Information
EQUIPMENT RECOMMENDATION
Firearms & Ammunition
Most hunting in South Africa will be on plains game species.We recommend you bring along your own rifle/s if possible, as you are more familiar with them. Firearms can be hired by prior arrangement for those hunters wishing to travel without firearms or can not bring along their own firearms.
Plains Game Hunting
During the arrangement of your Safari, Roots of Africa Hunting Safaris will advise you in terms of caliber we recommend for each of the plains game on your Wishlist. All-over well balanced calibers for plains game are the following;270,7x57, 30-06, 7 mm, 300 Win Mag, 300 Weatherby Mag. For smaller plains game species we prefer; 6.5mm and 243. Please select a good multi-purpose expanding bullet such as
Barnes X, Nosler Partition or Swift A-Frame. All of this bullets have proved to work very well in the past. We prefer a soft nose tough expanding bullets for large plains game species and solids for smaller plains game species.
Dangerous Game Hunting
Most Southern African countries by law require a minimum caliber of 375H&H or 4000 ft-lbf for all dangerous game hunting. Hunting Dangerous game in Africa is tough and always a challenge, and that’s why we recommend you bring along your own rifle with which you are familiar, especially for dangerous
game. We recommend at least 375H&H on Buffalo and Hippo. If you are planning to hunt Elephant or White Rhino you may want to consider a caliber larger than 375H&H, we recommend the following calibers and larger for Elephant and White Rhino; 416 Rigby, 450 Rigby and 505 Jefferey for the penetration and ft-lbf this calibers deliver. For Dangerous Game please select a good multi-purpose expanding bullet such as Barnes X, Nosler Partition or Swift AFrame.
All of this bullets are tough expanding bullets and have proved to work very well in the past. We recommend a 50/50 split for solids and soft nose bullets when hunting dangerous game cause you never know what’s gonna happen.
Tiny Ten and Small Game Hunting
There’s lots of calibers that can be used when hunting the Tiny Ten and small plains game. All calibers are suitable for killing small game, but some of the calibers can cause to much damage to your trophy which in some cases can be unrepairable. Choosing the right caliber when hunting small game trophies is very important. A 12 gauge shotgun can be used on some of our smaller game such as Caracal, Serval, Sivet Cat and Tiny Ten.
We suggest using AAA, SSG or No.2, which will ensure a clean kill of the animal and saving your trophy. When hunting the tiny antelope we recommend large and slow calibers such as 375 or .416 shooting a solid bullet. The hydrostatic shock of big calibers and the ft-lbf these calibers generate will guarantee you a clean kill. Smaller calibers such as 30-06 and .270 is also sufficient, but shooting a solid bullet is definitely a must to prevent trophy damage. The long range, fast calibers such as 7mm Remmington Magnum and 300 Win/Weatherby Magnum shooting at 3000ft/s and faster is ideal for antelope such as Klipspringer, Mountain Reedbuck and Vaal Rhebuck, as these antelope tend to roam in mountainous terrain.