June 2017 R39,00 incl VAT

Namibia N$41,50
06459

9 770256 067003
 CROOKS CORNER: COLLECTING SA HOME-MADE
OUTLAWS ON THE RUN SERVICE PISTOLS BOER MACHINE GUN

VOLUME 42 WIN
a Bushill

NUMBER 06 Hamper

TRUVELOS

CMS
JUNE 2017 HUNTING
Buffels in Zimbabwe
Safari Hunting
East African Tuskers

RIFLES
SIGS
MAX .40
ON THE COVER: The 7.62x51mm S&W PISTOL
ROBIN
BARKES
long-range rifle, one of four in Truvelos Matches
Guns to
Knives
Counter Measure Sniper series. TESTS
33 Barrel Cooling System

Read more on p54.

June 2017 R39,00 incl VAT
43 GamePro Spotlights Namibia N$41,50
06459
53 NiteCore LED Flashlight
62 HW100 Air Rifle

Photo courtesy of Truvelo. 64 Trijicon 3-9x40 Scope 9 770256 067003

Features
10 SIG SAUERS 1911 MAX
Aimed at the action pistol market
Paul Scarlata

14 BLOEDSPOOR
Buffels en bloedsweet in Zimbabwe
Dawie Strauss

18 SAVING FACE
Is your ammo good and clean and fresh tra-la-la?
Fergus Brown

20 A BOER MAKES A PLAN

A Mauser-actioned machine gun?
MC Heunis

24 FEARLESSREVOLVER FOR WOMEN

Indias answer to rape only the rich need apply
Roger Ingle

26 OUTLAWS OF CROOKSCORNER
Crafty characters in search of Dhlulamithi
Nick Hurry

30 NEWCOMERS TO IMFOLOZI
For the love of lions
Gordon Bailey

36 PISTOLS AT DAWN PART 1

Duelling was a part of gentlemanly life
Gregor Woods

40 SHY BUT DEADLY

Fast and aggressive if provoked
John Coleman

46 MATCHING KNIVES TO HISTORIC GUNS

Knives have backed-up guns since guns began
Robin Barkes

50 STALKING BIG IVORY IN KENYA PART 2

Early rains meant a long walk back to civilization
Pat Mzee Ayre

54 TRUVELO DOWN TO THE LAST DETAIL

Meeting international arms standards
Anthony Shelley

58 SAFARI HUNTING AS A CONSERVATION TOOL PART 2

In Africa, hunting protects wildlife from poachers
Robin Hurt

62 WEIHRAUCH HW100 AIR RIFLE

When only one-hole groups will do
Phillip Hayes

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Solving Confusion about Competencies
SA Moves toward Legal Rhino Horn Trade
Opinions expressed in advertisements or articles are
Guineafowl and Worms? not necessarily those of the Editors or Publishers.
Protected Areas Missing 75% of Elephants Readers should take every care with firearms and
Westley Richards Appoints New MD ammunition. Magnum has no control over readers
components or techniques and cannot entertain
claims of any nature whatsoever. The Editors reserve
MAGNUM YOUTH 69 the right to change and/or shorten articles and
How to Compete in Sport Shooting letters. The Publisher accepts no responsibility for
the content of advertisements.

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Trail Talk
Subscribe and Save
F
or local readers who would
like to subscribe to Magnum
we have good news: the price
for a 12-month subscription
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Regular readers will have noticed that
lately we have included more test reports
in each edition compared to last year. This
is at the request of various readers who
6 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
would like to read more on new and
sometimes older products available in
shops or about to be launched locally. We
will try to keep this up in the months to
come to give you our opinion on products
we believe youll find useful or of interest.
On the same topic, we have intro-
duced a new system where we are
labelling certain products with the
words Magnums Choice. This hon-
our will go to products that really
impress us in terms of quality while
offering good value for money as well.
This will be ongoing and in future you
will see a Magnums Choice sticker on
selected products at your local gun
shop. This does not suggest that simil-
ar products are inferior or do not meet our
standards; it is merely an indication that a
Magnum panel judged a specific product
to offer really good value for money. It is
also part of an initiative to identify and
highlight worthy new products that local
companies are producing or importing.
Lastly, on a sad note, we report that
well-known author, hunter, conservation-
ist and former Magnum contributor Peter
Flack, has made the decision to stop
hunting altogether. On 19 April 2017 he
wrote in his regular blog: this is my last
newsletter and blog post. I am busy sell-
ing my firearms and hunting books, clear-
ing out my hunting cupboard, resigning
from many of the hunting associations of
which I have been a member and tidying
up the rest of my hunting bits and bobs
and I will no longer write hunting articles
other than for the odd friend who specially
requests it, and then only after I have
given the request some serious thought.
Space limitations make it impossible
for me to go into the full details Peter
gave for his resolution, but part of his
decision had to do with opposition within
established hunting circles against the
Fair Chase Guild. The guild was formed to
promote, among many things, a positive
view of hunting outside normal hunting
circles. Peter was the main driving force
behind this initiative.
by PHILLIP HAYES
Win a Bushill
Hamper
A Bushill harness for a camera or a pair of
binoculars, a 125ml tin of Youngs303nitro
powdersolvent,andaGunsmithythree-stage
cleaning kit are all in the hamper waiting to be
woninthismonths readercompetition.
The hamper is sponsored by Bushill, a
leading South African manufacturer, importer
and distributor of premium shooting and
hunting brands. The Gunsmithy cleaning kit
includes gunsmith oil, an all-purpose cleaner
andacarboncleaner.
For your chance to win, simply answer this
question:WhatdoestheacronymSIGstand
for?(youllfindtheansweronpage10).
Email your answer to mail@manmagnum.
co.za. Please include your name, telephone
number and province. The winner will be
announcedintheJuly2017edition.
Not having Peter involved as an
ambassador for hunting is a loss we
can ill afford, as hunting needs every
individual and organisation to work non-
stop to counteract the distorted percep-
tions of hunting that are at large among
the general public. At the moment,
many hunters, and I include myself,
tend to spend a lot of time preaching to
the converted, when we should rather
be moving out of our comfort zone to
direct our efforts at the non-hunting fra-
ternity. We at Magnum wish Peter the
best for the future, and thank him for
the countless hours he has selflessly
spent on promoting ethical hunting.
Letters
PMP Expander Ammunition
I have just read Gregor Woodss article
The Bullet That Never Was (May 2017
edition) concerning the PMP ammuni-
tion that was never produced.
I was in the South African Air Force
at the time that ammunition was devel-
oped, and I knew several of the PMP
guys. When they heard that I was going
on my second buffalo hunting safari on
the flood plains of the Zambezi Delta
and intended using the safari compa-
nys Churchill .375H&H rifle, the PMP
boys asked me to test their new ammo
on a buffalo. They gave me five boxes
(100 rounds) of PMP lead-tipped nick-
el-plated Super Expander to take on
safari. They told me the design was
based on an original Goodnel pattern,
and their secret lay in the quality of the
copper, which was mined locally, and
was carbon-free. The ammunition also
proved to be very accurate.
That hunt proved to be the hard-
est of my life, mostly spent trudging
or crawling through swamp mud and
crawling along in a muddy creek to get
within range of a good buffalo bull. I
finally took a longish shot and the bull
dropped in its tracks. The bullet had
performed excellently, breaking both
shoulders. We thought the bull was
dead, but as my guide neared it, it
raised its head and tried to hook him,
narrowly missing his stomach. I gave it
another shot into the spine where the
neck joins the shoulder.
We recovered both bullets, and
despite the wide difference in shoot-
ing distances, both mushroomed per-
fectly and retained maximum weight.
On leaving, I gave four boxes of the
ammo to German clients whose safari
was back-to-back with mine, and the
remaining rounds in the box Id opened
I gave to the PH of the safari company.
I have always wondered why that
ammunition never went into produc-
tion. Now I know. I enjoyed Gregors
article. Casey Lewis, Gauteng
Your letters are an important part of Magnum. We (readers and editors) like to hear your problems and opinions.
Unless marked NOT FOR PUBLICATION all letters are considered and are edited for length and/or clarity. Pen names may be used, provided
that your full name, address and daytime phone number are furnished. Please try to keep your letters short and to the point.
8 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
SD, BC and Kipling
With reference to the article What is
Ballistic Coefficient? by Gregor Woods
(Magnum, April 2017), in the formula
for calculating SD on page 39, I think
there should have been a forward slash
(for division) or a division sign between
the 180 and the bracket, 180/(.308 x
.308 x 7000) = 0.271. A reader might
also wonder about the 7 000 which is
included to convert the bullet weight in
grains to weight in pounds.
Secondly, if we work back from the
table on page 41 we find the coefficient
of form (CF) = 0.891 for round nose,
0.622 for semi-spitzer, 0.542 for flat-
base spitzer and 0.502 for boat-tail
spritzer. Are these CF values constants
irrespective of calibre?
Furthermore, Gregor Woodss
story Kipling and the Boers (March
2017) reads like poetry, and I thank
him for this superbly written arti-
cle. Being a statistician, I have
been put on this earth to work with
numbers and not with words. How-
ever, I can admire a text written
by a master. Dr Piet Becker, Gauteng
Gregor Woods replies: Thank you for point-
ing this out; you are quite correct. The
formula for calculating sectional den-
sity which I wrote in my original man-
uscript DID have the division symbol
in it. However, this must have got lost
during the publishing process.
As you know, System Internationale
(SI) units are used in science and engi-
neering. This poses some difficulties for
shooters due to our use of avoirdupois
units. This results in conversion con-
straints being included in many other-
wise more simple formulae. The 7 000
converts grains to pounds.
The coefficient of form (CF) is inde-
pendent of calibre. The form factor is a
comparison of the shape of the bullet in
question to that of a standard profile.
The shape of the ogive geometry is the
prime influence in determining the form
factor. The pointed shape is called an
ogive which ranges from blunt to sharp-
pointed.
Thank you for your kind words
about the Kipling article.
All-Round Rifles
I enjoyed reading and was extremely
interested in Johan Groblers article on
the search for the all-round rifle or car-
tridge (Magnum, March 2017) for the
hunting of plains game. This is some-
thing most of us in the hunting frater-
nity enjoy debating.
My opinions are somewhat different
from his even though my criteria are
fairly similar.
I am not a minimalist. Bob Hagel,
respected American gun scribe, said it
all when he wrote that the effectiveness
of any given cartridge should not be
judged on how it performs when all the
conditions are just right, but how it per-
forms when things start to go wrong.
Somehow the less is more argument
is not one I espouse when it comes to
choosing a hunting rifle or cartridge.
I also disagree with Mr Grobler
that accuracy of a " group at 100
yards is needed. I regard a consist-
ent accuracy of one-and-a-half inches
shot one day after another out of a
cold barrel, fine for hunting condi-
tions. The first shot is the one that
counts. One does not shoot groups on
the side of a game animal.
Mr Groblers first choice is the 7x57.
I have hunted with all the calibres he
picked as his final four. I would choose
the .30-06 as my first choice, followed
by the .308, both with factory or hand-
loaded ammo. Neither are slouches in
competitive events either.
Next I would choose the .270
with hand loads. Lower the veloc-
ity and use 150 grain Nosler Parti-
tions if you are concerned about meat
damage. It has more case capac-
ity than the 7x57 and shoots flatter.
Tony Marsh, Canada
Handguns

SIG Sauers 1911 Max was designed from the ground up for action pistol competition. Note the chequered front strap, dual grasping grooves, flat
faced trigger, extended thumb safety and magazine release.

SIG Sauers 1911 Max

by PAUL SCARLATA photos by PAUL BUDDE and BECKY SCARLATA

Something old and something new

I
f youre like me, when you hear In partnership with the German gunmaker
t h e w o r d s S I G S a u e r yo u JP Sauer & Sohn, SIG introduced a DA/SA
immediately envision that alloy frame pistol, the P220, which was
companys popular double- adopted by the Swiss army, the Japa-
action/single-action (DA/SA), nese Self-Defence Force, as well as a
high-capacity pistols, as exemplified number of armies and police forces in
by the P226. the Middle East and Africa.
The Schweizerische Industrie- SIG pursued the American market
Gesellschaft (SIG) has been manufactur-
ing firearms since 1860 and introduced Sample targets fired from 25m show the Max to
its first handgun, the SIG P210, in 1949. be a pleasingly accurate pistol.

10 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

The ejection port has been lowered and fla-
red to insure spent cases get out of the way
reliably.
where most police forces were in the
process of switching from revolvers to
semi-auto pistols. SIGs high capacity
P226, in 9mm, .40 S&W and .357 SIG
has proven popular with police agencies
and civilian shooters. To address the
growing market in the United States
(US), SIG established a facility in Exe-
ter, New Hampshire, SIG Sauer, which
now manufactures the entire line of SIG
pistols.
IT DIDNT TAKE those marketing this
combination of Swiss craftsmanship,
Germanic efficiency and American
entrepreneurship very long to real-
ize that if they wanted to capture an
even larger share of the US market
they needed to offer shooters the most
iconic and beloved of all American
handguns the 1911. As with its other
DA/SA pistols, SIG Sauers 1911 GSR
was an instant success with civilian
shooters, police agencies and serious
Action Pistol competitors. If you check
The Max uses a traditional-style barrel
bushing and recoil system. Note the fibre
optic front sight.
out its website you will see that SIG
Sauer offers more than 30 versions of
this classic pistol.
Visible here are the chequered mainspring
In late 2014, they added the 1911 housing, beavertail grip safety with palm
Max, designed with the input of pro- swell, skeletonised hammer and adjustable
fessional shooter Max Michel Jnr (and rear sight.
I bet you thought Max meant Maxi-
mum). Max worked with SIG engineers
to develop a race-inspired pistol built
to his unique specifications with all
the custom features that a world-class
shooter requires.
Built by the SIG Sauer Custom
Shop, the 1911 Max is an all stain-
less steel, single-stack pistol with the
uniquely styled flat top, slab-sided
slide common to many SIG 1911s. The chequered
front strap and
The slide has dovetail cuts at both
Hogue Chain
ends for mounting a fibre optic front Link G-10 grips
and fully adjustable rear sight, while insure a secure
square-cut grasping grooves on the purchase on the
rear allow you to retract the slide pistol while the
flat faced trigger
even with wet or oily hands. A less
allows concise
aggressive pair on the front permits trigger control.
easy chamber checking.
The gaping ICE Magwell
allows fast, fumble free
reloads. Note the 10-round
Wilson Cobra magazine.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 11
 Here the author (right) runs the
plate rack one-for-one.

A massive external extractor will remove even the most smiths at SIGs Custom Shop hand-fit all the internals includ-
recalcitrant case from the chamber while a lowered and ing an EGW sear and firing pin.
flared ejection port insures they get out of the way quickly To improve handling and recoil control, metal has been
and reliably. removed from the trigger guard to allow a high grip on the
A quick examination of the frame shows extended, ambi- pistol. Sharp-cut 26 lines per inch chequering on the front
dextrous thumb safeties and a beavertail grip safety with a strap and mainspring housing combine with the Hogue Chain
palm swell. The Maxs radically skeletonised Koenig Speed Link G-10 grips to provide a secure, slip-free purchase on the
Hammer shortens lock time while the SIG Sauer flat pistol even with wet or oily hands. A moderately extended
faced trigger enhances trigger control. The gun- magazine release is easily accessible for positive mag-
azine ejection while the gaping Dawson ICE Magwell
lets even the most fumble-fingered among us like
SPECIFICATIONS: SIG Sauer 1911 Max yours truly make
Calibre .40 S&W fast reloads.
Overall length 221mm To d a y U S P -
Height 140mm SAs Limited 10 and
Barrel length 127mm Single-Stack divisions
Width 35.5mm a l o n g w i t h I P S C s
Weight (unloaded) 1.18kg Standard and Classic
Materials stainless divisions are dominated
steel slide & by .40 calibre pistols and
frame
while the 1911 Max is available
Sights front: fibre optic
in .45 ACP, I believe the major-
rear: fully
ity of people who buy one will opt for the .40
adjustable
chambering. I recently spoke with my contact at
w/white dots
SIG Sauer who told me that with the increasing
Capacity 9+1
popularity of the 9mm Parabellum cartridge,
Finish Rev 2-Tone
more and more 1911 manufacturers are offering
Grips Hogue Chain
Link G-10 pistols in that calibre. While I did not receive any
Extra features: Ice Magwell, ambi thumb definite commitments, it was intimated that SIG
safeties,dual grasping grooves, chequered front Sauer is considering offering the Max chambered
strap & mainspring housing, beavertail grip safety for Georg Lugers cartridge in the near future.
with palm swell, skeletonised hammer, flat-faced The 1911 Max I received to evaluate was a
trigger, extended magazine release, lowered & solid feeling pistol and the quality of fit, finish
flared ejection port, spare magazine, padded
carrying case & cable lock. Recoil control was above average.

12 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

 TEST FIRING RESULTS:
Factory
Black Hills 155gr JHP
Cor-Bon 165gr Performance Match
Remington 165gr Golden Saber
SIG Sauer 180gr FMJ
Handload:
180gr Plated FP +
4.5gr of TiteGroup
NOTE: Average of three, five-shot groups fired from an MTM K-Zone rest at 25m. Velocity is the average
of five rounds chronographed 4m from the pistols muzzle.
and assembly were immediately evi-
dent. It was graced with an excellent
trigger that broke crisply. The slides
Nitron finish contrasted nicely with the
brushed stainless frame and sported
Max Michel logos on either side.
TEST FIRING WAS conducted from an
MTM K-Zone rest at 25m. According to
my trigger-pull gauge the trigger broke
crisply with 1.9kg of pressure and the
sights provided a sharp, clear picture.
The following weekend I used the
Max to compete in an action pistol
match at a local club, using a holster
and mag carriers supplied by Dara Hol-
sters and several Wilson Cobra 10-round
magazines. The match included both
USPSA-type scenarios with multiple
cardboard targets requiring movement,
followed by a steel plate match.
The Max exceeded my expectations.
I ran the Max through a number of USPSA/IPSC-type scenarios with complete success.
Avg. Group Best Group Velocity (fps)
52mm 46mm 1 127
43mm 34mm 863
45mm 34mm 1 065
46mm 41mm 967
52mm 43mm 942
Dara Holster Kydex belt holster magazine
carriers proved just the ticket for competitive
shooting with the Max.
First of all, despite being quite dirty
from my earlier test firing, it ran per-
fectly during the hundred-plus round
match. Its ergonomics and controls
came to the fore allowing me to shoot
fast and accurately, perform speed
reloads smoothly and engage multiple
targets quickly.
All in all, I was very impressed with
the Maxs performance. Other shoot-
ers at the match who examined it had
nothing but positive comments but... flat mainspring housing, I always tend
As is my SOP, I do want to men- to shoot low, which is why all my per-
tion two features that I do not care sonal 1911s have arched mainspring
for, the first being the rear sights two housings an option I would like to see
large white dots on a pistol used for offered by SIG Sauer.
competition, I prefer a plain black rear Apart from these two caveats, I
sight mated to a fibre optic front. That believe that anyone looking for a qual-
said, the judicious application of a ity 1911 to get serious about action pis-
black marker pen gave me the sighting tol shooting need look no farther than
arrangement I prefer. Secondly, when I SIG Sauerss 1911 Max its a winner
shoot fast with a 1911 equipped with a from the start.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 13
 BO: Braam na nog n suksesvolle jag met The Beast agter hom.

LINKS BO NA ONDER: The Beast se spore in die sand van die Chewore.
Olifante kruis die Chewore net onderkant bekende berg Phumbi.
Wildehonde in die vallei.

