Spiral Slam Vs. Macnab; What's in a Name?

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Sabre

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I have often seen people get quite annoyed with individuals using the term "Spiral Slam" when referring to the main 4 South African spirals (Eland, Kudu, Nyala, and Bushbuck). Some people seem to get very heated about it, almost irate.

However, when people use the term Macnab to describe almost any combination of catching a fish, wing shooting, and a big game animal, I don't think I have ever heard anyone complain about it. Totally different species from the original, sometimes on a different continent from the original, totally divorced from the "correct terminology". But, no one ever seems to mind.

So, why the selective outrage? Shouldn't people be more mad about the bastardization of the Macnab term more than Sprial Slam? At least with Spiral Slam people are actually hunting spiral antelope.

Maybe we can have the Spiral Slam and the Spiral Grand Slam to appease the selective outrage.
 
Macnab was named after a sportsman that collected 3 specific species of game in 24 hours, I believe. @rookhawk please correct me if I'm wrong. So I can see some sneering at a "customized" version. For the spiral, I only know of one recipe. I will say this. If you'd like to go to Africa and bring home a mongoose, a guinea fowl, a warthog, and a monitor lizard and call it a "Best slamtastic slam ever." Good on you! I'm not Bespoke enough to fight over that......silliness.
 
Hedge774 said:
Macnab was named after a sportsman that collected 3 specific species of game in 24 hours, I believe. @rookhawk please correct me if I'm wrong. So I can see some sneering at a "customized" version. For the spiral, I only know of one recipe. I will say this. If you'd like to go to Africa and bring home a mongoose, a guinea fowl, a warthog, and a monitor lizard and call it a "Best slamtastic slam ever." Good on you! I'm not Bespoke enough to fight over that......silliness.
Click to expand...

I have not read the book, but as I understand it, it came from a fiction book about poaching from wealthy estate owners.
 
I will put my pinky out when I peruse said reading. Pip Pip, and all that rot...
 
I've never heard much negative about it..... other than maybe certain outfitters trying to promote critters they have on hand.

I always thought it included bongo, LDE, sitatunga, and lesser kudu.... throw in mountain nyala if you'd like. In other words, out of reach.
 
Hedge774 said:
Macnab was named after a sportsman that collected 3 specific species of game in 24 hours, I believe. @rookhawk please correct me if I'm wrong. So I can see some sneering at a "customized" version. For the spiral, I only know of one recipe. I will say this. If you'd like to go to Africa and bring home a mongoose, a guinea fowl, a warthog, and a monitor lizard and call it a "Best slamtastic slam ever." Good on you! I'm not Bespoke enough to fight over that......silliness.
Click to expand...

A Macnab was trespassing on a Scottish estate, killing a grouse, killing a stag, and making a fly from the former two to catch a salmon or a brown trout, and all in the same day. All three without getting caught by the gamekeeper.

A Royal MacNab was all the above, plus sleeping with the wife or daughter of the Lord of the manor as well.
 
Much ado about nothing in both cases. Series of goals are IMO finite and rather personal. In a few days, months or years no one but you will care. The Royal McNab doesn't even show up on my radar. But I have the spiral slam you refer to one and a half times, and who knows? i read about the 'Ham Slam" involving wild or feral boar, javelina, warthog and bushpig by a guy named E. Donell Thomas. I completed mine in 2018 with a bow killed bushpig. I used to have the goal of all five pacific salmon in a summer here in Alaska. Guess who knows or cares at this point. Me. Who else?
Ya, you get the picture.

Do what you want to do, the world will keep moving on.
 
I don’t ever recall seeing anyone irate about spiral slam, but I do find it annoying individuals with one South African hunt think they’ve completed the spiral slam. It’s a multi-year accomplishment across the continent. People seem to confuse marketing and what a real spiral slam is. Call it a South African spiral slam.
 
