By Jim Dickson | Contributing Writer
Today with many people from America hunting Africa it is worth examining what cartridges and guns are appropriate.
For most of the antelope and non-dangerous plains game a military rifle cartridge which is cheap and plentiful has always been standard. These are the calibers that the professional hunters used to feed their safaris in days gone by. Whether it be a 7MM or 8MM Mauser, a .303 British, or a .30-06 they all get the job done efficiently. Cheaper ammunition means more affordable practice and you can never get enough practice. Additionally, full power military rifle cartridges were designed to have the most recoil that an average soldier could fire 100 rounds a day without flinching.
When you move up to the magnums ammo costs and recoil goes up and as a result accuracy in the field generally goes down for most people. Way down. It can cause you to lose the trophy of a lifetime and ruin the hunt of a lifetime. A .30-06 or an 8MM Mauser with the powerful European loading instead of the wimpy American version which is more like a 30-30, are the best choices here. The European loaded 8MM Mauser hits much harder but can sometimes be more expensive.
There are plenty of commercial bolt-action rifles at all price ranges. You can get a Model 70 Winchester at your local gun store or you can have one of the Scottish or British Best Quality gunmakers build you one to Best Quality standards. The important thing is to make sure that you have the Mauser controlled feeding where the cartridge comes up under the extractor and stays under the extractor’s control throughout the feeding process instead of merely snapping over the rim as the cartridge is chambered. Lack of controlled feeding can cause malfunctions and Africa is no place to have malfunctions.
Personally, I would recommend an unaltered military M1903A3 Springfield or a M1903A4 version if a scope was to be used for the .30-06 rifle. For an 8MM Mauser rifle I would want a military ‘98 Mauser and if I wanted a scope mounted that would be the only alteration I would make. My ideal rifle would be an unaltered WWI long barreled ‘98 Mauser with the post war rear sight like the 98K had. I find the longer barrel version better for precision off hand shooting.
Military rifles have a broader butt plate that spreads the recoil out so you don’t feel it and they are much more ruggedly built. The full length military stocks can take knocks in stride that would devastate a light sporter rifle. Under the hot African sun the wooden hand guard is a lot more comfortable to the touch than a sun heated bare barrel. The extra weight of all that wood and fittings is right over the barrel where you need it for steadiness. Military triggers are simple and rugged with much less likelihood of giving trouble than some fancy commercial triggers I have seen. Remember, there are no handy gunsmith shops in Africa when you are out in the bush on safari.
Some of the larger non dangerous African plains game can be very tough and this is where calibers like the .375 H&H Magnum show their worth. This is the proper place for this round and it shines here. It should not be used for dangerous game though because of its many failures to stop dangerous game over the years resulting in the death of the hunter. These numbers grew so high that in years past, many African counties banned it’s use on dangerous game. Back when the British ran Kenya it was even illegal to hunt the giant forest hog with the .375 H&H and that hog only weighs about 500 to 700 pounds.
There is a softer recoiling American alternative to the .375 H&H Magnum readily available. The classic .405 Winchester and the .45-70 Gov’t. These rounds have equivalent power on game and the heavy 500-grain loads for the .45-70 available from Steinel Ammunition Co. surpass the .375 H&H in killing power.
The 325-grain Black Hills Ammunition fluted monolithic solid Honeybadger .45-70 has shot completely through American bison with every shot. I would recommend an octagon 22 inch barrel steel frame Henry for this as it weighs about a pound more than the round barrel .45-70 rifles and that weight is all in the barrel where it makes this rifle far steadier and easier to hit with than the round barrel .45-70’s. The .45-70 never was used sufficiently in the old days of Africa to make a name for itself as it was a black powder American round. The smokeless .405 Winchester saw some use, however, thanks to the publicity Theodore Roosevelt gave it. It was also used by the American white hunter of the early 20th Century Charles Cottar. Unfortunately for Cottar it resulted in his death when he could not stop a charging rhino in time. His daughter said that if only he had been carrying the .470 he would not have been killed.
The possibility of suddenly being faced with attacking dangerous game led to the demand for an intermediate cartridge between the non-dangerous game calibers and the true dangerous game calibers which begin with the .450 Nitro Express. This void was filled by the .450-400 which had a comparatively mild recoil, killed game better than the previous calibers, and could take on dangerous game in a pinch. It fires a 400-grain bullet at 2,150 FPS. Proper weight for these guns is 10 pounds though many were made heavier so that they could still be held steady after running after game in the infernal African heat. I have seen them up to 14 pounds because of this.
This double rifle caliber was the legal minimum caliber for dangerous game in the colonial areas where the .375 was banned. It found favor with professional hunters who were recoil shy and was soon followed by the .404 Jeffery, which was a version designed for magazine rifles. Rigby upped the velocity and came out with their own magazine rifle version, the .416 Rigby. Later the .404 could be had in the original .450-400 equivalent loading and a high velocity loading like the .416.
The problems with using a minimum caliber resulted in many hunters finding it necessary to move up in power to a true dangerous game caliber. South African professional hunter Brian Marsh quit using a .450-400 and moved up to a .470 after finding the .450-400 inadequate for stopping a cape buffalo charge quick enough. Edison Marshall, a famous American big game hunter of the 1920’s and 1930’s that I used to know moved up from a .404 to a .470 after spending all day trailing a wounded gaur he had shot in then-French Indo-China with a .404. Paul Roberts, who owned Rigby in London at the time, commissioned the .450 Rigby cartridge to be made after an elephant he shot through the shoulder with a .416 Rigby almost made it across the boundary to a protected area where Paul would have faced serious legal troubles had the elephant died there.
