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Why a double rifle?
Sports Afield, Jun 2002 by Boddington, Craig
When your hide is on the linem there's no better life insurance against dangerous game

IN A BYGONE ERA, Robert Ruark wrote about shooting an incoming quail flying just over the top of the surrounding brush. Except, as Ruark put it, the quail wasn't a quail; it was a tiger making 20-foot bounds. And the gun wasn't a sweethandling 20-bore double; it was his Westley Richards double .470.

In another faraway time and place, Kenyan ivory hunter, pioneer safari outfitter, and sometimes game ranger John Alexander Hunter was called upon to remove pesky rhinos from the Machakos District, not far from Nairobi, so the land could be cleared for farming. His removal tool was a double .500. In the thick brush that then characterized this area, Hunter got the rhinos to show themselves by charging, not all that difficult with the black rhinoceros. He survived, and, for better or worse, the Machakos is now open farming land.

Many years have passed since we hunted tigers or black rhinos, and I doubt we ever will again. But in our ever-shrinking and increasingly urbanized world we can still find close encounters with seriously dangerous game: lion, elephant, the wild bovines. These encounters may be less frequent than in the classic hunting literature we love to read-but they are not less deadly. So the lessons of days long gone remain valid: In a crunch, when your life and the lives of your hunting companions are at stake, nothing beats a large-caliber doublebarreled rifle.

By his own admission, Ruark was never a serious rifle guy, but he was a lifelong quail hunter and he knew good shotguns. Like most serious bird hunters, he knew that in the close-in panic of a covey rise or a grouse flush, there is no shotgun as fast or responsive as a side-by-side double. He acquired his double .470 just prior to his first African safari in 1952, and, by his own account, never fired it until professional hunter Harry Selby took him out for the ritual sighting-in session at the beginning of the hunt! But he did become familiar with that now-famous Westley Richards .470, using it not only on annual African safaris until his death in 1965, but also in India for tiger and Alaska for brown bear.

J.A. Hunter was a rifleman. He used many rifles, both doubles and magazines, through his long career, but in his excellent books it becomes clear that his preference for serious work was a double-barreled .500. Hunter, of course, is just one of the many famous hunters of yore who chose big-bore doubles-but many preferred powerful bolt actions, and the controversy continues to this day. In fact, there was a time when the magazine rifle almost won. In the years following World War II, Great Britain divested herself of her colonies, and no longer were British soldiers, administrators, and technicians going out to Africa and India in great numbers. The British gun trade withered, and during the '50s and '60s, Kynoch discontinued loading the big Nitro Express cartridges. All across Africa, classic doubles were shelved or sold for want of ammo. Inexpensive bolt actions, almost universally chambered to .458 Winchester Magnum, became the standard. This was the situation when I started hunting Africa; during the '70s and well into the '80s I rarely saw a double rifle used in Africa. A lot of those Indian and African doubles that were sold for a song in the '60s wound up in America. Barnes made the bullets, RCBS made the dies, Jim Bell made the brass, and good old American handloaders kept the double rifle alive. Or perhaps it was just too effective to die, because today the worm has turned. Right now, there are more double rifles being crafted, and in more places, than at any time since before the Great Depression-and quite possibly, more than ever Doubles are now being made in England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Italy-and even here in the United States. Federal loads .470 Nitro Express, and smaller manufacturers like Superior, Kynoch, and Rigby practically offer the full range of Nitro Express cartridges.

Many of the new doubles being made go to collectors and to hunters embarking on safari. However, in the last decade I have seen a lot of double rifles in the hands of professional hunters-old guns and new, young and old hands alike. The shift is not universal, but my conversations with African professional hunters suggest there are two primary groups: Those who have double rifles and those who want one.

Why?

A double-barreled rifle is much heavier than a sleek side-by-side shotgun, but the two share similar weight distribution and handling qualities: Plenty of weight between the hands, but also plenty of weight forward in the twin barrels, giving momentum to maintain a smooth swing on moving shots. The low profile and broad sighting plane of the twin barrels comes up smoothly and quickly, with the same pointing qualities bird hunters love in a fine double shotgun.

In fairness, a well-balanced bolt action can also have wonderful handling qualities. But the double rifle has two attributes that the repeating actions cannot match. First is length. Lacking a repeating action, the double rifle is at least 4 inches, in some cases nearly 6 inches, shorter than a bolt action with the same barrel length, important in the thick forest and underbrush where elephant and buffalo are so often hunted today.

