Africa's Toughest Game?

An old-fashioned safari can throw some pretty tough characters in front of your bead. Elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo.

But I can't afford an old-fashioned safari. Odds are you haven't booked one this year either. Most hunters visiting Africa outfit in the south, where plains game is plentiful. Daily rates remain modest there, and governments have not yet made killing a perquisite of the wealthy.

Southern hunts get short shrift from sportsmen with the coin for Africa's mightiest creatures. Still, a plains-game hunt can be as challenging as you make it. Some of these animals don't live on the plains at all. The klipspringer and mountain zebra, for example, prefer the steeps. Hunting them in the thorny rock-heaps they call home can be as demanding a chore as tracking elephants through endless mopane. Among creatures that do inhabit the plains are some very hardy and elusive antelopes. In fact, pound for pound, the ungulates that impress us with their grace and speed can be as tough as the biggest of the Big Five.

Though you'll want a powerful rifle to stop a charging buffalo, a well-placed medium-bore bullet catching him unaware takes the vinegar out of him quickly. Same is true of elephant, I'm told. For the most part, big animals withstand rifle fire better than small animals because they are big, not because they are tough. The bullet-energy/animal-weight ratio of a .458 Winchester Magnum to a bull elephant is less than that of a .22 Long Rifle to a whitetail buck. And many elephants have fallen to cartridges smaller than the four-five-eight. Some of Africa's toughest animals weigh less than a fat Pennsylvania black bear. Among them, and perhaps the most tenacious, is the oryx, or gemsbok.

"Hit him again!" The PH screeched. My partner cycled the bolt on his Sako and did just that. But the bull absorbed the 7mm Magnum bullet as if it were a burrowing bot. The big beast accelerated until a third bullet shattered its spine. On the ground, its vitals ripped apart, the gemsbok still would not give up. It lifted its head, then aimed its horns at us. Lions have been skewered by those 40-inch stilettos.

Multiple hits aren't the exception when you're hunting gemsbok. They're the rule. Not only are the animals durable, their lungs and heart lie forward of where most hunters expect to find them. Shooting just behind a whitetail's shoulder, or into the forward ribs of an elk, you'll shred both lungs. A shot to the same place in the slats of a gemsbok will almost surely give you tracks to follow.

Your bullet will land too far back, causing lethal damage but not immediately killing. The gemsbok's massive shoulders protect its vitals from arrows and lightweight bullets. The best strategy: Use a strong, relatively heavy bullet and hold for the shoulder a third of the way up from the brisket. Keep your vertical crosswire in line with the foreleg, not in the tuck behind it. Careful shot placement matters a great deal when you're after gemsbok.