Dave,

In August of 2006 I was fortunate enough to take an old Dugga Boy in Tanzania with a .416 Rigby pushing a 350 gr Barnes X at 2700 fps.

Used that same rifle with some of the left over ammo on a Bison shoot in Texas. (Jeffe watched it by the way.)

I'd have to say that the .416 Rigby did OK on the Cape Buff ... that old sucker what just tough as nails! He had obviously staved of the unwanted attention of more than one lion over the years, and he was not about to leave this mortal veil easily. He was hit three times with the Rigby and once from a Lott before I finished him with a head shot.

On the other hand, the rifle was simply authoritative on the Bison ... boom ... game over.

Bison and Cape Buffalo are not comparably tough.


(By the way, the Buff trophy mount is finally due in within the next two weeks ... after having been lost along with the taxidermist fir three years!)

mstarling

Don't you hate it when you get animals like that ?
I've had Water Buffalo like that, excepting a head, spine of full on heart shot, they don't
want to go down.

Where did you hit the Buffalo ?

CDNN has .375 Ruger Africans for $650. Add shipping and FFL fees and you're in for under $700. Includes rings so all you need is a scope.

A .416 Ruger sold on 24hcf a few days ago for $675 shipped.

As much as I love my Whelens, I don't think I'd take one for buffalo.

quote:

Originally posted by mstarling:
Dave,

In August of 2006 I was fortunate enough to take an old Dugga Boy in Tanzania with a .416 Rigby pushing a 350 gr Barnes X at 2700 fps.

Used that same rifle with some of the left over ammo on a Bison shoot in Texas. (Jeffe watched it by the way.)

I'd have to say that the .416 Rigby did OK on the Cape Buff ... that old sucker what just tough as nails! He had obviously staved of the unwanted attention of more than one lion over the years, and he was not about to leave this mortal veil easily. He was hit three times with the Rigby and once from a Lott before I finished him with a head shot.

On the other hand, the rifle was simply authoritative on the Bison ... boom ... game over.

Bison and Cape Buffalo are not comparably tough.


(By the way, the Buff trophy mount is finally due in within the next two weeks ... after having been lost along with the taxidermist fir three years!)

Mike:

Our experience differs. While I think that buffalo are indeed more AGGRESSIVE, I also think that a bison can indeed absorb more bullet shock than a cape buffalo. The last one my son shot with my .500 Jeffery did not go far but that was only a 1000 pound heifer. I shot a big bull twice with a .404 and it laid down. As we approached, it jumped up and started to run. A solid thru the neck finished him off. A buddy of mine shot a big bull bison with his .416 Rigby with Barnes bullets and had to put four or five rounds into him to finish him off. That same buddy, with that same gun, killed two cape buffalo with two shots. A big bull bison can take a hell of a hit. I think your bison experience is atypical but every animal is different, right?

quote:

every animal is different, right?

100% correct and applies to everything on the planet.

.

500N,

My fault. We came up the backside of a 10 foot tall by 30 foot in diameter ant hill and the PH said "Shoot that one." He bolted as I stood up and I hit him going behind a tree. Too far back.

There after, the four of us had more than 300 buffalo stampede toward us and split around the ant hill ... VERY scary!

We eventually tracked him up and my next shot went right through the heart. PH hit him with a Lott but again too far behind. We tracked him up again and I hit him on the ground from behind. Bullet entered the right ham, broke the femur, and went through the gut and chest cavity lodging under the skin of the chest. Went through the heart ... or what was left of it. Was the only bullet that did not completely pass through.

He again came up and went another 10 yards. Hit him in the head while he was thrashing around.

Damned tough critter. Magnificent will to live!!!

The only too far back shot that seems to work is to hit the Liver hard. Seems to stop them running !!! (which isn't surprising).

As many have pointed out, the .35 Whelen is not legal in most countries in which Cape buffalo are hunted.

Some have pointed out the hazards of violating the law in Africa, which is, of course, a concern, but you'd probably get away with it over there. However, I would not forget the Lacey Act.

It is illegal in the U.S. to import any trophy taken by illegal means in the country of origin. On occasion, the feds have sought to make an example out of someone even when the country where the hunt took place didn't care.

Being a Texan, Post Oak, you might want to google Lacey Act, moose, and helicopters in the Houston Chronicle to find an example. Just food for thought.

(Notwithstanding the legalities, I'm with Jeffe. I still like a .416).

quote:

Originally posted by 500N:
The only too far back shot that seems to work is to hit the Liver hard. Seems to stop them running !!! (which isn't surprising).