Ah, but the single overarching characteristic of the double that cannot be matched is this: No other action type is as fast or as reliable in providing the second shot that just might save your life. Also, and this is important at close range, no other rifle provides that second shot silently. Once in Tanzania, I had a misfire on a lion with a bolt-action .416. The loud click followed by the racking of the action set things in motion. We got the lion, but it got unnecessarily hairy.

A good professional hunter might go an entire career and never need that second shot to stop a charge ... but it's there if you need it. In practice, it will most likely be used-by both clients and professional hunters alike-for the fast one-two punch that precludes any possibility of a charge, and that's as it should be. It can be correctly argued that a magazine rifle is faster for the third and perhaps fourth shot. This train of thought ignores the grim reality of how fast bad things can happen, and how thick the bush is where they usually happen. Twice, with bolt actions, I have wounded buffalo and had to endure long, harrowing follow-ups. I am very fast with a bolt action, but I was physically unable to work the bolt fast enough to get off a secand shot before the animal vanished into the brush or was shielded by another buffalo. It's fine and proper to argue that it's the first shot that counts-but in the field, that first shot isn't always perfect. I have used double rifles on elephant, buffalo, rhino, and hippo. I haven't always, or even often, used that fast second shot-but I have needed it, and I've always been comforted by its presence!

Why not?

In the old days, ivory hunters who used magazine rifles argued in favor of firepower. They had a point, as do modern game rangers who do control work. This argument is not important to the modern client in search of one fine trophy, nor to the professional hunter who may have to back up his client or clean up his mess. The two arguments that do matter are cost and accuracy.

Double rifles are expensive; basic doubles start at about 15 times the cost of basic bolt actions. This is because it takes a great deal of handwork to craft a double. Unlike an over-the-counter bolt action, the final inletting of the stock must be done by hand. Final mating of the barrels to the receiver requires hand fitting. And, no small matter, those two barrels must be properly joined and then made to shoot together. Double rifle fanciers-including young professional hunters who can ill afford such a rifle-- believe the double does it better, and their lives are worth the investment.

For many years, I bought into the accuracy argument. On average, a bolt action is much more accurate. However, all but the most poorly regulated doubles are plenty accurate enough to cleanly take large game out to 100 yards. I've seen some that were much better, but I always thought it was sort of a random spread. Over the past few years I've been fortunate to share my little town of Paso Robles, California, with the John Rigby folks. I've watched them regulate dozens of doubles and have done some of the regulation shooting myself. With experience and like components, it's easy to achieve a starting point that gets you close. Then it's a matter of heating the barrels, melting the solder, moving the wedge-until you get it right. No double can rival a really accurate bolt action, but I am now convinced that double-rifle accuracy is largely a function of the amount of time and ammo its maker is willing to invest-and, of course, the skill of the regulator. Rigby's Del Whitman is a whiz, and I've seen him turn out numbers of doubles that have the shots cut each other.

They aren't alone, of course. Last year I used a Krieghoff double in .500/.416 that would print both barrels exactly side by side at 100 yards. Few big-bore bolt actions are as accurate. Krieghoff is a large and modern manufacturer, and their boxlock double is one of the least expensive on the market. You might think that they've found a way around this costly hand regulation. Not so. Just like Rigby and the many other smaller shops, they achieve a starting point through historical data and precision-made componentsbut then it's the time-consuming business of final regulation by hand, the old way.

When in need..

So the accuracy of a double depends on who makes it. The cost of a double is what it is. Not everyone can afford one, nor is a double rifle necessary to hunt dangerous game. Unless, of course, you really need that instantaneous second shot.

One long day in the Zambezi Valley, professional hunter Russ Broom and I followed a wounded leopard. I was carrying a shotgun, and I took the charge when it came. I saw both buckshot loads strike home, and I had time for two very quick realizations: I had failed to stop the leopard, and the gun was now empty. Then, to my right, came the double boom of Russ Broom's twin-barreled .500. The spotted blur folded, too close. Maybe I should have been carrying a double rifle that day ... but I will always be thankful that Russ was carrying his!

Copyright Sports Afield, Inc. Jun 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

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Lovu Zdar
Mick

A Man of Pleasure, Enterprise, Wit and Spirit Rare Books, Big Game Hunting, English Rifles, Fishing, Explosives, Chauvinism, Insensitivity, Public Drunkenness and Sloth, Champion of Lost and Unpopular Causes.