrats to Tony for hitting paper with one shot,
but he really needs to work on his follow through and recovery.
Start with learning to keep both hands on the rifle.

I think what catches the inexperienced off guard is the amount of torque as the rifle twists around the axis of the bore.
With a right-hand twist barrel, the rifle will tend to twist to the right, clockwise if looking down range.
The pistol grip of the stock will thus move in a clockwise arc also, so that means it is moving to the left, away from the palm of a right-handed shooter, as it recoils backward.

A leftie might have an easier time of it.
But the real trick for all is to grip the forestock with offhand thumb over the top of the barrel, encircling both wood and barrel.
And hang on better with the trigger hand, of course, keeping only the trigger finger slack.
I learned this by shooting a T.rex in 2001 with Master Mitch Carter, in an underground 100-yard range on Long Island, NY, of all places!!!
We shot from the bench, with "non-reduced" loads, with a muzzle brake, yes, but the muzzle brake does not tame the torque at all.
That made the torque more obvious.
The purpose was three-shot accuracy testing of the loads.
My hair went grey after this, just a coincidence:

RIP,

That photo is just brilliant.Look at the flame! More like a dragon belching fire!

Saeed,

I wondered about it a few time and I must ask, have you shot the T-Rex with full loads? What was it like for you? Did the rifle fly away too or did you manage to tame the beast and even managed to empty the magazine if there is one? I saw only one gent who shot the T-Rex,not much ado and manages to hold on to it. Walter thumps his back in congratulation.

Best-
Locksley,R

For those of you who don't visit the Aussie/NZ forum. Here is a write up on me shooting the T-Rex. It may explain my "Poor Handling"

So I we were sitting on the couch at Saeeds place, shooting the breeze and I popped the question "Saeed can I shoot the T-Rex?"

I saw a faint smile curl his mouth and I swear I saw his eyes twinkle.

"You want to shoot the T-Rex" He said

"Yep, I can't come to your place and not have a shot"

"OK lets go"

So off we raced down to the legendary range.
At the range Saeed gave me the rifle so I could dry fire it and then he made ready. That means he got the video camera ready. He handed me an artil...er..T-Rex round and says

"you know its really not that bad" He said with a very serious expression

At this point I was feeling pretty cocky about how I would go, after all I out weigh Saeed by just a little bit and thought if he could do it so could I.

I loaded the rifle and hauled it up to my shoulder. Sighted down range, took a breath and slowly let it out as I started to curl my trigger finger.

Now this is where things get a little hazy, because you see I have lost my short term memory and can only piece together what happened next by the flash backs that pop into my head at different times and by the dreams I have where I wake up sweating and screaming.

A split second after I pulled that trigger someone detonated a small nuclear device close by. I don't know how he got into Saeeds house or why he was there in the first place but current heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko punched me fair in the shoulder. My head rocked back so hard that my eyeballs actually stayed in the same place for a second before the optic nerve went tight and my eyes snapped back into my head. The rifle leapt off my shoulder as I staged back a pace and at the same time I could hear some manic laughter. I looked at Saeed and his lips were moving but I couldn't hear anything, so I took off my ear muffs...and that didn't help at all his lips still moved but no sound came out.

That night was Hessa's birthday party and I met a lot of Saeed friends, but they must of thought I was an ignorant bastard as all I did was look at them and smile and nod my head. I could see them asking me questions and talking to me but all I heard was a high pitched tone.

At night when I close my eyes I keep seeing that twinkle in Saeeds eye and hear him say

"you know its really not that bad"

Tony,

Only Roy has shot the 577 T.Rex more times than me, and neither of us dropped it!

He is also the one who developed the loads for it, off the bench.

You are making this sound much worse that it actually is.

For each of those you see in our videos dropping the rifle, there are at least 8-10 others who manage to shoot it without any drama!

Your friend Walter has absolutely refused to shoot it.

Sometime back a friend brought a friend of his visiting from Germany.

He wanted him to shoot the 577 T.Rex.

I got two rounds out, one was a full load just like the one you shot, and one that was loaded with 50 grains of UNIQUE.

My intention was that one of them would shoot the reduced load, and one the full load.

They fired a few different rifles and pistols first, then it was time for the T.Rex.

My friend did not want to shoot it, so he conveniently volunteere3d me to fire one shot to show his friend that it wasn't that bad.

Our visitor picked up one round of the two, and kept it in his hands. I picked the other round, and found out that the one I have was the full load..

I fired it, then our guest fired his reduced load.

"Not very bad at all! Like shooting a magnum shotgun" he said.

Now I was trying to think of a way to get him to shoot another round.

I said to him "Can you put that rifle up to your shoulder and aim again?"

He did.

"That is not very good. Take the rifle off your shoulder and put it back again"

He did.

"You are not shouldering that rifle properly. You did it when you fired it first, but now you are not doing it right. Would you try another shot?"

He agreed, and fired another round.

The rifle flew out of his hands, and the look on his face was absolutely priceless!

After he had recovered from his shock, and while sitting down nursing his shoulder, I said to him;

"One more?"
"NO No No"

"You were very lucky the firs time in placing the rifle in the right place on your shoulder. That is the way we do it, and how we manage the recoil. Because if you don't place it in just the right place, you will get hurt, just as you have done!"

