Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa 7x57 or 375 holland and holland for plains game?

I have had hunters use a 375 for 3-4 days and then start shooting horrible.

This is a huge problem when the remaining days are limited and there is too much time spent looking for wounded or lost game.

I have more then a few times offered up my 30/06 because their rifle is " off" the results were back to good shooting and a great finish to the trip.

On occasion ( and I should not give up my secrets here in public) I have asked the hunter to check zero at the range. I also take the rifle to shoot myself to verify it with my shooting first. The offer is to reduce the recoil pounding for them. This is always a welcomed offer!

When I'm done I hand the unloaded rifle to the hunter who believes it's ready to go. At the " click" of the trigger when the rifle jumps off the bags its obvious what the problem has become.

It's a really nasty thing to do by me, however there is no argument about going to the 30/06 after this. They shoot my rifle off the bags and we go kill stuff again.

Two thoughts here. There are a large majority of shooters who do not flinch or jump at all with the 375HH cartridge. There are much harder recoiling rifles then this.

There has been a large majority who have had flinching with the 300 mags. Based on the cross section of hunters I have had in my camps, the 300 mags are by a very wide margin the most flinch inducing cartridges I have ever seen my hunters use. Actually, It would be a comfortable bet for me to say that less then 50% shoot the 300 mags without any care or concern of recoil.

The difficult part of this is that the owner of the rifle either does not know this and blames the scope, ammo or rifle. He may also have an ego issue so he will not accept switching to a smaller rifle to make hunting so much more fun.

Of course none of the campfire members fall into this category as John suggests!