Welcome aboard WG455. Please tell us a little more about yourself as a hunter. Things like what have you hunted in the past, what kind and caliber rifles do you own, do you reload. AH is a great place to learn about hunting in Africa. Not to mention it makes for interesting reading as well.
Well I'll be completely forthcoming: I've never hunted in my life, not unless shooting at some nuisance raccoons counts. I've mostly been a fisher and crabber, and while my dad used to go marsh hen hunting in his younger days, he never took me. (Not that I would've wanted to, because getting in a dinghy with guns in seemed like an accident waiting to happen.) Unlike many of my classmates growing up, I never went deer-hunting nor for anything else. In fairness, I never asked to but I always figured it was "That Thing Your Dad Takes You On" and mine never seemed interested in volunteering me for it. On the other hand, he insisted on taking us to Europe nearly every summer and that gave me a healthy love for history and architecture, having trod where Caesar and Napoleon and so forth have done before me. Maybe that was a fair tradeoff. So, as a complete hunting novice, I plan on getting myself in gear and trying my hand on game here in GA first with my cousins, and graduating eventually to whatever and wherever else, up to and including Africa.
But I do collect firearms, most of which are milsurp and that's what I'm most familiar with handling. I've got SMLE No. 4 Mk I, one unaltered and one sporterized; sporterized Springfield 1903A3 that's unusable until I get a decent Unertl-type scope for it; Kar98k; M91/30 with a repro PU scope; M1 Garand; M1 carbine; semi-only Suomi KP/31 (9mm submachine gun, heavy as absolute hell as it's all milled steel and strong birchwood); Winchester 1897 riot gun. I think you can see a trend there, right? Last couple I bought were reproductions of the Colt Lightning slide-action rifle in .44-40 and the Trapdoor Springfield in .45-70, to have some extra-oldschool fun. I plan on adding a 9.3x62mm Mauser sporter to the collection soon enough.
Reloading is a new game for me. My cousin has offered to help me out with it, though, since he does it. I don't actually shoot enough to warrant it; I sure wish I did. Biggest problem for me is actually finding ranges that allow those older full-sized calibres. I haven't found many that do, not near me.
I'm sure this is hardly confidence-inspiring, but honesty counts, no?
~~W.G.455