I hunted South Africa several years ago and had an absolute blast. I took a 300WM, ran it suppressed, and hammered plains game. A few thoughts:
1. There is a service that will handle the import details of your gun, I highly highly recommend using them. It gets you an agent at the air port who walks the gun through their import process. Had I not used him, my gun would'a been gone, someone moved it to a hallway and left it sitting there, he found it only because he was allowed to walk around in placed I could not.
2. Insurance, travel for sure, gun too. Make sure the travel has evacuation provisions.
3. Good bullets! If you take shitty soft-core walmart bullets, you are toast. If it is a bucket list hunt, spend the money on good bullets. I ran Barnes TTSX and TSX in my 300WM and did great. I went with a guy that took shitty wal mart bullets and he swapped to mine after having a few animals run away. He was Army though, couldn't shoot for shit.
4. Great glass, especially binos. Lots of people will say run 10X, I took 10X and a backup 6X and spent most of my time on the 6X, much wider field of view, and you need FOV there.
5. DO NOT go with a list and only shoot the list. My PH impressed upon me (and I didn't listen till too late)"you gotta take what the bush gives ya." Wise words. I should have shot a massive trophy eland and didn't and have regretted it. Hunt your wish list, but shoot what a good PH tells you is worth shooting.
6. Good PH - it is a make-or-break thing, for sure. The outfit I hunted with had a few, and the one I randomly got was amazing, the others sucked - and Army ended up taking my PH. The dick.
7. Take more ammo than you think you need, and gift it to someone there if you don't shoot it all.
8. There was something with listing my gun with the state department, and I got it appraised for insurance purposes, do both - whatever the hell the state department thing was.
9. Good scope, illuminated reticle, have dope chart with and be confident. Shots can be from improvised positions, be comfortable off sticks. Take carbon fiber tripod with a great head if you are not confident off unsteady support.
10. You write the check when you pull the trigger, so make every shot count. If you doubt it, let it walk. Losing animals sucks ass.
I hope that helps. And Leupold sucks balls, but have at it... I ran a Premier hunter and loved it, longest shot was about 450 on a beast of a blesbok. Shortest shot was about 75 on a klipspringer with 2 bitches (meaning a great animal), I missed on the first shot because I convinced myself he was further away than he was. Because I was shooting suppressed, he got confused by the noise, didn't know where to run, and I racked and sent, he is on the wall now, still probably confused where the shots came from. That was on only miss, and it went well in the end, which is amazing to me.
