Anyone hunted this caliber in Africa yet?

Recently I hunted with someone who used the new .375 Ruger. His shooting was very poor! He wounded a cow buffalo with a frontal shot that was to low (The buffalo was killed three days later with a .375 H&H Mag.), then he gut shot a Impala ram. The ram went around 25 yards, and was finished off with a 9M/M handgun. Of course better shooting would of ended things differently.

Bad shooting is hardly the fault of the cartridge! People have shot poorly with every caliber in existence!

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Originally posted by Demonical:
Bad shooting is hardly the fault of the cartridge! People have shot poorly with every caliber in existence!

Agreed, When you have bullet "X" moving at velocity "Y", it has no idea what gun or cartridge it came out of.

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
Anyone hunted this caliber in Africa yet?

There’ve been a number of magazine articles regarding use of 375 Ruger in African hunts…some consider these to be questionable as written by professional writer who is somewhat beholden to the magazine’s advertisers…others will take them for what they are. Cartridge is so new that I doubt many consumers have had the opportunity to use the 375 Ruger in actual hunting conditions.
That said, the 375 Ruger is a virtual ballistics match to the 375 H&H so anything the 375 H&H can do so can the 375 Ruger...I don’t have either so don’t have a dog in the infighting.

quote:

Originally posted by Bo Rich:
Recently I hunted with someone who used the new .375 Ruger. His shooting was very poor! He wounded a cow buffalo with a frontal shot that was to low (The buffalo was killed three days later with a .375 H&H Mag.), then he gut shot a Impala ram. The ram went around 25 yards, and was finished off with a 9M/M handgun. Of course better shooting would of ended things differently.

As noted by Demonical and Collins, can’t fault the cartridge for a “piss poor shooterâ€.

I retired from law enforcement a couple of years ago and fondly recollect the quarterly firearms qualifications with the individuals who were “minute of washtub†at 15 yards with a 357 S&W Magnum (handgun) and “minute of side-of-barn†at 100 yards with 12 slugs (shotgun) or 308 Winchester (rifle) - many years of remedial firearms training for many of these individuals failed to tighten these groupings!...however PC prohibited that bullet being taken from their pocket.

I am curious about the factory loads and how those Hornadys are working out, since the 300 grain Interbond didn't fare too well on buff and has been discontinued.

capoward, I've read that cops miss their targets 80% of the time. Your numbers seem to support that.

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Originally posted by jetdrvr:
capoward, I've read that cops miss their targets 80% of the time. Your numbers seem to support that.

Jetdrvr…It generally can be blamed on one or both of two things, one: a gov’t entity who is unwilling to expend funds to properly train their employees with the weapons of specified carry, and two: quite a few individuals who probably should be employed elsewhere. Don’t forget though, in the heat of battle even those individuals with a reputation for their firearms prowess can miss most of their shots; good example is the “OK Corral†gunfight – lead starts flying and all that target practice goes to “hell in a hand basket†quickly.

Inasmuch as it duplicates the 375 H&H balistically in every respect, plus it has no horrible belt and its on a short action , it could be nothing less tha fantastic, better than the 375 H&H?? probably not, maybe so!...T

he difference is less than none IMO...both are great rounds, and you couldn't possibly go wrong with either of them..

Capoward,
I retired from the Gov. service L.E. specifically DEA and US Customs Agency with a short stent in the USFS L. E. ..

I don't recall anyone that did not qualify, and qualify well, if they did not then they lost their pistol and were off the street and in the intelligence or teaching division...

I don't know where you worked but it must have been a foriegn government..

Never at anytime in my career was I shorted on ammo, in fact we always had more than we could shoot..training was excellent..

Now, in a gun fight, you just never know how you are going to react and you may be hell on wheels in one fight and scared s--tless in the next..I have seen some brave men and I know they were brave men fall apart..

Dealing with dieing is not easy at best, except on the internet and in the movies..

No foreign government service though I did have a fairly close working relationship with some of our contiguous countries’ agencies over the years.

Different gov’t agencies have different qualification courses, qualification standards and different weapons. I started my gov’t LE career with the US Border Patrol in 1970, moved to INS’ investigations in 1988, and ended my gov’t career with DHS ICE’ investigations (consolidation of INS Investigations and Customs Agency investigations). I have shot the USBP, the INS’ investigations, the DEA, and the Customs Agency’ qualification courses and the USBP was the most difficult of these courses though not overly daunting for anyone who spent time maintaining proficiency with their handgun. And yes you either qualified or gun was pulled and you were placed into a non-carry position and given remedial firearms instruction. If you failed a second straight quarterly qualification then you either found non-gov’t employment or sought transfer to another agency branch where the carrying and use of firearms was not a job requirement.

I did personally observe the difficulty that many USBP officers, though principally the smaller statured individuals (after the USBP eliminated their minimum height and weight requirements), had in qualifying with their carry ammunition (158gr jacketed soft point .357 magnum rounds) once full load qualifications were implements vis-à-vis the prior use of .38 special wad cutter ammunition for quarterly qualifications.

I did personally observe a number of INS investigators (premerger) who found it a bit more difficult to qualify with the 40 S&W ammunition after having qualified with a lighter hitting round earlier in their career (.38 special wad cutters from a .357 magnum) as well as some former customs investigators (post-merger) who found the 40 S&W to difficult to qualify with so they stayed with their former Customs Agency’ investigations issued 9mm semi-auto.