Bloedspoor
deur DAWIE STRAUSS

Die bloedsweet vir buffels in

Zimbabwe se Zambezivallei

O
ns het stil en gespanne
agter Sam geloop, hy het
kort-kort met stok in die
hand vir ons die bloed
gewys. Die spoor het ons
in n digte jesse (Combretum patelli-
forme) bos in gelei. Dit was warm, die
tsetse vlie se byte het gebrand en die
mopanie bye het lastig om ons natge-
swete gesigte gevlieg en in ons neuse
en ore probeer kruip. In die digte bos
om ons was daar skielik n gekraak van
takke, diere oppad weg van ons. n
Groot bloedkol onder n mopanieboom
was die stille bewys dat die gekweste
buffelbul waarna ons op soek was lank
hier vir ons gewag het. Vir n wyle was
die spanning gebreek. Braam, Koos,
Kramer die gids van Zimbabwe parke-
raad en Sam, ons spoorsnyer, was op
die spoor van n dagga boy wat Koos
sowat n uur vroer gekwes het.
Ons het vroegoggend van G-kamp
in die Sapi safari gebied vertrek op
soek na buffels. Ons het gou twee buf-
fels se spore gekry waar hulle die pad
gekruis het nadat hulle by die Zambezi
water gedrink het. Na sowat n uur
en n half se spoorsny het ons op die
bulle afgekom. Die een buffel het effens
dwars gedraai en Braam het ges Koos
moet skiet. Braam sou opvolg met nog
n skoot, maar met die eerste skoot
het die buffel so vinnig omgevlieg dat
Braam nie kans gekry het om te skiet
nie. Koos was nie seker waar sy skoot
getref het nie en wou nie die bloed-
spoor volg nie. Ter versagting moet ek
byvoeg dat hy voorheen nie veel gejag
het nie, nie fiks was nie en boonop met
my .375 geskiet het, n geweer waaraan
hy nie gewoond was nie. By die bloedkol

14 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

onder die boom het Koos en Kramer
teruggedraai jagkar toe.
Vir my was dit n waterskei-
ding oomblik want ek het geweet
Braam maak nou op my staat
indien die bul dalk sou besluit om
sy horings op ons te toets. Dit was
my eerste keer in die Zambezivallei
en die eerste keer wat ek op die
bloedspoor van een van Afrika se
gevaarlikste gekweste diere was.
VAN DIE BLOEDPLAS het ons baie
versigtig verder gegaan. Sam voor Braam, Stephan en Morkel by die buffel waaroor die
op die spoor met my en Braam kort artikel gaan.
op sy hakke. Nou het ek eerste-
hands kennis gemaak met die
manne van die vallei se ongelooflike spoorsny vermo. Die
buffel het al minder bloed gelaat en later was daar niks en
om sake verder te bemoeilik het die bul vir sowat 500m oor
n rotsplaat gevlug. Sam kon die onsigbare hoefmerke op
die klipplaat sien en dit gevolg tot by die einde van die plaat geloop. By een geleentheid het n koei en n kalf minder as 10
waar ons uit die nou sigbare spore kon sien die bul se maat
het hier by hom aangesluit en hulle is saam verder.
Die plantegroei het nou dramaties verander. Kleinerige
struikmopanie en jesse-bos het
plek gemaak vir groot bome, en
onder die bome was dit so donker
dat ek die korrelbeskermer van my
.458 moes afhaal om die korrel
behoorlik te kon sien. Sam se hand
het skielik gelig. Elephant, het hy
gefluister. Die eerste wat ek gesien
het was n oor en toe die hele oli-
fantkoei so 20 meter weg. Sy was
een van n hele trop en ons moes
hardloop om uit hulle pad te kom.
Die wind was gelukkig in ons guns
en hulle het ons nie geruik nie. Die
trop is so naby aan ons verby dat
ek hulle mae kon hoor rammel. Die
feit dat ek voor die jag baie gelees
het oor hoe befoeterd en berug hierdie olifantkoeie van die
Zambezivallei is, het gesorg dat my hart so hard geklop het
dat ek verbaas was dat die olifante dit nie kon hoor het nie.
Later het ons by verskeie geleenthede weer in olifante vas-
meter by my verbygestap. Die olifante het die bufflel spore
vertrap en teen laatmiddag het ons doodmoeg en dors ons
water was lankal op - by die jagkar aangekom. Ons kon die
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 15
gekweste bul nie opspoor nie.
n Paar jaar later was ek,
Braam en Morkel terug in die
Zambezivallei en weer op
soek na n buffelbul. Steven
was ons spoorsnyer en gids.
Nadat ons ver suidwaarts
met die Land Cruiser in die
sand van Chewore rivier op
gery het en The Beast in
die koelte van n groot jak-
kalsbessieboom op die oewer
van die rivier getrek het, het
ons te voet weswaarts gejag.
(Braam het sy geliefde jagkar
The Beast, gedoop vanwee
die voertuig se ongelooflike
Pad word gekap vir die herwinning.
viertrek vermo en die grom
van die enjin as dit kilometers
ver deur die dik sand moet worstel.)
ONS HET GOU die spore van n groot
buffeltrop gekry. Vanaf n hoogte het
ons die trop dopgehou, n bul wat groot
genoeg was om te jag het stadig in ons
rigting begin wei. Toe hy in n opening
tussen bosse deurkom het Morkel se
skoot geklap, en myne, waarmee ek
moes rugsteun, n oomblik daarna.
Morkel was tevrede met sy .458 se
skoot, uit my posisie kon ek egter net
die buffel se nek sien, en ek het geweet
indien die .375 werwels getref het die
buffel in sy spore sou geval het. Dt was
duidelik nie die geval nie en na n rukkie
se wag vra ons Steven wat hy dink. Hy
het opgestaan, sy AK47 gespan en
doodluiters ges: I think we have a
wounded buffalo on our hands,
lets go.
Daar was bloed op die
grond en aan takke so skouer
hoog waarskynlik weens my
skoot in die nek. Dit was moei-
like terrein om enige gewonde
dier te volg, wat nog te s n
gewonde buffel. Digte jesse-
bos ruigtes het sigbaarheid tot
slegs n paar meter beperk.
Ons het uiters stadig en ver-
sigtig die spoor gevolg. Die
gids wat die agterhoede gedek
het, het skielik my aandag
getrek. In n gangetjie tussen Olifant baie naby in digte bos.
16 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
die bosse deur het ek die buffel gesien,
daar was net n bos tussen hom en
Braam hulle. Hy het vir hulle gestaan
en kyk. Voordat ek iets kon doen het
die bul omgedraai en deur die bosse
weggebars.
Nou was ons nog versigtiger en kort
hierna het ons meters voor ons weer n
gekraak van takke wat breek gehoor, en
dit het geklink soos n lokomotief wat
deur die bos storm. Gelukkig weer weg
van ons. Voetjie vir voetjie het ons nou
die spoor gevolg. Per ongeluk het ek n
takkie raak getrap, in die doodse stilte
wat ons in die stadium omvou het het dit
soos n kanonskoot geklink. Die bul het
reg voor ons uit die bosse gevlieg, net n
donker streep in die digte bos.
Steven het omgedraai, my stip
aangekyk en ges: Do you
realise this thing wants to kill
us... you put your feet where I
put mine... you walk quietly.
Ons het n rukkie stil gestaan
en herkou aan sy woorde. Die
tikkie vrees in die gesoute gids
se o en sy lyftaal het ons op-
nuut laat besef van die gevaar
waarin ons ons bevind het.
O N S H E T I N e n ke l g e l i d
verder gestap want die bosse
was te dig om langs mekaar
te loop. Ons moes nou in
gedagte hou om mekaar
nie raak te skiet nie indien
die bul storm. Steven het
geweet hy is eerste in die
lyn, dat sy AK47 nie die bul kon stop
nie en dat hy van ons en ons groot-
kaliber gewere afhanklik was. Dit was
nou grafstil, ons was gefokus op die
taak wat wag terwyl ons tree vir tree
stadig en met soekende o elke bos
deursoek het. Steven het meteens
versteen en vir Braam teen hom verby
getrek. Toe Braam se .505 Gibbs blaf
het die buffel gedraai sodat ek en
Morkel hom ook kon sien en ons het
dadelik met die .458 en .375 geskiet.
Die buffel het geval. Braam het met
bewende hande sy geweer probeer
herlaai. Dit was onnodig, die buf-
fel was dood. Ons het in stilte na die
gevalle buffel gestaan en kyk. Verlig-
ting het oor ons almal gespoel.
Morkel se eerste skoot was net
bo-oor die hart, deur albei
longe. Enige ander dier sou net
n paar meter verder geval het,
maar nie die buffel nie.
n In 2016 het die laaste
Citizen Hunts (soos di jagte
in Zimbabwe bekend staan)
in hierdie wildernis langs die
magtige Zambezirivier, plaas-
gevind. Zimbabwe se parke-
raad het die veiling vir jagte in
die Sapi en Jakasanga gebiede
gestop. Die gebied is nou soos
baie ander in die hande van die
groot jagondernemers en dus
vir gewone jagters verlore.
A Saving Face
s a vet practising in a rural
town in the Limpopo prov-
ince, I inevitably had my
share of interesting and
sometimes memorable
experiences. One that comes to mind
occurred at a correctional facility in a
neighbouring town in one of the erst-
while homelands.
The prison management kept cat-
tle, sheep and horses as part of their
rehabilitation programme, which
included involving the inmates in live-
stock husbandry. Our annual duty was
to test the dairy cows for tubercu-
losis and contagious abortion (bru-
cellosis) and to this end I one day set
off on the 80km trip to complete the
tests. I always enjoyed the d r i v e
through subtropical
fruit farms and lush
indigenous forest en
route to the town.
At the boomed
18 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
by FERGUS BROWN
illu stration ALAN WALKER
With every misfire, the prison
warden lost more cred
entrance, I had to fill in the man-
datory questionnaire and declare
any firearms. I never drive anywhere
without my Astra .38 Special revolver,
and this day was no different. How-
ever, I was reluctant to go through
the tedious process of explaining the
need for self-defence, and decided to
remain mum about the presence of
the weapon.
The tests were completed without
incident and, as I was cleaning my equip-
ment and packing my vehicle, one of the
wardens walked up and asked me to
examine one of the prisons old horses.
We walked to a group of Natal mahog-
any trees in the shade of which stood the
droopy-headed shape of a very old
gelding. The warden was con-
cerned about the welfare of
the animal as it seemed to
be losing condition and in
all likelihood was suffer-
ing.
After examining the
horse, I confirmed that
he had reached the
end of his tether, so to
speak. I determined
t h a t t r y i n g va r i o u s
treatments would have
no beneficial effect and
recommended euthana-
sia. Gravely the warden
asked me to do this for
them, as he was not
inclined to do it him-
self. That posed a prob-
lem as I do not carry
the drug used for this
purpose on general
calls, but after
some thought
I decided to
give the old
boy a general
anaesthetic which I did have with me. I
then asked the warden if I could use his
pistol to finish the job. In this way the
gelding would not suffer as he would be
completely unconscious.
While these discussions were going
on a small contingent of inmates gath-
ered, sensing a break in their dreary
daily routine. The warden explained
to them what the plan was and lively
interest was immediately evident. The
stage was set, so to speak, and amid
the growing crowd I haltered the horse
and administered the anaesthetic via a
jugular vein. The tough old campaigner
stood resolute for a moment, then
sighed deeply and slowly collapsed to
the ground, ending on his side com-
pletely oblivious of his surroundings.
I turned to the warden and
requested his pistol. It was a Star 9mm
Parabellum with which I was familiar
as I had been issued the same weapon
as an army officer years before. We
ordered the onlookers to stand behind
me and, after making sure that it was
safe to shoot, I approached the recum-
bent gelding and cocked the pistol.
Recalling the training we had received,
I imagined a cross formed by two lines
that traverse the forehead from the
left eye to the right ear and vice versa.
Where the lines intersect, a frontal shot
should penetrate the brain resulting in
an immediate and humane death.
THE CHATTER FROM my audience died
down and the tense silence was shat-
tered by the click of a misfire from the
Star. I hastily worked the slide to expel
the offending dud round and aimed
afresh. With the second resounding
click, an uncomfortable cough from the
warden was followed by a resumption
of chatter and even a laugh or two from
the overall-clad inmates. I checked the
ejected cartridges and found perfect
indentations on the primers. I could
only conclude that the ammunition
was old and no longer functional. With
a worried thought about my illegal
revolver in my vehicle and how I was
going to explain my omission on the
declaration form, I hoped fervently that
the Star would fire just one cartridge.
Undoubtedly my thoughts were shared
by the warden as he was rapidly losing
face in front of his charges. How would
he in future exact discipline carrying a
dysfunctional weapon?
The inmates remarks became
louder and more confident by the min-
ute. As the last bullet produced the now
familiar click, I had resigned myself to
owning up and finishing the job with
my Astra when to my astonishment the
old horse breathed a last deep breath
and expired from the anaesthetic! With
much relief, I made a show of confirm-
ing death with my stethoscope and
departed leaving a rather despondent
warden to sort out his hierarchy.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 19
 A Boer Makes a Plan
by MC HEUNIS

How a small-town Free State blacksmith invented a machine gun

M
achine guns will
always be asso-
ciated with Sir
Hiram Maxim,
inventor of the
first portable, fully automatic
machine gun, plus the wasteful
slaughter of thousands of young
men on the fields of Flanders in
the First World War. Few people,
however, know that a machine
gun was built shortly before the
Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) by
a young blacksmith named Evert
van Niekerk in the rustic little
town of Ficksburg on the eastern
border of the Orange Free State.
The true Maxim machine
gun was invented in 1883 by
Maxim, an American who later
became a naturalised Brit.
According to Maxim, a friend
told him, Hang your chemis- Evert van Niekerk, front, with his machine gun. Dan Deetlefs is pictured operating it. Note the five 7x57mm
Mauser rounds in a stripper clip he is holding. Photo courtesy of the War Museum of the Boer Republics,
try and electricity! If you want
Bloemfontein.
to make a pile of money, invent
something that will enable
these Europeans to cut each others havoc. Battles such as Omdurman, machine guns were useless in battle.
throats with greater facility. Ulundi, San Juan, Abu Klea, Shangani According to a 1969 article in Die
Ten years before Maxims design, a and Port Arthur were all dress rehears- Vaderland newspaper, Van Niekerk got
Swedish engineer patented a multi-bar- als for the wholesale slaughter that the idea of building a machine gun dur-
relled, hand-cranked mechanical gun would follow at the Somme and other ing the 1893 Matabele War. Back then
that was made and sold with great suc- WW1 battlefields. Van Niekerk farmed in Rhodesia where
cess as the Nordenfelt gun. Similarly, Maxim, Nordenfelt, Colt and Hotch- he also had a blacksmith shop. When
mechanical hand-cranked guns were kiss machine guns were used by both the war broke out he moved his fam-
designed by European and American sides during the Anglo-Boer War, but ily to Fort Victoria (today Masvingo) for
inventors, such as Montigny, Reffye, did not really come into their own, due protection where he probably joined
Gatling, Hotchkiss and Gardner. to the small numbers employed, the the local volunteer unit. During the
Such guns changed the face of war mobility of the warfare and the long siege and defence of Fort Victoria, he
forever. From the African deserts to distances over which many of the skir- often repaired overheated rifles for the
the tropical forests of South America, mishes were fought. In fact, after the defenders and probably had the oppor-
these machines of death wreaked their war, many British officers reported that tunity to study Maxim, Hotchkiss and

20 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017


Gardner machine guns as they were
already in use in Rhodesia.
One can only wonder if Van Niekerk
was present when 3 500 Matabele war-
riors assaulted a British South Africa
Company column near the Shangani
River on 23 October 1893. The Mata-
bele were well-drilled, many armed
with rifles, but the Rhodesian pioneers
machine guns mow[ed] them down
literally like grass. A week later, 6 000
Matabele warriors launched another
attack, this time at Bembesi, but again
they were no match for the crushing
firepower of the machine guns and
about 2 500 fell. For his services Van
Niekerk was promoted to corporal; he
received a medal and his name was dis-
played on the role of honour as one of
the defenders of Fort Victoria.
FOR HEALTH REASONS, Van Niek-
erk and his family were later forced
to move back to Ficksburg, where he
was employed in a shop. He was, how-
ever, allowed to work in the blacksmith
workshop of one Dan Deetlefs where
he started to design and build his
own machine-gun. Local townsfolk at
first were sceptical and some laughed
at his ideas, but when his invention
was demonstrated to them, success-
fully firing 132 shots per minute, they
applauded him. Soon he was demon-
strating it at Bethlehem and Fouries-
burg. Orange Free State President Mar-
tinus T Steyn attended a demonstration
on 14 August 1899 and officially named
A Maxim gun,
typical of those
used in the 1890s
during the
Matabele Wars
in Mashonaland,
which was to
become part of
Rhodesia.
Photo courtesy of
the War Museum
of the
Boer Republics,
Bloemfontein.
the gun the Van Niekerk Snelvuurder
(Van Niekerks Quick Firer). The story
goes that Cape Colony Prime Minister
Cecil John Rhodes, who probably knew
Van Niekerk from his Rhodesian days,
even offered him 1 000 for the pat-
ent. The outbreak of the Anglo-Boer
War, however, put an end to any deal
being made and Van Niekerks macine
gun would soon see action against the
British.
Details are unclear, but from the
two photos we have of the machine gun
it seems he used the barrel and action
of a standard 7x57mm OVS Mauser
rifle. The barrel was equipped with
a water jacket to keep it cool. It was
mounted on a peculiar looking stand
complete with an operators seat with
wagon-style beskildering (decorative
painting) on the frame.
Just how the weapon was fed
remains somewhat a mystery. The
article in Die Vaderland describes it as
being belt-fed (in other words a copy
of Hiram Maxims design), only from
the bottom. This, however, seems
unlikely as the normal bolt action
would tear the belt and get blocked
by it. So, it seems the weapon was
loaded with the normal five rounds of
7x57mm ammunition in Mauser strip-
per clips. Van Niekerk is seen holding
such a clip in the photo of the gun. If
this was done manually from the top
(as was done on the normal rifle) by
inserting the clip of ammunition into
the slot above the internal magazine
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 21

A posed photo shows clip-loading. Actually, the thumb would be at right-angles to the
rounds so as to enter the thumb slot in the left-hand receiver wall.
and pushing the five rounds down into the magazine by
hand, it would have brought down the rate of fire consider-
ably. By cranking the handle, a series of cams and rotating
arms pushed the bolt forward and closed it with the first
round chambered, pulled the trigger, opened and pulled
back the bolt, and ejected the empty case. This means the
five rounds could probably be fired as fast as the crank could
be turned, but as stated, loading the five rounds manually
from the top every time would have been impossible, result-
ing in the loss of a thumb if the crank turners timing was
out. It is, therefore, suspected that an extended magazine
must have been used.
THE PHOTO DOES show a long box-shaped part under the
magazine which could take more than five rounds at a time. A
spring-loaded box-magazine containing several rounds would
have made a lot more sense. Scaling the box against the
standard five-round magazine length, it probably took 45
to 50 rounds if carried in a single column.
A quick release mechanism on the box would
have been needed, to allow a quick change
of magazines. A novel feature seems to be
a cylindrical sight mounted on the barrel
one can only wonder if it was the worlds first
machine gun with a telescopic sight.
Due to the weapons size, weight and
mounting it could not be carried by hand and
was instead mounted on a wagon.
Brigadier-General Edward Yewd Brabants
Colonial Division, made up of 3 000 volunteers Boer Mausers, (top) a 7mmPlesier(Sporting) Mauser and the long model 1896 Mauser.
22 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
enlisted in the Cape Colony, patrolled the moun-
tains around Ficksburg and frequently clashed
with the Boers under Commandant Cornelius
Janse de Villiers. In one of these clashes at Ham-
monia on 23 May 1900, 17km north of Ficksburg,
Van Niekerks gun was brought into action, but
was captured by the Cape Mounted Rifles when
the wagon it was mounted on was left behind
in a ravine. Van Niekerk apparently removed
the bolt to make it inoperable and discarded it
somewhere in the bushes. The captured machine
gun was taken to Cape Town and put on display
in the Castle. Unfortunately, sometime after the
1930s it was sent to Pretoria, after which it went
missing. No records of its current whereabouts
could be found.
The talented Van Niekerk was later pro-
moted to field cornet and played an important
role in the guerrilla phase of the war where he
repaired and altered captured British firearms
and equipment, manufactured grain mills, cut-
lery and all kinds of useful articles. He was
so effective at re-using discarded items taken
from British camps that an order was issued
that scrap should be buried at least six feet
deep to prevent the Boers from using it. He is further cred-
ited for setting up a field hospital near Fouriesburg where
he performed surgery and amputations on wounded Boers
and Brits.
Van Niekerk also played an important role in captur-
ing two foreigners from Basotholand who were accused of
molesting and robbing Boer women. After the war, he was
much sought after when the Boers returned to rebuild the
utterly destroyed Orange Free State. He repaired farm-
ing implements and built steam engines, threshers and
a water-drilling machine. He even built a glider to try a
manned flight from Kranskop near Rosendal!
Unfortunately, he was killed in an accident in Johannes-
burg in the 1930s and so ended the life of an extraordinary
South African inventor.
n If anyone has any further information on the whereabouts
of Van Niekerks gun, please contact Magnums editor.
 Fearless
Revolver
forWomen
by ROGER INGLE
I
n a somewhat facetious
vein, I wrote an article titled
Concealed Novelty Guns in
the February 2014 edition of
Magnum. Just a month earlier,
an interesting compact revolver built
for concealment, called the Nirbheek,
made its debut. It is designed and
made by the Indian Ordnance
Factories Board (IOF) an equivalent
of South Africas Denel.
In this case, it would be inappropri-
ate to treat this gun in a light-hearted
way. It has arrived with a very impor-
tant task in mind to enable women
to use deadly force if threatened with
assault or rape.
There have recently been a number
of appalling gang rapes in India which
have incensed the public, and under-
standably resulted in mass demonstra-
tions demanding the government take
The well-established .32 calibre
semi-automatic Ashani.
24 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
The Nirbheek is Indias
concealed-carry endeavour
to stop rape and abuse
action. It is not an easy call to answer.
In some sections of Indias large
population, women endure sub-
servient status and are vulner-
able to abuse. This situation is
not peculiar to India. In many
developing countries some
women at the poor rural
end of a social spectrum are
subject to inequality and
oppression. Also, high crime
in informal settlements resulting from
mass urbanisation causes similar risks
to social workers and others active in
these communities. Will this gun fulfil
its intended purpose?
Orders are said to be overwhelm-
ing despite a cost of about R21 500.
Keep in mind this figure is higher than
an average annual salary in India.
The gun is not something a modest
income earner could afford, let alone
the poor who are most at risk. Then
there is the need for safekeeping
facilities at home and access to pro-
ficiency training centres both out
of reach to most poor applicants. So
the problem this gun aims to address
may fall well short of the mark,
despite three quarters of the orders
received so far being from women.
Unfortunately but expectedly, the
gun has met with much criticism in
The Nirbheek
FG-L037.
The famous
Webley Mk IV .38
service revolver.
some quarters. Many say the idea is
an insult to the memory of the vic-
tims and an admission of failure by
the government to address the issue
in other ways. One interesting remark
from the gun-free quarter is that
women carrying guns for protection
are 12 times more likely to be shot
by attackers compared to unarmed
women. Where this suspect data
comes from is a mystery.
ON THE OTHER side of the debate, IOF
chairman Sartaj Singh says, The sce-
nario today is that carrying a revolver
can be a big deterrent. The manufac-
turers believe export orders will also
start coming in. The IOF makes a wide
range of small arms and ammunition,
including a .32 calibre revolver known
as the IOF Mk1. With a 51mm barrel, it
is based on the famous Webley Mk IV
.38 service revolver.
The Nirbheek (meaning fearless in
Hindi) has its roots in this design, with
some features of a Smith & Wesson. It is clearly designed as
a small, easily concealed carry piece. The length is 178mm
and the use of a titanium alloy gives it an empty weight of
only 500 grams. The calibre is .32 (7.65x23mm). Some may
regard this as rather feeble, but the gun is not intended for
use in firefights. At one or two metres, the bullet energy has
a lethal capability. The gun is certainly not primitive. An inte-
grated frame and barrel forging in light alloy, a good trigger,
a safe-carry with the hammer at rest and an ability to receive
six cartridges from a speed-loader are important features.
In an amusing marketing remark, it was said, to add female
appeal, the Nirbheek is shipped in special boxes lined with
velvet, perhaps a first in the gun world!

