Gentlemen there is nobody on this website that I respect more than CaptCurl, and as he says he is mostly a purist where double rifles are concerned. The one place that is not the case, IMO, is his recommendation of the use of a double rifles chambered for rimless/belted rimless cartridges for use in hunting dangerous game.

It is true that a double rifles so chambered may work fine for years, and it may fail on the first re-loading of the rifle in a very tight situation. Cartridges like the 270 mentioned by someone above and even belted cartridges like the 338 Win Mag used for hunting in North America are not a real problem till you get in the alders with a 1500 pound coastal brown bear that has a hot hole punched in his gut, where you may need to re-load the chambers very quickly or be mauled. Again IMO, here is the place where you will screw up or the rifle will, or both.

There is absolutely no law that says you have to use a double rifle chambered for a flanged cartridge to hunt dangerous game, but I simply don't think the convenience of buying factory ammo may be a case for the 375 H&H in a double rifle, maybe a bolt rifle, but I doubt it is with a double rifle. I find that few double rifles regulate well with factory ammo, at least not well enough to justify it's use on dangerous game where in most cases more than two shots will be needed in very rapid succession especially on things like cape buffalo.

If you will notice every fine double rifle maker has come up with flanged rounds to match all the popular rimless cartridges that were popular at the time. 300H&H flanged for their double rifles, to match the 300H&H magnum for their bolt rifles, the 375H&H flanged magnum to match their 375 H&H magnum for their bolt rifles…….and so on! This is not just a whim, but a well thought out reliability fix for the firearms they make. Until the ammo availability crunch you never saw a double rifle made by any of the top makers chambered for the big bore rimless, or belted rimless cartridges, unless it was custom ordered by a customer. When the ammo was hard to find they had little choice but to make 375H&H and 458 Win Mag double rifles or switch to making only bolt rifles where the competition was fierce.

The above quote is by a man who sells these double rifles for a living, and the verbiage indicates potential problems, unless every little thing is perfect! That is rarely the case in the bush.
Still as I said there is no law that requires a hunter to buy his dangerous game double rifle chambered for a flanged cartridge, and so if that is what you want then buy it, by all means! It is just my hope that when you get away from the target range, and in the bush you don’t come to regret the decision with about one second left to do the regretting!

If this post makes sense to you fine! If it doesn’t ………………..well it may later!