Kudu Rifle

I love the things, my 270 has done in over 3000 critters. I have only lost one impala. Nosler lists them for thin skinned animals, I get teased all of the time. Usually not on the range, a 5 shot group can be covered with a 2 Rand piece at 100m.

enysse said:

Say it's not true! (lol).....a ballistic tip being a deadly bullet. Should be plenty for a kudu.

Click to expand...

35bore said:

I am glad to see there are 35Whelen fans out there. I was going to post on this thread sometime back, but, figured everyone knew what caliber I was going to suggest. Yeah 35Whelen....:worship:

Click to expand...

was getting bored waiting !!!!!!!!!!!:icecream: :sweat: :laughing:

saeng101 said:

I love the things, my 270 has done in over 3000 critters. I have only lost one impala. Nosler lists them for thin skinned animals, I get teased all of the time. Usually not on the range, a 5 shot group can be covered with a 2 Rand piece at 100m.

Click to expand...

:cook: you must be a very hungry person :biggrin2:

Fat also. Do a lot of damage control for farms and the Parks, never have to deal with the meat, mostly.

spike.t said:

:cook: you must be a very hungry person :biggrin2:

Click to expand...

For large plainsgame I use 9,3x62 - bullet Norma Oryx 285gr. Recommendet caliber for Kudu 308Win, 30-06, or 7mm Mag. Minimum caliber 7 x 57 Mauser.

Again a very boring choice but I used my .30-06 and 180 grain Sako Super Hammrhead rounds. I took a kudu bull at 220 yards in the base of the neck as he walked away from me.

He simply crumpled on impact and didn't run one single yard. Unsurprisingly as his neck was broken.

Shot placement is and always will be far more important than choice of calibre with plains game. If people are thinking that they need more gun, 'just in case', I'd suggest they need more time on the range before going hunting. That's not aimed at any one, it's just my own opinion.

Howdy,

Some of these older threads are the best sometimes.
My one kudu scalp gives me no right to proclaim what is a proper kudu rifle.
Nonetheless the story is possibly worth mentioning.

The only kudu I have shot was with the .300 H&H and 180 Nosler Partition.
He was quartering toward me at a lazed 240 meters, down hill.
I hit him spot on the shoulder, braking it, tearing through the boiler room and braking an off-side rib on the off side.
Exit hole about the size of an oblong golf ball.
The impact seemed to knock him off his hooves but as the PH was congratulating me, the animal leaped up and ran on three legs like a scalded cat, right to left.

I fired two more shots, now about 300 and 350 meters respectively.
One hit a stick, according to the PH, at any rate it was a clean miss.
One notched his hump like an evil child had taken a bite out of him.
He went down hard, in a cloud of Namibian dust, before I could make a 4th shot, and he stayed there.

My first shot had killed him but he jumped up and ran a ways in spite of his death.
I would not mind using the .300 H&H again for kudu but, I believe the 9.3x62 would be more to my liking (I since have had one built on a '98 Mauser action.)
By my wacky way of thinking, the .243 is not a kudu rifle.
Here in Alaska, it is one of best wolf and coyote rifles money can buy.

Cheers,
Velo Dog.

Velo Dog said:

Howdy,

Some of these older threads are the best sometimes.
My one kudu scalp gives me no right to proclaim what is a proper kudu rifle.
Nonetheless the story is possibly worth mentioning.

The only kudu I have shot was with the .300 H&H and 180 Nosler Partition.
He was quartering toward me at a lazed 240 meters, down hill.
I hit him spot on the shoulder, braking it, tearing through the boiler room and braking an off-side rib on the off side.
Exit hole about the size of an oblong golf ball.
The impact seemed to knock him off his hooves but as the PH was congratulating me, the animal leaped up and ran on three legs like a scalded cat, right to left.

I fired two more shots, now about 300 and 350 meters respectively.
One hit a stick, according to the PH, at any rate it was a clean miss.
One notched his hump like an evil child had taken a bite out of him.
He went down hard, in a cloud of Namibian dust, before I could make a 4th shot, and he stayed there.

My first shot had killed him but he jumped up and ran a ways in spite of his death.
I would not mind using the .300 H&H again for kudu but, I believe the 9.3x62 would be more to my liking (I since have had one built on a '98 Mauser action.)
By my wacky way of thinking, the .243 is not a kudu rifle.
Here in Alaska, it is one of best wolf and coyote rifles money can buy.

Cheers,
Velo Dog.

Click to expand...

Funny how far a dead animal can run. The deer I shot this year 20yds 243 100gr cor-lokt quartering slightly away. Ran for 70 paces, thankfully dropped in a field instead of the brush. There was no exit and the heart looked like a sieve with too many holes to count.

A lot of locals used to kill kudu with the 243, but I don't recommend it. Your chances of failure due to a lack of penetration is so much more.

If you're shooting for meat ,most South Africans use a 7x57 , 303, 308 , 270 , 30-06. They can then comfortably also shoot springbuck, blesbuck and Impala on the same hunt without too much meat damage.

I've noticed my 30-06 with 180gr bullets starts to creat Large blood bruises from the hydrostatic shock.a shot right behind the shoulder can
sometimes ruin the shoulder.

If you're coming on Safari and meat is not an issue, I recommend 7mm, 300win mag and similar.

i am of the opinion that kudu is not a tough animal either, I am definately of the opinion that a bigger caliber is better when hunting in Africa .

besides for my kalahari hunting where long shots are the order of the day and I use my .270 , I personally haven't hunted with anything smaller than 338WM for some years now .