THE TRUTH IS this gun is destined for the rich and famous;
not the masses or the poor and, despite a spike in gun per-
mit applications by women in the wake of the Delhi gang-
rape, the licences by all accounts remain very difficult to
obtain. Last October, Uttar Pradeshs Allahabad High Court
placed a blanket ban on new firearm permits, citing fears of
increased gun violence. The court said, Arming society to
such an extent rings a danger bell, and went on to suggest
the State is sitting on a volcano. But IOF general manager
Abdul Hamied expects these bans will be lifted. How this will
pan out is anyones guess. In India, big business has a pow-
erful lobby, especially so if it is a state-owned enterprise. So
the battle lines are drawn.
One question Magnum readers may ask is, why a revolver
and not a semi-automatic? After all, the IOF offers a well-es-
tablished .32 calibre semi-auto called the Ashani. It has a
shrouded hammer within the slide and an eight-shot magazine
two more than the Nirbheeks and it is clearly designed for
concealment. Though externally similar to the Browning 1910,
its mechanism is largely based on the Colt 1903, so the design
is robust and reliable. Nonetheless, I think the decision to go
the revolver route was the correct one. Yes, a revolver has less
firepower, but not by much in this case.
The Nirbheek is not designed for a combat role and, if
necessary, its cylinder can be recharged from a speed-loader
almost as fast as a magazine change in the Ashani. And then
there is bulk; revolver assemblies are generally thicker than
semi-automatics. But the Nirbheek is only a .32 calibre. The
cylinder is small. Another important consideration is training.
Revolver training is simpler than that required for a semi-
automatic. A revolver does not suffer the possibility of cycling
stoppages which may occur in semi-automatics, and particu-
larly a cycling stoppage caused by a loose hold. Keep in mind
the Nirbheek is designed for women. Semi-automatic pistols
rely on recoil to cycle the action. In smaller calibres, if the
gun is held loosely and the gun is allowed to move back freely
under recoil, there may not be sufficient inertial resistance to
take the slide through a complete cycle.
The debate in India will be interesting to follow with a clear
division between two sides.

June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 25

 Outlaws of
CrooksCorner
by NICK HURRY

Crooks Corner, and the Limpopo River top right.

Pursued by police in three countries,

T
these adventurers poached elephants he Crooks Corner story is

and smuggled ivory an interesting episode in

South Africas history span-
ning 24 years following the
Anglo-Boer War.
This area forms the rough triangle
of wild bushveld and riverine forest
between the Limpopo River to the north
and the Luvuvhu River to the south,
with the apex at their junction. The
boundaries of the old Transvaal, Portu-
guese East Africa (PEA) and Rhodesia
converged at this point, marked by a
beacon on an island in the Limpopo.
In 1903, the area was incorporated
in the Shingwedzi Game Reserve, now
in northern Kruger National Park. At
the time, the nearest game ranger was
130kms to the south, so there was little
control over the area. The place-name
referred to the colourful collection of
outlaws who made their camps there,
involved in the illegal recruitment of
Shangaans to work on the Witwaters-
rand mines, the unlicensed hunting of
elephants and other game, and a little
smuggling on the side.
It was excellent elephant country,
reached by a wagon track through
Punda Maria and Klopperfontein, and
across the Luvuvhu at the Pafuri drift.
The only sign of civilisation was a corru-
gated iron store built by Alex Thompson
and William Pye in 1910 at Makhuleke,
which served to sell goods and buy
ivory, and was named after the nearby
Photo by Anthony Shelley

26 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

Map of the Ivory Trail from1903 to1920.

Shangaan chief. A big plus for those involved in any illegal he got back to Makhuleke and borrowed enough money to
activity was that if a police patrol arrived from any of the buy a Mannlicher Schnauer 9.5x57mm rifle and 500 cart-
three affected countries, capture could be avoided by ridges. This was an improvement on the .303, being similar
simply moving across the border to the adjoining to the .375 Nitro Express, but was still underpowered for
territory. This caused a great deal of displeas- elephant.
ure among the three countries police forces, Undaunted, he launched a career in poaching
particularly the Portuguese. elephant and recruiting labour. He took revenge on
The most famous character of Crooks his attackers by soundly thrashing the ringleaders
Corner was Cecil Rutgert Barnard (1866- of the gang, thereby ensuring that it would not
1962), whose highly adventurous life- happen again. In time, his huge self-confidence,
story was told in TV Bulpins book The
Ivory Trail. Barnard was better known
by the nickname Bvekenya, meaning he
who walks with a swagger, given to him
by the local Shangaans who came to hold
him in high regard.
Having heard and read stories of the
old ivory hunters, Bvekenya decided to try
his hand at elephant hunting, and set off to
Makhuleke in 1910 with a wagon and a Lee-En-
field .303. Entering PEA, he applied to the Massan-
gena post for an elephant licence, but was refused as it was
closed season.

SHORTLY AFTER THIS, Bvekenyas camp on the Save River

was attacked by a gang of Shangaans led by a black police-
man from Massangena who had probably seen his money
belt. He managed to escape, but lost everything in the camp,
including his .303. After being helped by friendly Shangaans,
ABOVE: Dhlulamithi, the legendary elephant bull.
INSET: Stephanus Cecil Rutgert Barnard (Bvekenya) as a young man
circa 1910.

June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 27

and his provision of meat to the locals
gained their respect and loyalty which
was to be a great advantage to him in
evading capture by police.
It took Bvekenya six shots with the
9.5mm to bring down his first elephant,
and from then on he had to learn
everything by experience. Realising he
needed a heavier rifle, he apparently
wrote to the Mannlicher factory to see
if they could build him a 15mm cal-
ibre elephant gun. They replied in the
negative and asked who would fire it
a giant or a madman? When he could
afford it, he bought a Westley Richards
.425, which he didnt like, and then a
Holland & Holland .465 double, which
became his favourite rifle.
His total bag of elephants appears
to have been about 300, hunted in the
Transvaal and PEA, but mostly between
the Limpopo and Save Rivers in Rho-
desia. Eventually he was wanted for
poaching by police of all three coun-
tries, with a jail sentence of 25 years
passed on him in absentia by the Por-
tuguese. He consistently managed to
avoid capture by border hopping and
even moving the beacon around, until
in 1918, two frustrated Rhodesian
policemen ignored the South African
border and arrested him at Makhul-
eke. He was taken back to Fort Vic-
toria to face trial, but no-one would
testify for the prosecution and he had
to be released with a token fine of 5
for shooting a hippo. On the way back
through Rhodesia, he squared the
bill by shooting seven elephants and
recruiting some more labour.
THE CLIMAX OF Bvekenyas hunting
career was his pursuit of an exception-
ally big elephant bull whose left tusk
almost reached the ground. His tracker
told him it was known to local people
as Dhlulamithi, taller than the trees.
When Bvekenya eventually caught up
with the bull he apparently could not
bring himself to destroy such a mag-
nificent specimen and let him go, after
which he gave up hunting and went
farming.
Whether or not this was a roman-
28 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
Martin Jacob Charlie Diegal in his camp at
Crooks Corner circa 1913.
ticised version of the story, the fact is
he did not shoot Dhlulamithi, and the
fate of this great tusker remains uncer-
tain. There were a couple of reports
in the 1930s of other hunters having
shot him, and some big tusks were
brought in for sale, but then the area
was known for big tuskers. As a point
of interest, in 1967 a South African
Defence Force general, Victor Verster
was taken hunting in Gonarezhou
N a t i o n a l Pa r k i n s o u t h - e a s t e r n
Mortimer Walton Morty Ash in later years.
Zimbabwe, where he shot a huge
elephant bull with tusks of 107lbs and
137lbs. It was subsequently claimed
in some quarters that this was the
legendary Dhlulamithi*.
AN EARLIER HUNTER who used Crooks
Corner was Leonard Ledeboer (1868-
1959), who arrived from Holland in
1888 at the age of 21, and started ele-
phant hunting in the company of Freder-
ick Courteney Selous DSO, the famous
British explorer, officer, hunter, and con-
servationist. Ledeboer came to know
some of the other elephant hunters of
the time, like Finaughty, Van Rooyen,
Jackson and Goosen, and hunted in
Rhodesia and PEA. In 1921 he became
a ranger in the Shingwedzi reserve.
A German, Charlie Diegal, had a
15-year sentence passed on him by
the Portuguese, but carried on un-
troubled by this. He would grind the
tips off solid-nose bullets (calibre un-
recorded but probably military 8x57 or
.303) to expose the lead core, and was
out one day hunting antelope when he
made the mistake of shooting a buf-
falo with one of these homemade soft
noses. The enraged animal charged
and smashed him against a baobab
tree before taking off into the bush.
Badly injured, he was carried back to
camp. The Portuguese police got wind
of the incident and sent a patrol to his
camp to arrest him. They took him to
Beira and then Luanda (Angola) where
he apparently escaped internment and
ended up in South West Africa, farming
under an assumed name.
Mortimer Morty Ash, a friend of
Bvekenya, was a hunter-cum-store-
keeper who hunted in PEA. The story
goes that he was following a pair
of elephants when he realised they
were heading towards a Portuguese
administration post. He sent a couple
of his Shangaans ahead to the chef
de poste to tell him they could reveal
where to capture Ash. The Portuguese
responded with alacrity, to be led off 20
miles in the opposite direction. Mean-
while, Ash shot the two elephants in the
posts vegetable garden, cut out the
tusks and disappeared back into the
bush. It is not surprising that heavy jail
sentences were meted out to poachers
in absentia.
Fred Roux was another hunter-re-
cruiter who had a camp in PEA with
Bvekenya and the latters brother-in-
law, Billy Green. He was eventually
caught by the Portuguese, taken to
Inhabane and not heard of again.
The three De Beer brothers Herc-
laas, Theunis and Jan were avid meat
hunters who became completely bush-
happy in Crooks Corner, shunning the
trappings of civilisation, and subsisting
on whatever game they could shoot,
for which they reportedly had vora-
cious appetites. Bvekenya got them
to do a bit of recruiting for him during
their wanderings, which made them
some money. Jan died in the bush,
and when the other two brothers were
obliged to leave the area, they bought
a bull and a few cows from Morty Ash
and prepared to go farming at Pieters-
burg. On the way their appetites for
meat got the better of them, and with
no more venison available
they ended up eating all
the cattle, which put paid to
their ranching venture and
entailed looking for work on
the mines instead.
Such were some of
t h e va r i o u s c h a ra c t e r s
who inhabited and hunted
Crooks Corner during that
time. The saga came to
an end when the mining
companies clamped down The fourth edition of
on illegal recruiting, and The Ivory Trail by
the area came under the author TV Bulpin,
published by Protea
protection of the Kruger
Book House, Pretoria.
National Park, formed by
combining the Sabie and
Shingwedzi reserves in 1926.
Today, the Limpopo is much sandier,
with the original beacon washed away.
The site of Makhuleke store is marked
by the remains of its cement floor, and
a memorial with a plaque commem-
orates Bvekenya Barnard.
Fortunately Crooks Cor-
ner is conserved as it was
a beautiful part of the old
bushveld.
n Photos taken from Neem
Uit Die Verlede, by U de V
Pienaar.
* The lifespan of an elephant
bull in the wild is about 50
55 years. If the bull named
Dhlulamithi pursued by
Bvekenya Barnard had ivory
almost reaching the ground
in the early 1920s, it would
have been near the end of its
life. Gen Victor Verster shot
his big bull in Gonarezhou in
1967, some 45 years later there is no
possibility that it could have been the
same bull. Editor.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 29

Photo by Daryl Balfour
Wildphotossafaris.com
D
uring the 1930s, a cat flu
epidemic in South Africa
and the persistence of local
livestock farmers wiped out
Zululands lions, with the
result that none of the game rangers on
the staff of the iMfolozi Game Reserve
had any experience with these big cats.
So, in 1958, when the news broke of
a large male lion heading south from
Mozambique, all the rangers hoped the
lion would make iMfolozi his new home.
The lions exit was caused by
Mozambican hunters who fortunately
gave up their chase when he crossed
into Zululand. News of the lions pres-
ence spread through local communi-
ties like a veld fire, and a surprisingly
large number of people started cleaning
30 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
Newcomers to
iMfolozi
and oiling their rifles in feverish antic-
ipation of a hunt. Staff of the National
Parks Board (now SANParks) working in
Ndumo, Mkhuzi, Hluhluwe and iMfolozi
reserves, also kept a close eye on the
newcomers progress, but for a differ-
ent reason: they wanted the lion to
take up residence in one of the game
reserves.
THE GAME GUARDS lived in rural
homesteads surrounding the different
reserves. Any livestock death which
gave away the lions presence and
the direction in which he was headed
came through them and went directly
to the office of the late Dr Ian Player.
His phone never stopped ringing and
he provided all the hunters enquiring
by GORDON BAILEY
Nobody knew much
about lions before this
migrant arrived
after the whereabouts of the lion with
wrong directions and kept them run-
ning all over the place. The rangers
remained on constant alert. The short-
wave radio band used by the various
reserves could be listened into on any
home or car radio, so no news of the
lions real position was ever discussed
during routine internal calls. The lion
finally made it to the Dukuduku Forest,
east of Mtubatuba, and for three days
he was pursued relentlessly by several
groups of hunters.
You can imagine the rangers excite-
ment when early one morning they got
the news that the lion had walked right
down the main road of Mtubatuba one
night after leaving the forest. They
were still holding their breath two days
later when he was seen on the asking, What if you had woken
outskirts of Heatonville, west of when the lion was smelling
Empangeni. He was almost on you? The guard, realising how
the iMfolozi doorstep but still fortunate hed been, put his
not out of danger. Then sud- hand over his heart and simply
denly all news of him died away. said, Heart attack.

A WEEK LATER, a game guard THE LION HAD travelled just

based at one of the camps in over 300kms to his new home
the iMfolozi wilderness area was and the full story of much of
cycling back to iMfolozi after his journey remains unknown.
four days leave. He was half His presence in iMfolozi was the
way across a dry, sandy stream start of a new learning curve for
The men in the teams that dealt with early lion problems. In front
bed when the head of a huge all the game reserve staff. Old
centre is the author Gordon Bailey.
black-maned lion appeared out habits of sleeping without pro-
of the Phragmities reeds and he tection had to change and lion-
promptly fainted. interesting was that while he was proof enclosures for wilderness trail
When the guard came to, he sped unconscious the lion had emerged from camps, horses and trail donkeys had to
to the outpost at Ogome to report the the reeds and walked a complete cir- be built. The conditions in iMfolozi were
sighting to Nick Steele, who immedi- cle to smell him. The front pug marks decidedly suitable for the new arrival
ately went back to the site with him. closest to the guards position were the as the antelope populations were all at
The marks in the sand told the whole deepest, indicating forward weight dis- their peak numbers.
story: the impression where the guard tribution as the lion leant in to smell Two weeks after the lions sur-
had lain was quite obvious, but more him. Nick turned to the game guard prise siting in iMfolozi, the first of his

S CHOICE S CHOICE S CHOICE S CHOIC

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agnum regularly tests products
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If it meets the mark, then the product gets
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theres a lot more to come. So look out for
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name. BUSHILL BINO AND CAMERA HARNESS
RRP R215
For a retailer near you phone 021-945-2160
Outdoor comfort elastic shoulder harness
makes carrying binos or cameras a breeze.

YOUNGS 303
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Learn more at
GUNSMITHYS 3 SPRAY-CLEAN STEPS www.bushill.co.za
RRP R206 A combo of nitro cleaner
For more info: www.bushill.co.za and rust preventer, from
A one-stop solution for perfect firearm care. Parker-Hale. Its the great
Three easy aersol steps: 1) Carbon Cleaner, 2) stuff we all grew up with
All-Purpose Cleaner and Copper Remover, and it might not smell the
3) All-purpose oil. They cost more if bought same anymore, but it still
individually. Pack includes cleaning patches. 2 works the same old way!

