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How Much Ammo?
When determining how much ammo to bring on a hunting trip, plan for the unexpected.
By Craig Boddington
Dave Fulson and I just completed a two-country African hunt, ten days in Zambia followed by ten days in coastal Mozambique. Dave is my partner and co-producer of our African-based TV shows and DVDs. He brought the camera, I brought the rifles, and we switched off shooting and filming. The two rifles I brought were a pair of Ruger Number Ones, one in .300 H&H, the other in .450/.400 3-inch.
Hunting partner Dave Fulson on the range in Zambia. I usually bring enough ammo to check zero multiple times, but this time we had to start from scratch with a different scope.
It’s a good thing the safari is over. We have plenty of ammo left for the big gun, nineteen rounds. But we’re down to just four cartridges for the .300 H&H, and that’s much too close for comfort. It has been a long time since I ran quite this low on any hunt, and it’s made me think about just how much ammo one should bring on a hunting trip.
The Weight Limit
The maximum is easily figured, because that’s the airline limit: 5 kilograms, or 11 pounds. Usually I don’t come anywhere close to that, and I don’t want to if I can avoid it. I hate paying overweight baggage charges. With allowances shrinking and overweight charges increasing, even one box of unnecessary ammo can make a difference. On the other hand, you sure don’t want to run out!
The ammo weight limit for the traveling hunter is the universal airline baggage limit of 5 kilograms, or 11 pounds. This is plenty for any big-game hunt anywhere in the world.
The solution is quite easy on most hunts where you expect to take just one or possibly two or three species of game. Figure worst case two or three cartridges per animal, a few more to check zero when you arrive, and still a few more to recheck zero if the rifle gets dropped or, horrors, you miss a shot and need to know if it was you or the rifle. One box of twenty rounds should be plenty. I have consistently resisted this temptation, and I suggest you do the same. Bring two boxes, forty rounds, and there’s almost no way you’ll have a problem. If you bring a spare rifle, the same forty rounds is comfortably more than plenty.
It gets a bit more complex on hunts that might involve a larger selection of game—especially if the game is of such disparate size that two rifles with unique capabilities are required. In Africa a safari bag might include fifteen or twenty animals, and might also include 10-pound dik diks on up to heavyweights like buffalo, elephant, and hippo. Africa is the most obvious example, but not the only one. How about the South Pacific, where you might wish to combine buffalo and banteng in Australia with several species in New Zealand? Or Argentina, where water buffalo are readily combined with blackbuck, red stag, and more? How much is enough, without breaking the bank on the 5-kilogram rule?
Actually, it’s pretty hard to break that 5-kilo limit. Just out of curiosity, I weighed several selections of ammo for my recent Safari Rifles II book. Let’s take a three-rifle battery comprised of a .300 Weatherby Magnum, a .375 H&H, and a .450 3¼-inch Nitro Express. Sixty rounds of .300 Weatherby, forty rounds of .375 H&H, and twenty rounds of .450 weighs 11.5 pounds, 8 ounces too much. Substitute a .300 Winchester Magnum or .30-06 for the .300 Weatherby, and the numbers are fine. Take away five rounds of .300 Weatherby and five rounds of .375 H&H, and you’re just fine. Either way, it is almost impossible to run out of ammo. Or is it? How did it come to pass that Dave and I were almost out?
Too Much or Not Enough
On most safaris the heavy rifle is the one that’s going to be used the least—and will probably be shot the least on the range. Even if multiple buffalo are on the menu, twenty rounds should be plenty, thirty very comfortable—with an even mix of solids and softs. On this safari I brought sixty rounds for the .300 H&H and thirty rounds for the .450/.400. On the surface, this was too many for the heavy and rifle and not enough for the light. We’ll come back to the light rifle.
In defense of my decision on the heavy, we intended to hunt buffalo in Zambia, but we got wrapped up with sitatunga and never got around to it. I also intended to use the bigger gun with solids for some of the small antelope, but this didn’t happen. So the only field use the .450/.400 saw was one buffalo in Mozambique, two shots; the other nine rounds were used either checking zero or by PHs who wanted to see how the rifle shot. We had plenty of ammo, and that beats the heck out of not having enough.
We had sixty rounds for the .300. Between us, we took fifteen animals with that rifle. There were a couple of misses and a couple of animals that required additional shots, but most animals were taken cleanly with a single bullet. In other words, we were well within my planning factor of “two or three cartridges per animal to be hunted.”
Nightmare Scenario
So what happened? Well, we had the nightmare scenario of a scope blowing up completely at the very start of the hunt. On the range at home it was perfect. On the range in Zambia it was perfect. The first shot at an animal was six feet low, so back to the range we went. The scope was out so badly that it wouldn’t hold zero at all—but it took a few shots to figure this out. Sometimes I carry a spare scope, but usually I don’t. This time I didn’t, but our Zambian outfitter, Pete Fisher, had a spare. So we mounted a new scope, which of course required more shooting to zero. Before we took a single animal with the rifle, we had burned up more than a third of our ammo.
My main prize in Mozambique was this beautiful nyala, taken fairly late in the hunt. By this time I was down to ten cartridges, not a comfortable situation.
Last year, for that same Safari Rifles II book, I did a survey of professional hunters, as I did for Safari Rifles twenty years earlier. A new question I asked on this survey was how many cartridges hunters should bring. The low was fifteen, specified for the dangerous game rifle (adequate if just one buffalo or elephant is to be hunted). The high was a very generous one hundred. The most common recommendations, however, were a dead-heat split between “forty per rifle” and “sixty per rifle.”
Until today I probably would have voted for forty, and that remains plenty if your hunting goals are fairly limited. Now, with a safari finished and the .300 ammo almost finished, I’ll go with a minimum of sixty for the rifle that will see the most use. Come to think of it, if you can fit eighty into your five-kilogram limit without sacrificing ammo for other rifles, maybe that’s not a bad idea. For planning, consider three cartridges for every animal you might possibly hunt—then add twenty to cover plenty of ammo for checking and re-checking zero. Now that I think about it, excess baggage isn’t all that expensive.
