Ho hum. Another day in Africa, a land where 99.999% of American hunters will never hunt.

Hey, Dave, when F&S writes those 'Streategies for Deer' articles, how come they're, every year, year after year, tips for getting a white-tailed deer in the middle of the midcontinental corn and wheat belt?

F&S should do a southwestern desert or basin and range oriented article now and again. All that baloney about tree stands and feed lots and woody brakes between fields of grain isn't worth a pile of jackrabbit raisins in Arizona.

I have friend who hunts deer with his .375. A 270gr bullet leaves a 4 inch exit hole. We don't care about "over kill". He shoots a .375, my brother uses a .338, and I am going to us a .458WM. The .458 is just to see what happens and to say I did.

My experience with the .375 H & H is very limited compared with some hunters, but I like very much what I have seen.

I shot a bison--two shots through the heart--with my .375 and the 300-grain Nosler Partition. Also shot about five animals in South Africa four years ago, the largest two being a blue wildebeast and a waterbuck. Both these animals are approximately the size of an elk. I used handloaded 270-grain Hornady Spire-Points and IMR-4064 powder. No complaints!

I have to tell you folks about the rifle. I blundered upon it at Cabela's Gun Library in Sidney, NE ten years ago on my way to Mexico for a quail hunt. The rifle was custom built by Jim Botsford in the 1980s, .375 H & H Magnum on a pre-war Model 70 Winchester Super Grade action, Bastogne walnut stock, hand checkering, Pete Grisel skeleton buttplate and grip caps, express sights, 1-3/4X - 5X Leupold Vari-X-II in Leupold detachable mounts. Barrel had been cut back to 22-1/2" from the original 25". Previous owner, a big rancher from Colorado, said his wife shot one mule deer with the rifle. (With the skeleton buttplate I imagine it hammered her pretty badly! I slip on a tie-on leather pad when hunting with the rifle or shooting it over a bench, and do not find the recoil to be uncomfortable.) I had the trigger worked on, also had the late Dave Gentry mill a new set of swivel studs, as the odd-ball 3/8" size on the rifle wouldn't fit any swivels that I could find.

In any case, the rifle is too pretty to drag around in an Alaskan rain forest after brown bear, and who knows if I will ever get to Africa again? But I intend to keep it and use it whenever is practical.

bill boyd,
I don't think Boddington meant what you read. He's a big fat bullet man. He loves 375 but .40 and bigger is better, regardless of speed.

Daniel, Go get 'em. No such thing as overkill I say!
PS, although I do like a few steaks for the effort.

So did you have the drain line mounted after all that?

Blue Ox:
Nope. He didn't have it mounted per se. His wife yelled at us for letting him do it. Hell we couldn't NOT let him! He did however add to the legend of the .375 H&H being a s**t disturber!

I use 286g woodleighs at 2350 fps in a 9.3x62mm, this will do for ANY plains game or soft skinned dangerous game out to 250y, who really needs more. If I was to run into a buffalo I would reach into my pocket for a solid and not hesitate to use it, but if I was after buffalo especially then I would rather have a .458 lott than the 375.....cheers

Being a sucker for nostalgia I had to have a .375HH. Found a Model 70 Safari at a gun show for a a great price and in nearly new condition. The previous owner said it kicked too much to use. I mounted a Leupold 1.5-6 scope on it. With either factory ammo or handloads it shoots 1.25" or less all day. And while it's definitely not a varmint round the recoil is very manageable. I'ts a lot of fun to shoot!

Drive your Kenworth to the drive-in if you want, as for me ,I'll drive my new car. Shoot the 375 at deer at 75yd., as for me I'll just stick with my .308 Win.

I don't have a .375 but I do have a great elk rifle. It is a White .45 cal. muzzleloader that shoots 460 grain projectiles very well. I killed four elk with it. One round each.

To Bernie Kuntz: There is no such thing as consistency in the enforcement of airline regs. It depends on the shift, the phase of the moon, and Derek Jeter's batting average. The regs says that ammo must be transported in either the factory container or in a container made for the transport of small arms ammunition, but half the TSA goons have not read the regs, and the other half doesn't care what they say.

Try this: Store your ammo in the fragile, crummy factory boxes, but put the boxes inside a Cabela's Ammo Travel Case (Item number IJ 215353)). It costs $25, locks, doesn't take up a lot of space, and doubles nicely as a pistol case. That impresses the hell of out them.

Coming back from Africa, my party checked its guns and ammo through with no problem, but with the hunters behind us in line, the SAA people insisted that the ammo be packed with the guns, and when US Customs saw that, they went ape. An airline jerk is an airline jerk, no matter where.

The reason they don't show southwestern hunts for whitetail is probably the same reason they don't have TV shows with guys in regular Carhardt pants and a hand me down woodland camo T-shirt or blaze sweathirt studying deer sign and finding scrapes and actually hunting and having to hike in to their ambush site, gasp, maybe even over a mile. People now only care about antler size and weight of the deer, hence why there are a lot of articles about Iowa and Missouri bucks and Saskatchewan. Not that real hunting doesn't take place there. It's just that most of the clowns on TV are in heated shooting houses or on private ranches over feed plots with trail cameras and the latest fashion show worthy camo that the deer doesn't give a dang about. I'm prouder of my 100 pound cowhorn spike that I shot at 40 yards with my 7mm-08 one morning after canoeing in to the middle of Big Gum Swamp in North Florida where I set up "downstream" of where I knew someones hound dogs were running the deer off the dog hunt area and into the thick stuff than if I had shot some 10 point monster steroid buck over a pile of corn with my fancy scent lock clothes and special scent blocker etc. I fed my family and felt like I actually hunted. We need to get away from the shooting gallery trend where fat a**es get driven out to stands on golf carts and told they are hunting and get back to what our grandfathers did.