June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 31

magnificent roars were heard as he
traversed his new domain how fitting
it was to hear him proclaim ownership
of his new territory. His presence was
greatly appreciated, for it was the
start of a much needed natural preda-
tion game removal system. Prior to his
arrival, all game removal was done by
rifle. The lions loneliness, how-
ever, began to raise concerns
among game rangers. How long
would he stay without a mate?
AT T H E T I M E , D r P l a y e r s
world-famous Operation Rhino
relocation programme was in full
swing, and the Kruger National
Park (KNP) took many of the rhi-
nos being moved. These were
taken by truck from iMfolozi in
large, solidly-built wooden crates
and, after being off-loaded in
the KNP, the trucks returned to
iMfolozi with the empty crates
for the next load. It was a mys-
tery how it happened, but when
one of the crates was off-loaded
back at iMfolozi, several rang-
ers found a magnificent lioness
stepping out, followed by three We experienced an explosion in the
eight-month old female cubs.
There was no long hesitation or lion population, with territories
nervous running off, as is the
case with many wildlife species
claimed by young adult males
when introduced to a new area.
She stepped out of the crate
with a beautiful confidence, followed
by her cubs, and walked directly to the
nearest acacia tree where she reached
up to full length and several times ran
her extended claws down the bark of
the thick trunk. When shed finished,
she lifted her head high to scent the
air, chose her direction, and after a
few flicks of her tail, slowly walked
off with her cubs. For a long while,
no one moved until it came her low
communication call. She did it sev-
eral times, lapsing into brief silence
between her calls, and finally the lion
answered with a powerful roar. Cele-
bration clearly showed on all the staff
faces and, after cheers and handshakes,
people went their ways.
32 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
Conditions at the time could not
have been more suitable; normal rain-
fall had exceeded the annual aver-
age, and the iMfolozi-Hluhluwe area
enjoyed some of its best years. During
this time, we experienced an explosion
in the lion population, with territories
being claimed by young adult males.
Lions had yet to move north into
Hluhluwe when I was called to the main
camps office. A tourist introduced him-
self as Doug Cole, saying he had seen
lion spoor. I drove with him to the point,
where sure enough there were spoor
along the side of the road in dark soil,
softened by recent rains. At 125mm
wide and 140mm long it had to be the
front imprint of a male. I soon found
other spoor nearby but none as clear
as the one I had just measured. There
were four cats in the group, possibly
all males, and they were headed north.
On my return to camp, I spoke
immediately to Nick Steele we knew
we were in for some serious problems if
the lions got through the fence around
the reserve. Compensation for the loss
of livestock could always be sorted
out financially, but a loss of human
life would have a disastrous impact on
affected families, and could result in
the eradication of all the lions. When
Nick told us to get ourselves ready, we
all knew what was at stake.
The good conditions also
b e n e f i t e d t h e g ra z i n g a r e a s
of the various tribal authori-
ties surrounding our boundary
fences. The scent of fattening
cattle piqued the curiosity of our
inquisitive feline residents and
they soon breeched the fence to
investigate. Not knowing lions,
the cattle would not run away.
WHEN THE FIRST three lions
crossed the reserves southern
boundary, we placed a drugged
impala carcass as a test case a
few metres inside the fence at
the point they had got through.
Fortunately the cats returned
that night and fed on the
drugged carcass. Once they were
unconscious, we tagged them,
loaded them onto a Land Rover
and off-loaded them about 50
kilometres from where they had
exited, hoping the experience
would discourage them.
It didnt. Four days later they
went out again. When Nicks report
reached head office, the park boards
immediate response was that all lions
leaving the reserve were to be shot on
sight. The order went unquestioned
by rangers nobody wanted a human
life lost and lions leaving the reserve
were our priority. My camping box
remained constantly packed, and I was
ready to go in 10 minutes, earlier if the
helicopter was sent for me. The lions
were magnificent; none of the game
rangers enjoyed destroying them, and
none of us kept score.
We were very fortunate in that,
during my years as the senior ranger
in charge, we did not lose anyone not
among the communities outside the
reserve, nor staff inside.
by MORGAN HASELAU
The Benefits
of Assisted
Barrel Cooling
A fan to cool your barrel
T
he function of the BarrelCool is
as the name suggests it cools
your rifle barrel. An overheated
barrel can adversely affect
group sizes and shift bullet
point of impact. Barrel over-heating is not
normally an issue in hunting, but it is for
competitive sport shooters, and it can cost
hand-loaders time and money when working
on load development. This product helps to
overcome this problem.
The BarrelCool is a fairly new Ameri-
can product which, despite having been
launched only in 2016, is already being
exported to the United Kingdom, Canada,
Switzerland and Italy. In the United
States it is used by the Military Marks-
manship Unit and the national US
F-Class team.
It can be used in bolt-action rifles
ranging from .223 to .30 calibres,
and in all AR-15 platforms. Simply
insert the devices tube into the
cartridge chamber through the load-
ing or ejection port. The unit is held
in place by a loop of strong,
fabric-covered elasti-
Product Report
cised cord which expands to fit most rifles.
A small, battery-powered fan blows air of
ambient temperature down the length of
the barrel. The use of ambient air temper-
ature removes any risk of thermal shock
cracking your barrel by cooling it too fast.
Shooters in the US are currently conduct-
ing tests to see if the BarrelCool may actu-
ally prolong barrel life the test results
are not yet available.
How rapidly does it cool a barrel?
Obviously, different barrels will cool at var-
ious rates depending on calibre, diameter,
how hot they had become and the general
conditions. The BarrelCool starts the cooling
process where the heat originates the bore
interior, specifically the throat area. In most
cases, you can expect the barrel to cool in
roughly half the time it would have taken
without the help of the device.
The BarrelCool uses three CR123A bat-
teries. Battery life will range from seven to
11 hours, depending on their quality.
The BarrelCool also serves as an emp-
ty-chamber indicator. It comes only in yel-
low for optimum visibility, and when inserted
into your chamber, assures everyone that
your firearm is safe while you are taking
scores or examining groups.
The tube is removable and can be
switched with others of differing calibres.
n Recommended retail price at the time
of writing: R650; available from Safari
& Outdoor outlets. For more information
contact the importer, Adriaan Ritchie, on
078-459-4828.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 33
CollectorsCorner by MALCOLM COBB

South African
The Smith & Wesson Victory Model in .38/200
Service Pistols
calibre, which equates to .38 S&W, is a bargain
buy, being solid, accurate and dependable.
It is distinguishable from the .455"models
by the slightly smaller cylinder-to-frame Many 20th century firearms are now
proportion and the lower front sight.
considered collectors items

W
hen I started collecting,
all that was required
by the authorities was
a Permit to possess
a Trophy, Curiosity or
Ornament which entitled us to possess
old Martinis and Sniders, in fact virtu-
ally any antiquated firearm that you
couldnt get ammo for and were never
going to fire anyway. No competency
was needed, no fingerprinting and no
large-scale use of police resources.
Those were simpler times.
While my fascination lies with 19th
Star Model B in 9mm. Doubtless
century firearms, I was recently sat
many readers will remember
down before Magnums editors and these from their army days.
rather pointedly invited to consider that,
although the Victorian era produced
great topics for Collectors Corner art-
icles, were now into the second decade sible to have one of everything, the forefront of technology, they are not
of the 21st century, so perhaps its time average collector is drawn to a particular too expensive, enabling the beginner to
to regard certain 20th century firearms field of interest in my case, the 19th form the nucleus of a collection. And the
as collectables as well. century, but I also feel drawn to the fact that so many ex-British Army types
No problem. After all, the South handguns we used to shoot when I first retired to SA, means there is always
African Heritage Resources Act No.25 started in the mid-1960s. By and large, the possibility that exotica, such as rare
of 1999 (not to mention the Firearms these were ex-military pieces dating Webleys, may surface from time to time.
Control Act No.60 of 2000), provides for from the First So, to comply with the
the collection of artefacts, including fire- and Sec- Act, what would be the
arms, which have historical, techno- ond World theme for such a col-
logical, scientific, educational, cultural, Wars. They lection? Historically,
commemorative, investment, rarity, were plentiful, it would be handguns
thematic or artistic value. That seems ex-army ammu-
The Beretta 92 used by the
a pretty good description of just why we nition was still available, and
South African police until the
enthusiasts collect firearms. even now, 50 years later, a lot United Nations embargo
The word thematic in the Act comes of these arms are still around in South forced the government to
in very handy here. Since it is not pos- Africa. Since they are no longer at the turn to local manufacture.

34 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

issued to South African forces, which
could date all the way back to Jan van
Riebeeck, and right up to last week, if
one was so minded. Technologically, it
would be the advance from percussion
revolvers to solid frame revolvers and
then double-action, followed by
self-loaders and so on. Research-
ing any further into South Afri-
can issue arms might otherwise
be problematic as there are very
few books around on the subject.
Fortunately, for most of the time,
South African issue followed British
Army issue, which indeed is very
well recorded.
So where would we start a col-
lection? One good place is the Web-
ley Mk VI revolver in .455" calibre as
they are so common in these parts.
It was introduced in 1915 during
WW1 and continued into WW2, by
which time it was replaced by the
lookalike Enfield .38.
FROM THAT STARTING point, the
collector could work backwards
in time, as all Webley marks from
Mk I up to the Mk V were used in
South Africa. Before that were
the various Adams, Tranters and
Enfield revolvers in .450" and
.476". In addition, there were
variations in the Webley Army
Express (used by the Orange Free
State), Webley Kaufman, Webley
Pryse and Webley Wilkinson, not
to mention the Webley .455" auto-
matic and the much sought-after
Webley-Fosbery, all of which are so
distinctive they could form a sub-
group for collection on their own.
During WWI, Britain found itself
short of handguns to arm its rapidly
expanding forces. Since the transi-
tion to the Mk VI Webley was barely
under way, they bought many Colt New
Service Smith & Wesson Hand Ejectors,
and the similar Model 1917 revolvers in
.455" calibre. At times, the need was so
acute that, in 1915, and in spite of pop-
ular prejudice against them, the British
bought the Spanish-made Trocaola top-
break revolver in .455". There is at least
one of these in South Africa.
Another such sub-group for col-
lection could be the .455" semi-auto-
matics, mainly the Webley (a boxcar
stuffed into a holster, as one American
The Webley Mk VI in .455"
remains plentiful from
the two World Wars
and is a good starting
point for any collection.
A .455" Colt New
Service, issued during
WWI and still around
at reasonable prices.
Smith & Wesson Model
1917 in .455" calibre, a
slightly simpler version of
the Hand Ejector model
which has an ejector rod
shroud. Either model is
beautifully made.
once unkindly remarked) and the famil-
iar Colt 1911 .45 auto but in .455".
Coming forward in time, these were
followed by the Enfield .38-200 revolver
which replaced the Webley .455" after
1932, and even that has its deriva-
tives, not only the tanker double-ac-
tion model but also the short-barrelled
Royal Air Force version. As an aside, the
British were short of firearms (again) at
the start of WW2 so they bought over a
million .38 S&W Victory Model revolv-
ers which took the .38/200 round. There
are many remaining examples of
this weapon in South Africa and it
may well be the most disregarded
utilitarian defensive firearm in
these parts. They are strong, well
made and dependable, but they
just arent sexy enough to compete
against the more modern mag-
nums, which are more powerful
and have bigger grips and adjust-
able sights.
After the 1950s, official South
African use diverged from Brit-
ish; our police, for the most part,
used Walther P38s and Browning
GP35 High Powers, as well as var-
ious Beretta Model 92s, while the
SA Defence Force used the Star
Model B and Super Bs. Again, how-
ever, this is a potentially huge and
diverse field for collecting, as dur-
ing the days of the United Nations
embargo, the SA government
issued any handguns it could buy,
smuggle, capture or build up from
obsolete parts.
Matters came to a head in the
mid-1980s when these measures
became unsustainable, and local
companies began to manufacture
the Z88 pistol, which was pretty
much a copy of the Beretta 92.
Information on these developments
is hard to come by, but a new book
on this topic is promised for later
this year, so our store of knowledge
in this field should be increased.
This is merely a superficial view
of what is possible in terms of col-
lecting handguns that form the
South African heritage. It says nothing
of the rifles and other weapons which
collectors could divide into sporting and
military themes more about that on
another occasion.
n Thanks to the Hillcrest Gun Room for
the opportunity to take photographs.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 35
 Pistols at Dawn
by GREGOR WOODS

PART 1

Sir, I demand
satisfaction!

A pair of flintlock officers pistols made in duelling style (dual-purpose) in

regulation .650 calibre (16-bore). Note the absence of chequering, stocked to
the muzzle, 8-inch barrels (slightly shorter than pure duelling pistols), but
with duelling refinements: sights front and rear, and set triggers. Made by
H Nock, London, circa 1800.
Photo: Holts Auctioneers March 2012 catalogue.

36 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

F
or more than three centuries,
the social obligation to fight
duels was an ever-present
peril attending gentlemanly life
in Europe and Britain, and was
regarded with deadly seriousness. People
nowadays tend to view the duels of that
era with some amusement; in movies,
duelling scenes are more likely to appear
in comedy than in serious drama. Today, a
young man accidentally spilling a friends
beer might be jocularly threatened with
pistols at dawn. Few realise just how
readily such challenges were issued not
very long ago. And there was nothing joc-
ular about it men died.
Duelling should not be confused with
single battle. David and Goliath did not
fight a duel; Roman gladiators were not
duellists, nor were medieval knights who
jousted with lances on horseback before
spectators. Duelling was the private set-
tling of matters of personal honour and
reputation between men of noble birth. It
began among the landed gentry of feudal
Europe during the 1400s.
To understand the principles and
intense fervour of duelling we must
know something about the class system
of the times. This is a complex subject,
and what follows is, of necessity, an
oversimplification.
Prior to the 1800s, there was no
middle class. Society was made up of
just two classes: a small minority of
nobility royalty, aristocratic land-
owners and their progeny, i.e. the rul-
ing classes and the large majority
of commoners or peasants, ie the
working classes. The social abyss sep-
arating the two classes was unbridgea-
ble. Among the aristocracy, breeding
was everything, and strict records were
kept of family trees pedigrees, so to
speak. The nobility were expected to
marry spouses of appropriate station.
It was usual for the eldest son to
inherit the ancestral title (duke, earl,
viscount, baron etc), and with it, the
estate (read land). Nobles did not
work commercial employment was
considered infra dig. This left any addi-
tional sons in the family with a rather
limited life choice usually the military,
the clergy or academia. Those choos-
ing the military became commissioned
officers as their birthright. The other
ranks (non-commissioned officers and
privates) were made up of commoners.
The terms gentleman and lady
held an importance not well understood
today, as these words have become
mere courteous synonyms for man
and woman. Sometimes, if preceded
by the adjective real, they describe
a man perceived to be of chivalrous
instincts and a woman of refinement.
In centuries past, however, these titles
A famous French duel recorded in 1893 by
Le Petit Journal. Eminent politicians Paul
Droulde and Georges Clemenceau each
fired three shots; none found its mark.
were applied exclusively to the aristoc-
racy it was a matter of birth. Hence
the expression an officer and a gentle-
man the two terms were inextricably
linked. Likewise: the landed gentry.
Being so exclusive, the ruling classes
strove to demonstrate their superiority
over the working classes. High society
demanded very strict codes of protocol.
Impeccable manners and diplomacy
were de rigueur. A gentleman acted
on the assumption that any other gen-
tleman was above reproach in every
way unless he demonstrated otherwise
or his reputation had been sullied by
conduct unbecoming. And the attrib-
ute regarded as the highest mark of a
gentleman was honour. Apart from his
noble birth, the aristocrat saw personal
honour as what separated him from the
unwashed masses. Loyalty to his king
or queen, patriotism, integrity, trust-
worthiness, loyalty to his regiment,
bravery, dependability, high morality,
chivalry, respect for the peerage a
gentleman had all these qualities and
more as a matter of personal honour.
And therein lay the primary incen-
tive for duelling. The British Code of Duel
(1824) stated that honour is the reason
for the very existence of the duel, being
the requisite of a gentleman. If one peer
insulted another, the offended gentleman
was obliged to challenge him to a duel,
as failure to do so would indicate cow-
ardice and lack of pride marks of dis-
honour. The merest suggestion or impli-
cation that an aristocrat was in any way
less than a gentleman would provoke a
challenge in defence of his honour. This
code was exclusive to the peerage. No
gentleman would ever fight a duel with
a commoner, in fact, for a commoner
to challenge a gentlemen to a duel was
punishable by summary horsewhipping.
Initially, there were no written codes
for duelling. Swords were the usual
weapons for both military and civilian
duels, as these were part of everyday
attire for officers and gentlemen until
the 1700s. Duels became so frequent,
even among civilian gentry, that les-
sons in swordsmanship were deemed
an essential part of every young aristo-
crats education.
HOWEVER, BY THE latter half of the
1600s, the wheel-lock pistol had
become a cavalry weapon, and during
Frances Huguenot wars, certain cavalry
tactics were based on the use of these
pistols. One such tactic was adapted to
duelling: two cavalry officers galloped
directly toward each other and fired
their pistols as they neared or passed.
With the development of the flint-
lock, pistols gradually replaced swords
as the duellists weapon of choice in
Europe. The pistol was an equalizer. It
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 37

put a stop to expert swordsmen delib-
erately goading lesser opponents into a
duel and then carving them up (not all
men of noble birth were honourable).
Up until the 1770s, any pistols of
reasonable quality met the require-
ments. Military men used officers pis-
tols, which were usually made in ident-
ical pairs. This was convenient, as each
opponent had to be accorded an equal
chance. From about 1776, gun-mak-
ers began developing matched pairs
of pistols specifically for duelling, with
emphasis on barrel length, sights, accu-
racy, reliability and fine trigger release.
Gun-makers also made officers pistols
38 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
A typical matched pair of bespoke
duelling pistols in 36-bore made by
John Manton of London, circa 1805.
The 10-inch octagonal barrels are
smooth-bored and half-stocked.
Pans are rain-proof and flash-holes
are platinum lined (corrosion-free).
Barrels have an under-rib for added
rigidity. Photo: Holts Auctioneers
March 2013 catalogue.
in duelling style regulation smooth-
bore .650 (16-bore) stocked to the muz-
zle, with slightly shorter barrels than
most duelling pistols, but otherwise
with all the refinements dual-purpose
weapons if youll pardon the pun.
WRITTEN RECORDS, PAINTINGS and
engravings reveal that duelling was rife
throughout Europe. However, the French
seemed to outdo all other nations in their
zeal for this vice. In 1655, the newspa-
per Frankfurter Relationen even reported
a duel between two aristocratic ladies
one was hit in the thigh. Estimates
vary, but thousands of Frenchmen died
During the 1700s
duelling in France
became an obsession
among aristocrats
in duels during a 10-year period under
Henry IV, who issued an edict against
it which was largely ignored, and some
4 000 nobles died during the reign of
King Louis XIV, who in 1679, made duel-
ling a capital offence. Most European rul-
ers outlawed it not that this seemed
any deterrent. During the 1700s duelling
in France became an obsession among
aristocratic loafers who used any trifling
excuse to fight.
The French Revolution (1789
1799) being anti-nobility, put a stop to
duelling, but Napoleon later restored the
Empire, the nobility and duelling, and
did not discourage duelling among his
officers. Duelling intensified and grew
more vicious, especially in the army
where it became a means of bullying
honour seemed forgotten. In one case,
a young newly-wed couple was walk-
ing in the street, when a French officer,
drinking with his peers, bet them that
he would kiss the lady and slap her hus-
band. This he did, and the husband,
having no choice but to challenge, died
in the resulting duel.
By the late 1700s, in Britain and Ire-
land, numerous gun-makers specialized
in duelling pistols and duelling became a
highly sophisticated culture. In 1777, in
Ireland, gentlemen from several regions
came together and agreed upon a duel-
ling code of conduct, called the Code
Duello specifying 26 rules. Dubbed the
Twenty-Six Commandments, it was not
published, but copies were circulated
among country clubs and other gentle-
mens associations throughout Ireland.
In Ireland alone, 227 official duels
were fought in one year (1823). Every
nobleman bought a pair of duelling pis-
tols and practised with them daily as a
matter of common sense. In Ireland,
fighting at least one duel was considered
a rite of passage for young aristocrats.
Whenever enquiries were made regard-
ing a young gentlemans respectability
and qualifications, especially if he was
asking for a young ladys hand in mar-
riage, the first questions asked were,
Of what family is he? and Has he ever
blazed? (fought a duel).
Predictably, the English did not
favour the Irish code, and instead
adopted the British Code of Duel, writ-
ten and published anonymously in
London in 1824 and dedicated to the
Duke of York. It was said to have been
approved by the Duke of Wellington (he
defeated Napoleon at Waterloo) who
was himself a dueller. The British code
listed rules and also stipulated the steps
to be taken leading up to a duel.
In 1836, a book titled The Art of
Duelling, anonymously penned by A
Traveller, was published in London,
and British duellists also adopted the
principles and practices prescribed in
it. That same year, the French Code
of Duelling appeared, signed by 76
notable personages of France. Soon,
further duelling codes appeared in
other European countries.
IN BRITAIN, AS elsewhere, duelling was
most prevalent in the military where
more than an officers personal honour
was at stake. Any insult to an officer was
seen as an insult to his regiment, whose
honour must likewise be defended. Brit-
ish officers were in an impossibly invid-
ious position. The Rules and Articles
of War (regulations governing military
conduct) contained a standing order
forbidding duelling. However, they also
contained a clause stating that an officer
who submitted to insults was guilty of
scandalous behaviour unbecoming of a
gentleman. This meant that an officer
who failed to call out (challenge) any
peer who had insulted him or his reg-
iment, or who failed to accept such a
challenge himself, could be officially
court marshalled, drummed out of his
regiment and dishonourably discharged
from the army.
In the military archives of the Public
A pair of back-action percussion duelling pistols in 36-bore made by I Fray, of Leicester in
England, and now owned by Peter Maunder of KwaZulu-Natal. More detail follows in Part 2.
Records Office in London, there is a case
of an officer serving overseas, who failed
to respond to both an insult and a chal-
lenge from a fellow officer. This not only
ended his career, it apparently saw him
unofficially sentenced to death. He was
drummed out of his regiment and put on
board a ship home, but never reported
to Buckingham and his name does not
appear anywhere in the relevant muster
rolls. His name is simply listed in the sec-
tion headed Deaths (dated 1811), but no
cause of death is given and the manner
in which he met his death was never dis-
closed. (Refer John Atkinsons The British
Duelling Pistol).
A civilian, similarly disgraced, would
be declared dishonourable and ostra-
cized by society. And it didnt take much
to provoke a challenge. According to
contemporary accounts, if a gentle-
man so much as stepped on the hem
of a ladys gown at a ball, or inadvert-
ently pressed up against her, he could
expect to hear a male voice say, Sir,
I demand satisfaction! And hed know
exactly what that meant. In 1804, Lord
Camelford was slow to remove his hat
for the singing of God Save the King.
Lieutenant Best strode up, knocked off
Camelfords hat with his cane, chal-
lenged him to a duel and shot him dead
the next day. A Captain MacNamara of
the Royal Navy challenged and killed a
Colonel Montgomery because he found
the colonels language offensive during
a fight between their dogs!
The duelling procedure was carried
out with the utmost politeness and gen-
tlemanly form. In his Personal Sketches,
Sir Jonah Barrington tells of being chal-
lenged by a gentleman he had never
met. It was clearly a case of mistaken
identity, but as it was quite unthinkable
for a gentleman to imply that another
gentleman could make such an error,
Barrington accepted the challenge
without a word. They met in Dublin Park
and Barringtons shot lightly wounded
his challenger, ending the engagement,
whereupon they parted without con-
versation of ceremony.
The British did not recognise duels
fought in America as authentic, as the
Americans believed all men to be born
equal, rejecting the monarchy and the
nobility. That made them commoners,
thus the British dismissed their duels as
mere gunfights between ruffians.
n Part 2 of this article will discuss duel-
ling codes and procedures, duelling pis-
tols, and the end of duelling.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 39

