Tom Stienstra, Chronicle Outdoors Writer
Sunday, January 22, 2012

Il Ling New, America’s No. 1 female firearms instructor and hunting guide, was the top vote-getter in this year’s balloting for the California’s Outdoors Hall of Fame.

New was inducted at a ceremony Saturday at the Sacramento International Sportsmen’s Exposition, which ends a four-day run this weekend at Cal Expo.

The Circle of Chiefs also inducted fishing tackle pioneer Sep Hendrickson, hiker Scott Williamson and fly fisher and scientist Jim Adams.

Others considered by voters this year include snowboard Olympian Shaun White, bicycling guru Austin McInerny, Marin outdoor historian and hiker Barry Spitz and renowned trekker Leo Le Bon.

Anybody can nominate a candidate for the Hall of Fame. The award is based on a vote of past winners and leaders in the outdoor industry, media and government, free of any faction. All candidates must fill two requirements:

• The nominees have inspired thousands of Californians to take part in the great outdoors and/or conservation.
• The nominees must have taken part in a paramount scope of adventures.

For information, go to http://caloutdoorshalloffame.org

Il Ling New
Born in San Francisco and a Yale graduate with an MBA, she turned her back on a lucrative marketing career to teach people self-protection, how to handle firearms, and hunting. She is America’s No. 1 female firearms instructor and No. 1 female freelance guide. She has hunted across the hemisphere and to Africa twice, including for Cape buffalo, and trains hunters from across the hemisphere prior to world-class expeditions. She has hunted ducks in California since age 10. As an instructor, she has had a profound influence on people across America, and has taught Marines and police as well as housewives and hunters of all backgrounds. Her skills are world-renowned; with a handgun small enough to fit in her palm, she can put three shots in a pie plate in 5 seconds, has competed nationally for skeet titles, and is versed as an expert in all rifles. She has a stunning ability to improve others’ skills and safety. Named on more than 75 percent of ballots.

Read the rest if the article at SF Gate.

A great segment with Il Ling and Sheriff Jim Wilson from American Guardian TV.

They may not be perfect for every woman, but they’re a good place to start. These four handgun categories all have a place in a good personal-defense plan, and the specific models can be found chambered for reliable self-defense rounds.

Full-Size Semi-Auto Pistol

Smith & Wesson M&P: I like the M&Ps in both full-sized and compact models. They’re simple, ergonomic and come with three different, easily changeable backstraps to customize fit to your hand.

In the full-sized versions, they’re excellent for training, but a tad big for concealment. They offer excellent ammunition capacity, and with the built-in rail for attaching a dedicated light, make great house or car guns.

These are extremely “soft” shooting pistols, and felt recoil across all three chamberings I’ve tried (9 mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP) is insignificant.

Read the rest of the article at Shooting Illustrated.

The harsh reality is that even a sub-average criminal will try to remove his biggest obstacle first—and that will most likely be any man you’re with. That leaves you.

What about when you’re out with the girls, or the kids? Has anyone given much thought to what to do when a bad guy appears? Well, he has. That leaves you.

Right about now, you should be getting very serious about moving forward with that plan you’ve been hatching—the one in which you learn more about self-defense. Specifically, the one where you learn how to use (or get better with) that great equalizer—the firearm.

Read the rest of the article at Shooting Illustrated here.

In the blistering heat of a Mozambique swamp, a hunter stalks a wary herd of Cape buffalo–with a handgun.

The following was published originally in the May/June 2010 issue of Sports Afield.

I was snaking my way through the papyrus in my best belly-crawl when I suddenly remembered that cobras also favor the thick, reedy stalks for their hunting grounds. Fortunately, I was beyond caring.

Ruger's Super Redhawk in .454 Casull topped with a Burris 2-7 scope proved effective when the chips were down.

We were well into the twelfth hour of hunting on a blisteringly hot day northwest of the Marromeu Buffalo Reserve in central coastal Mozambique. It was a Cape buffalo hunt with a revolver, and I was fully outfitted with my trusty Ruger Super Redhawk in .454 Casull, loaded with 325-grain Barnes Busters.

It had taken four solid days to get where we were, and although this was not the longest time I’d spent hunting for buffalo, it was certainly the toughest. We were the last hunt of the season, so these animals were already wary and keen-eyed. It was the cusp of the rainy season, so vegetation was relatively low and dry, making us easier to see and hear. Last but not least, it was hot–between 100 and 115 degrees, with the raging humidity that accompanies the start of the rains. Zambeze Delta Safari PH Craigh Hamman and tracker Johny were used to it but the rest of our team-Ken Jorgensen, my hunting pal from Ruger and rifle backup, cameraman John MacGillivray, and me-all became dehydrated, or worse, during the first few days of the hunt.