375Fox said:
I don’t ever recall seeing anyone irate about spiral slam, but I do find it annoying individuals with one South African hunt think they’ve completed the spiral slam. It’s a multi-year accomplishment across the continent. People seem to confuse marketing and what a real spiral slam is. Call it a South African spiral slam.
Click to expand...

To be fair, I said "Quite annoyed" and "very heated, almost irate". And I have had personal conversations with people where those statements are very accurate descriptions of how they felt about it.

I think it would likely be better if they did describe it as "SA Spiral Slam". But my main point of the post is; I am unsure why there is such a discrepancy between how strongly people feel about the semantics of the term "Spiral Slam" and not the Mcnab.

It's worth noting I don't personally care much about completing lists and slams. I have completed some slams or lists incidentally just hunting things that interested me. It's kind of interesting as an aside, but doesn't do much for me.

I was thinking about it, also happened to be a bit bored. And I wondered if people who are bothered/annoyed by one and not the other had a specific reason.
 

JOHN MACNAB: WHO IS HE?​


The three protagonists are old friends: Sir Edward Leithen, barrister and former Attorney General; John Palliser-Yeates, City banker; and Lord Lamancha, cabinet minister. At their club, with the help of Sir Archibald Roylance, whose Highland retreat will be their base, the ruse that will shake off their boredom takes shape.

As even the pleasure of shooting has palled, the three plan something “devilish difficult, devilish unpleasant, and calculated to make a man long for a dull life”. Adopting the nom de guerre John Macnab, they send letters to three Highland estates warning that a salmon or a stag will be killed and removed from the property during 48 hours, from midnight to midnight, and returned to the door of the big house. John Macnab will stand the cost.

The cost of their success will be £50 to a worthwhile charity, the price of failure, double. Like Ripon caught practising with his loaders, they all know that their kudos could be seriously if not permanently damaged by discovery. The frisson of danger is a devilish attraction.
Click to expand...

https://www.thefield.co.uk/macnab-challenge/john-macnab-32108
 
rookhawk said:
A Macnab was trespassing on a Scottish estate, killing a grouse, killing a stag, and making a fly from the former two to catch a salmon or a brown trout, and all in the same day. All three without getting caught by the gamekeeper.

A Royal MacNab was all the above, plus sleeping with the wife or daughter of the Lord of the manor as well.
Click to expand...
Interestingly, grouse don’t appear at all in the original book by John Buchan (the author of the better known The Thirty Nine Steps spy / adventure novel, also a good read!) in which three men, bored with their comfortable lives as a politician, a banker, and a barrister head to the Highlands to look for some excitement to cure their ennui.

Basing themselves at a mutual friend’s house, they write to three neighbouring estates under the cover of “John Macnab” and lay down the challenge of poaching a stag or salmon.

Two men take stags and the third a salmon, all while successfully avoiding capture by indignant landowners (and their daughters), navvies, journalists and American archaeologists.

I believe it was only later when The Field (a sporting periodical in the UK) started advertising a Macnab challenge and enterprising estates jumped on the bandwagon that the Macnab evolved in to the form we know today: a brace of grouse, a red stag, and a salmon on the fly between sunrise and sunset on the same day. And, as noted, this has spawned a host of similar challenges with the common element of three quarry, killed or caught with rifle, rod and gun.

Back to the OP’s original point though: I’ve never seen a Macnab variant advertised as anything other than that, a variant. But, even if they were being advertised as a Macnab without any qualification (eg, a Suffolk Macnab, a Devon Macnab etc), everyone knows that you’re not killing a brace of grouse in Devon for example. And no one killing a couple of snipe, catching a sea trout and stalking an Exmoor red stag think they’ve achieved the original Macnab.

I suspect the issue with the so-called-spiral slams is that they’re presented without qualification despite only being part of the challenge. If they were advertised as a South African Spiral Slam, a Lowveld Spiral Slam or even a Spiral Slam Starter package, I think there’d be much less of an issue in the mind of some.

