Recent content by Chris Burger

What a line-up — Gaza buffalo and then the Tiny Ten in the Eastern Cape is a proper spread of everything Africa does well, from the heavy stuff to the little jewels that test your glassing more than your nerve. Enjoy every hour of the buffalo especially; there's nothing quite like closing the...

Coming to this one late, but as someone who farms in the Limpopo bushveld I couldn't scroll past it — you've picked a fine part of the world for a first African hunt, and what a way to mark a 60th and a 40th anniversary. A few honest words to set expectations: the bushveld gives its animals up...

Those are the real article, WAB — thank you for posting them. Klaserie bulls are exactly the top end I was trying to describe: fences down, moving on their own terms across the whole system, nobody's idea of a managed animal. You can read it in an old bull's face and the way he carries a...

Pleasure, McKenzie — and now you've left us hanging on the buffalo. That's the cruelest kind of cliffhanger for this crowd. Whenever the next chapter lands I'll be first in the queue to read it. The Northern Cape has a way of getting under your skin like that; every time I think I've got the...

Welcome aboard, Teddy — it's a good question, and not a strange one at all; anyone thinking hard about a frontal shot ends up asking exactly this. The honest answer is that there isn't one "thickness" to give you, because it isn't a single slab of bone. On a mature bull the frontal is a...

It's a fair question, and the honest answer is that "free range" means a few different things in South Africa — so it pays to ask a PH exactly what he means by it before you book. At the top end you've got the open Greater Kruger systems, where the buffalo move between properties with the...

Really enjoyed this — you caught the feel of the Northern Cape well. That part of the country gets overlooked by first-timers chasing the bushveld, but the Kalahari has a character all its own: the red sand, the long quiet stalks, and light at either end of the day that photographers would kill...

Great thread. Mine was an impala ram as a youngster here in Limpopo — nothing exotic, but I can still see it. A walk-and-stalk in the dead heat of midday when everything sensible was lying up, chasing an old ram that had given us the slip two mornings running. One shot with a borrowed .270, and...

@DryFly1995 — for the mix you've listed, a single .375 H&H will genuinely do everything on that list and do it well; plenty of buffalo and sable have fallen to one, and it carries the plains game without fuss. If you're checking a bag anyway, the nice-to-have is a lighter, flatter second rifle...

@DryFly1995 — good, that gives you real flexibility. For what you're planning, a single .375 H&H will genuinely do the whole list. It's the legal minimum for buffalo, hits plenty hard for sable and kudu, and in that thicker Save Valley / Coutada country your shots sit mostly close to moderate —...

You've had good steers on the where — the Save Valley and Coutada 9/Mahimba options will give you the wild-country, tracking-buffalo feel you've put at the top, and it's good to hear the buffalo hold up there. Two thoughts from the hunting side rather than the map. First, on a true tracking...

DLSJR, that's exactly the pattern I was reaching for — you'd answered your own second destination before you finished the sentence: the lion. A 58-pounder, a leopard and two old bulls in the low-40s on a first safari is a hunt most men build a lifetime around, and it makes sense the one animal...

This is a good thread, and it lands on something I care a lot about. To my mind the APNR age-based limits — 8yr/36", 10yr/38", 12yr and unlimited — are one of the more honest systems out there, because they force the conversation onto age rather than spread, which is exactly where it belongs...

Welcome, Brock — and what a way to arrive, a 700 Nitro at Holland & Holland then Purdey and Rigby in a single day. That's a pilgrimage most of us only dream about. Montana's a fine place to spend a few years while Africa waits — good country, good people. And retirement's the right time to do...

Reading these back, the pattern that jumps out is that almost nobody picks a second destination on price — it's a specific animal they've set their heart on (that Rowland Ward sable, a bushbuck, a buffalo that got away) or ground and people that treated them right the first time and earned the...