doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com AN 8 BORE DOUBLE RIFLE ONCE OWNED BY JACK LOTT

One has to wonder, how many wrongly placed bullets were needed to come to this conclusion?

They believed that body shots were needed to kill an elephant reliably. Thus, the huge bore bullets used to gain the needed penetration.

Tradition, and a reluctance to embrace a "new concept" . . . . a well placed small caliber higher velocity bullet, caused the "delay" in change. In hindsight one might consider how much harder it would be to place that bullet in an elephant's heart than to place one in its brain (and the fact that a heart shot while fatal is not instantaneous, as is a brain shot).

If the .450/.400 double rifle was a 10 pound rifle, the recoil energy would have been 270 ft/lbs. If it was an 11 pound rifle, the recoil energy would have been 246 ft/lbs.

If you read W.D.M. Bell's books on elephant hunting, it becomes apparent he made a lot of one-shot kills with small caliber rifles and brain shots. But he also frequently missed that small target while attempting to take as many as possible out of a suddenly alarmed herd, and ended up having to track wounded animals. He described sometimes quickly jumping up on a dying elephant to have an elevated position for shots at others in the herd. So he had to hold his sights steady while standing on a still breathing animal. Witnesses say he was an extraordinary shot with nerves of steel.

I found it fascinating that sometimes he would stalk a resting bull so close that he would shoot upward into the brain cavity, and then quickly run away so the elephant wouldn't fall on him.

Then there was Sir Samuel Baker at the other extreme, who used 4 and 8 bore guns, and sometimes used the single barreled 2 bore gun he called "Baby". "Baby" was a muzzleloader built by Holland & Holland, and fairly light. It weighed a little over 20 lbs. while firing an 8 oz. projectile at around 1500 fps. He said when he shot "Baby", the recoil spun him around, knocked him down, and always left him with a violent headache. He did admit to being afraid of it. He would sometimes allow his native gun bearers to fire it to empty it after being loaded for long periods. He said one native would brace the other who fired the gun. The recoil would knock both of them to the ground, and the rifle would fly several yards behind them. The Arabs called it Jenna-el-Mootfah, which meant Child of a Cannon.

Bell was a very experienced hunter and a very, very good game shot. This is very different than shooting targets. No one can acquire the experience to do what he did using their own resources today. They could only do that by shooting on "control" or as a professional where someone else is "paying the freight". Bell disposed of a shipment of .318 ammo that had proven to be unreliable by shooting birds "in flight" for practice. To learn about the good ones we read their books, to learn about the ones, not so good, we have to read their headstones. There are plenty of headstones caused by believing the "hype" of small bores and substituting that for experience and skill. Cordite and jacketed bullets are different than black powder and lead bullets (even explosive bullets) anyway.
Mike

I am not on par with most here, but visited G & H in NY close to 30 years ago. They were no longer just south of Houston where they had been years prior. Not the same feel as the old store but I do vividly recall a H&H hammer, sidelock SxS 8 gauge. It weighed 18#. The barrels appeared extremely short but only because they were so WIDE. It shouldered nicely but I could not imagine pulling the trigger! They also had a newly arrived H&H 410. They had not even priced it but the two SxS would be “framed” on my wall but definitely long before I had a cellphone, much less one with a camera.

Thank you, sir.

I once had occasion to shoot 625 gr solids in a Mauser 98 actioned .50-110 WCF of about 8 lbs. I don’t regret it. Neither do I desire to repeat it.

Funny, that.

Best,
Ted

Yeah, me too.

Hello all.
Here is an update. I have an 8-bore round ball mold ordered from England, and an 8-bore hollow base conical mold from Accurate Molds. However, both are many weeks away from arriving. So, in the meantime, I improvised a homemade mold of my own. Below are a series of pictures showing my process. I hope to test my bullets later this week. Range report with target to follow.

http://www.buckstix.com/buckpics/8-BORE-MOLD-000.jpg