That said, I’m very much looking forward to the opportunity to add eland and bushbuck to the kudu and nyala I hunted last year when I return to the Eastern Cape next May. If I’m successful, I may even tell my uninitiated friends that I’ve completed a spiral slam…!
 
I’m one of the ones who got (mildly) annoyed when I first saw a South African outfitter advertise the Spiral Horn Slam . . . In one easy hunt!

I will admit that the annoyance drives in part from what I believed to be a bit belittling of what is a pretty difficult and time consuming chase (at least it was for me), but more importantly, I felt the outfitter was trying to gussy up a pretty regular hunt, for marketing purposes. Sort of misleading advertising, as it were.

So it comes down, for me, to truth in advertising. You wouldn’t be happy if you were paying for a Caddy and a Volkswagen were delivered. If you’re not going to deliver what most of us think a spiral home slam is, then call what you are prepared to deliver something else.

As a hunter rather than an advertiser, feel free to call whatever you got, whatever you want.
 
Rigby375 said:
Interestingly, grouse don’t appear at all in the original book by John Buchan (the author of the better known The Thirty Nine Steps spy / adventure novel, also a good read!) in which three men, bored with their comfortable lives as a politician, a banker, and a barrister head to the Highlands to look for some excitement to cure their ennui.

Basing themselves at a mutual friend’s house, they write to three neighbouring estates under the cover of “John Macnab” and lay down the challenge of poaching a stag or salmon.

Two men take stags and the third a salmon, all while successfully avoiding capture by indignant landowners (and their daughters), navvies, journalists and American archaeologists.

I believe it was only later when The Field (a sporting periodical in the UK) started advertising a Macnab challenge and enterprising estates jumped on the bandwagon that the Macnab evolved in to the form we know today: a brace of grouse, a red stag, and a salmon on the fly between sunrise and sunset on the same day. And, as noted, this has spawned a host of similar challenges with the common element of three quarry, killed or caught with rifle, rod and gun.

Back to the OP’s original point though: I’ve never seen a Macnab variant advertised as anything other than that, a variant. But, even if they were being advertised as a Macnab without any qualification (eg, a Suffolk Macnab, a Devon Macnab etc), everyone knows that you’re not killing a brace of grouse in Devon for example. And no one killing a couple of snipe, catching a sea trout and stalking an Exmoor red stag think they’ve achieved the original Macnab.

I suspect the issue with the so-called-spiral slams is that they’re presented without qualification despite only being part of the challenge. If they were advertised as a South African Spiral Slam, a Lowveld Spiral Slam or even a Spiral Slam Starter package, I think there’d be much less of an issue in the mind of some.

That said, I’m very much looking forward to the opportunity to add eland and bushbuck to the kudu and nyala I hunted last year when I return to the Eastern Cape next May. If I’m successful, I may even tell my uninitiated friends that I’ve completed a spiral slam…!
Click to expand...
Well put
Rigby375 said:
That said, I’m very much looking forward to the opportunity to add eland and bushbuck to the kudu and nyala I hunted last year when I return to the Eastern Cape next May. If I’m successful, I may even tell my uninitiated friends that I’ve completed a spiral slam…!
Click to expand...
:ROFLMAO:
 
Sabre said:
To be fair, I said "Quite annoyed" and "very heated, almost irate". And I have had personal conversations with people where those statements are very accurate descriptions of how they felt about it.

I think it would likely be better if they did describe it as "SA Spiral Slam". But my main point of the post is; I am unsure why there is such a discrepancy between how strongly people feel about the semantics of the term "Spiral Slam" and not the Mcnab.

It's worth noting I don't personally care much about completing lists and slams. I have completed some slams or lists incidentally just hunting things that interested me. It's kind of interesting as an aside, but doesn't do much for me.

I was thinking about it, also happened to be a bit bored. And I wondered if people who are bothered/annoyed by one and not the other had a specific reason.
Click to expand...
I think the difference is the difficulty and cost of completing the true spiral slam vs the Macnab is by definition obtained in one day. No long term plan or years needed to accomplish it. The macnab isn’t any real significance to me whether it’s in Scotland or South Africa. The real spiral slam is a serious accomplishment for any hunter.
 
