By Tim Hunter Martin 

Buckmasters headquarters can be a pretty hot and hectic place during the summer months. Just like you, the staff here begins planning for and dreaming about fall adventures when the heat index creeps above the “too-hot-to-fish” mark. It was on such a day when I began cooking up an autumn hunt in Texas.

Photo: The author took this gorgeous blackbuck with Remington’s Model 673 topped with Nikon’s Monarch Gold Scope.

In the shade of Buckmasters’ front porch, GunHunter Editor Larry Teague and I were taking a much-needed break and doing a little “October dreaming.” I told him about my longtime desire to take a blackbuck antelope, which is a beautiful little critter, originally from India. I asked Larry if he had any new guns that needed field-testing for the upcoming year, especially a versatile caliber that would be effective in Texas where I might shoot anything from a 1-ton buffalo to a 30-pound coyote.

By Mike Handley 

-- When we swung into the graveled drive in front of the brick farmhouse, I assumed that Thomas, our guide, was stopping to get a key to a locked gate behind which was supposed to be boundless herds of impala and toothy warthogs. I was surprised when a barefoot youngster charged out of the house and climbed into the Toyota’s bed alongside me.

Photo: Rack editor Mike Handley is proud of his littlest trophy from last year’s South African safari. As small as it might seem, however, the exceptional steenbok’s horns qualified for both the SCI and Rowland Ward record books.

His name was Juri (pronounced Yuri). When we came to the first gate, the 11-year-old jumped down, ran to it, opened and held it until we’d driven past. After he closed it behind us and twisted the wire that served as the gate’s primitive latch, he hopped back into the truck. Before continuing, Thomas began conversing with Juri in Afrikaans.

By Mike Handley

-- Imagine that you’re standing motionless within the scratchy embrace of a fallen cottonwood limb. Thirty yards in front of you stands a mature white-tailed buck — an 8-pointer — fixated on the weird man-shape that he doesn’t recall ever being in that spot before you got there. About 160 yards beyond the whitetail, yet framed by his thick beams, a pronghorn buck is bedded up to his chin in tall brown grass, surrounded by eight girlfriends busy mowing the prairie. 

Photo: Fat 6 1/2-inch bases and 14 1/2-inch horns bewitched the author, who hunkered down for two hours in order to get a shot at this, his first pronghorn. The buck scores 77 inches, just 3 inches shy of the B&C awards minimum.

Sounds like a real Kodak moment, huh?

Well I don’t have to imagine it. I lived it ... on opening day of South Dakota’s 2001 antelope season. It was my first trip to that part of the country and my maiden hunt for pronghorns. Five hours into my hunt, I was hooked. I was also finished!

By Mike Handley

-- Sweat rivulets scrimshawed my dusty face as I labored to keep up with Christo Carstens. Jogging pell-mell through the savannahs of South Africa can quickly humble a desk potato who’s supported R.J. Reynolds for more than three decades.
The first day of a weeklong safari, after a morning of playing cat and mouse with a couple of ever-wary kudu bulls, we found ourselves knee deep in long grass, moving in and out of the shadows cast by stands of acacia. Christo was valiantly trying to get downwind of a herd of blue wildebeests intent upon remaining downwind from us.

Photo: The population of blue wildebeests is thriving in southern Africa. This old bull’s position in the herd hierarchy was filled almost immediately by one of the many younger males.