On my first very first safari I brought a spare scope in the same rings, and it turned out the spare scope was needed.
But when traveling with more than two rifles, such as when both Eileen and I go together, I've take one "loose" well-proven scope, with the tools needed for all the mounts. We also needed that spare on one safari.
Might also comment that on various "cull" hunts with several other hunters I've seen far more cartridges used than just in the rifles Eileen and I have taken.
On one month-long cull in South Africa another dozen hunters took part, in two "shifts" of six during the first and last halves of the month. I took a 7x57 and 9.3x62, and without looking at my journal of the trip I can recall the other hunters using the .270 Winchester, .270 WSM, 7mm-08, 7x57, 7mm Dakota Magnum, .308 Winchester, .300 WSM, .300 Winchester Magnum, .325 WSM, .338 Winchester Magnum, 9.3x62, .375 H&H and .416 Remington Magnum--and there were some duplicates. (One .375 and .416 were brought primarily for buffalo, and each was used only on a single bull.)
I only took 13 animals despite staying the entire month, but accompanied some of the other hunters while they took 59 more. A total of 184 were taken, an average of 14 for each of the other hunters, and every evening I interviewed many of the hunters I hadn't accompanied, getting the details of their results.
Most of the hunters had never been to Africa before, or only on one previous safari. The majority brought two rifles, one chambered in a round of .30 caliber or less, and the other in a larger cartridge from .300 Winchester Magnum on up.
Several ended up using only their "deer rifle" after several days, because they started to flinch when using their larger rifle--and realized it. This can happen on safaris, especially when shooting lots of animals, and also check-shooting the rifle every couple days to make sure bouncing around in a Land Cruiser hasn't jostled the scope "off."
One of these was a guy who brought two rifles in the same chamberings I did, the 7x57 and 9.3x62. After a few days he found he wasn't shooting very well with the 9.3x62, so switched to his 7x57 and did fine after that. The same thing happened with another guy who brought a 7mm-08 and a .300 Winchester Magnum. He gave up on the .300 and found the 7mm-08 worked fine on the same variety of plains game.
In fact I was accompanying him when he killed a mature blue wildebeest with the 7mm-08. The range was around 150 yards, and he put a 140-grain Nosler AccuBond just behind the bull's shoulder. It ran 50-60 yards and keeled over.
Among the interesting things was all the "bullet tests" the month provided. This was in 2007, not long after both the Barnes TSX and Nosler AccuBond had been introduced, and quite a few hunters used one or the other. The guy who brought the .270 WSM as his only rifle used 140-grain TSXs, and did VERY well, impressing the PHs considerably.
Another guy brought the .325 WSM and a .375 H&H, the .375 primarily for buffalo. But the Winchester Power Points in the factory loads he used in the .325 penetrated so poorly on larger plains game the PH told him to quit using it, and he spent his second week using the .375 on everything--and very well.
Two other guys brought a single rifle. The one on the first shift brought a .338 Winchester Magnum, with 225-grain AccuBond handloads, and shot it very well. In fact he had 7 one-shot kills in a row before he tried to get fancy, and attempted to shoot a blue wildebeest in the ear, because he wanted to bring home a hide without any bullet holes. He missed slightly, and had to shoot it again. But he'd already taken a big blue wildebeest bull with one chest shot, which worked well (I was beside him on that one).
The one guy who brought a .300 WSM started out OK, but by the end of his hunt during the second half of the safari was shooting poorly, perhaps because it was a pretty light rifle. I was also beside him when he wounded a big kudu bull, and the trackers lost the scanty blood trail. It turned out he'd broken the lower jaw (he was aiming for the chest), as the PH discovered a week after we'd all left, when he came across what was left of the carcass after being torn up by jackals and vultures.
Nobody who used a rifle in any chambering under .300 magnum lost any game, including the guy who brought the .270. But he also brought a .338 Winchester Magnum, and shot both rifles very well.