The Forest
In Zambeze Delta Safari’s 1.5-million-acre concession known as Coutada 11, buffalo are hunted in either the thick suni forest (named for the small antelope that thrives there), or the vast floodplain. Because I wanted to get close (I figured 20 to 30 yards was my optimum range) we first tried the forest.

Full of hanging vines covered in thorns of all shapes and sizes, as well as deadfalls obstructing every step, the forest offered the best concealment. We managed to stalk to within 35 yards of a nice 40-inch bull and his little group, but he was young, so after a great stalk and a good look, we left him to grow up some. In our other attempts, though, the animals led us deep into denser and denser foliage, and, with the dead leaves carpeting the ground (a little like trying to stalk across a floor of Doritos), hunting became extremely difficult. These conditions allowed even the most oblivious of buffalo to keep us in check.The area is also home to an impressive array of plains game species. Its nyala are some of the best on the continent. The sable quota for the area we were hunting is larger than that of the entire nation of Zambia. Bushbuck, red and blue duiker, suni, oribi, and other game were plentiful.

After we’d tripped and crackled our way through the forest and bumped yet another herd of buffalo, PH Craigh Hamman made the wise suggestion to change locations. We headed off to a fly camp twenty miles away to hunt what he ominously called The Swamp.

Mozambique's Coutada 11 hunting area has very strong populations of buffalo and a variety of other plains game.

Into the Swamp
The Swamp is actually a vast floodplain, flat as a pancake, and covered with large groves of papyrus and sawgrass. I’d never seen papyrus before, and it’s impressive. A reed-like plant that grows to sixteen feet, it can be so dense that you literally can’t see more than one foot in front of you. They say that when buffalo get into the papyrus, the odds are really stacked against you.

Sawgrass was the other vegetation we contended with. Traversed in one direction, all is smooth and lovely–but go the other way and the serrated edges on the long, sweeping leaves cut like, well, a saw. Both of these plants grow in watery, marshy, swampy areas, but at this time of year, the end of the dry season, we had both quicksand-like mud (two of our party sank in to their knees, and someone from the group before us lost an entire boot), as well as dried, cracked mud that formed crevices large enough to grab a foot (we had three sprained or twisted ankles among us).

To negotiate all this, we used all-terrain vehicles called Argos. These are eight-wheeled, tracked little tanks meant purely for hauling things, human or otherwise. Comfort had obviously not been a design concern. At one point even Craigh said, through clattering teeth, ”Argos are better than walking–but just.” The bouncing was so severe that we all thought about getting off and walking alongside at one point or another; the jostling was so uncontrollable that I worried about maintaining my zero on my scope, and cradled the revolver in my arms the entire time. Despite their hardiness, one Argo got stuck in a hippo ditch (that’s why you always travel with two Argos out in the Swamp), and the other lost one of its tracks.

Tracked vehicles called Argos were used to cross the swampy, treacherous terrain.

Still, we eventually worked our way to almost ten miles from our fly camp. It’s not that there weren’t any animals; in fact, spotting buffalo in the vast and open Swamp was easy. We looked for birds, or simply dust. Great swirls of it in the distance marked herds of buffalo making their way across to munch or drink; the flocks of white cattle egrets did likewise. But it was just as easy for them to see us. Not only was the Swamp wide open, but the animals here congregated in much bigger numbers, which meant more sets of suspicious eyes. Add to that the papyrus and sawgrass they favored for concealment whenever spooked, and we had our stalking cut out for us.

We tried to get close to three separate herds as the day wore on. Each time the animals stayed in sight, but we could not close the distance effectively.

It was mid-afternoon when we tried one last time. We had spied a large herd just beginning to move for its afternoon feed, making its way from an open area through a couple of smallish, linked, reedy islands. Finally, the papyrus and sawgrass was on our side, and a few sparse thickets allowed us to stalk to within 100 yards of the strung-out herd. Slowly they grazed, relaxed and maybe even not all that hungry, but at least they were moving. Craigh and I both realized that this would be our last stalk of the day, and we were running out of days. We made the unspoken commitment to do whatever it took to get into position.

On Hands and Knees
We moved in, first bent at the waist and then on hands and knees, trying to be deliberate but knowing that time was against us. I kept my head down and focused on putting one hand and knee in front of the other, and we were able to crawl within fifty yards of the animals that had passed the clearing. But it was soon apparent that the herd was too big (in the hundreds), for us to get within my preferred thirty yards.

