After what Mark pointed out, I tested
RewriteRule .* http://%{REMOTE_ADDR} [L,R=403]
And the 403 works as I hoped. The traffic is gone with no hit to the Apache error log.
After what Mark pointed out, I tested
RewriteRule .* http://%{REMOTE_ADDR} [L,R=403]
And the 403 works as I hoped. The traffic is gone with no hit to the Apache error log.