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CarlsenHighway, your information is second hand hearsay at best and pretty much muddled up! Part of this was already dicussed in another thread, see
http://forums.nitroexpress.com/showflat....e=1&fpart=2

Bell owned at least two Mannlichers. Let's go back to the roots. To quote W.D.M.Bell's own book "Karamojo Safari", Prologue:
"The first rifle I used in Africa against anything larger than a rabbit was a single-shot falling block .303. It had a side lever and was a poor extractor, but was light, handy, beautifully sighted by Fraser of Edinburgh...(foolishly he traded this for a single-shot .450 BPE, a move he deeply regretted)....My next rifle was a .303 Lee-Metford ten-shot...In the course of time I acquired a long-barreled .256 Mannlicher, stocked and sighted (iron sights, but extremely refined) by Gibbs of Bristol. I did not use this rifle on elephant; I don't know why unless it was that I had only soft-nosed bullets. It was not until later that I got a .256 Mannlicher-Schonauer and used it on elephant. I used the long Gibbs -a most beautiful rifle- entirely for meat-getting. And what a deadly weapon it was!....Just to give an idea of this sort of thing, the donkey headman demands four hundred skins for donkey saddles…..This particular trouble was generally cured by nine or ten giraffe; failing them, a score or so of zebra or, more rarely, by a dozen buffalo. That Gibbs certainly had a full-time job to do. I don't think that even now a better rifle could be found for that particular work." (end of quote)

As Gibbs had a very distinctive style, quite different from Jeffery's, Bell's Gibbs "Old model .256 Mannlicher" probably looked like this one of 1899 vintage, marked "G.Gibbs, Bristol"
(Quote Bell again):
"At the same time I got the .256 I also acquired the first rifle I had made especially for me - a .275 (7mm) Mauser by Rigby of London. It was still in the days of the round-nosed bullet, and luckily for me the ammo was good, sound, reliable, German DWM stuff,powder,case,cap and bullet…..Without fault or hitch, misfire or hang-fire, that little rifle slew some eight hundred bull elephant besides scores of buffalo, a few rhino, and an occasional lion. Never once did a soft-nosed bullet pollute that perfect barrel….(end of quotes)..Only later, "As prosperity descended upon me," Bell obtained a "very refined little Mannlicher-Schoenauer .256 with a goodly store of solids" from Fraser of Edinburgh. He rarely used this rifle because the ammo of Austrian make, Roth or Hirtenberger, was unreliable. This is likely the M-S carbine shown above".
BTW, Jefferies was not based in Scotland, but in London…

Edited by kuduae (26/11/10 10:42 AM)

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