Craigh glanced at the rear guard still crossing the clearing, and thought there might be some stragglers that we could look over. We had to crawl deeper into the little papyrus and sawgrass mounds to have a chance of getting close enough to assess the animals. At one point, we slithered around a patch of long grass to within ten yards of a cow, and continued to slide by her to look at the group following her. I was tempted to peek up and look her in the eye, but I kept my head down.

We snaked our way to a spot where the vegetation was low enough, just about where the animals were crossing through the reedy patches. Craigh lifted his head slowly and peeked through the reeds. There was a nice mature bull at the edge of the group, only thirty yards away.

The only way to get close to buffalo in the flat, open floodplain is to stalk around the large groves of papyrus and sawgrass.

Craigh slowly drew himself up to a semi-crouch, and Johny, still in a crawl, slid the sticks to him. I went to my knees, thinking I might be able to shoot from there, but I had come to a standing crouch to see over the papyrus.

Strangely, the bull looked at once both closer and farther than I’d thought he was–probably an illusion resulting from a combination of heat exhaustion and anticipation. I drew the Super Redhawk from the chest holster I’d rigged into a cross-draw, and hoisted it onto Craigh’s sticks. Cocking the hammer as I came up, I planted the revolver while keeping my eye on my target–just as I do in practice–and found the bull there in the scope.

It took just a moment for Craigh and me to confirm we had the same bull in mind–and also to make sure I had a clear shot! The animals were moving around, seeking out the choicest green shoots. We realized that this “little” bunch contained more than fifty animals.

The bull was angled away from us, not the ideal broadside shot we’d hoped for, but a very doable quartering position. My first shot was into the crease as Craigh had instructed-behind the right front leg. It turned out to be a high heart hit but heart-shot animals sometimes don’t know they’re hit, and this is especially true of buffalo. This ruffian merely bucked that leg out, hesitated for a second, and trotted off with his pals.

Oddly, the herd didn’t bolt and stampede away, but Craigh had warned me of this too. He told me they often move off just a bit, then turn and face you again, as if demanding, “Who did that?” This bunch moved about twenty yards away, but then hung together, a little more alert, but largely unimpressed. Harrumph, I thought, as I tracked the bull and shot again.

Unfortunately, I was now shooting through sawgrass. Though I know better than to try busting through stuff I’ll confess that in the heat of following my bull and trying to get another shot into him, I didn’t notice the reeds now in my way. Shot number two was deflected, and though it also hit, it didn’t put him down.

Now the herd wasn’t quite sure what was going on, so they milled around more as they continued to put distance between us. I moved a few feet to the side, to get out of that darned sawgrass and get a clear shot. I was having serious trouble identifying my buffalo, but thank goodness for Craigh’s sharp eye! He was on him even as the entire herd seemed to swallow the bull up. The bull was seriously ill, not moving well, and I wanted to end this as quickly as I could. But he was constantly obscured by other buffalo.

Then suddenly, there he was, in the open, broadside. The other buffalo seemed to melt away; none behind, none in front. The reticle steadied, and I focused on it, and then on applying smooth, consistent pressure to my trigger.

At this shot, which hit in the center of the vitals, the buffalo bucked, stumbled, and keeled over, legs out. We later paced it at more than 100 yards. I was thankful that I had taken Craigh’s advice to use a scope for this hunt instead of iron sights, as I had originally planned.

Now we all advanced on the buffalo’s rear: Craigh and Ken with backup rifles in hand, and me with the revolver in a solid ready position, delivering insurance shots at Craigh’s direction. As we moved in, Craigh said, “If he charges, he’ll have to get up, turn around, and then come for us-and you’ll have to beat me to the draw!” I’m still not sure if he was kidding or not.

For a long moment, all of us stood there, shoulder to shoulder. I’m not sure what the others were thinking, but I wasn’t quite sure that it was done, and I wasn’t quite ready to let myself heave that sigh of relief and triumph. Finally, Craigh looked at me and smiled for the first time in four days, and so did Johny. (I later learned that neither had been entirely sure about the revolver-buffalo thing, and Johny in particular had decided that such a small gun could only result in a perilous follow-up with an unhappy ending.)

As intense as this hunt was for me, it was clear from the looks on the faces all around that every person had had his own personal adventure. As my friend SheriffJim Wilson says (he credits Finn Aagaard with this), hunting in Africa is a team effort. In the Swamp this day, we had won gold.”

Having successfully met the challenge of taking dangerous game with a handgun, the author was thrilled with her hard-won Cape buffalo.

For more information on hunting in this area, contact Zambeze Delta Safaris: www.gamehuntersafrica.com; gamehunters@sai.co.za

Sidebars:
Preparing for a Revolver Hunt
Gearing Up for Revolver Buffalo