early 1990's "great white hunter" rifles.

[smenkhare]

I was watching league of extraordinary gentlemen and a few other africa based shows and loved the old rifles that they had.

what would they have used? my would have been some old winchester or similar.

[RedneckFur]

I assume you mean early 1900's rifles?

There were alot of different rifles in use in Africa at the time. Rich hunters tended to go for custom made, very expensive doubles in very large calibers, like 500 Nitro express and a few others.

Ivory hunters, poachers, and your more average African colonists often used 8mm mausers, and .303 Enfields. These were bolt guns, and didnt have the refined lines or class of those expensive doubles.

If you want to learn more about double rifles, there are a few companies that still make them. You can try an internet search for Holland and Holland firearms, or Jagerwaffen. Their guns tend to start in the hundred-thousand dollar range, and go up quickly from there. Its been a while since i bothered to look, but I think that big bore african ammo can go for over $25 per round. It makes for very expensive target pratice, not that you'd pratice much with a 500 nitro express. There are video's on youtube.com that shows a man shooting one. The recoil from that beast lifts one of his legs off the ground.

[smenkhare]

d'oh.

yeah meant the 1900's
never heard of a double rifle but will look at the sites.

ok looked. 131,000 pounds? i think i'll be passing on that one.

[44 AMP]

were preferred by many for dangerous game. The 2 complete sets of lockwork, including triggers was the best insurance anyone could come up with that at least one barrel would shoot no matter what.

People who regularly faced dangerous animals at single digit yard distances and had a strong aversion to being stomped, smashed, gored, clawed, bitten, etc. bought the best stoppers they could. Bell and a few others are legends for using small caliber bolt actions for elefant, but in the beginning it was the big bore Express rounds that became the standard, and they remained the standard against which all others were judged.

And with bolt actions, only those with controlled feed were considered appropriate for dangerous game. Mausers and the Winchester Model 70 (pre 1964) were popular.

Double rifles have never been cheap, a lot more goes into them than many people think. One reason they are so expensive is the intense labor required to regulate them so that both barrels have the same point of impact with a specific load at a given range. This involves a lot of shooting and adjusting the wedges before permanently fixing them in place.

[smenkhare]

i didn't expect them to be cheap but $131,250? i could get 2 lotus's for that.

guess i have to put my allen quatermaine fantasies on hold until i win lotto.

[Jim Watson]

The Chapuis express rifles are not bad with a plain grade in the $5000 range. But a French safari gun?
Searcy is colonial made - California - for $15,000 and up. Way up.

[Jimro]

A B Grade Mauser 98 in 9.3x62 (1905) was a pretty common choice, altho lots of 7x57 Mausers were left over from the Boer War.

The m98 action also took hold in Britain where it was chambered in a bunch of proprietary cartriges, 318 Westley Richards, 375 H&H (1912), amongst others.

Jimro

[Scorch]

If you pick up a copy of "Cartridges of the World" by Frank Barnes, there is a chapter on British sporting rounds. While this does not really answer the question, you will see a lot of pictures of typical rifles used with the behemoth rounds. Also interesting is that bolt rifles started taking over in popularity due to the cost of double rifles and the advent of smokless powder, particularly prior to 1914 and WWI since the actions were often German-made. And although we hear a lot about British rifles in outlandish calibers, the Germans and French also had colonies in Africa and made some very effective rifles and cartridges for African game. One of the reasons we don't hear about them is that the British won the war, so they got to write the books about conquering the Dark Continent.

[Mike U.]

That will give some interesting reading. The main page loads a little slow if your on dial-up 'cuz it contains tons of info.

http://www.african-hunter.com/

ENJOY!

[Mike Irwin]

Rigby, Jeffrey, and Wesley Richards put out some very well regarded bolt-action rifles in heavy calibers. Many were made on Mauser Magnum actions, but some were made on British-made actions.

The .416 Rigby is perhaps the most famous of the proprietary bolt-action cartridges, but the .425 Wesley Richards was also popular and very effective.

Then there's also the best of all of the British bolt-action cartridges, the .375 H&H Magnum.

Of course, the bolt action rifles don't have the cachet or romance of the big doubles.

The big double rifles for the Nitro Express cartridges (.450, .465, .470, .500, .577, and the king of them all, the .600) were in many ways a continuation of the huge muzzleloading blackpowder guns. Sir Samuel Baker had a smoothbore 2-bore that he used. Gave him nose bleeds when he fired it.


The Germans did design a number of effective cartridges that were good on heavy game, but I've read in any number of places that the German rounds were often lacking when it came to bullets, and that caused any number of otherwise good rounds to be regarded with suspicion.