By Charlie Benton
The rapid tapping on the roof brought the Hilux to an abrupt, shale-clinking halt on the narrow mountain two-track. In this part of the world, PHs and trackers usually communicate in some derivative of a Bantu language—typically Zulu or Xhosa. However, Kamva, our 21-year-old tracker, speaks nearly fluent English, so everyone in the truck exchanged their smiles for puzzled furrows when Kamva called down through my open rear window, “There are three again.”
Twenty minutes before our present confusion, we were looking for bushbuck. Terry, Tony, our PH Dave, Kamva, and I were slow-crawling in low gear, surrounded by incredibly thick vegetation, when Dave put the truck in park and excitedly told me to get out and bring my rifle. Dave pointed across the dense ravine. Three nyala bulls cruised in a clearing at about 375 yards, slowly feeding between bushes and low-hanging tree branches. I didn’t need a PH to identify the shooter in this group; the old bull’s impressively outturned, ivory-tipped horns and stout body mass dwarfed his young protégés.
An errant blesbok tore through the back of the clearing and set the bulls on high alert, but they didn’t run off. I then made two key mistakes. One: I took an incredibly unstable seated/hovering shooting position with my feet under my butt and my knees raising and lowering my body, never quite settling into a firm platform. Two: After acknowledging my instability, I didn’t take the few seconds required to find a proper position.
Solus Lightweight Hunter on Safari
For this safari, I chose the Solus Lightweight Hunter from Aero Precision, chambered in 7mm PRC. Terry has the exact same rifle and I piggybacked off his experience, which showed this gun likes 160-grain Barnes VOR-TX bullets. Multiple trips to the range in the States plus one session in camp validated the Solus Lightweight Hunter’s consistency as a sub-MOA shooter. My personal setup with scope, rings, suppressor, bipod adapter, and sling weighs just over 11 pounds. The Proof Research carbon fiber-wrapped barrel certainly results in less heft than full steel, but even stripped of accessories, it still weighs in at the upper end of what most would deem “lightweight.”
However, let me add this: While the name might be slightly ambiguous, this rifle’s weight and design are extremely comfortable to carry in the field, on par with or more so than rifles weighing a pound or two less. Plus, more ounces means less jump when you squeeze off, allowing you to reacquire your sight picture and assess impact more quickly.
The Lightweight Hunter features a Solus action topped with a 20-MOA rail, dropped into a Grayboe Phoenix 2 stock. The action functioned properly throughout the hunt, and the bolt-throw proved consistently easy to manipulate. Aero’s factory single-stage trigger felt great, leaving me with zero desire for adjustments. The stock comes equipped with QD mounts, an adjustable comb, a substantial recoil pad (more on this shortly), and M-LOK/Arca compatibility. Because of the aforementioned standard features, it took considerably less time to set this rifle up than most others. I’ve never been one to seek out a cheek riser on my rifle stock, but I found this comb uncomplicated and quickly effective.
All of that to say, the equipment used on this particular hunt is top-notch and dialed in. The shooter, on the other hand, not so much. While the sprinting blesbok wasn’t enough to send the nyala running away, his actions caused the eldest bull to begin a slow walk towards the protection of the ravine. Dave whispered that I should take any shot I was comfortable taking, because if the old guy made it into the thick stuff, we’d likely never find him again. With an unnecessarily shaky platform and my target only ever so slightly quartering towards me, I pulled the trigger. The bull jumped, ran a couple of yards, and stumbled to the ground behind a patch of trees.
Not So Fast …
Following a minute or two of everyone confirming that we all saw him go down and not get back up, we began celebrating. After high-fives and handshakes, we piled back into the truck to go retrieve my nyala. While bouncing down the road, the ever-vigilant Kamva looked back through the trees towards the clearing and saw that the old bull rejoined his younger companions and rapped his knuckles on the roof.
We dumped out of the cab, and I jumped back on the sticks. Sighting in, I observed the nyala’s hunched posture and knew my first shot must have been more guts than vitals. Adrenaline and pride got the best of me again, and I rushed two shots without getting properly settled, missing both times. I somewhat corrected my position and fired another round, hitting him in the leg and sending him running into cover. This was quite a rodeo.
Dave and I left Terry, Tony, and Kamva at the higher vantage point from which I’d shot. He and I made our way around the mountain and down onto the hillside where the bull disappeared. As we crept in, we saw the two younger males milling around and knew the old man was likely bedded nearby. No sooner did we make that assessment than the bull exploded from a clump of bushes 20 yards in front of us. He disappeared over the lip of the ravine in an instant. I never had a shot.
Scouring the ground, we only found a couple specks of blood. We had no trail to follow. Checking with the rest of our lookout party, they had no bead on a direction of travel either. Dave and I slid into the deep draw and worked our way down, figuring that to be the most likely direction a wounded animal would take. After 100 yards or so, and for no reason discernible to me, Dave climbed back out of the gully on the same side we’d entered. I followed. Dave broke right and picked his way down, about 15 yards ahead of me. By the grace of God, I turned left and took three steps. Those three steps allowed me a view through a two-foot opening in the concealment of thick bush to see the stripes of the old bull’s coat running parallel with the ground, indicating that he was lying down, possibly dead, only 12 yards in front of me. Raising my rifle into position, I whispered sharply, calling Dave back.
Final Showdown
As Dave stepped to my side, the bull jumped up, thrashed around, and lowered his horns in what felt like perfect alignment to my body and—whether true or not—convinced me he was about to charge. I fired a round, and he dropped, then got back to his feet, then fell again. Dave told me to shoot him one more time, but be sure not to shoot his horns. I did as instructed. Seconds later, the grizzled old bull drew his last breath—but not before craning his neck all the way around to stare me right in the eye as his body gave up the ghost.
Somehow, in the chaos of chasing this nyala, I managed to rip the recoil pad on my rifle. The tear started at the bottom of the pad, where the pad meets the stock, and continued up to the halfway point. I was only three days into a two-week hunt. While dragging a warthog out to the truck early in week two, I looked down to see the entire bottom half of the recoil pad ripped off. I retraced my steps but never found it. Channeling some serious African ingenuity, I filled the void left by the missing portion of the pad with a pair of my socks, held in place by duct tape provided by my PH (he only had red duct tape).
I settled my nerves after that first hunt and made much better decisions on my positioning for the remainder of the trip. The Aero Precision Solus Lightweight Hunter continued to do its job—even with a modified recoil pad—and I easily went six-for-six on animals this safari. Aside from the tear in the recoil pad, there were no other issues to report despite daily hard use in unforgiving conditions. We are not gentle with our gear at Field Ethos. The rifle functioned exactly as expected each time I used it.
Cost: $2,850
Pros: Sub-MOA accuracy; Optic rail, M-LOK, and QD mounts make setup quick and straightforward; carries comfortably
Cons: This rifle cannot account for or correct poorly aimed shots.
Editor’s note: I didn’t mention the torn recoil pad as a con because, after checking with the folks at Aero Precision and several other industry veterans with 40+ years of experience, no one ever heard of a recoil pad ripping off before. Aero sent me a replacement pad immediately upon my return home, but I may just stick with the socks and duct tape…
