The wind started blowing at gale-force speeds and winter will just not relinquished its hold on us that easily.

Four days until I leave on a lion hunt and this can only mean one thing – making sure my ammo is all loaded and perfect. Shooting a 470Nitro Express is not cheap but it is not as expensive as the bigger calibers.

This is my recipe: each shell has been resized and de-primed. I use a Remington die set with 2 dies – resizing/de-priming and a seating die. After they have been cut to size (if they need it) they spend 3days in the tumbler with a teaspoon of Lyman brass polish. They come out absolutely sparkling clean. If they need it, I will put them in the sonic clear before the tumbler.

The other reason I like the tumbler is I find the shells come out much smoother on the outside which assists in reloading my rifle as I do not have ejectors, so they slip out when I tilt the rifle.

This I do well prior to the night I put the powder and points in. I try to keep a production line up and going through out the year and always have my shells clean and primed. I clean the flash hole and prime them the day I take the shells out the tumbler.

After much experimenting and testing with Peregrine points, I am happy to say I have my 470NE grouping well at 25meters and this was the mixture.

Each shell receives 106grains of S365 powder made by Somchem here in RSA. I then place a 500grain Peregrine VGR-2 solid monolithic (copper) point into the shell to total cartridge length (COL) is 4inches exactly. The design of these bullets are amazing and I urge you to read African Dangerous Game Cartridges by Pierre Van Der Walt and visit http://www.peregrinebullets.com/ for more info and the reasons why I swear by them.

Now back to the lion hunt, I will be backing up with expandable bullets, which are the Peregrine VGR-3, they are ballistically matched to the VGR-2, my solid back up bullet. They have a plunger, which deploys the mushroom, and we have had amazing results with there on Buffalo and the heavy thick-skinned animals you can see them at: http://www.africahunting.com/threads/peregrine-vrg3-bushmaster-rsa-manufactured-bullet.23063/

I am now I need to Clean my rifle one final time, check my ammo is correct and I am ready to go.

The feeling of excitement is almost over whelming me.

PH, Jono Joseph