Many months before my 12th birthday my father asked if I wanted to hunt a Cape buffalo. Can you imagine my response? I was jumping up and down inside, but then knowing him, I asked - “Really?” With my father, a challenge was always ahead of a reward, and this was a fantastic motivator to a young man like me. He simply said, “The condition for the buffalo hunt is that you must be able to handle a big-caliber rifle in a dangerous situation. You never know,” he continued in Afrikaans, which is what we only spoke together, “what could go wrong, and you need to be able to handle a big caliber with confidence.”
The challenge - when I was ready: I had to shoot five rounds with my father’s rare Mannlicher-Schönauer .458 Winchester Magnum off shooting-sticks at a 100 yards.
That next weekend found me dragging my father to the range, my small sweaty
