Victorian Africa – Relived

THOSE WHO’VE READ the journals penned by Africa’s hunters of old, naturally try to imagine what it must have been like when elephants were everywhere and buffalo blackened the earth and the plain me seemed endless. We try to picture Africa pristine and primitive when safaris proceeded on foot with long rows of native bearers led by khaki-clad men in pith helmets carrying double rifles with muzzles you could stick your thumbs into… They needed those big bores back then. They had to be ready for anything.

He wanted to know first-hand what it actually felt like to face an angry elephant or a big-bossed buffalo ‘up close and personal’, when you’re armed only with a black-powder rifle firing lead bullets. And he wanted to use the same rifles the Victorians had used

Have you ever stopped to wonder what it must have been like to hunt Africa’s dangerous big game before the advent of jacketed bullets and smokeless powder? When we think of hunting the Big Five, we take for granted our Nitro Express cartridges and big belted magnums loaded with steel-jacketed or solid brass bullets. But what about those times when all hunters were like the little man in the nursery rhyme whose “bullets