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Billfromoregon - Whereabouts? I live in the South central portion of Washington, about 30 mi. above the Ore. border.

Although not specifically about the .400 Jeffrey, but dealing with a Chapuis. I have a Chapuis UGEX 9.3 I bought at the last SCI convention. I'm still fooling around trying to finalize on a load for the rifle. I'm working with Nosler Partitions (286 gr.), Ballistic Tips (250 gr.), and Barnes Triple shocks (250 gr. & 286 gr.) and Barnes monolithic solids (286 gr.). Next up on the list are Swift A frames in 250 gr and 300 gr, and after all of that I'll mostly shoot cast bullets (286 gr. GC) to save my wallet and the Chapuis barrel.

A couple of things I've noticed in working with my rifle:

It is accurate way beyond my expectations. 2 lefts and rights with factory S&B will group into about 1" at 100 yds (scoped & benchrested). A second thing is that how I hold the rifle on the bench can make a HUGE difference in how it groups. If I hold it like I would my .45-70 (7# rifle, w/ 425 gr cast @ 2000 fps...ouch

) or .338, I can alter point of impact at 100 yds by ~ 9" with the barrels crossing. The left barrel will be about 4 -5" to the right of the point of aim & vice versa for the right barrel. With heavy recoiling rifles I hold them quite firmly to reduce muzzle flip and pain on my cheekbone. Since the result of my technique is so significant, I am working on my shooting technique with this rifle to be sure the load being tested is the rifle and not me. I'm not sure just when I will trust my technique enough to use the rifle for hunting. I'm pretty hard on myself when it comes to bullet placement on a critter. My ultimate goal is to have a load that is sufficiently accurate I can use the rifle out to 300 yards if needed. Factory loads (286 gr.) chronograph at 2230 fps instrument (~10' to the center screen).

As far as books go, I usually buy any I can get that contains a discussion on double rifles if the book is priced reasonably. The Gregor Woods tome "Rifles for Africa" is not particularly kind re: double rifle accuracy. Too bad as he is wrong in that regard, at least as far as my experience and research relative to the Chapuis rifles. Oh well, maybe that will make more DR's available for us that know different. FWIW......Pilgrim

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