Ditto on the liver shots!

quote:

Ditto on the liver shots!

I've seen quite a few deer shot in the liver.....seems to be an instant stopper.

I believe it hurts like hell.

Maybe a combo of shock and hurting makes them pull up.

I know one Buff that we shot, a Big Buff Bull, long shot with a Bolt Action,
the liver was hit and we knew it wasn't a good shot but it had to be taken
(feral animal, only seen once in a blue moon).

Anyway, he hardly moved, just went into the scrub 30 feet.

You would think any animal double lunged or had the heart shot out would expire within 10 minutes due to lack of oxygen to the brain.
I hear a lot of these stories about various followup situations that really do not make a lot of since. Could it be that the hunting party is engaged with their wounded quarry within this 10 minute cycle, or are there more single lung shots or gut shots that account for these dangerous encounters.
Get close, wait for the best shot, shoot straight, and use a good bullet! If it runs off, wait 10 minutes.

Every animal is different.

Lung shots especially, some have remarkable staying power.

quote:

Originally posted by eezridr:
You would think any animal double lunged or had the heart shot out would expire within 10 minutes due to lack of oxygen to the brain.
I hear a lot of these stories about various followup situations that really do not make a lot of since. Could it be that the hunting party is engaged with their wounded quarry within this 10 minute cycle, or are there more single lung shots or gut shots that account for these dangerous encounters.
Get close, wait for the best shot, shoot straight, and use a good bullet! If it runs off, wait 10 minutes.

I'm no Buff expert but I know that a double lunged elk can still move a long way before tipping over if its excited. I believe it has something to do with the shear size of the lungs compared to a Deer. An elk operating at 50% lung capacity can go a long way, same amount of destruction would be 90% of a deer's lungs and I would guess a double lung on a Buff would be a far smaller percentage of its lungs capacity. Another thing is that high velocity bullets seem to turn lungs to jelly, slower moving projectiles don't seem to do that.

Snellstrom

I agree to some extent but I have noticed it also seems to partly determined by bullet diameter (to state the obvious). I haven't seem Buff lungs turn to jelly just because of velocity but then again,
I don't use that many HV firearms to shoot Buff so maybe I need to do so and have a look at it.

Re Bullet diameter, A 9.3 or 375 semi opened up is vastly different to a 500gn .510 SN
opened up to about an inch, and that is without the shock factor thrown in.

A 1" or over hole closes up less than a .5" hole.
So the smaller the calibre, the more easily it closes so IMHO,
the more a CNS system hit is required - Brain, Spine, Heart etc.

That is just my HO.

I wish we could have a physician or vet weigh in on this topic. I would like to know if a lung is actually functional if it is punctured regardless of the size of the hole.
If you stick an animal with an arrow, it does not make a big hole (Slice a nice portion) and leaves a very limited entry / exit that can close easily but it is a very effective killing tool if you (double lung) your quarry.

EZ

EZ

Spent a lot of years bow-hunting, now back to rifle hunting for reasons that are irrelevant.

With my old rig, unless I intentionally broke the arrow off on the off shoulder of a quartering animal, I generally got full pass throughs. Only exceptions I can think of were a kudu where I screwed up and hit the near shoulder bone, and wildebeast, which are notoriously tough.

I shot what I consider relatively small diameter broadheads -- 7/8". But a 7/8" hole through the lungs and both chest walls is'nt what I would call a small hole. And, animals usually ran less distance than when I've shot them with a rifle (and not made a spine or skeletal damaging shot).

EZ, if you shoot thru the thoracic cavity and air enters thru the chest wall a pneumothorax develops and the lungs cannot expand, thus becoming nonfunctional.

BUT, both left and right thoracic cavities must be punctured, since the two sides are separately contained. An animal can survive on one lung, left or right. Thus, you must cause bilateral pneumothorax.

If you shoot a hole thru the heart or a great vessel exiting the heart, the game is over. The heart will either fill the pericardial cavity, causing hemopericardium, or exsanguination develops. Either waay blood flow essentially stops and the animal becomes unconscious. Don’t believe the “I shot him thru the heart” and he kept going stories. A true heart shot will kill within a minute.

Regards, AIU (MD)

quote:

Originally posted If you shoot a hole thru the heart or a great vessel exiting the heart, the game is over. Blood flow stops and the animal become unconscious.

Regards, AIU (MD)

But the brain and muscles can work pretty well for a minute or two, even as much as 3 minutes sometimes, with no blood flow from the heart at all.

In that amount of time a buff can kill one pretty damned dead....especially if you meet him or her up close and personal.

