Man Magnum August 2020

RECENT ARTICLES AND remarks in Magnum concerning defensive carry have drawn quite a response from readers – thankfully all positive. Writing on personal defence can be a difficult task as there are many and varied strong views on the subject, and to complicate matters the tactical execution of attacks is never the same, making a one-size-fits-all solution impossible. In our environment the attackers almost always have the advantage, lying in wait to ambush or choosing the time of attack when the victim least expects it. Often the targets are the weak and most vulnerable. Although, in our writing, we focus on the drills and equipment needed to help you survive, there is a lot more involved in protecting yourself and your loved ones. Many of these additional factors do not…

Baobabs and Buffalo Weavers I enjoyed Gregor Woods’s article on the Baobab in the Feb 2020 issue of Magnum. He raised the question as to why red-billed buffalo weavers invariably nest on the west side of a baobab tree. Would it be that the prevailing winds come from the east, and it suits the birds to fly into wind when landing on their nests? Also, the setting sun would warm the nest in the evening? These are two theories which I have told my clients in the past. – Henry H Henley, Kenya Mauser .303 Die artikel ‘Mauser Revelation’ in die April uitgawe wat verwys na Mauser wat gewere in .303 gemaak het, het my teruggeneem na 1974. Ek was in Kaapstad Sentraal gestasioneer toe ’n Portugese man een dag…

A FIELD NGER had seen a cheetah which a pe d to be trapped in an old fenced off are a at the rangers’ camp on the game e reserve’s boundary fence. Although it wa standard barbed-wire sto k fence, the cheetah was apparently having difficulty getting out. The section ranger rounded up three of his staff and together they climbed over the fence, hoping to drive the animal out through the open section at the other end – an unusual yet straightforward task, one would have thought. They spread out and walked slowly through the overgrown paddock, shouting as they went. The outcome was unexpected. An angry leopard sprang onto one of the field rangers. Then, frightened by the response of the other rangers, it quickly jumped off the…

SOMEWHERE ON THE seemingly endless stretch of per-f straight road between Bloemfontein and Jagersfontein, Ernie remarked that one of the termite mounds dotting the grassla would make a perfect rest for a handgun hunter. The problem with that, I informed him, was finding both a termite mound and a shootable animal within range of it. An hour earlier, at the Bloemfontein airport, I had met Ernie Bishop of Gilette, Wyoming – preacher, handgun hunter and speciality pistol fundi. Our hunting destination was a 33 000 hectare game reserve straddling the Gariep River. On the backseat, in a hard case, lay Ernie’s custom handguns; an XP100 and a Ruger GP100, affectionately known as the Franken-Ruger. The XP100 is a speciality pistol on a Remington XP action with an 18ˡ ˡ barrel…

HAVING A PASSION for searching out new hunting grounds, my wanderlust always led me to look ‘over the next hill’ nd I often found the best game trophies in wilderness areas where others ad not ventured. Consequently, 1979 found me fly-camping on the Lulimala River in Northern Zambia, close to the Bangweulu Swamps. I was hunting sitatunga with my good friend and client Joerg Bucherer of Switzerland, owner of the Bucherer jewellery company. On our first morning, Joerg had bagged a ram with lovely lyre-shaped horns of well over 30''. The area was teeming with sitatunga in numbers such as I had never seen. We also hunted black lechwe, oribi and tsessebe on the flood plains bordering the main Bangweulu swamps, an hour and a half’s drive from our fly…

SINCE THE TIME of the first firearms in the era of flints, and the locks that struck them i pans, through to the latest of today’s modern semi-automatic weapons, the demand for reliable operation has remained consistent. In many applications, handguns and rifles are life-protecting weapons so a trustworthy gun is imperative in this role. In the flint and percussion cap era, the challenge to achieve this was largely through the quality of the workmanship in the simple lock mechanisms of the day. When revolvers and magazine-fed, repeater-action rifles arrived, the attention shifted to good designs. The parallel requirement of quality remained and was largely met by mass production through the use of patterns, jigs and machine tools which offered high standards of precision. This reduced the over-reliance on the…