Shy But Deadly
by JOHN COLEMAN
A bite from Africas black-mouthed
monster can kill within minutes
T
he many tales of Africas
deadly snakes are often
exaggerated. More snakes
are actually sighted in
the United States than in
Africa, and Australia has many that are
venomous. However, few snakes are as
deadly as Africas black mamba.
Mambas are not black, but pale to
slate grey in colour. Only the insides of
their mouths are pitch black hence
the name. They are slender for their
length and have long, tapering tails.
Mambas can grow to four metres in
length, have small heads and medi-
um-sized eyes. In South Africa, they
are found all over the northern Lowveld
and KwaZulu-Natal, and occur in Bot-
swana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Malawi, Mozambique and some other
neighbouring countries.
Mambas are rather shy and, like
most other snakes, will avoid trouble
if possible. However, if cornered or
40 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
attacked, they are very likely to bite.
They can raise a third of their body
length off the ground and extend a
slight hood when annoyed. They can
lunge very fast, are front-fanged and
have large venom sacs enabling them
to inject considerable doses of venom.
If you see one rearing up in front of
you, get the hell away immediately. A
bad bite from a black mamba can kill a
person within as little as 30 minutes,
depending on where you are bitten and
the amount of venom injected some
are dry bites. Nearly half the bites in
southern Africa are fatal if not quickly
treated. Their venom is neurotoxic
(nerve poison) and affects respiration.
Mambas certainly move faster than
most other snakes. There is a popular
belief that a black mamba can travel as
fast as a galloping horse. This is non-
sense, as the maximum speed meas-
ured for any snake is about 13km/h
(8.1mph). A marathon runner runs
The black mambas mouth is black inside,
hence the snakes name.
Pictures above and left supplied by Johan Marais,
African Snakebite Institute.
18.5km/h (11.5mph), making it very
easy to outrun any snake, although
they dont chase people.
Some local tribes believe that black
mambas hide up in trees and crow like
roosters, and when someone comes to
investigate, the snake bites the person
on the head, causing almost instant
death. The Shona people of the region
call a black mamba rovambira, mean-
ing eater of dassies (hyrax).
People are seldom bitten by mambas,
but many dogs are killed because they
attack snakes. I knew of a man in Rhode-
sia who had a pack of nine hunting dogs.
One day he was out hunting jackals when
his dogs found and attacked a huge black
mamba. The snake bit all nine dogs and
they all died within an hour. I had a little
Jack Russell terrier that died within 15
minutes of a mamba bite.
BOTSWANAS FAMOUS crocodile hunter,
Bobby Wilmot, died from a black
mamba bite when he drove his boat
into some reeds in the swamps; his son
was killed by a mamba in almost the
same spot a few years later.
When I was a youngster, my father
had a small farm near Kwekwe (for-
merly Que Que in Rhodesia), where
we used to go camping at weekends.
I hunted dassies with my .22, collect-
ing the skins for tanning to make a
kaross. One day I shot a dassie on a
rock high up on an outcrop and climbed
up to retrieve it. As I looked over the
top of the rock from which it had fallen,
I came face-to-face with a huge black
mamba intent on grabbing the dassie
for itself. I almost did a somersault and
retreated, leaving the dassie for the
snake. On another day, I shot a 12-foot
(nearly 4m) mamba with my .22.
A couple of my hunting clients shot
black mambas near the Limpopo River
in Rhodesia. One was a German named
Franz Wengert, who later became a
safari operator in Tanzania, the other
was the well-known American handgun
hunter Larry Kelly. Both snakes were
about three metres long.
In Namibia, near Okahandja, I used
to hunt on a farm that was crawling
with black mambas I saw a few every
time I hunted there. The owner was
absolutely terrified of them; whenever
he saw one he turned ghostly white
and was speechless for about half an
hour. I asked him why he didnt sell the
farm before he had a heart attack on
encountering another mamba. I hav-
ent heard from him in a while.
When I was hunting professionally
in Zambia, my wife Win would some-
times accompany me. The camp com-
prised grass huts, a grass dining room
and kitchen. One night Win, who is of
nervous disposition, kept waking me up
to say there was something trying to
get into our hut. Finally, I got out of bed
and looked around with my flashlight,
but saw nothing, so I went back in and
told her to let me get some sleep. When
I went out the next morning, I saw the
track of a big snake entering our hut
through a gap in the grass, so I quickly
got Win out and sent my men in to
search the hut for the snake. Suddenly
they all stampeded out and announced
that there was a huge snake curled
up in a tyre by the head of our beds. I
went in with my shotgun and shot the
snake as it came out of the tyre. It was
a four-metre black mamba! After that I
was more inclined to believe Win if she
said something was moving around.
On another occasion, I had collected
an American client at Zambias Kenneth
Kaunda International Airport (formerly
Lusaka International). His first question
was, Are there black mambas in Zam-
bia? Of course there are, I replied, but
this is winter and we wont see snakes
A black mamba shot by Larry Kelly with a
pistol, near the Limpopo River in Zimbabwe.
because they hide away. He was abso-
lutely paranoid about black mambas
and I could do little to calm him. Guess
what we saw on the road just outside of
Lusaka? A huge black mamba and it
reared up next to the car! He refused to
believe anything I said after that even
though we saw no more snakes.
In the Matetsi area of Rhodesia, not
far from Victoria Falls, I was following
a honeyguide, a small black-and-white
bird whose persistent chittering is said
to lead a person to a beehive. I fol-
lowed the bird until it came to a large
anthill covered in small bushes. It kept
FAST FACTS
Black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis)
IDENTIFICATION: Skin colour olive to grey;
mouth interior blue-black, which is display-
ed when threatened; coffin-shaped head; ath-
letic body up to as much as 4m (13ft).
BEHAVIOUR: Sometimes lifts up to a third
of its body off the ground when confronted,
spreads cobra-like neck-flap. Moves at up to
13km/h (8.1mph). Lives up to about 30 years
in the wild. Lays 6 to 17 eggs in midsummer;
hatchlings measure up to 60cm.
DISTRIBUTION: Savannas and rocky hills of
southern and eastern Africa. Found in old
termitaria, hollow tree trunks and rocky out-
crops. Often seen basking in tree branches
early morning. Active during the day, return-
ing to the same place at night. ticeps), until Vivian FitzSimons split them into
VENOM: Mambas strikes repeatedly, injec-
chattering urgently and diving towards
the ground, so I went into the bush to
investigate and came face-to-face with
a big black mamba. I shot out of there
like a scalded cat and left the snake to
his anthill. Maybe there was a beehive
there, but there is a persistent folklore
in Africa that says these birds also lead
people to snakes.
A RECORD BLACK mamba was appar-
ently run over by a vehicle near Bul-
awayo in Rhodesia and taken to the
local museum. This monster was said
to be nearly six metres long, although
this may have been an exaggeration as
the longest black mamba reported in
the literature was 4.5m; in the past 30
years the longest one accurately meas-
ured was 3.8m, says Johan Marais, at
the African Snakebite Institute.
I have lived in the bush most of my
life, but have never been bitten by a
snake, and I have had to inject only two
of my labourers with anti-venom who
were bitten by cobras while out walking
at night. They probably would not have
survived a black mamba bite.
My advice to anyone walking in the
bush where there may be black mam-
bas, is to keep your eyes peeled and
avoid getting close to any large snakes
just walk away and leave them alone,
and they wont harm you.
ting large amounts of potent neuro- and car-
dio-toxin with each strike just two drops can
be lethal! Before the advent of antivenom, a
bite was usually fatal, within 20 minutes.
PREDATION: Feeds on rodents and small
birds. Killed by birds of prey and other sna-
kes, especially black-necked spitting cobras.
THREATS: Habitat destruction due to human
encroachment but no conservation status.
DISCOVERY: Known to missionaries and resi-
dents prior to 1860. Name taken from the
Zulu word imamba. First formally described
by Albert Gnther in 1864. In 1896, Geor-
ge Boulenger lumped black and the smaller
green mamba together as Dendroaspis angus-
separate species.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 41
Test Report by JACQUES BOSHOFF

GamePro Spotlights
L
ight-emitting diodes, better known as LEDs, are a has no battery of its own, so youll probably get the full
lighting technology that has generally changed the 50 000 hours of LED lifespan out of it. The Bubo has a bat-
world for the better. LED lamps have tery, making it more portable, but we all know
far longer lifespans, with electrical that battery lifespan can be limited.
efficiency several times higher than Both models come with a three-year war-
that of incandescent lamps and significantly ranty but the Bubos excludes the battery. I
higher than most fluorescent lamps. was highly impressed with both spotlights,
The first LED was invented in 1927 by a and I intend to buy a Bubo for farm secu-
Russian, though the white LEDs familiar to us rity and the occasional bushveld night
in flashlights and spotlights today were drive its a good lightweight spotlight
developed in the 1960s. Initially expen- and doesnt need plugging in.
sive and inefficient, their output and effi- The GamePro range of spotlights comes
ciency has grown exponentially, doubling with outputs of 300lm, 600lm, 1 040lm,
every 36 months. 2 000lm and 4 000lm, retailing from R749
Lite Optec, importer of the GamePro to R2 399. The Bubo (1 040lm) has a sug-
range of mobile LED spotlights, recently gested retail price of R1 399 and the Tyto
asked me to test two of their models, the (4 000lm) R2 399. For wholesale enquiries or
GamePro Tyto which generates a massive for your nearest dealer, contact Lite Optec on
4 000 lumens (lm), and the GamePro Bubo which gener- 011-462-6986, or info@liteoptec.co.za.
ates 1 040lm.
The GamePro Tyto spotlight comes with a CREE 45W LED
lamp that boasts a life of 50 000 hours. It works on a normal
12-volt (V) car cigarette lighter socket. With such a large
output, one might expect a big bulky unit but it weighs just
680 grams and the overall diameter is only 165mm. Its alu-
minium and ABS construction makes it a bit heavier than
the Bubo. The Tyto comes standard with a red filter lens and
a carry bag; an optional 7aH powerpack can be ordered to
provide 1.5 hours of independent operating time.
The packaging claims a beam distance of 850 meters. I
was a bit sceptical until I tested it on a game farm outside
Modimolle in Limpopo on an almost full moon night: at 350m
I easily picked up the eye of a hare; at over a kilometre a
reflective road sign was clearly visible.
The GamePro Bubo XL (1 040lm), equipped with a CREE
T6 15W LED lamp, really impressed me. Unlike the Tyto, the
Bubo has a built-in 3.7V 3.6aH lithium battery which provides
a run time of 2.5 hours. It comes with an AC mains charger,
and another that plugs into a cars DC 12V cigarette lighter.
Users are warned not to charge and use the spotlight at the
same time, as this may permanently damage the battery.
Over-charging can also permanently damage the battery,
but the AC charger has a red light that turns green when fully
charged, to alert you. The beam distance claimed on the box
is 620m, and although the LED is not as strong as the Tytos,
I still got very good reflection from the road sign at over a
kilometre.
Like everything in life, there are pros and cons. The Tyto

June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 43

Book Shelf
The German Shorthaired
Pointer in South Africa
Edited by Dr Slang Viljoen
The German Shorthaired Pointer in
South Africa is a comprehensive guide
to the breeds selection and training.
While the book mainly focuses
on shorthaired pointers, it provides
a wealth of useful information on
gun dogs in general, from selecting
a pup through to proper training for
wing-shooting, and caring for your
dogs health.
Choosing a gun dog pup is not easy.
The book advises wingshooters to
ensure that both parent dogs are from
registered working stock. This can be
Dont miss a single copy
www.manmagnum.com
mail@manmagnum.co.za
subscriptions@manmagnum.co.za
44 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
done by contacting a field trial club
that specialises in your chosen breed,
and by insisting on some form of writ-
ten proof that documents the parents
working ability. It is also important to
assess the sire and dam in action: if
they have a trainable temperament and
are not gun-shy, it is likely that their
progeny will have similar traits.
The book comprehensively cov-
ers training techniques, and features
a number of articles written by club
members and leading experts.
All the training methods discussed
were used on dogs from proven work-
ing stock.
Dog owners should look after the
health of their animals, and this is
especially true of working dogs. Time in
the field comes with its own risks, and
knowing how to act in an emergency
may save your dogs life.
The book covers canine first aid and
explains what signs of distress
to look out for. Leg mala-
dies are some of the most
common: limping, swelling
and malformation, or the
dog biting at the injury,
are all signs of a possible
fracture, and veterinary
help should be sought as
soon as possible.
The best way of
avoiding health prob-
lems is to ensure that
your dog is well-disci-
plined and will resist
its natural inclination
to attack. Snake bites may be rare but
its important to know what to do in
such an event. Training your animal to
point out snakes serves the dual pur-
pose of protecting your dog as it will
be standing still and you will know
where the snake is, giving you control
of the situation. The book illustrates a
number of dangerous snakes to look
out for when out on a hunt, including
black mamba, puff adder, rinkhals and
Cape cobra.
A controversial topic is docking
tails, a practice condemned by the
South African Veterinary Council since
2008. It is argued that there are,
however, practical reasons for dock-
ing hunting dogs tails. Working dogs
will often do more than 100km in a
single day through thorny and rocky
terrain, which can lead to a serious risk
of injury.
Tail damage often fails to heal well,
because of constant knocking into
objects and licking. Should the tail not
heal, amputation may be required, so
docking is not for aesthetics, but rather
as a preventive measure.
This commemorative edition cel-
ebrates the 30th anniversary of the
founding of the Transvaal Hunt, Point
and Retrieve Field Trial Club. It is edited
by club chairman Dr Slang Viljoen,
well-known field gamebird expert and
specialist in wildlife management. He
draws on 30 years of members experi-
ence in working with these dependable
and versatile dogs.
The German Shorthaired Pointer in
South Africa is in A4 hardcover format
and has many beautifully rendered illus-
trations as well as colour photographs.
It opens with a history of the club and its
activities, featuring many photographs,
clippings and anecdotes. With over 300
pages, nothing is left out, and it should
prove an excellent reference for owners
of the breed, or for anyone interested in
gun dogs in general.
The book is priced at R500. Please
email Dr Slang Viljoen at slangvil@
iafrica.com for more information.
Morgan Haselau
 Matching Knives
to Historic Guns
by ROBIN BARKES

An early hunter or explorer in

Africa would carry a general
purpose knife with his pistol.

A working marriage of
cold steel to hot lead

46 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

F
rom their very beginning,
guns were backed by cold
steel. For the first 500 or
600 years of firearm his-
tory, once a man had fired
his slow-loading muzzle-loader,
his close combat weapon was a
sword or a knife. For explorers,
hunters and early settlers, swords
were clumsy things to lug around
but a knife was essential if a fellow
wanted to survive.
While all knives remain basic-
ally similar in having a blade and
a handle, different shapes, styles
and sizes were developed accord-
ing to purpose, the most important
improvement being the steel used
for the blade. Firearms developed
and changed quite dramatically
according to technological progress,
especially during the 1800s.
While mulling over the subject of
close-quarter weapons, it occurred
to me that certain knife designs
were probably used in conjunc-
tion with certain handgun designs
common to each period of firearm
development. I figured it would
be a fun exercise to speculate on
such marriages and to round up
the appropriate historical guns and
knives for a photo collection, a pic-
ture being worth a thousand words,
as they say.
Where possible, I coupled original
antique weapons, but in some cases
modern replicas stood in for the gen-
uine article. Id like to have begun
this pictorial history with the first
crude handgonnes followed by the
matchlock, then the wheel-lock, and
so on, but unfortunately the earliest
designs Ive ever come across are
flintlocks, so thats where I started.
As a boy I was enthralled by the
pirate films starring the swashbuck-
ling actor Errol Flynn, and I loved
playing at being the scourge of the
Spanish Main. Years later, as a grown
boy, a double-barrelled flintlock pis-
tol became the pride of my collec-
tion. But what knife would a bucca-
neer carry as a backup to his pis-
tol? Well, I guess he used anything
sharp he could lay his hands on, but
for this pistol I chose a slim-bladed
knife that wouldnt be a hindrance.
You see, its only in comic books that
pirates boarded ships with knives
clenched between their teeth. In the
days of sail, a knife might have been
useful in a tavern brawl, but the
weapons used for boarding ships
or repelling boarders were muskets
with bayonets, cutlasses, boarding
This old spear-pointed blade was a good match with a
axes and belaying pins. However, pirates double-barrelled flintlock pistol.
most pirates carried knives of one
kind or another, and as you can see,
this antique spear-pointed knife with
its dark wooden handle goes well
with the pistol.
NEXT, I TURNED my attention to
the trailblazers of early America.
These brave men would disappear
into the wilderness for years and
sometimes disappear forever. The
first buckskin-clad adventurers
Early trailblazers in North America relied on big
carried long, slim Pennsylvanian knives for survival and defence.
rifles that became better known
as Kentucky rifles. And, of course,
they carried a pistol and a knife to
back it up. So, studying my Ken-
tucky pistol, I pondered over the
style of blade that would go with it.
Traditionally, a man would carry a
heavy blade that could be used to
chop saplings to fashion a shelter
or build a canoe as well as cut up
a deer. And, if attacked by a couple
or three injuns, once hed fired
off his rifle and pistol and things
This huge Bowie knife dwarfs a pair of big
got up close and personal, his Walker Colts.
blade needed to be longer than the
injuns. So I chose an ancient heavy
blacksmith-made blade with a
scrimshawed stag horn handle that
looked just dandy with the pistol.
Moving along in history, I hefted
an original .60 calibre percussion
pistol in my hands and my imagina-
tion rolled back to the early hunters
in South Africa. Old journals record
that these fellows carried pistols to
deal with close-quarter confronta-
tions. But it would appear that the Confederate soldiers had to provide their own knives
knives they carried were mostly and they liked em big!
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 47

ABOVE: Yankee soldiers in the American Civil War were issued with knife,
fork and spoon sets.
BELOW: Accompanying Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson would have carried a
pocket revolver, and perhaps a small penknife in his waistcoat.
a
During the late 1800s a hunter would always carry a revolver and
knife such as this Bushmans Friend by Wostenholm.
48 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
good quality, general-purpose blades used for a multitude
of daily chores. However, in their wagons they always car-
ried a few dozen good knives of different sizes used for
skinning the trophies they bagged. So the knife I chose to
match the big bore pistol was a good blade that could be
sharpened by a few strokes on a whetstone.
Next, picking up a pair of heavy Walker Colts, the
famous Bowie knife immediately came to mind. Although
Jim Bowie died at the Alamo 10 years before the Walker
Colt was introduced, the knives he gave his name to were
still at the height of their fame. Therefore I could not resist
selecting a huge special-order Bowie made by Port Eliza-
beth knife-maker Jonny Kable to go with the big revolvers.
My historical journey then took me to the American Civil
War. The most common handguns used in this conflict were
army and navy Colts. These revolvers were standard issue
to Union officers and cavalrymen because the Colt factory
was in the industrial north. The well-equipped Northern sol-
diers were issued with a combination knife, fork and spoon
set and I decided an original Civil War cutlery set would go
well with the Colts.
The Confederacy could not afford to equip its army with
the luxury of combination eating utensils, therefore sol-
diers supplied their own knives. As I have examined many
old photographs showing rebel soldiers posing with enor-
mous knives, I matched the Southern-made Spiller and
Burr revolver with a big knife, the kind of thing Johnny Reb
would have used mostly to cut firewood, butcher a hog, or
dig a rifle pit. Surprisingly, Civil War surgeons reported see-
ing very few wounds caused by bayonets and knives during
the four-year clash between the states.
FROM THERE MY mind was led to the railhead towns of the
expanding American west. In the smoky saloons, shady card
sharps cheated gullible railroad construction crews and inno-
cent settlers in crooked games that often ended in violence.
A gambler would carry a hideout gun such as the small,
pocket Colt backed by a hidden knife. The blade I chose to
match the hideout gun was an Arkansas toothpick a deadly
stabbing weapon usually carried tucked into a mans boot.
As the railroad clawed its way across the plains, more
rip-roaring frontier towns sprang up, and as more settlers
arrived, the army built more protective forts. This annoyed
the Indian tribes who took the word progress to mean inva-
sion of their territory and so began the full-scale Indian
wars. During these times one breed of frontiersman stood
out above the rest the Indian fighter! Here was a man
who knew the country, the Indians, and most of all he knew
how to survive on the vast treeless plains that stretched
from Canada southward into Texas and from the Mississippi
west to the Rocky Mountains. The hardy frontiersman was
employed by the army to track down illusive war parties
of Indians and no wagon train could move without a hired
scout. His close-quarter weapons would have been a Colt
A gamblers hideout gun backed up by a deadly Arkansas toothpick.
revolver and a fighting knife. To match
the revolver I selected a medium-size
clip-point blade with a stag horn handle.
Once the free-roaming Indian tribes
had been shut up on reservations and
the buffalo practically wiped out, the big
cattle ranches took over the Great Plains
and the day of the cowboy reached its
pinnacle. Although these hard-working
men all wore guns they were not
gunfighters. The weapons they
carried were used to kill predatory
animals, shoot crippled horses
and defend their herds from rus-
tlers. They all carried knives, but
the blades were merely tools of
their trade, and in most cases the
implements were folding knives
carried in their pockets. With the
possibility of being thrown from
your horse, carrying a fixed-
blade knife on your belt was not
a good idea. So the pocket piece I
selected to go with the cowpokes Along with his Colt .45, an Indian fighter would carry a knife
handgun was an original oldie with like this stag horn-handled fighter.
horn scales.
Continuing my historic journey I
arrived back in Africa. The year was
1880 and thoughts of a Martini Henry
and Webley revolver immediately
came to mind. Well now, I thought, Ive
hunted with a Martini and although I
never carried a Webley I did carry a
A cowboys companion tool for his six-shooter was a pocket knife like
this horn-handled folder.
sheath knife. So I figured a hunter of
the 1880s would have carried the same
kind of knife on a belt with his revolver.
The original old Wostenholm knife
(called the Bushmans Friend) which
I chose as a companion piece for the
handgun was a perfect match.
Across to London well, sort of.
Of course, Sherlock Holmes and his
companion Dr Watson were not his-
torical figures, but fictional characters
created in the imagination of Eng-
lish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(though he fooled many readers).
Likewise, Holmess famous address,
221B Baker Street, was fictional
Baker Streets numbers did not reach
221 during the time of the Sherlock
Holmes adventures (18811904)
though the London Post Office did
receive many letters addressed to
Holmes at that number. As a young
fellow, I was intrigued by the master
sleuths skill at solving complex cases,
but noted that in times of danger he
insisted Watson carry his Bulldog
revolver. So, examining a beau-
tiful ivory-handled pocket pistol
of the same type, I deduced that
the good doctor, being an Eng-
lish gentleman, probably carried
a small, elegant penknife in his
waistcoat pocket Elemen-
tary, my dear Barkes. I think
this one with its mother-of-pearl
handle would have met with
Watsons approval. Incidentally,
this pocket pistol drives me mad
with frustration because Id love
to fire it but the ongoing search
for its oddball .442 calibre
ammunition has been in vain.
As a living history buff, I have
always undertaken the shooting of
historical guns in the true spirit of the
original. To me, matching a knife to a
gun is as important as casting bullets
around a campfire and wearing histor-
ically correct outfits.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 49
Typical east African hunting scene of the early 1900s. A line of porters bearing ivory after a long foot safari.