My feeling is that for ME, I would want something which will will break both shoulders and immobilize the sucker right where he stands. My object would be to first immobilize him, THEN kill him. Whether the first shot killed him or not is unimportant to me, as long as he can't run or fight.

YMMV

I think that I can relate to all sides of this story. I enjoy using minimal calibers for the job, where skill, courage and macho rule - a test of grit. And I can appreciate those who enjoy such things as climbing Denali and Everest. I can certainly appreciate the rush of hunting dangerous game – the hunter becoming the hunted primal kinda thing. I can also understand the principle of stacking the odds in my favor. That’s why I had a 458 made for my carry gun in summer and fall, for hiking salmon streams, etc. I do not want a lingering argument with a brown bear. However, sometimes I question the sportsmanship involved in these overkill cartridges for cape buff, when the hunter is the one who seeks out and picks the fight. Somehow, it seems that the method of choice for a real hunter and sportsman is the bow. What’s the challenge in whacking a buff with a cartridge big enough to stop a freight train? That’s especially considering that for most of the African “sportsman” today there’s always the PH to save your ass in case you flinch.

Don't get me wrong. I'm just presenting this as food for discussion. For clarity, it's my intention that if I ever shoot another brown bear, it will be at a range of 15 feet or less, and I will be disappointed (of course) if the shot isn't a stopper. It's a matter of attitude. I'm not gonna pick a fight with a brown bear, but if a fight starts, I want to end it promptly as surely as I know there is no other choice but to shoot.

Alternatively, it is difficult for me to imagine the same scenario with a cape buffalo. A fatal and final shot at 15 feet is something the modern "hunter sportsman" considers, but in reality wants to avoid.

KB

Well, kabluewy, for the most part I share your sentiments. That's one of the reasons I don't go hunting buffalo in my old age.

But, if I were in Buff country, I would be carrying a BIG ENOUGH rifle to break both shoulders. Sometimes one blunders onto one which is in a bad mood, whether hunting them or not. If I have to shoot one, I don't want him or her living 2 or 3 minutes getting even by killing ME.

I wouldn't mind hunting cape buffalo. I think of it as a Hemingway sort of thing. However, if I did, I would take my 458, and that's after a lot of practice with it for familiarity and assurance.

However, I can't imagine spending the money for that sort of thing. Instead, I would try to find a real hunt for a wild bison, either in Canada or here in Alaska. Again, I would use my 458 for the job. Heck, I would rather do a moose hunt than a cape buffalo hunt. It's just me. I would rather hunt something I can put in the freezer and share with friends, and eat over the winter, than blast a buff for the natives.

I have had bison meat, and it's delicious, and there's lots of it on one of those critters. Same thing can be said of moose meat. It's good eating stuff, better than beef in my opinion.

Again, I agree with you Kabluewy...

Moose hunting is my absolute favourite sport. When I was just out of college, my wife and I ate moose at least two times a day, often three times, for three years. Then my income finally reached a level where we could buy our food.

I never hunted moose in the lakes or bogs...always still-hunted them in the forests along river banks of major rivers...where you might meet up with anything. Nice country, lots of low bush blueberries under big trees, lots of sandy-come-gravel soil with a fair amount of duff on it. Nice sun infiltrating hrough the trees on the SE facing banks of the rivers...a real paradise now destroyed by all the Alberta oil exploration.

Anyway, never failed to get my two bulls per year and had a lot of wonderful roasts, sausage, and B-B-Q'd steaks, not to mention stews, liver, and that sort of thing. We even did home-made pizza from scratch with moose sausage sliced thin, instead of pepperoni....

Oh man, you do have a way with memories and mental images. There is no better vision than the memory of a fall hunt in the northland near a river for moose. However, there are many which equal it.

I suppose, my point is that my visions of memorable hunts have always focused somewhere within the northland, especially Alaska. Perhaps that's why I live here. Africa is somehow beyond my imagination. Maybe it's because I never considered it a possibility.

KB

quote:

Originally posted by Ackley Improved User:
EZ, if you shoot thru the thoracic cavity and air enters thru the chest wall a pneumothorax develops and the lungs cannot expand, thus becoming nonfunctional.

BUT, both left and right thoracic cavities must be punctured, since the two sides are separately contained. An animal can survive on one lung, left or right. Thus, you must cause bilateral pneumothorax.

If you shoot a hole thru the heart or a great vessel exiting the heart, the game is over. The heart will either fill the pericardial cavity, causing hemopericardium, or exsanguination develops. Either waay blood flow essentially stops and the animal becomes unconscious. Don’t believe the “I shot him thru the heart” and he kept going stories. A true heart shot will kill within a minute.

