I'm sure it was and recall Baker or Bell may have used one one on such beasts as well.
: John Taylor's good book, African Rifles and Ctgs., available at most Libraries (I think) may have thoughts on it. I'm sure it does, as he mentions the .450 BPE quite favourably for up to and including elephant with hardened lead bullets.
: One thing one must remember, is foot pounds of energy is not a good measure of killing power. It is impossible for an animal weighing 200 pounds to be hit with a impact of thousands of pounds, yet stay on it's feet. The formula makes no sense.
: The big bores kill by disrupting organs and blood vessels by hitting with a porojectile that will do adequate damamge and penetrate deeply enough to do that damage.
; The .45 calibre African calibres have been lumped all together as giving similar results by those who use them daily with many heads of game killed by them or observed first hand. This puts the 8,000 FPE of the .460 Weatherby in the same bracket as the 5,000 FPE of the .458Mags, factory and wildcat, while a step up to the .50 calibres, giving the same or similar FPE showed greater stopping and killing power over the .50's and another step up when ging to the .577's. This in itself should show FPE isn't a good criteria for stopping or killing power. Ther are many others, btw.
; Many of the African species, not weakened by hard winters, seem more 'bullet proof' or tougher than like weight North American game. Even at that, many North American game animals are also seemingly FPE resistant. Buffalo and Elk fit that, as the the great bears.
; Where the buffalo hunters did just fine with 2,000FPE and 2,400FPE from the really long cases, they killed well to well over 600 yards, yet today, we have guys saying buffalo are showing no impacts nor dying quickly when hit by 4,000fpe from .375's and .416's. Many accounts and letters sent to Sharps tell of bufflo dropping to the shot, yet that seemingly hasn't happened in the wilds of B.C. during the special season. 8 rounds point blank with an '06 through the lights accompanied with 27 minutes of video show he was unimpressed with that rifle's 2,800fpe each , combined energy of 22,400 foot pounds of energy. that poor 1,500 pound buffalo should have been hamburger or at lease slammed to the ground, instead of just walking around looking over the landscape, and grabbing up a mouthful of grass. What a video.
; Please don't take this the wrong way. We've been deluged with FOE numbers for many years. It's just that on most big game, those numbers have proven to mean very little if anything.