One more point of discussion. Craig Boddington, who has over one hundred and twenty (!) safaris under his belt, relates a story in one of his books where he lost out on what was going to be his biggest kudu. Why? because he had with him a 3006 and the animal only presented him with a "Texas Heart Shot" (sic). He goes onto say, had he been carrying his 375, the shot would have been a no-brainer. Granted this was early on in his career where bullet technology was not what it is today (Partitions were around), but regardless, my point continues to be that shot placement/bullet construction are not always the end be all.
This is a very pertinent example, in my view. Let me add one from my experience in Zim in 2015. As you may recall, my friend, after much discussion with you, Ingwe, JB, Paladin, and of course John Sharpe, I had decided to leave my second rifle (a Sako 338 Win Mag) at home and shoot whatever I had to shoot with my 375 H&H and 300 gr Swift A-Frames. The cartridges were my own handloads, proven in my rifle during the 3 months leading up to my safari over and over and over again. I won't disagree with jdollar's statistics on the proportion of game killed worldwide with factory vs handloaded ammo, that is a completely irrelevant factor as far as I'm concerned; I used my own handloads for the same reason I've done 99% or more of my game-killing with my own handloaded ammunition, and the same reason I've caught at least 99% of the trout and salmon I've caught on my own hand-tied flies: it gives me great satisfaction to do so.
In any case, I had made the decision to go with the 375 H&H/300 gr Swift combination for everything, and had practiced with the combination extensively at ranges from 10 yards with irons to 300 yards with BOTH scopes I planned to take with me. I was confident I could place my bullets precisely anywhere in that range.
We had been hunting kudu quite hard for two days after killing my big Cape buffalo. This was Day 5 of my safari. It was late in the day, and we were headed home. The sun was barely above the mopane brush on our left, and I had pretty much given u pfor the day after several long walks in the bush chasing kudu tracks. I was hot and thirsty and really looking forward to a cool sundowner and my pipe, which I'd left in camp at lunch by mistake.
Suddenly John hit the brakes and said in a low voice, "Look at that monster!" I couldn't see The Monster, but on his say-so I spilled out the left side of the Land Cruiser and worked the bolt of my rifle as John peeled out behind me. We moved carefully to the back of the truck and peeked around the corner. There in the mopane scrub, a scarce 50 yards away, was a great gorgeous kudu bull. John whispered that he was "a big one", which from previous discussions meant it was close to 60", about as big as kudu get in the Bubye Valley Conservancy herd.
I put my sights on him, centering the thick post of the Trijicon Accupoint sight on his left shoulder 1/3 of the way up, and the rifle roared. I brought the rifle back down and worked the bolt simultaneously, looked for him with both eyes and the scope, but he was gone. Isaac, the tracker, twirled his finger in the air and said, "Zeezeezee!", indicating my bullet had ricocheted off a twig and likely missed the bull. Oh, well, thinks I, there goes my one shot today, but we'll get another tomorrow. When we followed up the shot we found a thumb-size branch cut off about 10 yards from the kudu's tracks, accounting for my miss. How I failed to see this branch when lining up the shot should have been a clue to me, and we were shortly to have even more trouble with this. The short version is that the bright green triangle at the top of my scope's reticle was too bright for the failing afternoon light, and in my ophthalmic cortex the necessary adjustments were flooding out the details of little things like intervening brush.
We were about to return to the truck when Isaac hissed, and we all looked to the right, and the kudu was just standing there, 50 yards away, just looking at us! John whispered at me to take the shot if I could, but it was too tight in the bush for the sticks, and I hurried my offhand shot, and missed again. The kudu ran off, but this time Isaac sang out that I had hit him, but maybe too far back. My heart sank. A wounded kudu in the African bush costs the same as a dead kudu in the back of the Land Cruiser, and I knew we had limited time to track him and finish him.
We tracked him several hundred yards back into the bush. Isaac insisted the bull was dragging one hind leg, and John translated that the tracker thought I'd gut-shot him. "No way," I insisted. My sights had been right on the shoulder when I let fly, the bull was broadside, and there was no chance of a hit that far back. But Isaac's opinion carried a lot more weight on the trail than mine at that point, so what I knew didn't really count for much.
Then we came across the bull again. He had made a wide half-circle by this time, and he was now west of us, with the setting sun almost behind him. Bad light. I could see him, but not well, and through the scope he was invisible. I tried changing my line, but no go... he simply vanished in the scope. Then he turned to his right, and suddenly his entire left side caught the sun and he stood out brilliantly in the dark brush. John was telling me to take my rifle off the sticks, that we would try to maneuver closer, but I saw the bull so clearly! In my mind was the knowledge that the bull was hit and wounded, and aside from my lost trophy fee this part of the Bubye is crawling with lions, which meant he'd be feline fodder by midnight with a bullet wound in his hindquarter. I couldn't let that happen.
So I put the post on his left flank and pulled the trigger. The rifle roared, and my hunter looked at me incredulously; he hadn't seen what I'd seen, and he clearly thought that my shot was folly. But Isaac shouted that I'd hit the bull hard, and dashed forward ten yards and called out that the bull was down. Sure enough, he was, and that was that. The kudu turned out to be only 53", nowhere near the anticipated 60", but that's the trick of the light in the bush. No matter, he was a beauty, and he was mine. He was down, mortally wounded, unable to rise; I put a finishing shot in his chest as he lay on the ground, and that was that.
I went to the skinning shed and stayed with the skinners to see what had happened. It turned out the bull was in fact unwounded before my shot into his flank, despite the trackers' insistence that I had wounded him. That gave me some satisfaction. But what gave me more satisfaction was finding the first Swift A-Frame under the skin of the offside (right) shoulder. The bullet had mushroomed very little, which was the expected result for a shot that did not hit bone.
The bullet travelled from his left flank, just forward of the hindquarter, throught the paunch, the ventricle of the heart, the right lung, and the right shoulder. It was exactly the performance I had anticipated this bullet in this caliber would give me. There is no chance that the 225 gr Accubond bullet I shoot in my 388 Win Mag would have been able to make that shot and kill that kudu.
And that is why I would take my 375 H&H with 300 gr A-Frames for Lord Derby Eland in the CAR, Jorge.
