Quote:
Originally Posted by 500grains
Capstick's tales were mostly fabricated. A 12 gauge with buckshot is HIGHLY DISFAVORED for lion medicine and is in fact illegal in all countries where lions are hunted. Legal rounds are .375 H&H rifle and up. Shotguns lack the velocity to deliver either shock or good penetration (same problem with handguns). Shotguns with pellets of any size face the problem that each pellet is relatively light so penetration is poor unless shot at point blank range where the pellets arrive as a solid blob. And then the disadvantage is that the projectile blob is delivered at 1000 less than rifles can offer.
Feline nervous systems tend to be incapacitated by shock of a bullet that hits them at 2400 fps or more.
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While it is true that Capstick DID embellish his tales with other professional hunter's stories — Stories he, himself, admitted he'd heard while working at the '
Duck Inn' in Mauhn, Botswana when he was new to Africa and waiting to get his first guide's license — at the same time it is important to realize which incidents he actually took part in, and which incidents he is merely relating for the sake of selling books and penning a good tale!
In Capstick's day 12 gauge shotguns were NOT illegal to use. Today, though, is another story. Because some of Capstick's adventures are documented with photographs I'm inclined to believe him when he says that, on more than one occasion, he followed wounded lions into thick brush with a 12 gauge shotgun and buckshot in his hands. He, also, relates stories about using this combination at very close range. (Mere feet!)
I've, also, watched national park rangers using shotguns in exactly the same way that Capstick says he did. When I knew him, Peter wasn't a liar; something of a loner, perhaps, but nobody thought of him as a liar. The man had books to sell; and he needed to make them entertaining — He did!
Sometimes he told other hunters stories; sometimes he told his own; and, yes, I'm sure that, on occasion, sometimes he embellished them, too; but to deliberately lie about using a shotgun at close range on lions? No, I do not think Peter would have done that. (Peer group pressure and all!) From the '
end of the hunt' pictures I've seen, I'm inclined to believe that if Capstick says he finished off lions with a 12 gauge shotgun at 3 or 4 feet of distance then, yes, that is what he did.
When the bloody and hard-fought Rhodesian war broke out, Peter voluntarily continued to live in his remote backcountry hut in order to help protect the local villagers he knew in the area. In my experience personal courage, and outrageous fairytales are seldom generated by the same man. Nuff said!