T
ime was getting short as the

Stalking Big
rains might break any day.
Once the rains began our
chances of success would
be very remote as the ele-

Ivory in
phants move right out into the desert
country and dont return to the rivers
or permanent waterholes until the coun-
try dries up again. Two days hunting in
frightful heat produced no signs of any

Northern Kenya
bulls, although I had the camp moved
each day and hunted fresh country.
The third morning, as usual, I sent
the safari on to wait some distance
down stream and was soon sorry Id
done so, as we had not gone far when
my tracker found an imprint which he
by PAT MZEE AYRE
said was fresh and was that of a big
bull. We followed it as quickly as we
could but did not progress very fast,
as the tracking was very difficult and
I constantly marvelled that he did not FINAL
lose the spoor completely. The old bulls
feet left very slight traces of his pas-
sage and he had not fed much (this
would have helped a bit, as he would We continue with the late Pat Ayres tale of an
have dropped leaves and bits of chewed
twigs as he fed along). After several
elephant hunt in Kenya in the early decades of
miles we perceived hed been joined by
another bull, and the tracks now held
the 1900s, told in his own words, and recorded
on a straight course away from the by James M Hurt, who gave Bwana Askari per-
river along a well-worn path, heading
for some rocky hills in the distance. mission to publish them in Magnum
50 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
 Finally, we reached the hills and came to a curi-
ous jumble of rocks which gave the impression of
having been placed in position. I was so struck by
their strange appearance that when the tracks led
through an opening in some rocks that looked for
all the world like a gateway, I was paying more
attention to the curious formation than to the job
in hand. An excited whisper from my tracker woke
me with a start and directed my attention to what I
took for two elephants showing up vaguely through
the thorn bush about 60 yards away. They were
standing under a big thorn tree, each facing away
from the trunk of the tree. A hasty test of the wind
decided me to work around the right and try to view
the ivory, so I edged around as carefully and quickly Pat Ayres friends, Martin and Osa Johnson, in a lion cage car, typical of the times.
as possible. When I could again see the elephants,
I was surprised that they were both facing me and
that the ivory was small. Presently I made out what appeared
to be another one facing the other way. The only way to make
sure was to work around still further to try to see his ivory.
THE STALK TOOK me behind and through a mass of rocks.
Had the elephants made off then, there would have been no
chance of a shot and I spent an anxious few minutes crawl-
ing around, not knowing what was happening, or whether or
not the old bulls were getting restless. I nearly died of heart
failure when a porcupine that had been lying in the shade of
a rock rushed out, making an awful noise with his quills. It
seemed impossible that it would not disturb the elephants.
I was also much concerned that it might bump into me by
mistake. However, my luck was in and I finally got onto a
rock which gave me a clear view of the third tusker. His ivory
seemed very long and appeared almost to reach the ground.
The position was risky, as I was on the skyline, and
although an elephants sight is not supposed to be good, an
The end of a successful elephant hunt.
animal would need to be blind not to notice an object mov-
ing against the sky at about 20 yards away. The only thing
to be done was to shoot from where I was. It was not easy
shooting: though the distance was short enough, there were
several thorn branches which did not improve matters. I took
a shot at the brain but did not hit it; however, the heavy bullet
went close enough to stun the animal temporarily, and gave
me ample time to fire a shot at the heart. This seemed to
wake him up and he spun around and started off, enabling me
to put a shot into his other side as he made away.
When the crashing died away I scrambled out of the rocks
to follow up and see what my shots had done. The first thing
I saw was my gun bearer trying to rescue his woolly cap from
a high branch of a thorn tree. It turned out that he had been
following me around toward the elephants when I fired, and
they had all stampeded in his direction. In his hasty scram-
ble to get out of the way his cap had in some way got up
to its lofty perch. My other boys then joined us and asked
what the ivory of the fourth elephant was like. For
a while, I couldnt make out what they were talking
about, but they declared that while I was sneaking
around to see what the bulls under the trees were
like, Id passed a large elephant only a few yards
away. I can only suppose that, as he was standing
motionless in a patch of bush, and my attention
was riveted on the ones Id seen, there had indeed
been another elephant, though what he looked like
Ill never know.
A short walk along the blood-sprinkled spoor
brought us to the old bull lying dead. His ivory
was very long, but rather thin, so it did not prove
as heavy as I had expected. The tusks scaled 85
pounds each when weighed later. Quite pleased with
my success, even though Id not met the old gen-
tleman whose tusks were beyond his power to carry
alone, we started for camp and reached there late
in the afternoon. We were all pretty tired, but much
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 51
more cheerful than wed been for days,
and the boys chattered late into the
night about the days doings, and no
doubt swapped a number of lies about
previous hunts.
I got to work next day as early as
possible, cutting out the ivory, and
lunchtime saw me under way for home.
The rains seemed about to break any
minute, and when they do set in travel-
ling is no joy. I pushed along as fast as
possible, and for a time travelled ahead
of the safari, hoping to get a shot at
a good lesser kudu which are reason-
ably plentiful in those parts. However, I
found that it did not pay, as the porters
lagged behind, so I took up my posi-
tion at the rear of the safari to keep
them moving. We had not gone an hour
in that order when two splendid kudu
bulls cantered across our line of march,
within easy shot of the leading porter,
but too far for me to shoot at. My lan-
guage is best left to the imagination.
THE THIRD EVENING after bagging the
elephant saw me just 12 miles from my
truck. I hoped that the rain would hold
off for another night and let me reach
it by noon next day, so that I could be
home in the evening. My provisions
were about exhausted, as was the food
for the porters. I managed to shoot a
hartebeest, but did not take much for
myself, keeping enough for a couple of
meals only. The Clerk of the Weather,
who had no doubt been watching pro-
ceedings, and chuckling to himself at
the surprise he was going to spring,
set to work that night to show what he
could do when in earnest.
Rain started soon after nightfall and
seemed to keep on all night. To make
matters worse, a perfect cloudburst fell
on the hills that fed the rivers I had to
cross. Morning dawned without a cloud,
but walking was very hard going. Most
of the road was black cotton soil which,
when wet, has the nasty habit of stick-
ing to your boots and packing there
until the weight gets so great that the
lump falls off, only to repeat the pro-
cess again. It does not appear to pack
so badly on the natives bare feet as it
52 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
does on boots, so the porters fared a bit
better than I did.
Midday saw us at the river, which
was a large one without a bridge. One
look was enough to convince me that
the only way Id get home was by walk-
ing unless I stopped there until the
rains finished in a few months time. Of
the two prospects I preferred walking.
Its easy to be wise after the event is
finished: had I had the sense to have
left the truck on the bank of the river,
I might have managed to cross the
other rivers, as the worst of them was
bridged, and the others not very large.
The only thing left to do was to fol-
A hundred-pounder, the Holy Grail of every
elephant hunter.
low the river upstream until we got to
a native bridge and cross there, then
make for the native villages in the
hills to get food for the men and for
myself. This I proceeded to do as soon
as arrangements had been made for a
couple of men to stay with the truck
to see that the tyres were not cut off
and converted into gents footwear, for
which purpose they are very popular
with most east African natives, and any
motor car left unattended long is too
good a chance to be missed.
Evening was approaching when we
reached the first of the local villages. I
bought food for the men and arranged
for some to be sent to the two left in
charge of the truck. A fowl was pro-
duced for my dinner. It turned out to
be the toughest thing Id ever tried
to chew and might as well have been
allowed to live for all the use it was as
food. All it did was to make me wish the
harder for a real meal.
The next day was spent in climbing
to the top of the range of hills, and I
thought my food troubles were over
when we pitched camp near a small
Indian store. However, the store-
keeper did not cater to anything except
local trade, and all he stocked were
blankets and wire, neither of which
seemed good eating to me. All he could
sell me to eat was a small quantity of
rice, about as unsatisfactory a meal
when eaten without anything to flavour
it as I wish to meet again.
EACH NIGHT IT rained now, but fortu-
nately the days were fine so every day
I travelled as far as the porters could
manage. I had found a pair of light
shoes very comfortable in climbing up
the range, but I made the mistake of
wearing them to descend the other
side, with the result that my feet kept
sliding down into the toes of the shoes
and blistering the tops of my toes on
both feet. However, I was nearing the
end of my trip and from the hills could
see home, a very cheery sight, but still
a days march away.
Though I had enjoyed the trip, I
was pleased to be back. My partner
met me with a cheerful grin as I strag-
gled in at midday and said: You may
think youve had a good time, but you
certainly dont look as if you had! At
any rate, work seemed far less irksome
than it had before Id had my fling, and
it was some little time before the old
urge to go and look for the father of all
elephants asserted it self again.
n This concludes the three-part series
on Pat Ayre, brought to us by Magnum
contributor Bwana Askari
Editor.
by MORGAN HASELAU
NiteCoreTIP
Flashlight
Dynamite comes in small packages
T
he NiteCore TIP is tiny.
At only 60mm long and
weighing just 23 grams, it
is designed for attachment
to a keyring, small enough
to sit comfortably in your pocket, ready
for use when needed. But dont let its
size deceive you the power that this
little flashlight produces is astounding.
The TIP is the successor to the
NightCore Tube, a popular everyday
carry (EDC) flashlight. Like its prede-
cessor, the TIP is a rugged, lightweight,
compact EDC torch. The workings are
protected by an aluminium alloy outer
case, and it should be able to withstand
a 1.5-metre drop. It is also scratch-re-
sistant wise considering it will most
likely be attached to a set of keys. The
TIP is rated IP54 for dust- and water-re-
sistance, meaning it is protected from
limited dust ingress and from water
spray from any direction. It comes in a
variety of colours, among others blue,
black, silver, green and red.
It features a powerful Cree XP-G2
LED which produces a top output of
360 lumens (lm) to a maximum beam
distance of 74 metres thats some
serious illumination for such a small
flashlight. There are four different
brightness settings, ranging from low
to turbo. I dont have 74m of open
space at home, but the TIP clearly lit
up my 20m driveway, and Im con-
fident it could do three times
that with ease.
The turbo mode
is bright enough to
disorient someone if
shone into their eyes,
which could buy you
crucial seconds in an
emergency.
The battery is USB-rechargeable,
obviating the need to carry spare bat-
teries around. The battery will fully
recharge within two hours. Running
the TIP on the 360lm turbo mode has
a runtime of 30 minutes, while using it
on the lowest setting of 1lm gives 46
hours of continuous beam. I carried
the TIP with me for a week during the
test and did not once have to recharge.
The NiteCore
TIP fits snugly
in your hand.
The battery is
recharged via a
USB port. No
spares needed.
Test Report
Having only two buttons, the TIP
is simple to use. It has an On/Off but-
ton, and one which cycles through the
brightness modes. Pressing the two
buttons in various combina-
tions will lock the flashlight
so that it does not
come on in your
pocket, and you
can access the turbo
mode to see how much
charge remains.
My only gripe is that
there is no cover for the USB
port, which risks dirt or lint clog-
ging it up. Considering the TIP will
probably spend most of its life in
your pocket, this seems quite an
oversight.
The TIP is an excellent EDC flash-
light, and if there is anything else on
the market that matches its brightness-
to-size ratio, I have yet to see it.
n The NiteCore TIP is available across
the country and retails at about R565.
For a dealer near you, contact NiteCore
SA on 083-410-6005.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 53
 Precision engineering has put
Truvelo South Africas leading
rifle maker on the world stage

Truvelos 12.7x99
long-range rifle,
one of four in the
Counter Measure
Sniper series.

Down to the
Last Detail
The four main calibres for which Truvelo
makes rifles: 7.62x51mm, .338 Lapua
by ANTHONY SHELLEY Magnum, 12.7x99mm and 14.5x114mm.

F
rom a small one-man show
that started in a Pretoria
garage more than five dec-
ades ago, Truvelo is today a
renowned manufacturer of
precision rifles, barrels and rifle acces-
sories, with a military and commercial
customer base that stretches across
the world.
The business goes back to 1966,
when its founder, German immigrant
Frans-Joseph Gebert known as Oom
Joe and father of current CEO Ralf
Gebert registered a patent for a sen-
sor which could accurately detect vehi-
cle speed. As an instrumentation tech-
nician who had worked for the Council
for Scientific and Industrial Research,
Oom Joe spent many hours in his little
workshop attached to the garage of the
family home in Lyttleton, where he also
took in firearm repairs.
The brand name Truvelo, a combi-
nation of the words true velocity for
accurate speed measurement, now
covers all divisions of the Truvelo manu-
facturing group. The first company was
registered in 1974, producing barrels for
the Bisley shooting community. Truvelo
Africa Mechanical Division was estab-
lished in 1994 when it was licensed to
manufacture armoury products. Truvelo
Africa Electronics Division concentrates

54 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017


on vehicle monitoring equipment for road
traffic law enforcement. Both divisions serve
international niche markets, while the new-
est addition to the group is Truvelo Africa, a
black-owned entity opened in 2014 to service
the South African markets.
The group operates out of premises in
an industrial park in Midrand where it has its
manufacturing and proofing facilities and an
underground shooting range. The company
also has a sales office in the United Kingdom.
THE ARMOURY DIVISION has remained small
and flexible, in order to be fluid to meet the
production needs of any particular client. Of
the total staff complement of about 30, 16
work in production while most of the oth-
ers are involved in compliance, testing and
administration. The complement includes two
full-time research and development (R&D)
engineers. Persistent dedication to tech-
nological improvement, along with sophis-
ticated testing and continual evaluation of
materials and processes, has seen the brand
become a world leader in superbly accurate,
long-range high-precision rifles. Calibres
range from 6.5x47mm Lapua to 20x110mm
Hispano in fact, the company can make
any barrel from .22 to long-range 40mm.
Much of Truvelos production serves mili-
tary and police markets, with the majority of
its exports going to military clients overseas.
It also supports a far smaller commercial
market, which includes private rifle own-
1
ers in South Africa and abroad, by provid-
ing barrels via gun dealers and gunsmiths.
It also provides a service for occasional
repairs, and expertise in fault analyses.
In a tough market, Truvelo generally
finds customers at international arms expos,
where one becomes a captain of the indus-
try by delivering firearms and components
that meet the highest expectations in qual-
ity materials and precision engineering.
The company gets a bit of marketing help
from South Africas Department of Trade
and Industry. And then there are the criteria 2
demanded by Aerospace Maritime Defence
(AMD) member companies for the supply
of products and services to the Department
of Defence, government organisations and
other contractors, both locally and interna-
tionally, in the defence and security market
sectors. AMD member companies provide
high-tech solutions at competitive prices,
with a constant need to secure export 3
orders, which in turn lead to local skills
development, job creation and retention.
Similarly, Truvelo must take cognisance of
the Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initia-
tive, launched in 2007, to support R&D pro-
jects in the aerospace, space, defence and
security sectors.
Once an order is on the table, enormous
effort has to go into contract management.
Applying for permits and originating docu-
ments for each consignment, especially for
clients in the United States and Europe, can be

6 4

1. Barrels that have been deep-holed and honed are lined up ready for rifling.
2. From left, a raw billet of steel, a semi-finished action and one thats almost complete.
3. A five-axis CNC machine with a batch of newly made bolts.
4. Stages in manufacturing an aluminium receiver.
5. Barrels, actions and muzzle brakes come together.
6. The stock assembly with an unattached receiver and barrel.

June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 55

 Getting the Proofing Right
TRUVELO PROOF-TESTS to CIP specifica-
tions. The firearm is checked for its essen-
tial mechanical dimensions: all measures
and tolerances in the chamber are verified.
After the rifle has passed a visual inspec-
tion, cartridges overloaded to produce 25%
more chamber pressure than the CIP maxi-
mum for that specific cartridge, are fired in
it. Head space should not change after firing
high-pressure rounds. Each rifle that makes
the grade is stamped with a proof mark.
The same would apply if cartridges were
being tested, which would be done at regular
intervals against the CIP pressure specifica-
tions. For pistol, revolver and rim-fire cartrid-
ges, the standard proof is performed with
overloaded cartridges that produce 30% more
chamber pressure than the CIP maximum for
the cartridge in its commercial version.
Voluntarily testing beyond the CIP maxi-
mum pressure limits is also possible for cus-
tomers who intend to use their firearms under
extreme conditions (hot climates, long shot-
strings etc).
The CIP independently assesses, approves
and publicises manufacturers data, such as
chamber dimension specifications, maxi-
mum allowed chamber pressures, calibre
nomenclature, and the technical proofing
processes used.
The CIP formally distributes established
data and decisions to its members through
diplomatic channels, which are generally
accessible to all users.

Truvelo employs a shadowgraph, an optical
method that uses light to measure contours.
a minefield of red tape. Its exacting work
theres no room for error in completing
and collating all the paperwork that goes
into delivering each order. Along with
all the usual documentation involved
in importing raw material and shipping
finished products, there are invariably
special customs clearances, end-user
certificates, tax forms, shipping permits
some countries abroad have their own
bureaucratic quirks, all of which add to
the huge cost of administration. Some
permits are restricted to time frames,
or require annual renewal, which must
be considered when planning production
and timing deliveries, particularly when
a permit application can take as much as
seven months waiting for an approval.
Military and police contracts alone keep
two full-time Truvelo staffers busy.
TRUVELO IS ONE of few privately owned
firearm manufacturing companies to do
almost all its own R&D and production,
and the only one in Africa to do its own
proofing. Very few rifle components
are outsourced; triggers and pistol
grips, along with some minor parts, are
farmed out to support local engineering
works, while recoil pads come from the
United States. Steel is made to specifi- the mandrel. The mandrel is then with-
cation and may have to be ordered as drawn, leaving a perfectly rifled barrel.
much as six months in advance on pre- For bigger calibres from 0.50" or
paid shipments. To avoid possible short- 12.7mm and above Truvelo use the
falls downstream, some raw materials button method. The buttons also
and premade parts are kept in stock, tungsten carbide are essentially very
ready go into the production process short mandrels: bore-diameter cylin-
when an order comes in. ders with integral lands raised to the
Production generally adheres to precise groove diameter for that cal-
just-in-time principles. For accuracy, ibre, and appropriately off-set to pro-
longevity and finish in boring and rifling vide the specified rifling twist. For
barrels, custom-designed buttoning is this process, the steel barrel blank has
used, along with forging, grinding and already been drilled all the way through
lathing processes for the various steel
components that go into a rifle. A lot
of the machinery is of German origin,
some using electronic controllers to
support the computer-numerically-con-
trolled (CNC) production that relies on
sophisticated 3D software to execute
detailed technical drawings.
For rifling the smaller-calibre bar-
rels, such as their popular .308 and
.338 LM, Truvelo use a hammer forging
process with a mandrel. The mandrel
is a calibre-sized tungsten carbide rod
with raised lands along its surface fol-
lowing the specified rifling twist for
that particular calibre (ie the bore inte-
rior reversed in solid form). An over-
sized tube of unformed barrel steel is
fitted over the mandrel, and then pow-
erful hydraulic hammers pound the
barrel steel down onto the mandrel,
so that the interior of the barrel tube Magnum staffer Jacques Boshoff with a
takes on the precise size and form of 14.5x114mm rifle bolt.