Obviously, there is no "best" caliber, but there are good bullets and bad bullets. One time I was hunting in Zululand with a stranger from Pennsylvannia who claimed he knew a lot about bullets. Knowing he'd be coming to Africa, he'd scoured America looking for the perfect bullet. He finally found a manufacturer on the West coast who produced the "perfect" bullet in his caliber which was [I think] a Weatherby .270. I'll describe the bullet. It had exposed bright lead at the tip...but...at the very tip of the exposed lead was a conical piece of copper. This fellow told me that when the bullet struck the beast, the copper was forced down on the lead causing radical expansion of the bullet. Gee Whiz! I thought, not knowing better.

Anyway this fellow left a trail of wounded animals. Bad luck, I thought. One day I came on one of his successes. It was a skinned impala hanging from a tree. The exit wound was HUGE, maybe 7 inches in diameter. The shoulder was gone--obliterated. I looked for the entrance wound. No entrance wound. The "exit" wound was the entrance wound. The "perfect" bullet had blown on impact--complete bullet failure. No doubt this was the explanation for all this guy's wounded animals. His "perfect" bullet was exactly a terrible bullet.

I've killed almost all my kudu--maybe 30--using a Winchester 300. Until recently, I've used a 180 grain Nosler Partition. A few animals have run. A couple required a second shot. None escaped wounded. The Noslers almost always perform perfectly with expansion to twice their initial diameter. If I have a complaint about the Nosler Partition, it is that they rarely exit an animal as large as a kudu. They are usually mushroomed up under the far side skin. This is a good news-bad news situation. The good news is that the animal gets 100% of the shock value of the bullet. The bad news is that there is no exit wound which means a reduced blood trail.

On a hunt this last September, we tried a change in pace. My son was shooting and I outfitted him with a Win .338 Magnum shooting 225 grain Barnes triple shock bullets. Besides smaller animals, he shot kudu, waterbuck, red hartebeest, zebra and black wildebeest. All of the bullets exited. He hit the black wildebeest in the middle of the chest at 500+ yards. The bullet shot clean through him. All animals, with the exception of the hartebeest, which was hit very low on the chest, died directly with the shot. We only recovered one Barnes bullet. My son shot a giraffe with a Weatherby .416 loaded with a 400 grain Barnes triple shot. The bullet was mushroomed up under the far side chest skin. The animal trotted maybe 75 yards, stood, and collapsed dead after 45 seconds. The bullet retained 99.8% of weight.

So is there a functional difference between the Nosler Partition and the Barnes Tripleshock? After one hunt using the Barnes bullet, I have really proved little. It is possible that the design of the Barnes bullet--with four metal petals folding back--produces a "buzz-saw" effect, literally reaming out a wound channel. Maybe but, then again, I have another son who uses a .270 Winchester loaded with Barnes triple shocks on local white tails. The bullets are 130 grains and most of them--with virtually no weight loss--are mushroomed up under far side skin. No through-and-through penetration.

I have shot a fair amount of Kudu since I started hunting, Kudu are soft animals, they are normally the first to die of drought or disease. I have used the good old 308Win on most of them at ranges from 10 to 510 meters and when the bullet goes in the right place, the Kudu does not go far. The bull I shot at 510 meters died within 40 meters, there was no expansion on the bullet, entry and exit wounds were both caliber size, both lungs were hit and the bull died pretty quickly. Kudu are deceptive in height, but they are pretty skinny slab sided animals.

In my view it all depends on the range. I have shot quite a few kudu and other similar class antelope with smallish rifles (6.5x55, .308win, .270, etc). They all work fine if you put the bullet in the right place; however I prefer a harder hitting calibre at longer ranges and also in thick bush, where an animal can easily disappear. 300 win mag and similar are top choices in the desert regions. My personal all round favorite is a .338WM, but in the bush a 9.3 x 62 is arguably a better option. Both are also excellent on wildebeest, eland, giraffe, etc.

What a fun old thread! I’ll read it all when I can.

In the Eastern Cape my brother and I killed three kudu with .300H&H and 180 grain Woodleigh PPSNs. Dad used a 7mmSTW with 160 grain Barnes TSX.

In Botswana my mate and I shot our kudu with .375H&H and 270 grain Woodleigh PPSNs.

I used an old Mauser in 9.3x62 on my recent plains game hunt. Shot six animals and none went far shooting 286 grain a-frames. The gemsbuck, waterbuck and kudu seemed like big animals to me and I did not feel overgunned. The PH seemed to approve.

of course there are lots of calibres that work, but for me, the ultimate Kudu rifle - .300 Win Mag with 200gr Nosler Partitions or Swift A-frames

I will be in the RSA in less than three weeks. Kudu is on my list. I am taking a .300 Win Mag and a .375 H&H. I will report back.

Either of those rifles will be fine kudu medicine..

They certainly fall to smaller calibers shooting lighter projectiles all the time..

Times have changed and new cartridges have appeared since this thread ended. Do we have any more cartridges people have used on Kudu. My one and only was shot with a 35 Whelen using a 225 grain accubond at 2,850 fps. Hit front on at around 120 yards. Bullet located in the ham after over five and a half feet of penetration.
Others in the group used a 300win mag with 210 ELDX, the other with a 270 WSSM and ELDX projectiles.
58 inch with a 270 WSSM. Kowas region

55 inch 300 win mag Kowas region

52 inch from the Kalahari 35Whelen
225grain accubond recovered from my kudu.
Has anyone used any of the newer calibers like the 33,or 28 Nosler, God forbid the 6.5 credemore.
Some one posted they wanted to use a 50BMG on giraffe I wonder how that went. If the primers are leaking with the load he was using I would like to stand well clear as it is well over red line for pressure. Might have wanted to kill it with shrapnel when the rifle blows up.
To each their own. What did you use and what projectiles.
Cheers everyone
Bob

Not that I would condone such...but to each their own.