Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. J.D. Jones HANDGUNHUNTING This is just an average bull; adult but not an old big guy. Bigger than most Capes though. TIPS, TECHNIQUES AND POLITICALINCORRECTNESS CuLLing Lessons L ynn Thompson’s DVD, Death Down Under, shows 100 animals being taken and 50 of them are Asian buffalo. This isn’t what you would consider a “hunting” video. It’s obviously a culling operation and as the cover says, it may be extreme for some viewers. It does give real world experience in animal reaction to various hits and educates the viewer on what to expect. You can see video clip samples of it on the coldsteel.com website. It did remind me of some unusual experiences I had in Australia hunting buffalo during the years the government was attempting to eradicate them. My first trip was in 1986 and we helicoptered out into Arnemland about half a fuel1986 version of the SSK Contender with a 2X Leupold. Caliber — at least .375 JDJ. load worth in a Bell Ranger. After finding a suitable population of buffalo, we landed and made camp for three days. It was necessary to move in three days as odors were becoming unpleasant. In those days you could haul all the ammo you wanted to via commercial airlines so I brought plenty. I experimented heavily with a lot of calibers in the Contender and .44 Magnum revolver, mainly with my 320 grain cast bullet. Charges — yes a few, but only because I was trying to provoke them. Walking across a grassy field one day, some bulls got up from their naps at about 30-40 yards, took a look at me, stuck out their noses and began to trot toward me. A brain shot was nearly impossible, and the story goes these were charges and animal speed would increase, and the head would drop to put the horns to work at the last moment. I chose not to find out if this was true and dropped to one knee and shot them in the heart at 15-20 yards with the .375 JDJ. Every one turned into a left fishhook and went down quickly. These animals had never seen a human before and my feeling was they were simply curious of those Ruger Redhawk with an antique upright animals. My PH and Aimpoint. Bullets were others maintain they were legiti320 JDJ cast bullets at mate charges. We still disagree. about 1,500 FPS. Not Predictable O M y hunting partner had dropped a bull that stayed upright on his chest. He had been fighting his boss and was a mess of maggots. I stepped up to him and bent over to take a close up photo as he regained consciousness and simply ran over me. Then we had to run, shoot him in the ass, run some more, do it over again, until we downed him. The shot that knocked him out was a spinal process hit with a 500 grain .45-70 that didn’t get the spinal column. While we were walking on a narrow trail with water on both sides, a buff that had heard us approaching had submerged and finally run out of breath. He shot up out of the water like a nuclear submarine surfacing at top speed about four or five feet from me, scaring the hell out of me and covering me with muck. He was going up and somewhat away from me and as his hips cleared the water I stuck out the .375 with one hand and spined him, then finished him with a brain shot. In my memory this happened 10 minutes ago. J.D. Charges Too n another cull operation we drove into a herd of buff that were all laying down. Suddenly they began popping up all around us. The guys in the back of the truck gave them all they had and when I was sure they were empty, I jumped out of the truck and ran after rapidly retreating herd. Suddenly almost directly in front of me a buff came up — his head thrown away from me, and I distinctly remember seeing his front hooves were off the ground. I threw my left arm up, brought the Super around and double-actioned one into his under jaw and kept running. Later I found the muzzle blast had blown most of the hair off for several inches around the entry. The .320 had exited out the top of his head for a perfect brain shot and I didn’t even see him fall. I took quite a ribbing as the man who charges buffalo. With that group of rifle hunters there was a lot of following up wounded animals. On several occasions I approached wounded animals that really tried to charge but were too far gone to make much of a go of it. The Asian buff is far underrated by the charisma given the Cape Buff. The Asian is much larger and in my opinion may be tougher to put down. Just about any large animal not hit right is hard to put down. * 22 WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM • JULY/AUGUST 2009