56 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

to the precise bore diameter for that calibre. The button is
then forced at enormous pressure through the drilled bore,
its raised lands compressing or ironing grooves into the
surface of the bore, which follow the specified rate of twist.
The outer barrel is then lathe-turned to the required shape
and diameter. Truvelo makes both the mandrels and the but-
tons in-house. These barrel-making methods ensure close
tolerances in the rifling, and barrels thus made are potentially
less likely to warp as they heat up during firing.
Truvelos rifle barrels are then fluted externally, which not
only reduces the overall weight of the rifle, but creates a
larger external barrel surface area, affording more rapid heat
dispersal. Fluting is a CNC-grinding process; the width and
depth of the flutes depends on the calibre. The barrels are
free-floating, the only contact being their junction with the
rifles receiver. Even as they expand with heat during firing,
no part of the surface comes in contact with the stock or any
other pressure point which might interfere with the barrels
harmonics (vibrations) as the bullet proceeds through the
bore. This feature enhances accuracy potential.
ANY BARREL OF .338 calibre and bigger has a muzzle brake
as a standard feature, which releases a measure of the
expanding gas from the bore just before the bullet exits the
muzzle; this redirected gas creates a rocket effect which
opposes the rearward thrust of the recoil, thus reducing the
felt recoil.
Truvelos rifle bolts are machined from bar steel, while
their receivers are machined from aluminium for weight
reduction. After CNC-shaping, the action components are fur-
ther honed and polished to tighten the tolerances, and racked
for assembly. This combination of materials, design features,
precision engineering and strict quality control ensures that
their rifles inherent accuracy is held within 0.5 MOA.
Manufacturing precision components for firearms may not
seem much different from making close-tolerance compo-
nents for other types of machinery. However, what makes
the difference at Truvelo is the need for proofing and compli-
ance. Due to the absence of local firearm proofing facilities,
when Truvelo started making armoury products some five
years ago, electronics engineer Ralf Gebert soon realised the
need for the company to develop its own laboratories and
OEM specifications, especially if it was to remain competitive
with global technologies. For example, each barrel has to be
measured and traceable at each stage of its production. Each
manufacturing procedure on each barrel is measured, and
each operation is traceable using the barrels unique number,
with its own lab reports, to ensure compliance with standards
of material durability and precision engineering. The bore and
rifling of every barrel is verified, along with in-camera proof-
ing, before it is stamped with its own proof mark.
After completing each batch and discussing any produc-
tion issues, data packs with relevant technical drawings are
updated and backed-up. This saves work in the long run,
Lightweight Precision
TO SATISFY THE demand of snipers need for more surgical
accuracy to neutralise targets at long ranges, Truvelo deve-
loped its compact and lightweight Counter Measure Sniper
(CMS) series for urban warfare, where easy manoeuvrability
is important. There are four calibres in the CMS series, namely
12.7x99mm, 14.5x114mm, 20x42mm and the 20x110mm His-
pano. All can be made available for anti-material cartridges
when military snipers need to interdict targets such as missile
embankments and armoured personnel carriers.
Probably Truvelos most popular CMS rifle is the CMS .338
Lapua, a tactical rifle for long-range precision shooting in mili-
tary and desert warfare where targets can be at 1 000 metres
and beyond.
The design includes a foldable stock, fully adjustable recoil
assembly, adjustable grip, stanag picatinni rails and a remov-
able bipod. Various fore-end lengths are available on request.
CMS .338 LAPUA SPECIFICATIONS
Mechanism: Bolt action with four locking lugs
Magazine capacity: 5 rounds
Barrel length: 660mm
Overall length: Unfolded 1 265mm, folded 1 000mm
Number of grooves,
twist rate: 6, 1:10
Weight: 7kg, including telescope and magazine
Accuracy: Better than 1 MOA at 500m
(ammunition dependant)
Effective range: 1 800m (ammunition dependant)
Standard accessories: adjustable cheek piece, muzzle brake, operators
manual in English, and two five-shot magazines.
Optional accessories include silencer, mono pod, provision for night
vision and thermal imaging attachments.
when a rare glitch comes to light, or a design needs adjust-
ing for a future project. Its all about innovation in producing
weapons that are lightweight, adjustable, accurate and reliable,
a philosophy that underpins Truvelos guarantee of accuracy and
reliability. Suggested retail prices are about R77 000 for smaller
calibres; R83 000 for the .338 Lapua, and R107 000 for the
12.7x99mm model. For details telephone 011-314-1406/8, or
email Truvelo at localsales@truvelo.co.za.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 57
 Safari Hunting as a
ConservationTool
by ROBIN HURT

PART 2

Anti-hunters and legal hunters share the same goal

58 | and
Father ManMAGNUM
Son. | June 2017
M
ost safari hunters come to
Africa for the wilderness
experience. They come for
the challenge of hunting
wild animals on foot, on a
one-to-one basis animals that occur
nowhere else on earth. They come for
the excitement of the chase fair chase
where the stalk is everything and the
quarry has every chance of escape in its
vast habitat. They understand that when
the chance factor is removed, it is no
longer hunting but culling. They come
for the sense of adventure and for the
camaraderie of evenings around remote
campfires with like-minded friends.
A shining star is Namibia, the most
hunter-friendly country in Africa.
Namibia is pro-conservation through
utilisation; ownership of wildlife is
encouraged and its wildlife numbers are
steadily increasing. It now has 82 com-
munity conservancy concession areas
registered, funding poverty eradication
programmes for formerly disadvan-
taged human communities and turning
former poachers into anti-poachers.
According to Dr Chris Brown, of the
Namibian Chamber of Statistics, during
the 1700s, Namibias land mass prob-
ably had an estimated 8 million wild
animals. As occurred throughout most
of Africa, these numbers were quickly
depleted as the result of subsistence
and commercial hunting for hides,
skins and ivory, and settler farmers
viewing game as competing with their
livestock for grazing. The situation was
exacerbated as the indigenous peoples
acquired guns and horses wildlife was
simply wasted. By 1960, the land mass
of Namibia had fewer than one million
wild animals. Game laws were in place,
but had not halted the decline in wildlife
numbers.
LEGALLY, LANDOWNERS WERE free to
hunt game on their farms for their own
consumption and if it posed a threat to
their livelihood. They could also invite
friends and relatives to hunt it for sport
and for meat, but they could not legally
sell the game or game products, nor
profit from hunting. Game, therefore,
had no commercial value. Conse-
quently landowners continued to regard
wild animals as a threat to domestic
livestock as competitive grazers, dis-
ease-carriers and fence-breakers. At
best, game was seen as a source of
cheap meat.
Then the government did an about-
turn, declaring the landowner to be the
legal owner of the game on his farm,
granting him ownership or user rights
to wildlife in effect, entitling him to
profit thereby. In doing so the gov-
ernment placed the responsibility for
the conservation of wildlife (outside
of national parks and game reserves)
squarely on the shoulders of private
land owners.
This was an instant success. Over-
night, wildlife became valuable. Safari
and game ranch hunting became a via-
ble alternative to traditional livestock
ranching. This was such a triumph that,
in 1990, community land holdings were
given the user rights to their wildlife,
with carefully set quotas. The game
and hunting fees received benefited the
indigenous peoples of Namibia, leading
to poverty alleviation. This resulted in a
sharp increase in wildlife numbers, and
today Namibia has over 3 million wild
animals countrywide more than its
human population of 2.3 million. Over
16 million hectares of Namibias land
mass is dedicated to wildlife conserva-
tion.
Recently, Namibian President
Hage Giengob publicly stated that he
had banned the banning of hunting.
That shows how important the use of
wildlife is to Namibia and her people.
Economically, safari hunting is a most
important industry for the well-being of
the country as a whole, and is the very
foundation of its successful conserv-
ancy programme. The sustainable use
TOP TO BOTTOM: BIM Gill with his 102 x 100
of wildlife is enshrined in the countrys
pounder, Tanzania, 1968.
constitution. Hadelin Diericx with his big tusker both
By contrast, countries that have over 100 lbs a side. Tana River, Kenya, 1970.
banned legal hunting have experi- Hans Kuderli, game scout Hapana Fakiri and
enced a decline in wildlife. In Africa, tracker Laboso Arap Sura with a set of fine
Sudanese tusks both more than the magic
people deriving little or no benefit from
100 pounds aside, 1974.
wildlife see little reason to conserve South Sudan savannah elephant tusks
it, and as a result, communities turn larger tusk 104lbs, circa mid 1970s.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 59
to poaching. As soon as legal,
conservation-minded hunters
are removed from the bush,
the game is subjected to illegal,
non-selective poaching with no
thought given to conservation.
Poachers show no concern for
tomorrow their sole imperative
is for a lucrative return today.
Elephant and rhino poachers
indiscriminately shoot animals
of any gender or age; payment
for tusks and horns is by weight,
size matters little. Poachers have
no love or feeling for the animals
they destroy. Bush meat poach-
ers set far more snares than they
can successfully monitor, result-
ing in the cruel, indiscriminate,
and wasteful deaths of numer-
ous animals whose carcasses
rot away where they lie. And the
sale of bush meat benefits just a
few individuals, not whole com-
munities.
Kenya banned all hunting
in May 1977, when that coun-
try had an estimated 176 000
Author Robin Hurt on safari in Botswana.
elephant; today the number is
down to 23 000. Kenyas black
rhino population has declined from
8 000 to about 680 at the time of writ-
ing. All other game has declined by
70% all during a time when no legal
hunting was permitted! This was due
in part to a burgeoning human popula-
tion and its consequent encroachment
(along with attendant cattle and goats)
on wildlife habitat. However, the pri-
mary cause remains poaching for bush
meat, ivory and rhino horn.
HISTORICALLY, TANZANIA WAS the
first east African country to ban hunt-
ing. This was in 1973, when that coun-
try had an estimated 380 000 elephant.
Safari companies were forced to shut
down, consequently the wilderness
areas became a free-for-all poachers
paradise. Realising its mistake, the
government reopened safari hunting a
few years later, but during that period,
massive declines in elephant num-
bers resulted. The reopening of safari
60 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
hunting came in the nick of time and
saw substantial growth in wildlife pop-
ulations, particularly elephant which
increased to about 130 000. Then,
soon after the new millennium, fuelled
by Asian demand, poaching again
increased throughout Africa.
More recently, this situation was
exacerbated when the US Fish and
Wildlife Service stopped all imports
of ivory legally hunted by American
sportsmen in Tanzania, even though
such exports were covered by CITES
quotas and permits. This effectively
stopped elephant hunting in Tanzania
by Americans, which led to the familiar
old scenario: no legal hunting presence
in the wilderness meant that the void
was once again filled by poachers. The
result has been huge declines in ele-
phant numbers not only in southern
Tanzania but also northern Mozam-
bique. What a miscalculation that
restriction has proved to be.
Tanzania is not the only Afri-
can country to have reopened
hunting after closure. Recently,
having seen the negative results
of such bans, Uganda and Zam-
bia have reintroduced safari
hunting as a viable and sustain-
able management tool for con-
servation.
The story of South Sudan
is a sad one. This was one of
the richest wildlife countries
in Africa, with huge, unrivalled
herds of elephant. I hunted
there from 1973 through to
1984, and left only because of
the civil war between the north-
ern Muslims and the southern
Christian and Animist popu-
lations. I witnessed incred-
ible wildlife numbers, including
numerous northern white rhino,
sometimes in groups of up to a
dozen. Today there is not one
remaining. It was the same
in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (formerly Zaire) where
I hunted briefly in 1984, in the
north east. In my hunting area
alone I saw numerous forest
elephant bulls, many with tusks weigh-
ing over 100 pounds a side. It was a
hunting paradise. Unfortunately for us,
our legal presence effectively curtailed
poaching and the illegal ivory trade
unbeknown to us, we were treading on
the toes of influential persons. Pres-
ident Mobutu closed safari hunting
and we were forced to leave the bush.
Today, elephant in this part of Africa
verge on extinction and the remnant
northern white rhino are extinct in the
wild. How tragic.
I NO LONGER hunt elephant, but that
does not mean I am opposed to legal
elephant hunting quite the contrary.
I believe legal elephant hunters are
an anti-poaching force to be reckoned
with. During the past 54 years of my
career, I have seen dramatic declines
in wildlife and changes from the time
of my youth when small islands of
people were surrounded by a sea of
wildlife, to today, when tidal
waves of people are drowning
the remaining islands of wildlife.
This is particularly true in the
case of elephant. Since 1979,
African elephants have lost over
50% of their range due to human
encroachment on their habitat.
Elephant need vast ranges in
which to find sufficient food and
water.
At the start of the 20th cen-
tury, Africa had an estimated
five million elephant. By 1960,
there were probably something
over two million. Today an esti-
mated 415 000 remain. Some
believe that just the East Afri-
can countries alone: Kenya,
Tanzania and Mozambique, have
collectively lost over 70 000
elephant in recent years. Dur-
ing the same period in Gabon,
Three white rhino.
the last stronghold of the for-
est elephant, populations have
declined from well over 80 000 down effort directed at the end-user of ille- knowledge, while the latter group bases
to fewer than 60 000. gal products derived from poached theirs on proven scientific and histori-
Only in the southern African coun- elephant and rhino, instead of continu- cal fact, and personal experience. It is
tries of Namibia, Botswana (currently ally targeting the licensed hunter? The a pity we cant work together for our
closed to hunting but enforcing a pol- answer is clear not much can be done common goal.
icy of zero tolerance of poaching), to control poaching in countries with Africa today still has fabulous game
Zimbabwe and South Africa do we see uncooperative governments or corrupt fields and wilderness areas with wild-
s t a b l e e l e p h a n t n u m b e r s . W hy ? officials, and the same applies to the life populations unrivalled anywhere on
Because of proactive management, pri- illegal markets. Its much easier to be the planet. But the simple, unassailable
vate ownership and sensible user rights seen to be doing something by forcing fact, confirmed by scientists involved in
importantly, community conserva- more and more bans and regulations hands-on wildlife management, is that
tion programmes such as Zimbabwes on the lawful hunter. wildlife needs hunters dollars to sus-
CampFire scheme. The key must be tain the populations outside of national
to tackle the illegal end-user no black CHINA RECENTLY PROMISED to close parks and protected areas. You can help
market equals no poaching. As long down all dealings in ivory an impor- by explaining to non-hunters the ben-
as there is demand in Asia, poaching tant commitment that will certainly efits of legal, ethical hunting. Bone up
will continue. The comparatively few help reduce the demand for illicit on the facts and tell people what hunt-
remaining elephant will be subjected to ivory. Hopefully, other Asian countries ers do for conservation. Emphasize the
ongoing decimation as the price of ivory will follow Chinas example. But what important fact that most of Africas wild-
escalates in inverse proportion to the about the trade in poached rhino horn? life occurs outside the protected areas.
decline in the numbers of animals. Perhaps an announcement on that will Lets keep it that way as a competitive
The recent Convention on Interna- follow soon. and sustainable form of private land
tional Trade in Endangered Species of Lets face it, the ideals of the anti- use. That is what conservation hunting
Wild Fauna and Flora CITES) conven- hunter and the legal, ethical hunter is all about.
tion in South Africa recognised that the are the same: the healthy, long-term CREDIT: My thanks to Esmond Martin,
legal, sustainable utilisation of wildlife survival of wild animals. The difference renowned authority on African elephant
is an important tool for conservation. is that most of the former group tend to and rhino populations, for checking pop-
This is a welcome advance. Now the base their arguments on sentiment and ulation figures given in this article with
question remains: why isnt greater emotion backed by little or no scientific IUCN in Kenya and his own files.

June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 61

 The HW100 Sport is a quality PCP.
O Weihrauch
ver the last few years, air rifle
shooting in South Africa has
grown in leaps and bounds, and
we are currently spoiled for choice
when it comes to the availability
of springers and PCP rifles. Quality and prices
vary widely, and imported Chinese PCP air rifles
can be bought for as little as R3 500.
However, with PCP rifles, keep in mind the
additional cost of an air reservoir (R4 100 new)
and a fill adapter (R1 500). So, even when opt-
ing for a budget Chinese brand, it entails an
initial outlay of about R10 000 if you buy new.
I recently had the opportunity to test a pre-
mium quality PCP by Weihrauch. I was keen to
know how this rifle, which retails for just under
R20 000 (yes, thats for the rifle only) performs
on the shooting range. This German company
has been making quality air rifles for decades
and its springers, such as the entry-level HW30
and HW50 rifles, are legendary.
The test rifle was the HW100 Sport in
5mm. It weighs 3.9kg without a scope and
first impressions indicated a quality piece of
equipment. The Sport is 1 070mm long and
has an oiled, dark walnut stock with a raised
cheek piece for scoped use the rifle does
not have any open sights and is fitted with
a dark recoil pad and white spacer. The pistol
grip, including its cap, and the fore-end are
immaculately chequered.
The model I received was stocked for right-
handed use and had a very ergonomically
shaped pistol grip. The 60cm barrel came with
a moderator. The HW100 came with a 14-round
magazine made of steel, and with the neces-
sary fill adapters. I filled the cylinder to about
180 bar and zeroed the scope at 25m with JSB
Exact pellets. The two-stage trigger is fully
adjustable and was set very light too light
62 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
HW100AirRifle
by PHILLIP HAYES
Superb accuracy from a top quality PCP
for my taste and the initial first stage travel
was almost non-existent. On several occasions
the light trigger surprised me by going off too
early. This can be easily remedied with a couple
of adjusting screws, but I decided to stick with
what I presumed to be a factory setting and see
whether I could get used to it.
The magazine can be removed by cocking
the side lever, sliding a button to the rear and
then taking the magazine out. Loading up with
14 pellets takes only seconds and once the mag-
azine is replaced, moving the side-lever forward Five shots at 25m with JSB
Exact pellets.
pushes a pellet into the barrel. A side safety
(similar to those on Sako and CZ rifles) operable
with the thumb of the right hand is another fea-
ture that makes this air rifle perfect for hunting
preparation. Once a shot is fired, the side lever
is cocked, which turns the rotary magazine, and
on closing, the lever pushes the next pellet into
the barrel. Once a pellet is fed into the barrel,
cocking the side-lever will not cycle the maga-
zine again unless the shot is fired, an ingenious
feature that precludes your loading two or more Three shots with the heavy
pellets into the barrel by mistake. Samyang (23.7gr) pellets at 25m.

The cocking lever is pulled back to cycle the magazine and when pushed forward feeds a pellet
into the barrel.
My first couple of shots did not pro-
duce promising results, but I soon got the
hang of the trigger and things improved.
Shooting from a bench, I proceeded
to test for accuracy at 25m, expecting
good results. Initially, I simply rested my
elbows on the benchtop with the rifle rest-
ing in my hands. I shot a five-shot group
that could easily be covered by a R2 coin.
Thats impressive accuracy.
I THEN RESTED the rifle on a sandbag.
Settling in comfortably, I fired a series
of five-shot groups. The rifle clearly
grouped better with the JSB Exact
pellets, five shots forming one ragged
hole despite a steady breeze. Due to
rain and strong wind, I was unable to
test this combination at longer ranges,
but I believe that a sub half-inch five-
shot group at 50m should be possible,
even for someone like me who seldom
shoots from a rest.
Polymags Predator (13gr) and
Samyangs heavyweight 23.7gr pellets
shot slightly larger groups, but it was evi-
dent that the HW100 was exceptionally
accurate with whatever I fed it see the
accompanying photographs for results.
Fired over a chronograph, the JSB
Exact pellets (13.73gr) clocked 964fps
for 27.9ft-lbs (37.6J) of energy, the
heavy Samyang (23.7gr) at 727fps
for 27.8ft-lbs (37.7J) and the Polymag
Predator 13gr at 943fps for 25.7ft-lbs
(35J). These are impressive figures for
an air rifle. Moreover, one refill fired
just over 30 shots before the velocities
started dropping.
When I first handled this rifle, it
reminded me of a Sako centre-fire in
6mm PPC I once owned, being more
or less the same weight and size, and
both being exceptionally accurate. This
makes the HW100 an ideal air rifle to
use for practising for the hunting sea-
son accurate enough to inspire con-
fidence and to expose human error.
According to a ballistic programme,
if I zero my Hawke 3-9x40 scope at
25m, I can use it out to 110m without
mechanical readjustment merely by
using the mil-dots for elevation. On
calm days, the HW100 will make an
excellent rifle for practising shots from
field positions at life-size springbuck
targets out to 100m. I cannot imagine
an easier and less expensive method
to prepare for the hunting season. And
youll have fun in the process.
The moderator is one of the best
Ive had the pleasure to use, reduc-
The removable steel rotary magazine
takes 14 pellets.
The trigger can be adjusted with Allen keys.
The HW100s cylinder is fitted with its own
easy-to-read pressure gauge which, unlike
those on some PCPs, is very accurate.
The safety is similar to that found on some
centre-fire rifles.
ing the normal report to a soft phud
sound. I am a tall man, and with
this full-sized stock and the silencer
attached to the 600mm barrel, I found
the rifle quite long and not suitable for
youngsters unless they were to shoot
from a rest. Weihrauch does offer a car-
bine which is 975mm long and has a
410mm barrel, but for those starting
out, I would suggest one of the spring-
ers, such as the HW30.
Overall, the HW100 is an impressive
air rifle made to extremely high stand-
ards. Accuracy is simply outstanding
and the 14-shot magazine makes light
work of reloading. This quality comes
at a price, but for those demanding
the best, the HW100 is a must on the
shortlist, and it should survive for sev-
eral generations.
n For a dealer near you contact Inyathi
Sporting Supplies on 012-808-9911.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 63
Test Report by ANDR GROBLER

T
rijicon, the American optics
company, has come a long
way since 1981 when it
m a r ke t e d t h e A r m s o n
occluded eye gunsight. It
has established a solid reputation for
reliable high-quality optics for various
applications from handguns to bows.
Trijicon sights are used by military and
law enforcement agencies, competition
shooters and hunters.
The Trijicon AccuPower 3-9x40 rifle
scope features a battery-powered illu-
minated reticle with adjustable bright-

Trijicon AccuPower
ness settings. It weighs 483g and is the
only scope in the AccuPower series with
a 25mm tube.

