Thanks for the wonderful post - great reading. This forum is a great place to thrash out ideas!

I'm with you on Lion and Giraffe, and elephant is just a curiosity for me. I'm still on the look out for "my" .450/.400

buffalo rifle. I like the idea of the .577 2 3/4" but I reckon it is probably too heavy in the recoil department for me. A while ago I passed up a .450 Rigby sidelock because I was after a .461 Gibbs Farquharson at the time and the Rigby needed too much work (as opposed to TLC). Ended up missing out on both in the end and still have nightmares!