Thread: South Africa near Botswana border with Dave Freeburn Safaris

Just got back from the trip of a lifetime after I won 5 days free hunting from Dave on Facebook. Saw wild elephant, cape buff, black rhino, hyena and giraffe.
Pretty much the whole gamut of plains game too. It is high fence hunting but at 50-60,000 acres it didn’t feel like it as you can drive in one direction for hours!
www.davefreeburn.com
I’ll be writing about the trip in one of the mags but here are some pics.

Fantastic accomodation and food is cooked fresh every night. Got to eat a bunch of the game we shot. My favourite was steenbok eye fillets.

Nice !

Warthog is some of the tastiest meat you will ever eat.

For my 40th we drove to Unions End - the part of the Kgalagadi park where South Africa, Botswana and Namibia meet.

The Sako Bavarian .270 (the one I did the stock work to) from Mr Songhurst shot really well and looked great in the African sun.

Dave’s 500 Nitro Express Verney Carron Double. Beautifully put together and a real step up from the usual Krieghoff and Merkel doubles. Dave regularly carried it depending where we were as the Buff and Black Rhino were a real threat.

love the look on his face...it like WTF is that crazy Kiwi doing with my rifle now!!!!
go the mighty .270,just as matter of interest what loads did you feed her with???

that 500NE looks stunning. but quite quite small & delicate, bit like a sxs 20 gauge. Bet it does not kick like one though, eh.

Ahhhhh brings back memories great part of the world and most enjoyable hunting , also have to agree with you steenbok great eating in fact all the game was good , made biltong from Kudu just hung it in the carport on wire bloody amazing how it dosnt go rotten air to dry fuckin tasty though. Great prize you won there ,thanks for the post

What a great trip,thanks for the photos.That Nitro 500 looks a buitifull looking canon.

Sounds as if it was an awesome trip. Will look forward to the story in the magazine.

@FRST looks like a great trip just gotten back from SA as well.
Where about was that? The Kalahari end or up the Limpo end?

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

love the look on his face...it like WTF is that crazy Kiwi doing with my rifle now!!!!
go the mighty .270,just as matter of interest what loads did you feed her with???

Just took some factory Fiocchi 130gr soft point. Was very accurate and I ran out of time/motivation to get better pills loaded as I started a new job two weeks before I left. They performed pretty good on the 4 animals I took, with one shot kills on all. All of them ran 80-100 yards before expiring but that can be pretty typical. Wildebeest, impala, warthog and an ailing baboon... the warthog and baboon were shoulder shots and the other two were heart shot. I clean missed a trotting warthog but that was all my fault!

My dad used a Sako Finnlite 270 with Norma Oryx 150gr and had one shot kills as well with 2x Zebra, Warthog and Impala. Shot placement was made pretty easy as the ranges were 25m to 150m max and the sticks we shot off were a two point Danish design- almost as good as a benchrest at shoulder height. We also practiced before we left and got really dialed in.

Originally Posted by Sideshow

@FRST looks like a great trip just gotten back from SA as well.
Where about was that? The Kalahari end or up the Limpo end?

Limpopo end. Some very typical African scenery where we were, exactly what I envisioned/was hoping for.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

love the look on his face...it like WTF is that crazy Kiwi doing with my rifle now!!!!
go the mighty .270,just as matter of interest what loads did you feed her with???

Ha yeah looks like it, but that’s Dave with the double and my mate Ed in the background. Dave gave us all a DF Safaris shirt, and Ed wore his non-stop.