The body is aircraft-grade alumin-
ium, which is durable and lightweight,
coated with a hard, matte black ano-
dised finish that protects the scope
against scratches, corrosion, water
and sweat. The tubes are waterproof
and filled with nitrogen to eliminate
fogging. The eye relief is 90mm, which
is ideal for all calibres except perhaps
very powerful hunting rifles producing
heavy recoil.
Features include the usual dials to
adjust for windage and elevation (one
click moves the point of impact a quar-
ter-inch at 100 yards), a magnification
ring and a rotating eyepiece for focus-
ing. A separate knob adjusts the bright-
ness settings for the illuminated green
reticle. The dials are covered by turret
caps that are grooved for easy handling
even with gloves. The dials have direc-
tional arrows and their clearly marked
gradations are further indicated by a
click that you can both hear and feel.
To reset the dials, simply raise the
dial knob, turn it to the zero mark and
push it down in line with the indica-
tor on the turrets. Resetting to zero
allows the shooter to dial in windage
and elevation adjustments for various
distances. The dials are numbered to
quickly return to a previously zeroed
setting.
The diopter adjustment ring in the
eyepiece turns smoothly and easily, but
not so easily as to move inadvertently.
The magnification ring at the front of
3-9x40
the eyepiece incorporates a speed lever brightness settings and an Off feature
for quick adjustment and has the same between each setting, enabling the illu-
heavy grooving as the turret caps. minated reticle to be switched off with
The 3-9x40 Trijicon AccuPowers one click of the dial. The wide range of
lenses are multi-coated, producing brightness settings caters for all light
a brightly defined picture up to the conditions.
edges. I could not find any image dis- The reticle is in the second focal-
tortion and the scopes light-gathering plane. The crosshair is fine, hence at
capabilities are excellent. higher magnifications, quickly disap-
The scope has a third turret with 11 pears against a dark background or
target. This is where the illuminated
reticle comes in. Whatever the prevail-
ing lighting conditions, the crosshair
illumination can be adjusted for the
appropriate contrast. The reticles lower
1 half is the bullet drop compensator type
with additional dots on both sides of the
lower vertical wire to compensate for
4 cross-winds.
This is a lightweight scope with a
low-profile design for versatile applica-
tion hunting rifles, semi-auto firearms
and competition. It is a quality product
3 that should deliver years of good ser-
2 vice. Its only drawback is its somewhat
bulky magnification ring which requires
high scope mounts for it to clear the
Firing a group, then moving the scope eleva- raised bolt handle.
tion setting down, firing a shot, moving the
The recommended retail price is
impact point to the right and firing a shot, up
and firing a shot and finally back to the origi- R15 030 not cheap, but good optics
nal setting, resulted in the final shots landing never are. To find a dealer near you
almost where the first ones had. contact ECM on 012-329-4116.

64 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017

 ReadersMarket

ARMTEC SYNTHETIC STOCKS

PO Box 20481 Noordbrug 2522 (Potch)
Chris 082 853 7134, Office (Daleen) 083 531 5860
fax 0866 284 893 www.armtec.co.za

Manufactured from multi-layered

fibreglass cloth, laminated under pressure and
filled with hi-tech composite material.
Finished in non-slip, chip resistant epoxy coating.
Available for Lee-Enfield, P14 and Brno.
Custom built stocks for all other makes

Pigeon Rotary
The Ultimate Pigeon Decoyer

083 270 4970 www.decoys.co.za

www.manmagnum.com

June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 65

 ReadersMarket

For Sale
n Winchester Mod 70 any condition, will pay
wooden and synthetic cash. Jan 082-565-5916
stocks, short and long (012).
action. Offers? Trevor n AYA 12ga dou-
n Several skull mounts 082-419-9199 (033). ble-barrel shotgun
by Highveld, including n .300WM Sauer side-lock ejector, good
kudu 51''+; 2x sable 202 Wolverine, 26'' condition. Paul 082-
43''-45''+; nyala 23'' bull-barrel, imported 411-0210 (033).
shoulder mount, price 2015, threaded for n Arms collector
neg. Paul 011-883- silencer, very accurate, buying old guns,
6032. R32,000. Jaco 074-116- swords, bayonets,
n Pachmayr adjustable 9318 (027). any condition, free
rear sight for 1911A1, n P14 .303, new barrel, valuations and advice.
3-dot system, never Sporter stock, scope Peter 031-562-9591,
used, with screwdriver bases fitted, R5000. 083-415-5627.
& allen key, R450 plus Brian 072-309-2143

General
postage. 082-923-8069 (012).
(021). n Lyman 9.3x62m dies,
n .303 geweer; .38 Spl new, R450; Simplex
Rossi rewolwer; .22 pis- .416REM dies, used,
tool; .22 geweer; Baikal R250; Speer Hotcor 9.3 n Swap 100x Sako
12 Boor haelgeweer. bullets, R400/50. David .38Spl 115gr FMJ car-
Maak n aanbod. Isabel 082-654-6939 (012). tridges, for one box of
082-450-9047 (012). n Colt Magnum .357 6mm .243 85gr Sierra
n Winchester .22 Mod- revolver, 6'' barrel, gun GameKing bullets.
el 63LR, c1938, scope, bag, leather holster, Danny 018-788-5905
60x cartridges; BSA pistol grip included. (016).
.410 bolt-action c1910, 082-850-7890 (011). n Swap 50x .308
both good condition. 150gr Nosler Partition
Offers? 046-624-1116, bullets, for 7mm
072-377-5785.
n Collectors item, Brno Wanted 140-160gr of similar
quality. Piet 083-293-
Model 21H 7x57 rifle, 0065 (012).
R19,500; Custom Sako
9.3x62, excellent, with n Once-fired 7x64
scope, R28,000 without brass. Thys 076-114-
R20,000. 072-356-6213 9732 (011).
n Sako .220 Swift rifle, www.manmagnum.com
(051).

TRADING POST
MINIMUM CHARGE PER ADVERT: R80,00 (incl) for twelve words; thereafter R5,00 per
word. Hyphenated (and compound) words are counted as separate words. Payment
must be enclosed adverts that are not paid for in advance cannot be published.
TRADING POST, Box 35204, Northway 4065
classifieds@manmagnum.co.za fax 086-520-3711

KNIFEMAKERS! (0109): BOSVELD JAGGE- jou motorfiets saam.

R375 R670 R1300 One stop shop for all LEENTHEID, MOPANE/ Gerhard Kotze
your knife making LIMPOPO OMGEWING 083-967-7216 (014),
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R375 R670 R1300 supplies. Call 012-752- jagkamp, selfsorg. WINGSHOOTING
7760/62, or visit Biltong jag. Boog KWAZULU-NATAL
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PREMIUM HUNTING welkom. Koelkamer en fowl, upland birds over
R375 R670 R1300 AND TARGET BULLETS slaggeriewe. Prys sluit Pointers, walk-up guin-
FOR SALE (0301): From jou vleisverwerking in. eafowl & pigeon/doves.
R170 the bushveld to the Vir 2017 pryslys skakel Join Professional Guide
open plains: Only the Jaco 082-550-4208, Todd Lutman for some
best is good enough! mopaniegamesafaris@ quality wingshooting.
S.A. Premium Bullets: gmail.com 082-419-7486, www.
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WANTED - SKULLS cool room, guides, 461-3421 (012), www.
AND HORNS (0306): vehicle incl. Plains perfectbulletpuller.
We are buying legally game rifle and bow co.za
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quantities. Call office thembekasafaris.com (0602): Umkomaas,
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sandveldhunting.co.za 500m skietbaan, bring co.za

66 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017


Solving Confusion
About Competencies
To overcome possible confusion among
firearm owners, the National Hunting and
Shooting Association (NHSA) has clari-
fied the validity of competencies and
when these should be renewed.
It has been generally accepted that a
persons competency for a specific cate-
gory of firearm such as a handgun,
rifle, shotgun or semi-auto rifle expires
only when that of the oldest licence
expires. However, under the SAPS Direc-
tive of 7 January 2011, this is true only in
some situations it certainly does not
mean that all ones competencies expire
only when your oldest licence expires,
irrespective of the firearm type.
In many cases, all the competencies
a person holds are printed on one docu-
ment a white card or an A4 sheet doc-
ument which could, for example, cover
all four competencies: handguns, rifles,
shotguns, and semi-auto rifles. However,
according to the associations press
release, the A4-type of competency doc-
ument has no expiry date on it, and
many firearm owners have erroneously
interpreted this as meaning that their
competencies are valid indefinitely.
The validity of a competency is calcu-
lated from the date of its issue: five years
for a firearm licensed under Section 13
(self-defence) and 10 years for a firearm
licenced under Sections 15 and 16 (hunt-
ing and/or sport shooting). These time
frames also apply to the respective fire-
arm licences.
If you own a handgun under Section
13, then the competency must be
renewed along with the licence five years
after the date of issue. However, if you
own a Section 13 handgun as well as a
handgun under Sections 15 and 16, then
your handgun competency is valid for 10
years after the date of issue.
Validity of competencies for rifles,
shotguns and semi-auto rifles are easier
to interpret as all these firearms are usu-
ally licensed under either Sections 15 or
16, and thus have 10-year licences. Irre-
spective of when your rifle, shotgun or
Gallery
semi-auto rifle licences expire, your com-
petency for these categories of firearms
expire 10 years after date of issue.
It is important to note that all compe-
tencies, regardless of the Sections, must
be submitted for renewal 90 days prior to
the expiry date. Morgan Haselau
SA Moves Toward
Legal Rhino Horn Trade
Privately owned rhino horn can now be
sold in South Africa, subject to certain
conditions. Of the estimated 20 000
rhino in South Africa, about 40% are pri-
vately held, and owners wishing to sell
their horn stocks can now do so legally,
subject to standard government and pro-
vincial permitting requirements.
This follows a ruling by the SA Consti-
tutional Court in April this year, lifting the
national moratorium imposed in 2009.
The ruling has been welcomed by the Pri-
vate Rhino Owners Association (PROA)
which feels that the moratorium has con-
tributed directly to the poaching
onslaught in recent years by turning an
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 67
Gallery
Guineafowl and Worms?
I am often asked if guineafowl have worms. It has always
been a difficult question to answer, as I have shot and
cleaned many guineafowl, and other gamebirds, during the
last 34 years, and never seen any worms in their meat. Of
course, all animals have intestinal worms and, in fact, even
worms have their own species-specific parasites, namely
other worms! Humans are also hosts to a variety of para-
sites, with many calling our intestines home.
When cleaning guineafowl during the 2015 season, I
noticed that several birds felt lighter and their breasts were
a lot thinner than the other birds. Usually, I skin them and
remove the breasts and legs without cutting open the
abdominal cavity. This time, as I was in a hurry, I decided
to remove the skin and then gut them, preserving the car-
cass for processing at a later date. Surprisingly, all the
skinny birds had worms within the abdominal cavity. I took
some photos, and sent them to a friend who is an expert in
these matters. Dr Volker Schwan, a senior lecturer in hel-
minthology and ectoparasitology at the University of Pre-
torias Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases, had this
to say:
The good news is that there is nothing to be concerned
about. The images clearly show specimens of adult tape-
worms which usually reside in the small intestine of animals
acting as definitive hosts. As seen in the images, they were
found in the abdominal or peritoneal cavity, most probably
as a result of migrating out from gut injured by a pellet,
bullet or slaughtering.
Tapeworms, with very few exceptions, have an indirect
life cycle and birds mostly become infected by ingesting
invertebrates (for example, insects, snails and slugs) which
act as intermediate hosts. This is not an unusual finding
and I can assure
you that there is
no threat to
humans!
So, yes, guin-
eafowl can have
worms, and that
does not alter
the fact that
fowls are very
tasty when
braai-ed, fried,
stewed or pot-
jied! Leslie
van der Merwe
68 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017
existing legal market into an illegal one, which has driven up
prices and led to increased poaching.
While poaching will not cease overnight, PROA hopes that
the domestic sales of horn from legal, ethical and humane
sources will relieve some of the frontline pressure on rhino. For
now, the international ban on rhino trade remains in place, but
PROA says the court decision could be the first step towards
international legalisation, as this is the only way for legal trade
to be truly effective.
The association hopes the sale of horn in SA, from both
private and national stocks, will bring in much-needed funds for
keeping rhinos safe through various anti-poaching and security
measures, as well as encouraging private owners to invest in
community-based natural resource management projects as
these will now be sustainable.
However, opponents to legalisation argue that the move will
have negative consequences. Morgan Griffiths, of the Wildlife
and Environment Society of South Africa, was quoted on the
National Geographic news website saying that, If these regs
are promulgated, we will see a significant rise in poaching, as
poachers use the significant loopholes to cater to the increased
demand for horn in the Far East. Morgan Haselau
Protected Areas Missing
75% of Their Elephants
A new study at the University of Pretoria (UP) estimates that
protected areas in Africa are missing 75% of their elephants
some 730 000 individuals.
The study undertaken by UPs Conservation Ecology
Research Unit (CERU) aimed to estimate the number of ele-
phants there should be in 73 protected areas spanning 21 Afri-
can countries. Based on recent counts, these areas are missing
three-quarters of their elephant populations. A third of protected
areas have less than 5% of the elephants that they should.
The study used remote sensing of the most important
resources for elephants (vegetation and water), poaching data,
and the largest population database for any mammal species,
to model the density at which individual populations should
stabilise.
The studys lead author, Ashley Robson, says, In the past,
weve had relatively good estimates of how many elephants
there are, and how many are poached. But now, weve deter-
mined how many elephants there should be in the first place.
While the magnitude of loss due to poaching is devastating
730 000 elephants are missing across the 73 protected areas
assessed I dont see our work as more doom and gloom. On the
contrary, we provide ecologically meaningful goals for elephant
conservationists to work toward. Its a positive step for elephants.
Rudi van Aarde, supervisor of the project and chair of CERU,
says elephants thrive in a huge variety of conditions, from
Continued on page 70

How to compete
in sport shooting
The South African National School Shooters Union
(SANSSU) has been built on the foundations of the old high
schools cadet system. The union has shooters in 11 regions
around the country, representing all nine provinces, and its
1 200 members make it one of the biggest sport shooting
bodies in South Africa.
Initially .22 rifles were used, but as the schooling envi-
ronment has changed so air rifles have been introduced and
are today used along with air pistols.
The shooting disciplines are developmental, requiring
participants to master different positions which make it is
easy to progress into any of the senior sport shooting
structures, with their building blocks in place. It is a sport
that takes discipline, patience and dedication of course,
safety is key. The air rifle discipline is called 3P, or three-po-
Youth
YOUTH
sitional shooting, requiring shooters to master each posi-
tion, namely standing, prone and kneeling. Pistol shooters
progress from sitting with full pistol support, to freehand
shooting while standing.
Each of the member provinces has its own competition
structure, but generally there are between four and seven
school competitions per year. Shooters are placed in age
groups from under 10 to under 20 (the youngest at the last
national event was just eight years old) and can choose to
shoot in the rifle sporter, springer or precision classes, or to
use an air pistol.
Provincial competitions generally consist of 1 000 points
for rifle shots and 400 for pistol shots, while national com-
petitions consist of 1 600 points for rifle shots and 800 for
pistol shots.
At a national level, there are three opportunities for
shooters to compete:
Early in the year, shooters can take part in a postal
league, shooting at their home facilities in competition con-
ditions. Results are then measured against shooters in dif-
ferent parts of the country, and sometimes internationally,
to determine winners.
As in any sport code, there is a national event, held annu-
ally in October, where provincially selected teams compete.
The third event is actually trials, normally held around
March, and used to select a team to represent SANSSU
internationally. This is where the top shooters battle it out
for a place in the national team. This year, selected shooters
will compete in the United States in July.
If you want to become a sport shooter, you will need
some basic equipment. For rifle events, you will require a
rifle, pellets, prone mat, kneeling roll and a scope. For pistol
shooting, a pistol and pellets are needed. For the younger
pistol shooters starting in a supported position, a support
structure is also required. You may choose to add gloves,
visors, arm slings and rifle stands to your pack. Normally
you will need to buy these items, but some schools hire
them out to competitors.
To find out more about SANSSU, go www.sanssu.co.za,
where there are provincial contact details. Elzaan Fourie
Magnum would like to encourage sport shooting
among youngsters. Send your stories, pictures and
local competition results to mail@manmagnum.co.za,
or call 031-572-6551.
June 2017 | ManMAGNUM | 69
Gallery

deserts to lush forests, so elephant densities vary according to

local resources.
There is no single ideal elephant density. Ecologists have
PEOPLE
known this for a long time, but its never been quantified until
now. Improved remote sensing, decades of count data, and a
huge effort from my research team have enabled us to estimate Meet Our Contributors:
benchmarks for elephant populations. The current study is the Herman de Wet
culmination of a decades work.
The historical trade in ivory and the renewed poaching Our contributor of
onslaught have influenced elephants across the continent, and the month is
masked the relationship between population size and environ- Herman de Wet,
mental conditions, Van Aarde says. from Durban. He
But weve accounted for the impact of poaching in our models was born in Est-
to predict ecological benchmarks the size populations would court in KwaZu-
reach if environmental factors rather than human influence con- lu-Natal and his
trolled population growth. This has been a hotly debated question, favourite hunting
especially here in southern Africa. grounds are in
According to Robson, Everyone with an interest in conserva- Pongola.
tion protected area managers, policy-makers, international His calibre of
funders, and the public should consider this study. Weve made choice is the reputable 8x57 which was the German military
it possible to target resources to the protected areas most in need. cartridge during both World Wars, and is an outstanding
Of course, this isnt just for the sake of elephants. Elephants hunting cartridge in its own right. His favourite animal to
play a major role in shaping the savannas that in Africa cover as hunt is bushbuck. Away from hunting, he enjoys deep-sea
much land as continental United States and Europe combined. fishing and golf.
Losing elephants is detrimental to our savannas and the species
that rely on them. More About Our Subscribers:
While the conservation targets are a positive step, our study
is a wake-up call. About 70% of the current distributional range of
Tony Forsyth
African elephants falls beyond protected areas. That elephants
arent doing well, even where protected, means we need to take To n y l i v e s i n
action, Robson says. Morgan Haselau Botswana and
has been a Mag-
Westley Richards Appoints New MD num subscriber
since 1982. His
Following the death of Westley Richardss managing director preferred calibre
Simon Clode in December 2016, his right-hand man and former is .375H&H but
director of operations, Anthony Trigger Alborough-Tregear, has the .30-06 and
been appointed as the new MD of the iconic British gun and rifle .338 SABI fol-
making firm in Birmingham. low closely
Anthony Alborough-Tregear has been an integral part of the behind.
business and is the perfect person to build on Clodes legacy and For danger-
maintain the high standards that he set. ous game, he
I am greatly honoured to have been appointed as the new MD uses a .450'' Express built on a Brno ZKK 602 action. His
of Westley Richards, says Alborough-Tregear. Obviously, the favourite hunting grounds are in the Tuli Block on Botswanas
position comes with enormous responsibility and pressure to eastern border with Zimbabwe and South Africa, where on
maintain and uphold the reputation and standards that have been his last trip he hunted blue wildebeest.
set over the past two centuries. However, I have every confidence
that the future of this great company is a bright one. Knife Winners
We have some tremendously exciting plans in the pipeline,
and I am certain that with such a great team, we will continue to Arnold Stoch, from the Western Cape, and Bobo Molapo,
break new ground, exceed expectations and uphold the Westley from Gauteng, are this months winners, each getting an
Richards legacy of producing the finest guns and rifles that money ultra-light Honey Badger knife.
can buy. Morgan Haselau

70 | ManMAGNUM | June 2017