Last edited:
Rigby375 said:
Interestingly, grouse don’t appear at all in the original book by John Buchan (the author of the better known The Thirty Nine Steps spy / adventure novel, also a good read!) in which three men, bored with their comfortable lives as a politician, a banker, and a barrister head to the Highlands to look for some excitement to cure their ennui.

Basing themselves at a mutual friend’s house, they write to three neighbouring estates under the cover of “John Macnab” and lay down the challenge of poaching a stag or salmon.

Two men take stags and the third a salmon, all while successfully avoiding capture by indignant landowners (and their daughters), navvies, journalists and American archaeologists.

I believe it was only later when The Field (a sporting periodical in the UK) started advertising a Macnab challenge and enterprising estates jumped on the bandwagon that the Macnab evolved in to the form we know today: a brace of grouse, a red stag, and a salmon on the fly between sunrise and sunset on the same day. And, as noted, this has spawned a host of similar challenges with the common element of three quarry, killed or caught with rifle, rod and gun.

Back to the OP’s original point though: I’ve never seen a Macnab variant advertised as anything other than that, a variant. But, even if they were being advertised as a Macnab without any qualification (eg, a Suffolk Macnab, a Devon Macnab etc), everyone knows that you’re not killing a brace of grouse in Devon for example. And no one killing a couple of snipe, catching a sea trout and stalking an Exmoor red stag think they’ve achieved the original Macnab.

I suspect the issue with the so-called-spiral slams is that they’re presented without qualification despite only being part of the challenge. If they were advertised as a South African Spiral Slam, a Lowveld Spiral Slam or even a Spiral Slam Starter package, I think there’d be much less of an issue in the mind of some.

That said, I’m very much looking forward to the opportunity to add eland and bushbuck to the kudu and nyala I hunted last year when I return to the Eastern Cape next May. If I’m successful, I may even tell my uninitiated friends that I’ve completed a spiral slam…!
Click to expand...
Now, what if you could tell your ‘uninitiated friends’ that you took all four in their natural range?! Does that matter?! Should that matter?!
 
Hank2211 said:
Now, what if you could tell your ‘uninitiated friends’ that you took all four in their natural range?! Does that matter?! Should that matter?!
Click to expand...

Aren't the 4 people typically go for (Eland, Kudu, Nyala, Bushbuck) usually hunted in their natural range? South Africa is native for all 4, which I'd imagine is where most people end up hunting them.
 
Sabre said:
Aren't the 4 people typically go for (Eland, Kudu, Nyala, Bushbuck) usually hunted in their natural range? South Africa is native for all 4, which I'd imagine is where most people end up hunting them.
Click to expand...
That would be my answer as well, but I've only hunted RSA. I know there are many subspecies out there in different countries. Should I get my bushbuck next year, it will be my slam. Right or wrong, it all very meaningful.
 
All four are indeed natural to South Africa, but Rigby375 mentioned that he got them in the Eastern Cape, and I don’t beleive that nyala naturally made it that far south. I could be wrong, and in any case, this might be simply nitpicking on my part!
Sabre said:
Aren't the 4 people typically go for (Eland, Kudu, Nyala, Bushbuck) usually hunted in their natural range? South Africa is native for all 4, which I'd imagine is where most people end up hunting them.All
Click to expand...
 
Hank2211 said:
All four are indeed natural to South Africa, but Rigby375 mentioned that he got them in the Eastern Cape, and I don’t beleive that nyala naturally made it that far south. I could be wrong, and in any case, this might be simply nitpicking on my part!
Click to expand...

If google is to be trusted, it says you are correct. They did not naturally make it to the East Cape. That's surprising to me. So South Africa, yes, East Cape specifically, no. I expected their native home to be about the same as Kudu. Learn something every day.
 
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