[bleep],
FYI, I had to delete a post on this thread a few minutes ago because I had trouble with my computer and couldn't copy lines from your post. Needed to re-boot. I tell you this so you don't start with groundless and false accusations like you have with Ray. Anything and more that was in the prior post is in this one.
You ought to know that Ray books hunt for very experienced "Varsity" level African hunters. This I know for fact. I haven't ever booked with Ray, but that is just happenstance. I book through outfitters/opperators I personally know or through PH's with whom I wish to hunt. I booked only my first safari though a booking agent, and it wasn't Ray, but as I said, that was only happenstance.
From your post:
"Anyway, just why did you call my a novice? So what makes me a novice? One trophy bull elephant?"
Yes. The topic is open sights on a client DG rifle. As I have posted, my experience tells me that, for buff, a scoped rifle is the more versatile tool. Also, by far the better tool for lion and leopard. Rhino? Who cares, no wild black rhino to hunt, ditto for white rhino, and white rhino were never one of the big five.
But, as I have also posted, for folow up, should it be required, an open sighted rifle is by far the better tool.
And for elephant, an open sighted rifle is the only appropriate tool.
I have gone into why that is so in previous post, so won't do so now, but it is so.
With your one event, one elephant expertise you more than vehemently disagree. You make disengenouos agruments based on false premises and no experience to try to ram your one event, one elephant experience down the throats of vastly more experience DG and elephant hunters.
In truth, you are a rank novice. This most recent posts makes that ever more clear. Just the way you phrase the question reafirms your inexperience on the topic of open sights for elephant hunting.
For the moment, I will decline to rise to your bait and tell you and the whole board, or an even wider audience how much elephant experience I have, but suffice to say a hell of a lot more than you. More, in fact, than "90% of Zimbabwe PH's" - that according to Buzz Charlton, Zim PH and elephant specialist, and Buzz told me that at one half the number of elephant that I have hunted to date. If you were really inclined to know, you can search and find out without much difficulty.
My lifetime goal is 100 elephants before I am too old or inform to track them, and I am well on my way to aceiving that, given my age.
From your post:
"JPK, you are such a nice round target I promise to lay off, for a while."
Hmm, this reference to "round target" strikes close to home. I have put on 60lbs in the last two and a half years sitting behind my desk. It is the price I pay for what I do, which pays the bills for my family and for my elephant hunting addiction. But feel no need to lay off, criticism by rank novices rolls off my back. Surely I won't lay off when you write fantasies based on false premises and not founded on experience.
On that topic, I can readily disgree with one who has a different opinion than me when that opinion has been earned with hard won experience. Disagree as I might, that earned opinion will carry with me the weight it deserves, and the attendant respect it deserves.
FWIW, Bill Stewart has about as much experience as I do, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. But at that level of experience, an elephant or two, or three, or four, makes little difference. I disagree on some issues with Bill, but he has earned much respect.
Also FWIW, to hopefully put a dose of reality into your misquotations of my opinions, I use a scoped bolt rifle, or a scoped double rifled-barreled shotgun (for shotgun only deer hunting areas) for almost all of my four legged game hunting. For fun, I may use an apperature sighted lever rifle, or an open sighted double rifle, but I do not delude myself into believing that they are the better tool for the task at hand.
But for elephant hunting, an big bore, .458" or better, open sighted double rifle is the best tool.
{Editted to add that you might want to avoid meeting Ray, you may need dental work if you do.}
2nd Edit: I hope you noticed that I did not criticise you for blowing your one and only attempt at a frontal brain shot, only the fact that you so emphatically put forth that a scope was the only way, and that it made a big difference in your hunt. Clearly you blew the shot with your scoped rifle, it didn't make any contribution at all.
But blowing the shot is no big deal, the most experienced PH's blow them not infrequently. After blowing one early on in my elephant addiction, and kicking myself for a couple of days, I had conversations with Roger Whittall and Barry Duckworth. Both are "retired" Zimbabwe PH's who are now opperators. Barry was also a culling officer for Rhodesian Parks and has killed something like a thousand elephants. They were partners, now are neighbors in the Save Conservancy. Both told me to stop kicking myself because they both had plenty of blown brain shots in their day.
Using a big bore rifle, which I do, ~75% of the elephants that I have hunted dropped to the shot. Of those that did drop to the shot, most were brained, but several were just knocked down or down and out. I also killed outright, at the first shot, one elephant even though the bullet passed 1 1/2" over the brain, as later determined when we cut the skull open. (I am an unreformable bullet digger.) Skull fragments into the brain? Enough shock from 500 grains to turn off the brain? I don't know and never will, but the elephant was dead as a stone.
Since I use a double rifle with open sights, my follow up killing shot on those elephants only knocked down is very rapid and precludes a PH's bullet. But all of the ~25% that did not drop to the shot got my second barrel plus a PH's bullet to the heart.
I stopped but failed to kill one elephant that charged us in very thick jess in early May 2008, in Nyakasanga. We were not pursuing this elephant, he came upwind for us. I was closest, at seven yards, and I had the clearer shot. The PH tried to brain the elephant after my two shots stopped him, and the PH missed the brain as well. Thankfully, the elephant was turned and he departed at top speed. But that elephant eluded us, and we lost him after three days on his tracks. Loosing a wounded elephant, even one we didn't intend to shoot, that was a very, very low point in my life.
Last thing, I get sweaty palms and dry mouth when it is time to make the final approach to kill an elephant. The day that I don't is the day that I quit hunting elephant.
So, don't kick yourself too hard for blowing your first brain shot. But do switch to a proper big bore rifle, and do switch to open express or apperature sights. File the bead, never approach early or late with the sun in your face. That was your PH's screw up. He should have known better. Almost all of the time the direction you approach a bull is at least somewhat in your control, they are frquently alone or in a small group, and that means you can vary your approach by 10, 20, 30 degrees, maybe more, and keep the sun behind or to the side. And since elephants are the only game in the world you shoot up at, that is important. If you must approach into the sun, and you must shoot THAT elephant, then that would be the time for a heart shot.
So, go back and try it again. Do it a half dozen times in pretty quick succession, you will learn alot.
JPK
Last edited by JPK; 11/14/09.
