Yesterday on a weekend hunt my companion was carrying a 375, with 300gr Barnes X's. We were after a kudu, and not having any luck, but chanced across some Blue Wildebeest. Let's have a poke at these he sez. Fine by me, it's his nickel. I was not carrying my rifle with me, but I am not too worried, this bloke has shot more buffalo than I have had hot dinners.

He does a classic stalk, elegant in every sense of the word, they were not spooked at all. They are standing in a broad dried up dam or vlei, rolling about in the dust and messing about. A big bull gets up, steps clear and..... Boom! From 100m from a seated position, my pal drops the hammer. I watched the whole thing thru the binocs. The hit sounded good.

Confusion....milling about....we lose sight of the animal...there he is! Off to the left! Hit him again! Damn there's a tree in the way!! He looks hard hit, surely he is going to fall...Nooooooo!!!! he pulls himself together, and he is off like a cheerleader's panties into the brush with 15 other snorting wildebeest. If I had had my rifle with me I could have poked him 3 times by the time he had cleared the vlei, from the position I was in.

We get to the spot...no blood. We cast about and after 20 minutes we find a tiny drop of bright red blood, alongside a watery brown splotch which I smell and yes, it is guts. There is zero blood trail so we follow the tracks and the bush is so dense the resting wildebeest scramble off with the wounded bull in tow, as soon as we get within 100m. He stays with them.

The rest you can guess, we never found the animal.

Which all goes to show, not even a 375 will drop a animal, shot placement is the overriding key.

That afternoon, farmer says he has a problem Blue Wildebeest on another farm which is tearing up the fences, can we oblige? Sure, one of the party wants a Blue so off we go to this animals favorite haunt. Sho 'nuff there he is next to the fence 150m away, we stop the bakkie. Off we get, and he ducks into the bush. Creep down the road, we spot him in the bush about 20m in trying to figger us out. My pal takes a careful aim through the brush and pops him one. He is using Barnes X 200gr in a 30-06. I can't see how the shot hits but the willie is off faster than a bride's nightie but he leaves a bright red trail not even Helen Keller could miss. We are wading in it. 2 kilometers later of solid blood we get to the animal and he is totally bled out. The shot has hit him low, and I mean LOW in the lungs. Turns out the bullet barely nicked the lungs and he just bled out through that nick. What luck, one half inch lower and we would have lost that animal too.

He got his revenge tho', it took us 2 whole hours of bush clearing and a puncture to get the bakkie in to load him up.

Another lesson in shot placement.

Cheers

Pete

Shot placement is important, but those blue wildebeest are tough. I shot one thru both lungs with a 300 win mag and it still kept running off. It finally took two more shots thru the vital organs before he went down. I guess that is why they are called the poor man's buffalo.

Pete: Thanks for a good lesson well told.

I had a ph tell me there are more wildebeaste running around in Africa with lead in them then anyone could ever imagine...


Mike

Sounds to me like the Barnes X are not opening up on Wildebeest.

May I suggest:



http://www.northforkbullets.com/375-300.htm

Actually I thought the point was that whatever bullet you're using, you still have to hit them in the right spot.

My happy story with a Blue Wildebeest was with a 375 H&H Magnum shooting cheap Speer 270 grain boat tailed spitzers. The shot hit the right shoulder and the animal ran off and around some brush and disappeared about 150 yards down the pike. The PH was intrigued since there were only a couple of tiny drops of blood.

In turned out, the bull was stone dead just around the brush where he disappeared. There was a small wound where the bullet entered and no exit. The bullet had mushroomed beautifully just under the skin on the opposite side having traversed both lungs. The bull died with one shot and I wasn't even using North Forks!!!

Shot placement, shot placement, shot placement.

Pete,
Fond memories. My first kill in Africa was a blue wildebeest, using exactly the cartridge and bullet your buddy was using. My .375H&H-300grXFB was loaded to 2528 fps MV.

Mine was an easy 150 yard broadside shot off shooting sticks, through the heart. The brindled gnu sprinted off and fell over dead in 100 yards, with a big exit hole bleeding him out.

Did your buddy have some brush deflection? I did on kudu, causing me to shoot the bull in its right upper leg instead of the heart. We tracked that kudu for 7 hours before stopping him with Portuguese-Texan heart shots, one each from me and the PH.

None of us need to be told that a 30-06 with a good bullet that is well placed is still a far superior shot to any .375 H&H that is off the mark.

Frankly, I just don't understand why folks hunt with the big bores for plains game when they are taken so easily with medium bores and at least in my opinion more reliably and much of it due to the fact that many folks just shoot them better.

Ahh the dreaded blue woundedbeast strikes again.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Barnes opened up. I've killed far to many head of game with both XFB's and TSX's to fall for that crap.

If the hunter would have been shooting the beloved and deadly NF and hit him in the guts the story would have been just the same. Animal not recovered.

If you can't handle the recoil from a "big bore" like the pleasant old .375H&H you should stay at home and sort through your drag queen wardrobe. The .375 isn't anything that can't be shot with extreme precision, if you happen to be a rifleman! Geezuuss the Monday morning quarterbacking on this sight never fails to amaze me.

Sometimes shit happens, if you've been hunting long enough you'll learn it to be true.

PS

The blue wildebeest is with out a doubt the number one wounded and non recovered trophy on the planet.

My first african animal was a blue wildebeest, shot with a 416 rem mag 350 gr TSX near max load.Shot about 240 yards or so. in the triangle so to speak. He ran close to 250 yards spewing blood out 6 foot of each side. Before going after cape buff I am getting a bigger gun.

JD

quote:

Originally posted by 500grains:
Sounds to me like the Barnes X are not opening up on Wildebeest.

That was not at all the lesson I got from the story, nor from my own experience.

Here's a 270-gr. TSX from a quartering-on shoulder shot on a blue wildebeest at about 100 yds. The bull did a shoulder roll toward me, kicked a couple times, and was stone dead by the time we walked up to him. The bullet stuck under the hide on the far side of his rib cage, with massive pooling of blood.

Give 500 his complaint, you know that is what he lives for.

quote:

Originally posted by Pete Millan:

he pulls himself together, and he is off like a cheerleader's panties

Sorry to hear about the lost animal but, That's funny, I don't care who you are!

quote:

Originally posted by duikerman:


Frankly, I just don't understand why folks hunt with the big bores for plains game when they are taken so easily with medium bores and at least in my opinion more reliably and much of it due to the fact that many folks just shoot them better.

Having only spent 6 weeks in the bush country of Africa I found out the very first night why one carries a .375 H&H as a main or primary weapon. Two simple words: Dangerous Game I do however agree that for the moment in which the actual shot is taken at various plainsgame, the lessor weapon is generally more successful for the average Billy Bwana. The catch is what do you meet on the trail to Billy's PG trophy?

Yep, the point is that good shot placement is key to successful recovery of an animal. And the story is not about talking up the 30-06 as being better than a 375. Personally, I favour the 375 for bush work.

RIP, on the first wildebeest the shot was clear. On the second one, well, I looked at the entrance wound that was low real careful and it looked like it was elongated. It had clipped the knee on the way in too. Plus the fact that the 200gr Barnes did not exit, which kinda surprised me, considering the X section of a wildebeest at that point is only 8 inches or so, and only cartilage to defeat, not much bone down there. We did not recover the bullet, it got lost in the gutting, but yeah, I hear you, I think maybe it got tipped by a twig and tumbled in. A 200gr barnes is a long bullet in a 30-06, maybe stabilisation is an issue?

Cheers

pete