Road trip

So we're goin' on a road trip. It's organised - DaggaBoy and his girls are gonna' hop into the wagon and hit the road for a 3-day-marathon cross-country trip, and it's all in support of the latest rifle to find its way into the safe...

I want a double rifle: part 2

I was perhaps 16 when I read Wilbur Smith's A Time to Die.  Sean Courtney was cool but I was never going to be a professional hunter living in suburban Sydney. I thought old Capo was the man of the moment. Riccardo Monterro carried the short, ugly, double-barrelled rifle chambered for the powerful .577 Nitro Express.  The ultimate banduki for hunting ndlovu.

Capo had that superstitious ritual of his, the changing of cartridges that he always performed at the beginning of a hunt. He’d opened the breech of his double and slide the fat brass cartridges out of the chambers, changing them for two others from the loops on his jacket.  Quite inspiring for a wannabe dangerous game hunter.

And then, into my life came Baroness Karen von Blixen’s epic recount of her life in British East Africa, now Kenya.  Her leading man, famous ivory hunter Denys Finch Hatton carried a Charles Lancaster .450 (3¼”) Nitro Express double rifle; another wonderful piece of African Big Game hunting history.

These wonderful rifles, built foremost with reliability in mind and tremendous power to kill the largest game that roamed the earth were designed for close quarters hunting and effectively equipped the hunter with two single shot rifles in one stock.

A double rifle is built for the hunter, and while admire marksmanship at extreme range as much as the next bloke, the true hunt starts from when we pick up spoor and we track and we track and we find warm dung and fresh evidence of feeding. When you can smell an animal and hear its movement through the bush, then one has truly hunted. Hunting is far more enjoyable than assassination at 500 yards.

In 2002, I traveled to London and visited all of the famous gun makers with my fiancée (now wife).  It was beautiful. And it was clear that this was serious business and business I could not afford to get involved with. Bugger.

Having spent some time looking over the years it has become clear that an ordinary bloke with some commitment can put himself in a position of owing a Blaser, Sabatti, Chapius, Merkel, Kreighoff, Heym, Searcy, Verney Carron or perhaps even an Australian built Alex Beer & Co? I guess it’s a matter of priorities.

I was considering these priorities the other day having had a favourable response from the taxman recently. An ordinary bloke’s double was within reach without to much impact on the bottom line.  Then I saw that Ruger had started chambering the No.1 in that old classic I talked about in my last post – the .450/400 3” Nitro Express.  Tough decision.  A double or a - single???

What it has come down to is  hunting.  I would love to enter the world of the nitro express now, but at this point, while my legs are strong and my family is willing, surely it makes more sense to live some of the old world experiences while I can, and while they let us? Bloody protectionists.

So I ordered the .450/400 3” Nitro Express. There will be the business of fitting a scope in QD mounts, procuring some brass from old Bruce and getting this thing to shoot straight.  All good fun. The double will come in good time.

And I’m looking at opportunities to hunt ndlovu sooner rather than later. 

As Damon McCartney, the doyen of doubles once wrote:

“If I die today I have had a life well spent, 

for I have been to see the elephant, 

and smelled the smoke of Africa.”

I want a double rifle: part 1

Best start with the honest truth: I want a double rifle. 

In my mind, a double rifle is to be used for hunting of dangerous game; perhaps the largest game that roams the planet. There is the history and romance of the Great White Hunters that opened up Africa, and the mechanical reliability of carrying two independent single shot rifles.  A potential life saver, these rifles combined with the big bore cartridges they are chambered for are designed to be used when the target is likely to fight back.

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In 1884, Paul Vielle invented the first smokeless gunpowder suitable for rifles. Unlike blackpowder that it replaced, the resultant propellant known today as pyrocellulose, produced negligible smoke when fired and was three times more powerful than black powder, generating much higher muzzle velocity in the same sized case.

One of the first black powder hunting cartridges to be converted to smokeless powder was the .450/400 3¼” Magnum Express.  The original blackpowder loading was a 325 grain lead bullet at 1,900fps.  In its Nitro loading using the newly developed propellants, the same chambering launched a 400 grain jacketed bullet at 2,150fps – the 13% increase in velocity combined with the 23% increase in projectile weight produced 57% more muzzle energy, a tremendous leap in performance by any standard.

In 1896, British gun maker Jeffery introduced a new version with thicker case walls and a shorter neck to eliminate the tendency for the cartridge to stick in the chamber. The resultant cartridge was the .450/400 3” Nitro Express. It’s not quite that simple, the cases aren’t interchangeable as the new brass has a thicker rim and the shoulder is slightly farther forward than the original 3¼” case.

  

The original blackpowder .450/400 3¼” Magnum Express sits above the 3" version developed

by Jeffery for use with the newly developed and much more potent pyrocellulose propellant.

In the early 20^th century the double was starting to lose ground to the magazine-fed Mauser bolt action rifle and there was a need to develop suitable rimless cartridges for the new Mauser actions.  Again, in 1905, Jeffery modified the same case and created the ballistically identical .404 Jeffery; but that’s another story.

By the mid 20^th century, following the end of World War II, the cost of double rifles meant that they were no longer the first choice for hunters of Africa’s Big Game. Commercial production of the .450/400 3” Nitro Express ceased in the 1960’s and for all intents and purposes, the cartridge died.