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Guide to Dangerous Game

Large Dangerous Game

Buffalo
Buffalo Recoveries

Elephant, Buffalo, Hippo, Rhino

Use the most powerful cartridge you can shoot confidently, and comfortably handle. For elephant, only use high quality solid bullets for all shots.

For those who prefer homogenous or monolithic solids, we now offer our Hydrostatically Stabilised solid in most popular calibres. These deliver high shock and excellent deep straight line penetration.

Other Dangerous Game

For other heavy dangerous game, we recommend and have proven from much experience, the use of soft nose bullet for the first shot, followed by FMJ if needed. Use the heaviest bullets available for your chosen cartridges. Heavy bullets are much more reliable at moderate velocity than light bullets at high velocity.Good quality FMJ's are essential for second and subsequent shots on other heavy dangerous game. In the case of buffalo the bullet may have to penetrate rear end muscles (which will pull most soft nose up), the large grass packed stomach, to finally reach the vitals of the chest cavity.Similarly a rear raking shot will necessitate the bullet penetrating the stomach before reaching the vitals. No soft point made can be relied on to penetrate sufficiently for a successful rear end or raking shot. Also, head or spine shots on a charging animal are very risky. Only good quality solids can be relied on for this, such as Woodleigh's steel clad FMJ bullets.
Boars
Elephant

Large Thin Skinned Game

Buffalo
Buffalo Recoveries

Eland, Kudu, Moose, Elk, Bears

Use medium calibres (9.3, 375) upwards bullets from 300gr and heavier for best results. Where range can vary, we recommend our PP bullets eg. 9.3 x 64 320gr PP at 2400fps or 375 MAG 300gr PP at 2500fps.If you plan to use a combination smaller than 9.3mm then our 338 250gr PP and 300gr RN will give excellent results.


Dangerous Thin Skinned Game

Cats

Use good quality soft nose bullets, medium calibres (375) upwards. Large male lions have heavy muscles, again, don't get carried away with light bullet and high velocity. Use a standard calibre (375 300gr or 416 410gr) weight soft nose bullet, or heavier preferably RN type. Woodleigh RN give rapid, controlled expansion and are eminently suitable for this type of game.The PP's, although a little slower in expanding are also an excellent choice, especially if one bullet is chosen for all RN.

Lion

Plains Game

Kudu
Use from 6.5mm upward, heavy bullets for calibre eg. 270 150gr, 7mm 160gr or 175gr, 30 Cal 200gr or 220gr. Our 250gr RN in .323" gives the venerable 8 x 57JS an excellent performance level on medium sized game. It can be comfortably loaded to 2400fps in good Mauser 1898 and other more modern rifles. Choose the best quality bullets you can get and don't use the light weight bullets except for small animals like duiker, springbuck etc.