Thus we come to the true dangerous game cartridges starting with the .450 Nitro Express which fires a 480-grain bullet at 2,150 FPS. There are a lot of calibers of about the same power in this class such as the .500-450 Nitro Express, .465 Holland & Holland, .470 Nitro Express, .475 Nitro Express, and .476 Nitro Express (aka .476 Westley Richards) as different gunmakers came out with their own versions. Many used 500-grain bullets. While they all hit about the same a lot of users say that the .465 has noticeably less recoil than the others. Guns for these calibers should weigh 11 or 12 pounds to absorb the recoil and permit a faster second shot. These are all double rifle cartridges.
It wasn’t until much later when the .458 Winchester Magnum came out that there was a bolt action version. Unfortunately the .458 Winchester has a checkered past. It’s problems began when it’s designers blew out the .375 magnum case to a straight walled case then made the mistake of shortening it so that it would go through a standard length bolt action. When they loaded a 500-grain solid or a 510- grain soft point the powder was compressed and sometimes clumped together giving erratic ignition. There are instances of this reducing velocity to the point that the bullet could not penetrate the elephant’s skull to reach the brain. Obviously this is a very serious matter when you are dealing with an irate pachyderm. The solution was to use the full .375 magnum length case which allows for a proper powder charge. This is known as the .458 Lott. Users of standard length bolt actions in .458 Magnum are advised to use 480-grain bullets which permit enough room for the powder charge without unduly compressing it.
Another problem that has surfaced in Africa is the .458 magnum sometimes failing to feed properly. This has caused some hunters to use the Steyr Mannlicher .458 magnum rifles whose rotary magazines don’t have this issue.
Next up in power we have te 570 grain bullet .500 Nitro Express. It has more stopping power and also more recoil so guns made for this caliber should weigh 12 to 14 pounds for fast second shots. The gun trade did provide bolt action equivalents, the .505 Gibbs and the .500 Jeffery.
It is a mistake to assume that these calibers are infallible with proper bullet placement. There are freak cases where an enraged cape buffalo has absorbed many .470 and .500 bullets before going down. There is also the case of the famous elephant hunter Charles Linsey Ross in 1938 near Mpika, South Africa. Charles put three perfectly placed brain shots in his 350th elephant with a .450 Nitro Express yet the great beast still managed to reach him and kill him before it died. They put the dead elephant’s skull on his grave and for years every passing hunter would probe the bullet holes with a reed and conclude that all three shots were perfectly placed. The army medics will tell you that unless a big blood vessel is broken or the medulla oblongata is hit the effect of a bullet going through the brain is not fatal and the effects are the same as a stroke. For many years after WWI there was a doorman in New York that had survived eight German machinegun bullets through his brain.
Weird things happen and that’s why the super heavyweights exist.
Enter the greatest big bore of them all, the mighty .577 three-inch Nitro Express. A round that has been known to hit an elephant and squirt it’s brains out it’s ears. A round that unfailingly stops cape buffalo charges when delivered to the vitals. While the old Kynoch rounds often deformed the new Woodleigh Solids loaded in Wolfgang Romey’s ammunition don’t and they have always shot entirely through the elephant no matter what the angle. There is always both an entrance hole and an exit hole. That is the performance you need when one of your trackers or bearers suddenly has an elephant bearing down on him at the worst possible angle for a shot from you. This is a brute at both ends firing a 750-grain slug and generating 100 foot pounds of recoil. Guns intended for a fast second shot should weigh 15 pounds or more for this cartridge. At 14 pounds the recoil is bearable. At 13 pounds it hurts. Below 13 pounds I don’t want to fire it.
There is also the .600 Nitro Express with its blunt bullet designed not to deflect on the temple bone of an elephant. Kynoch loaded gilding metal jacked bullets instead of the strong steel jacketed bullets after WWII and their poor performance with the .600’s 900-grain bullet ruined the reputation of this round. Even with proper bullets it does not penetrate as well as other elephant cartridges often giving only 2 feet penetration in an elephant’s skull. While this is plenty for brain shots it is not good enough for some of the weird angles that you may have to take a shot in to protect those with you.
There is also a .700 Nitro Express but it has not seen enough use yet for me to make any definitive statements on it aside from the fact that the first projectiles were deforming in elephant skulls because they had gilding metal jackets instead of steel jackets. This retarded penetration led to the bullets being recovered.
Finally we have the seldom seen Victorian old reliable standards, the heavy 8 and 4 gauge rifles. These deliver crushing stopping power and equally crushing recoil with the 8 gauge having 200 foot pounds of free recoil while the 4 gauge has 300 foot pounds of free recoil. Add to this the enormous size of their ammunition which required an old time ivory hunter to designate bearers just for the ammunition for a day’s shooting and you can see why they lost popularity to the smaller Nitro Express cartridges when they became available. Nevertheless, nothing had as much raw stopping power as these behemoths.
That is until 2010 when former ivory hunter turned Best Quality British gunmaker Giles Whittome made the first of his gigantic 2 bore rifles. The largest and most powerful sporting rifle possible as the maximum load for this beast has over 600 foot pounds of recoil and that is why no one has ever fired the maximum load the gun is capable of. That much of a blow can easily kill a man. Users just work up to as heavy a load as they can take and stop there.
On the subject of rifles the high cost of double barreled rifles today puts them out of reach of most hunters who therefore must use bolt action rifles. Still, for those who can afford it, a double barreled rifle stocked to fit the user is by far the best choice.