The poor guy has been telling all his friends how important it is where to place the rifle on one's shoulder is ever since!

Saeed:

First off, thanks again for your yearly report on your Safari and it's posting here. It's such a treat to view it.

Secondly, You must have very dark side. Unique!!! My God that must have hurt. Any idea about the pressures involved when that little nuclear device went off?

JDK

You have a very valid point there on shoulder placement. Regardless of the size of the rifle.

Don't ask me how she did it, but, my first wife got some cup filler under the butt on my '06 while I was trying to teach her to shoot. Talk about tears!
Over a couple months I worked up a light load she could handle yet powerful enough for mule deer we intended to shoot that fall. Not long after that I picked up a .303 Enfield for her plumb cheap. That worked out nicely. We both fired at the same time at her first game shot and she made a clean kill, I had to go finish mine up. One of my proudest moments shooting.

Do you turn the T Rex bullets on the CNC too?

Why is the insulation torn up above the shooting area? Too much fire maybe, just melted it?

Thanks for sharing,
George

WC375,

50 grains of Unique is a squibb load, a light load, compared to 180 grains of VVN550. That is an essential point of the story in
Saeed's
last
post
and that was a
very
very

Buy a donkey!

Yes, I make the bullets myself on our CNC lathe.

The tunnel is not insulated, except the first 3.5 meters.

50 grains of UNIQUE is a reduced load in this rifle.

quote:

Secondly, You must have very dark side

Understatement of the year Lets just call it a devilish sense of humor.

OUR LATEST HERO

This demonstrates that the unexpected torque is what slipped Our Hero's grip.
On firing, the rifle twists to the right in the shooter's hands, seeming to want to lay over onto its right side.
There is an abrupt, unexpected twisting of rifle clockwise around the bore axis, from the shooter's perspective, looking down the bore from breech to muzzle, downrange.
The right-hand twist barrel creates angular momentum of bullet and barrel from the bullet's linear momentum pushing along with frictional resistance against the lands,
accelerating from throat to muzzle exit.
The pistol grip of the stock jumps into a revolution clockwise about the axis of the bore, escaping the shooter's right hand, and is quickly grabbed in heroic recovery.
It takes about one second.
And Tony's eyeballs never left his sockets.

I have added a couple of videos of skinning a buffalo and skinning an eland.

The process took over an hour, so I speeded the process up.

Kind of funny to watch fast-motion skinning videos with skinner pretending to eat raw viscera accompanied by chipmunk audio.
What a hoot.
Did an aircraft pass overhead during one of them, high pitched and Doppler shifting?
I am confident a weakling like me could easily handle a 577 Tyrannosaur, because I know how.

Where does one put down their name for a copy of the DVD of this years hunt. I have been wanting to go to Tanzania hunting for a long time, and may just empty the savings account to do so, but can live vicariously, though the DVD till I do.

I am putting the video together right now.

And when I am finished I will post the details of how to get your own copy.

Sorry about the delay.

It is quite an involved job, and sadly there are other work that need to be done too.

I have done about 6 hours so far.

Hey Tony-----?
Do I read your mind correctly when you set that thing off?
"WTF happened?"

Sure looks like a short barrel too. That don't help tame recoil a bit. What is it? 22 or 24"?
How often do you sweep the unburned powder out of the tunnel? IF never, better consider doing so if you shoot much in it. We had quite a fire at the indoor range when a spark set off full joints in the concrete floor. Fun to watch the fires running all over the floor that night. Sure got smokey too.

Thanks for the replies Saeed, appreciated and helps make this site much better.

Things under control when you got home?
Wish you well, enjoy reliving those hunts and fun times while editing. That will make it easier to do, right?

George

Thank you RIP for posting that

George, what was actually going through my head was "HOLY SNAPPING DUCK SHIT WTF WAS THAT"

Before that shot the biggest calibre I had fired was one shot from a 458 Lott. My biggest calibre in the safe is a 8x57 . The most amount of shots fired by me in a large calibre was on the hunt with Saeed's 404/375! I'm a big bore rookie

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
Thank you RIP for posting that

George, what was actually going through my head was "HOLY SNAPPING DUCK SHIT WTF WAS THAT"

Before that shot the biggest calibre I had fired was one shot from a 458 Lott. My biggest calibre in the safe is a 8x57 . The most amount of shots fired by me in a large calibre was on the hunt with Saeed's 404/375! I'm a big bore rookie

Bakes,
Sure with this kind of rifle we are all big bore rookies! Nonetheless I still think that Saeed could find somebody that could hunt with the T-Rex and have a contest with the trackers as well!

Best regards to all!

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
Thank you RIP for posting that

Welcome, Tony. My pleasure.

You did a lot better than some:







Look at the grin on the spectator:



Another Classic "Flying Rifle" pose, this reminds me of a snake charmer for some reason:

I keep getting requests for our video of this year.

We have two camera men doing the videos - the main ones anyway.

Roy and Gary.

I have finished editing and converting Roy's videos, and I am in the process of converting Gary's footage now.

I have taken a few hours of footage too. but those are going to be added at the end of the safari video, as they show parts of the countryside and other activities like skinning, getting stuck, and other bits that might be of interest especially for those who are considering their first African safari.