375h&h, one do it all African load..?

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liberty

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A question for you experienced African hunters.

I have a friend going to Africa on a plain games hunt and possibly Cape Buffalo if the opportunity presents itself.

Question is, is there one bullet that is up to both tasks, that's is plains game and Buffalo, without compromise?

He would prefer bringing one load and avoid the complications of two, mainly different points of impact, having the appropriate cartridge at the moment etc,,

He has a Win.m70 and does reload his own. Recommendations appreciated,

Thanks in advance.
 
Certainly, any quality 300 gr expanding bullet will do, over a jigger full of R15. You can expect two and a half feet of penetration on your buffalo, and clean kills on planes game without the bloodshot meat you'd expect com a high velocity small bore. The old adage about being able to eat right up to the bullet hole is not to far from reality.
 
I will say up front that I have zero experience hunting African game... but I do have some experience loading and shooting .375 H&H... the 300 grain Partition is an excellent choice for a "one bullet - do all" load... and RL-15 or H4350 will do very well... an experienced African game hunting friend offered a load of 80.0 grains under a 300 grain bullet as an excellent load... it has proven to be accurate but I have not run it through any game as yet... can't imagine that it won't be excellent.
 
I stopped using the 300gr Partition when 2 of them got stuck in the spine of a big bear. They were very close finishing shots, they expanded down to the rear section, but I felt they should have gone a bit deeper....Killed lots of stuff with them, but Right or Wrong I stopped expecting real bone smashing performance from them.

If I was going on your trip tomorrow, I'd take 270 or 300gr TSX or similar quality bullet. I guess even a partition would work, but not for me. :)
 
One .375 bullet for do it all (except for solid work) African hunting is a tall order and a bit of compromise is necessary.Best compromise for everything isn't the same as being best for every individual scenario. The TSX is actually one of the better choices. I've shot from giraffe down to steinbuck with them, and it works about as well on one extreme as the other. In between there are things that kill a little faster, but there is no doubt that they work for those too. There is no need for the 300 grain, the 270 has all sorts of penetration and as near as I can tell kills faster than the 300. One of my pet peeves with TSXs is there isn't as much visual and audable signs of a hit. If I have another PH, guide or hunting partner tell me that I missed another animal that was fatally hit I'm going to snap. When the "professionals" can't see hits, you really have to wonder what chance the shooter has self spotting. Taking out some major bone goes a long ways to rectifying that.

All of which brings me to my favorite, the 270 grain A-Frame. I've killed a pile of animals with those specific bullets, including 9 buffalo. You won't have to worry about animals not looking hit, and the folks back home will likely hear it hit. The deer and elk sized plains game get thumped pretty good; but it might be a little rough of the jack rabbit sized stuff. Still better than the little guns though.

CEB Raptors are worth a look too. Expensive little buggers though.
 
I was going to say a 300gr A-Frame. But I tend toward the heavier bullet weights for a given caliber. If it was PG only then I would drop down to a 270gr A-Frame.
 
I think you'd have a hard time faulting the A-Frame as per BUM's suggestion, Dogleg regards them highly and he's hot more things with them than anyone I know. Myself, 300gr TSX over H4895, very consistent in heat or cold, almost like a solid that expands, kills everything I hit with it. By no means the most impressive kills on the small and mid sized game, even large, but they sure work on Buffalo and heavy stuff.
 
In reality, with buffalo on the table and only one load, it is buffalo you will be loading for, and accepting the results on other game... Best bet is to ask the experienced buffalo shooters for their best load on buffalo... go with that. Dogleg's experience can't be denied... he says "A-Frame", there ya go...
 
10years ago or so I won LEH for grizzly in BC, so I removed 300 win mag barrel from my Ruger 77 rifle and bought .375 blank chambering it in popular 375/338WM.
I did extensive 270gr Hornady IL bullet trial and found that it will allways bust 6-7 one galon milk containers full of water with couple of 1/2" plywood boards between them and still have 65-75% of it's weight left. I would use it for cape buffalo if I had to.
Sure, Swift A-frame are much better bullets in case if less than ideal shot must be taken.
I never found the proper size grizzly bear but busted two moose with the rifle over the years.
Recently I sold the rifle b/c at 62yo its to much of a kicker now. My HD rifle now is 35 Whelen
All my 12ga shotguns are gone as well....
 