Over my 35+ year career I had a number of close friends who were either local firearms instructors at other locations within the INS or who may also have been academy firearms instructors who confirmed that the trends were agency wide and not a local analogy.

Throw into this qualification mix both the INS and Customs inspectors and the individual ability to quarterly qualify fell substantially (though admittedly firearms carry was not a job qualification for this position within either agency). Both were merged within DHS, along with USBP, into Customs and Border Protection and now that CBP inspectors have been approved for law enforcement coverage status (within the past 12-months) their individual firearms prowess will improve (else they’ll be seeking employment elsewhere as well).

Now this is all and good at the federal level however the local law enforcement folks in smaller communities truly faced a daunting task as few of their city or county leadership felt the need for annual firearms qualifications let alone multiple qualifications within a fiscal year. Financial liability concerns, after a few of the larger municipalities nationwide were sued over their law enforcement personnel’s lack of firearms prowess when discharging their weapons in the performance of duty, forced local municipalities as a collective whole to implement departmental firearms training and annual firearms qualification standards for their law enforcement personnel. Were tort liability concerns not an issue I’m sure that many if not most local government entities would never have adopted firearms training and annual qualifications standards due to budget costs.

Almost forgot…more than once in my career the HQ level bean counters otherwise utilized our annual ammunition budget on other than ammunition purchases forcing local stocks to be utilized for qualifications only with no ammunition available for practice except for those individuals in remedial firearms training. Also more than once have gone through gas purchase/shift mileage restrictions (beyond the Carter gas line years) due to these same individuals. Did they ever get fired….nope they only seemed to rise in importance within the agency.

Oh well, much longer than necessary, s..t happens . Keep the faith.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
Inasmuch as it duplicates the 375 H&H balistically in every respect, plus it has no horrible belt and its on a short action , it could be nothing less tha fantastic, better than the 375 H&H?? probably not, maybe so!...T

he difference is less than none IMO...both are great rounds, and you couldn't possibly go wrong with either of them..

Yeah, I realize they're almost identical. I own an H&H myself and won't change...see no reason to...as I said previously, I was more interested in how the Hornady factory DG bullet performs on DG. Just curious.

I have no problem with the .375 Ruger, other than it appears to be a solution to a non-existant problem.

quote:

Originally posted by capoward:

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
capoward, I've read that cops miss their targets 80% of the time. Your numbers seem to support that.

Jetdrvr…It generally can be blamed on one or both of two things, one: a gov’t entity who is unwilling to expend funds to properly train their employees with the weapons of specified carry, and two: quite a few individuals who probably should be employed elsewhere. Don’t forget though, in the heat of battle even those individuals with a reputation for their firearms prowess can miss most of their shots; good example is the “OK Corral†gunfight – lead starts flying and all that target practice goes to “hell in a hand basket†quickly.

Yeah, stress certainly changes performance, but good, consistent recurrent training overcomes stress-induced mistakes.

I'm a retired pilot and skydiver and I had excellent training in both disciplines, plus some excellent training in firearms. Luckily, I've never had to use the firearms training other than in hunting, but when you have a sudden catastrophic engine failure on an aircraft, that training just kicks in, you complete the procedures and maintain control. Same with skydiving. I've had a couple of catastrophic situations in that sport and immediately reverted to the basics and I'm still here. I have a dozen or so dead friends who didn't do it right.

Different people react to intense, sudden stress onset very differently. The ones who revert to the training usually come out on top. But shooting is a frangible skill and lack of practice degrades essential skills considerably, so if there is no budget for ammo and recurrent training, I can easily understand why many LEO's are at substantial risk when they come up against a well trained opponent. The Miami FBI disaster is a prime example.

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
Different people react to intense, sudden stress onset very differently. The ones who revert to the training usually come out on top. But shooting is a frangible skill and lack of practice degrades essential skills considerably, so if there is no budget for ammo and recurrent training, I can easily understand why many LEO's are at substantial risk when they come up against a well trained opponent. The Miami FBI disaster is a prime example.

The lesson learned from the Miami FBI disaster was that they unfortunately fully defaulted to their standardized training under the stress of the firefight and that their training had failed to prepare them for the miss-happenings that they encountered which is why shortly thereafter the USDOJ required all of their LE components to revise their firearms training programs to eliminate the identified shortfalls of the Miami incident.

They were not properly trained or equipped to take on a highly motivated opponent. They also had a tendency to believe in the mythical invincibility of the FBI.

A large part of that problem was the ineffective weapons they were using. The shooter was hit something like eleven times with 9mm and .38 special rounds, but none resulted in a fatal wound until some wounded agent managed to reload and crawl to within point black range and finish the guy.

That shootout generated the most estensive study on handgun wounding factors ever undertaken. The 10 mm came out on top as a result of that, and then was downloaded to the .40 S&W because many agents couldn't handle it, as I recall.

Plus, they came up against a highly motivated shooter equipped with superior weaponry who wasn't going to fall down at the first shot, like the movies always show. He just kept shooting and reloading and took them out, one by one, running on adrenaline and anger. Just goes to show how ineffective handguns really are and how a determined opponent can really raise some hell if he's not afraid to die.