![]() 50 BMG and similar anti-materiel rounds have been devised which are much more powerful, though they are not generally considered useful hunting arms as their weight usually exceeds 25 lb (11 kg). Other wildcats based on the heavy machine gun. 600 Overkill made by Rob Garnick represents the greatest power available from a standard hunting action. 585 Gehringer by Karl Gehringer to be made by wildcatters. 577 Tyrannosaur by Colonel Art Alphin and. 700 Nitro Express and the new brass manufacturers allowed even more powerful elephant guns such as the. 416 Remington Magnum arrived in factory offerings. This prompted a new boom in elephant gun development and calibers such as the. The rest of the old Nitro express calibers had faded into obscurity until a resurgence in safari hunting came about in the 1970s and 1980s. 460 Weatherby Magnum and many of these were " wildcatted" (to modify an existing case and rifle to fire a different caliber bullet). The American gun market produced several famous dangerous game cartridges around this time, such as the. Thereafter, they largely switched roles to tools for game wardens and as back-up firearms for professional hunters guiding international hunters. These rifles came out in single shot, bolt action, and double rifle configurations and continued to be used until ivory hunting died off in the mid-20th century. The safari heyday of the early 20th century "nitro era" records much literature on such calibers as the. Within a few years the mighty bore guns of the previous era largely disappeared from the gamefields. 620 inch caliber and velocities around 2,000 ft/s (610 m/s) they possessed vastly improved trajectory and penetration over their black powder forebears. With smaller metal-jacketed projectiles ranging from. The Nitro Express line (c.1895), so named because the composition of the early smokeless powders such as Poudre B, ballistite and cordite, were the first of the new order of elephant guns. It was not until the parallel developments of jacketed projectiles, closely followed by smokeless powders in the late 19th century, that dangerous game could be taken with near 100% certainty. 577 Nitro Express in 1900, which used modern metal jacketed and solid bullets pushed by more modern smokeless powders. 577 Express around 1890, which used smokeless cordite instead of black powder, and then the. 577 Black Powder Express was the go-to dangerous game caliber from the 1870s through 1900. The dangerous game projectiles were often hardened lead alloy. įollowing the bore guns were the brass case "express" rounds, which incorporated black powder with modern ballistics by making relatively smaller projectiles go faster. Thus, dangerous game hunting in the 19th century was as much a test of the gun-bearer's ability to relay guns to the hunter, and of horsemanship to evade charges long enough to reload. ![]() ![]() Despite their enormous power, the short low-velocity slugs still suffered the penetration issues which plagued guns of this era, particularly for the toughest shot of all: defeating the bone mass for a frontal brain shot on an elephant. The largest-bore guns in common use (and bore rifles with the advent of breech loading and rifling in the late 19th century) included the 4 bore, using a 2,000-grain (130 g 4.6 oz) slug at up to 1,400 ft/s (430 m/s). Due to the velocity limitations of black powder and lead-usually around 1,500 feet per second (460 m/s)-the only way to increase penetration was to make a larger gun. These very large and very heavy firearms were the first to be known as the elephant guns of the black powder era (1850–1900), though their use also included all thick-skinned dangerous game such as rhinoceros, hippopotamus and cape buffalo. The projectiles were lead round balls or short conical slugs, sometimes hardened with antimony. The caliber was still measured in bore or gauge-10, 8, 6, 4 bore, and 2 bore-or the guns were named by number of projectiles per pound. Due to their ineffectiveness on the largest game (up to 35 shots being recorded by some writers for a single elephant), they soon developed into larger caliber black powder smoothbores. The first guns were the simple muzzle-loading shotgun designs already used for birds and loaded with solid balls of lead for use on large game. This was for self-protection, food gathering, and sport. Elephant guns were black powder muzzle-loaders at first, then black powder express rifles, then later used smokeless powder cartridges.Īs Europeans made inroads into Africa in the early 19th century, guns were developed to handle the very large game encountered. Theodore Roosevelt with large-caliber rifle and dead elephantĪn elephant gun is a large caliber gun, rifled or smoothbore, originally developed for use by big-game hunters for elephant and other large game.
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