Gatehouse said:
Saeed has done pretty good with .375 mono metal bullets on hundreds (thousands?) of African animals.
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Of that, I have no doubt.

And this is only my (untested African) opinion, and based on NA hunting experience only... but if only one bullet/load is to be used on all game, at all distances, from one .375, I would personally look for a stout, bonded, lead core bullet. That is what I would have the most confidence in, given the parameters... which are not, at all, unusual.
 
hoytcanon said:
Of that, I have no doubt.

And this is only my (untested African) opinion, and based on NA hunting experience only... but if only one bullet/load is to be used on all game, at all distances, from one .375, I would personally look for a stout, bonded, lead core bullet. That is what I would have the most confidence in, given the parameters... which are not, at all, unusual.
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One that may be of interest to you then is what I've picked up from Matrix to use in my 375 H&H and 375 CT. It's a 300gr FBRN Bonded. I haven't used them on game yet but those on site like Why not? and c-fbmi may have that experience.
 
Johnn Peterson said:
One that may be of interest to you then is what I've picked up from Matrix to use in my 375 H&H and 375 CT. It's a 300gr FBRN Bonded. I haven't used them on game yet but those on site like Why not? and c-fbmi may have that experience.
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When I asked Marshal about using his larger bonded bullets on buffalo he advised against it. I'm sure he has/had his reasons.
 
Johnn Peterson said:
One that may be of interest to you then is what I've picked up from Matrix to use in my 375 H&H and 375 CT. It's a 300gr FBRN Bonded. I haven't used them on game yet but those on site like Why not? and c-fbmi may have that experience.
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I have not tried Marshall's bullets yet, but am curious as a result of reports by the members you mentioned. I have used Partitions on thin skinned large NA game with excellent results as well as A-Frames... the A-Frame is clearly a tougher bullet than the Part, but is likely not particularly necessary on NA game... the A-Frame with it's bonded frontal section would be a better choice on African game... but even there I would trust the 300 Partition to do the job. Maybe I am old school, but I just have accumulated a lot of trust in jacketed lead to get the job done cleanly... my relatively few experiences with mono-metals on game yielded less than spectacular results... one WT doe cull comes to mind, in particular... on this particular question, I will defer to the experience of many of the above posters.
 
Thick skinned is a real game changer. You gear up with the toughest softs you can find for animals that some still argue are solid appropriate then pop something the size of big whitetail or a starving elk with it and wonder why it ran. Its better than going the other way and using a deer bullet on something about as solid as a black painted rock or can look in a second story window, but either way there is a compromise made. Just as using the .375 for everything is a compromise in the first place. It just happens to be one of the best compromises ever made, all considered.
 
Dogleg said:
When I asked Marshal about using his larger bonded bullets on buffalo he advised against it. I'm sure he has/had his reasons.
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At best, I'd be using them on NA game. My Daughter and Son In Law have been to Africa but unless ;)there's a definite improvement in my weekly efforts in Lotto 649, that experience is out for me.
 
Johnn Peterson said:
... but unless ;)there's a definite improvement in my weekly efforts in Lotto 649, that experience is out for me.
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Not if you converted some hardware to life experience...

At the very least, it would be a great motivation to begin the downsizing...

I will put down my pitchfork and let the little fella with the halo on your other shoulder speak...
 
hoytcanon said:
Not if you converted some hardware to life experience...

At the very least, it would be a great motivation to begin the downsizing...

I will put down my pitchfork and let the little fella with the halo on your other shoulder speak...
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Therein lies the the problem.:) I don't know that I'm ready for that big 'D' word. To start with, my focus is and has been decent hunting quality long guns and decent quality handguns. While the field application for some of what I have 'may' be somewhat unlikely, I still enjoy the shooting of them, even just punching paper. Also, the work on loads and reloading for 'them' is part on the enjoyment for me.
With Africa as a possibility, I'd go for plains game. I don't knock it but the likes of Elephant, Rhino, Hippo or the big cats isn't something of interest to me. As I recall,;) my Daughter has me classified as a 'deep freeze hunter'.
Even here in NA, Bear isn't something on my list. Deer, Moose and this year, Antelope as 'table fare' my wife enjoys but I don't think, rather I know she wouldn't be willing to go for Bear. I can live with that.
 
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