Will be flying from Atlanta to Jo'burg, overnighting there, and then on to Lilongwe, Malawi where I catch a charter to Sable Camp at the Niassa Reserve on the Moz/Tanzanian border.

I've hunted Africa a few times, but never Moz -- looking forward to chasing Leopard; Hippo; Croc; and miscellaneous other critters native to that area -- all with handguns as usual.

I'm betting it'll be pretty hot at Sable Camp in October!

I was in Freischuetz' camp in Mozambique last October. Great camp, hunters and hunt, and I got my first Cape Buffalo - but you are right, it will be hot!

A couple of years ago, I spent the entire month of October in Limpopo and it was brutally hot for the entire month.

On the other hand, with all of the vegetation missing and water in short supply, the Leopards were easier to get to bait and the plainsgame easier to find than in the wetter seasons.

I won't be chasing buffalo on this trip as I wanted to focus on other dangerous game, but if the buffalo hunting in that area looks good, I'll come back for them next year. I truly love hunting the Cape Buff, they're a special challenge with a handgun.

You may well find the buffalo hunting to be good - at least it was in Coutada 14, a little farther down the Zambezi.

One difference between that area and Zimbabwe, where I spent three years previously - there was a lot of sawgrass, and the PHs told us we should wear long pants rather than shorts, even though it was hot. I did, but a friend of mine, a Zimbabwean associate PH, didn't have longs - his legs were pretty cut up by the end of the hunt.

You might want to check this out with your outfitter/PH, and maybe look for some tough but lightweight long pants.

Good luck on your hunt - wish I was there!

I'm not planning to take another Buff on this trip, focusing instead on Leopard, Croc & Hippo - along with the bait animals I'll need for two of those - and the various plainsgame species available there that I may not have taken elsewhere.

That said, if I should get lucky, score most everything planned early, and they have a late season Buff on quota, you never know...... I do think of hunting the Cape Buff as the ultimate -- They're a particular challenge for me given that I shoot exclusively with handguns.

I've been thinking a lot about appropriate clothing -- both as regards the possiblilty of sawgrass even that late in the dry season, and, of course, the "fly." I've concluded that I'll have to take sufficient of both long and short in both shirts and trousers along with a "bug suit" just to be safe. In lightweight fabrics, those things don't weigh that much, so I'll just overpack a bit. There's almost nothing worse than not having the right clothing in the bush.

On my last late season hunt -- that one in Limpopo -- I opted for long sleeves and legs and only took one pair of shorts and one short sleeve shirt, everything else was long -- BIG mistake. It turned out that I was only comfortable on alternate days. Not that I didn't still enjoy the hell out of that trip.

If I become suicidal, I'll start hunting dangerous game with a handgun, and I'm an accomplished handgun shooter. I don't want to put all of the responsibility of saving our asses on the PH in case of my bad shot(s). On another thread in African Hunting, there's the story of a client having to shoot a buff off of a PH with a .375, which some say is marginal for wounded buff and I would agree, and that's a hell of a lot more gun than any handgun ever made.

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On another thread in African Hunting, there's the story of a client having to shoot a buff off of a PH with a .375, which some say is marginal for wounded buff and I would agree, and that's a hell of a lot more gun than any handgun ever made.

I routinely hunt using .375 H&H in Encore pistols in Africa -- and the .375 is by no means the heaviest caliber that I use in hunting handguns. Handguns have come a long, long way since the days when a .44 Magnum was the most popular handgun hunting caliber and handgun hunting was something of a gimmick. Today, properly armed and otherwise prepared, you can do about anything with a handgun that you can do with a rifle.

Nowadays, I never feel under gunned -- even in Africa -- with hunting handguns appropriate to the task. And, I'm not alone -- there are many very successful handgun hunters in the field today.