Regards, AIU (MD)

More specifically it needs to be a tension pneumothorax; partial pneumothorax, even bilateral is quite survivable (at least in humans).

since when did buff hunts go for 50K?????? more like 15K....

shot by the game scout for using a 35 on buff??? since when??? 99% of game scouts, prolly 100% wouldn't know the difference between a 35 and a 375 if they were holding them....

and the PH runs the show.....

I'd still get a 375H&H......

troy

quote:

Originally posted by postoak:
Trax, I know that about the .350 Rigby, and the Nosler ammo I have gives a velocity of 2800 fps with the 225 grain in the Whelen, so it actually has the Rigby beat by a couple of hundred feet per second.

Yes, Nosler custom ammo lists 35Whelen 225gn at 2800mv, is that what you have clocked, or are you just going off Nosler figures?

Although not 35Whelen, Interesting is what this guy has achieved from his 22" tube, .338/284win

quote:

Originally posted by Kabluewy:


I would try to find a real hunt for a wild bison, either in Canada or here in Alaska. Again, I would use my 458 for the job.

You and I are definitely on the same page of experiences, even though in different countries.

If you look at a map of Alberta and go east along the northern border with the NWT you will come to Ft. Smith (IIRC). My memory is getting a little foggy, but anyway, it's Ft. Something or Other, just north of Lake Athabaska and barely into the NWT. LOTS of Wood Buffalo just SE of there in Alberta, and they are absolutely wild. No domestication, ever, of that herd and it is a BIG herd. When I lived there in Alberta, they were very huntable.

A friend of mine had an OLD GMC Suburban with the two rear doors which opened in the middle & swung sideways. He had an electric winch situated between the driver's and passenger's front seats and would take out the rear seats when hunting those bison. When one was down, it was a simple task to 4-wheel drive over within cable reach of it and just pull it right into the back of the rig...after gutting & bleeding out, of course.

Very good eating meat, but one had to be careful which buffalo they killed. At that time some of them had anthrax.

As to moose meat, I'd take it over beef, elk, deer, or even Bison any day of the week, in a heart-beat.

Best wishes, Yank.

I am a bit late to see this but may be able to add a little - I have shot Water Buff Bull with a 35/284... essentially a 35 Whelan. The 280gn Swift A-Frame was my choice. And it performed perfectly. Broke nearside shoulder with first shot (projectile under skin just behind far shoulder). Then broke far shoulder from nearside ribs shot angling forward as the Bull turned away. Projectile under skin again. Perfect expansion and weight retention of >95%.

This load was out of a 22" barrel and essentially duplicated the old 9.3x74R ballistics.

9.3x74R 286gn @ 2275fps
35/284 280gn @ 2280fps

There has been a lot of large game shot with those sort of regulated 9.3x74R loads...

However would I take my little 35 after African DG assuming it was legal? I believe it could get it done but the answer is...

Hell NO; that's what a 404Jeff is for.

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
Very good eating meat, but one had to be careful which buffalo they killed. At that time some of them had anthrax.

Maybe a year ago I was reading the Anchorage paper about AK F&G planning on releasing in Alaska some of those buffalo from Canada - I think they referred to them as Woods Bison. Anyway, they caught about twenty of them and last I knew they were in quarenteen near Portage AK. Those things take to Alaska very well.

KB

I think I saw the .35 Whelen referred to as poop gun here...
It gives the same ballistics as the .350 Rigby in the 1920's.
I have read what Taylor thought about the .350 Rigby for buff, and he thought very highly of it.

As for the topic, go to a country were your gun is legal, have fun.
Or, rebarrel to .375 Whelen - you will probably nver take it out.

quote:

Originally posted by Kabluewy:

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
Very good eating meat, but one had to be careful which buffalo they killed. At that time some of them had anthrax.

Maybe a year ago I was reading the Anchorage paper about AK F&G planning on releasing in Alaska some of those buffalo from Canada - I think they referred to them as Woods Bison. Anyway, they caught about twenty of them and last I knew they were in quarenteen near Portage AK. Those things take to Alaska very well.

KB

I would think think they'd do very well in inland Alaska. They seem to thrive where there is lots of muskeg, stunted willow brush, and various native grasses. Fifty-five below doesn't noticeably bother them even a little bit, and I'm certain they've seen it a lot colder than that too.

When adults they also seem very able to deal with wolves, either singly or in packs ...calves may find it a lot tougher going.

Anyway, thanks for the info. I always admired those big guys and am pleased to hear they are finding more land to call their own.