It may turn out, the guy likes the 375 H&H. Or his buddy thought that was the smallest caliber, instead of your buddies, who think a 270 is adequate.
This is not a matter of "my buddies"......Jack O'Connor, RIP, wasn't my friend
Like it or not, it is rather an entire school of thought that, for good or bad reason, it does exists...they think some uber caliber are not necessary..this group of people include folks that did their fair share of safari hunting way before the "Sunday Safari Hunters, 30.000 dollars a pop" craze raged on...
This people think that power is not a substitute for proficiency and shot placement..they think flinching and harsh recoil can seriously trump any advantages a large bore have...
However these "30 cal is sufficient for lions" folks, think large bores are fully warranted for thick skinned large animals such as Cape Buffalo, Rhino or Elephant...yes thousands of Elephant have fallen to the 7 X 57 Mauser in the hands of Walter "Karamojo" Bell and others as Roy Weatherby performed remarkable African hunting with his 257 Weatherby Magnum and more than one proboscis capitulated to a 30-06.. but that is beside the point...the above mentioned people, "regular" safari hunters think a very big wallop is necessary when trying to take a large pachiderm down.....simply enough, they do not think such raw power is necessary for the big cats....agree or not, talk to them
Again I have no special interest nor experience in this as I'm not planning any safari and, actually, I would like to buy an "elephant" gun to add to my gun collection...but I'm fascinated to see how people have such different wiew on the same topic.....my personal "fascination" for this is that I bought my first 30-06 rifle from a Lion hunter....
It is not an official statistic, of course, but seems to me that the proponents of the big artillery pieces are the younger folks where the "30 Cal is enough" tend to be guys that have been around the "African block" longer and many of them were born and raised there.
On a similar note, large Brown bears (and polar bears for that matter) are regular hunted in Siberia with the 7,62 X 54R....this caliber may seem puny and totally inadequate to the typical Alaskan bear hunter...