With all of the initial research done, the hunt booked and the deposit paid, it was soon time to turn my thoughts toward the gear that I would be taking with me to Africa.  The most critical piece of equipment that I would take would be my rifle.  Thinking about the guns that I own, only my deer rifle would even come close to handling some of the large antelope that I wanted to hunt.  But would even that be enough?

It was time to do some more research.  My deer gun is a Remington model 700 7mm magnum all weather rifle topped with a Swarovski 3-12.5 scope.  It's two thousand dollars worth of rifle, with the scope being three quarters of the value of the piece.  It's a gun that I am very happy with: a tack driver at 100 yards, and with the Sims recoil pad on it I can shoot it over and over and never be bothered by the kick.

I've been a fan of the 7mm Remington magnum for many years.  The ballistics are superior to the venerable .30-06, and it carries plenty of energy out to 300 yards and beyond.  I have not, however, found there to be as wide a variety of bullet weights and types readily available for this caliber.  I've been shooting 150 grain Remington Core-Lokts out of this rifle for a long time, but in the last couple of deer seasons have been thinking hard about moving on to a better bullet.  While being extremely accurate, I've had too many deer run further than they should after being hit in the vitals with one of these bullets.

I returned to the internet and began to read up on the success rate of the 7mm magnum in Africa.  I posted messages on a couple of forums asking about the use of the caliber, and time and time again I was told that the rifle would be sufficient for the animals that I was after.  The main thing, everyone said, was choosing the right bullet for the gun.  Get something in a Barnes Triple-Shock X-bullet or a Trophy Bonded Bearclaw.  Try to find a bullet in the 160 to 180 grain weight range, they told me. 

I started going around to the gun and hunting stores in my area, and at a small outfit in Gastonia, NC I found a couple of boxes of Federal Premium 160 grain Barnes TSX rounds.  I whistled at the price tag:  $45 per box.  The manager of the store confirmed that he would order more for me if needed, so I bought the two boxes that he had and headed down to the rifle range.

The first group that I shot was high and to the left of the ten ring, but the holes were tight.  Tighter than they had been with Core-Lokts.  I made a few adjustments to the scope and was soon shooting consistent kill shots in the center of the target.  My gun, it seemed, really liked these Federals.  With the bullets shooting so accurately, I decided to stop my search right there and give these TSX bullets a try throughout the coming deer season to see how they did on whitetails.  If they did well, this would be my Africa round.  If they performed poorly, I'd go back and try to find the Bearclaw bullets.

Even though my rifle was sighted in perfectly, I returned to the range twice before deer season opened, and each time my rifle and bullets performed flawlessly.  When I would run a patch through my gun, I was always surprised at how clean it would come out, even after shooting a half dozen rounds.  This was my first experience with high dollar bullets, and I was beginning to learn why it was worth it to spend the extra money on a premium round.  I scoured the area stores and bought all of the 7mm magnum TSX bullets around, even having a couple of stores order more for me. 

I talked my bullet choice over with my friend Arnold, who is a veteran of many North American hunting trips.  He's killed elk, Dall sheep, antelope, and a couple of hundred whitetails in his time.  He made a great point when he told me that he never understood why many hunters spent so much money on their rifles and scopes and yet consistently bought low end bullets.  Having done this myself for years, I immediately saw the truth in what he was saying and vowed to never again skimp on my choice of cartridge.

Once, just before deer season, my friend Pete and I took our wives with us down to the range for an afternoon of shooting.  We were talking about my rifle and how it might perform in Africa when Micki surprised me by saying "Do you need to get another rifle for your trip?"

I thought carefully.  "Well," I said, "I'd really prefer to take a .375 H&H, but I don't think that it would get much use outside of this trip.  I'm not sure I want to put the money into a gun that I might only use once."

"We can do it," she said.  "I don't mind."

"Well, the biggest part of it is that I don't want to have to buy another scope.  I'm a firm believer that your choice of optics are more important than your choice of firearm, and I wouldn't want to put anything less than another Swarovski on a new rifle.  And my deer rifle is so perfectly matched to the scope that's on it now that I don't want to take that scope off and put it on a new rifle, even if only for a short time."  That was a big sentence for me.  I'm not much of a talker.

"If you want to buy another one," she said again, "I'll go along with it."

While I greatly appreciated her heart here, I just couldn't do it.  It would be another $2,500 for a rifle and scope that would suit my needs, and with the 7mm magnum being adequate I couldn't bring myself to spend the extra money.  I thanked her, but had to decline the generous offer.

We finished checking our rifles, making sure they were right were we wanted them to be, then packed up and headed home.  Deer season was coming up in the next couple of months, and then it would be time to see how my rifle would perform in the field with the new bullets.