laststandonzombieisland

“Bring enough gun…” It’s a common expression at both ranges and hunting cabins, but can be applied whenever a buddy buys some huge caliber rifle or shotgun and shows it off for the first time. Nevertheless, we decided to point out some of the finer points of those titanic gatts of the safari.

When European and American adventurers came to Africa in the 1800s, they found the continent teeming with exotic wildlife. While there was many of the same types of hunting scenarios as there were back home, (e.g. upland birds, small game, deer etc.), there were also some incredibly dangerous big game animals. The five most fatal of these, called the Big Five, or the Fatal Five, were the African elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, Cape buffalo, and lions.

These animals were difficult to hunt, especially on foot and when cornered, they were incredibly dangerous as all could mount attacks rapidly. Immense 13,000-pound elephants could charge, almost totally concealed from tall grass and trample a hunter flat before he could get a shot off. A 2000-pound black rhino’s skin is thick enough to deflect small and even medium caliber rounds.

The 200-pound leopard was a master of the stalk, only appearing at night to ambush its prey. The Cape buffalo, stubborn even when wounded, could ambush pursuers and turn the tables in the blink of an eye, earning these unlikely bovines the dubious reputation as one of the most successful killers of humans on the continent. Finally, we all know the lion as “the king of the jungle”. A pair of these creatures, known as the Tsavo Man-Eaters, killed no less than 35 workers along the Kenya- Uganda railway project in 1898. This epic lion v. man battle was depicted in the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness.

With animals like these, your regular off the shelf rounds just did not cut it.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com