Forums.NitroExpress.com

Credit to Nickudu for digging this up.

Seeing Double
Sports Afield, Sep 2004 by Ariño, Tony Sanchez

Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with Furl.net. It's free! Save it.
Are traditional double rifles the right choice for today's safaris?

Years ago I wrote an article about double-barreled rifles, and I opened with the following comments:

"Every time I get a double rifle in my hands, my mind always asks the same silent question: What fantastic histories would it tell to us if it were able to speak? Double rifles are no doubt the most sporting and romantic of all the guns employed by yesterday's and today's big-game hunters, amateur or professional."

Later on in that article, I said, "Time and again, experience has shown that a good double rifle fitted with automatic ejectors is the best life insurance a hunter can have. When facing wounded, dangerous animals, it is essential to have two shots available without having to lower the gun for reloading and not to lose the animal from sight. The double rifle has continued in present-day areas of Africa with dense bush populated by dangerous big game to be as necessary as it has been for the last hundred years. Calibers may change, but that does not affect the necessity of a double rifle under such particular conditions. This type of rifles was, is, and will be the right choice for use in dense cover with low visibility."

The use of double rifle is primarily confined to the hunting of dangerous game. In my humble opinion, double rifles of less than .400 bore are useless for hunting in Africa because their accuracy cannot compete with that of a single-barrel bolt action fitted with a good scope. In present-day Africa, 90 percent of hunting is done with bolt actions ranging from the 7mm Remington Magnum up to the .375 Hamp;H Magnum, and only 10 percent of hunters will ever employ calibers larger than .400, mostly for elephant, buffalo, arid hippo.

An eternal debate rages among hunters as to which system of rifles is better for hunting dangerous African game, the double-barrel or the bolt-action rifle. I will not take sides on this because it is very much a personal choice due to the ability of the user with one system or other. What is good for one person is not necessarily suitable for another.

The mechanism of a good double rifle is, in general, simple and utterly reliable, with failure nearly impossible and the rifle very easy to handle by the hunter. Perfectly balanced, it comes into the shoulder so naturally that one can point it instinctively, and it can be aimed and fired almost without using the sights at short range when facing a charge.

A double rifle should always have automatic ejectors. Without them, the rifle loses one of its main advantages: the speed with which it can be reloaded after firing, a real necessity when every second counts. Without ejectors, empty cartridges have to be removed manually, which is sometimes difficult when a hunter is excited. A big double rifle for dangerous game without automatic ejectors is useless and a constant concern for the user. My old friend, the late John A. Hunter, maybe the greatest shooter of double rifles in East Africa, used to refer to a double without ejectors as "a piece of iron."

The double rifle was king of the African game fields up to 1920, more or less. But the period between 1905 and 1913 marked the advent of big, powerful cartridges that could be employed in repeating guns with Mauser actions-cartridges such as the .404 Jeffery, .425 Westley Richards, .416 Rigby, and .505 Gibbs. When these bolt-action rifles became widely available, many hunters began using them in the dangerous game fields, which had up to then been dominated by double rifles.

From that moment on, the hunting world was divided between the users of traditional double rifles and those employing the new, heavy bolt actions, and the debate began about which system is better for hunting dangerous game. It is a ridiculous debate because practical experience has shown that both types of rifles work very well, and no system is 100 percent ideal in all circumstances. Both have advantages and limitations according to the type of terrain.

As a general rule, repeaters are preferable in more open country where you can shoot at greater range while doubles have a distinct advantage when one is working in heavy, thick forests, and when following a wounded, aggressive animal.

I prefer double rifles, but I am not dogmatic or fanatic about it as I have also used repeaters all my life with great success. I have managed to acquire the necessary experience with both types of rifles over fifty-three years of hunting in Africa, having shot 17 ,277 elephant, 2,044 buffalo, and 332 lion without a problem, using doubles and magazine rifles alike. Do not forget that a rifle alone cannot do anything-its performance always depends on the skill of the person handling it.

Although I remain generally impartial on the subject of the two types of rifles, I must point out the great effectiveness of the double rifle when facing the charge of a wounded animal in dense cover with poor visibility. Then, having two shots available without having to lower the gun to reload-so the hunter never loses sight of the target-is an evident advantage. Having said this, I'd like to comment further for the benefit of hunters who don't have much experience with double rifles.

Double rifles designed for dangerous game are always .400 caliber or larger. all of the big bores in this category, from the .400 to the .600, use powerful cartridges that have heavy recoil, which means that firing one of these rifles is not like firing a shotgun at a bird where the hunter can fire two shots in rapid succession-bang, bang. A hunter firing a double rifle is pushed back by the recoil of the first shot, and it takes an instant to recover his balance and the aiming point again due to the natural tendency of the barrels to move upward from the line of fire. If you doubt this, I would suggest that you shoot at a target with a big-bore double and record the whole thing on video. You will be surprised to see the movement that results from the strong kick.

It is imperative not to shoot both barrels in rapid succession, one after the other. Keep one barrel ready just in case and try to quickly reload the empty barrel, or you may find yourself in a delicate position with an empty gun.

Sometimes inexperienced hunters begin to believe that with a double in their hands they are invincible. Even at a short range, it is not always easy to stop the charge of an aggressive animal. In many cases this is because of the nervousness of the hunter. Not everything depends on the rifle-in such situations, human behavior is as important as gun performance, or more.

Doubling Up

Now, after all the above considerations, we come to the main question raised in this article: Is the double rifle still a good choice for today's safaris?

Of course, there is nothing wrong with using a double rifle on modern safaris, just as many hunters have done for the last hundred years. If you own a double rifle and are familiar with its use, it's the perfect thing to take with you on safari. But if you are planning to buy one for your hunt, in my opinion it is not worth making such a large investment in a gun of such limited use, considering that you will shoot only six or seven rounds during the whole safari. Do not forget that with large-bore doubles for dangerous game, there is no happy medium. These rifles are either very good, and therefore expensive, or they are cheap and hopeless.

Carrying a double rifle is not an imperative condition for a successful hunt. A good bolt-action rifle will do the same work, and keep in mind that todays sportsman is always backed by an experienced professional hunter. The dangerous adventures with which the stories of so many hunters are strewn tend to be 90 percent ridiculous fantasies designed to impress gullible readers.

By tradition, the best large-bore double rifles have always been made by British gunmakers: Holland & Holland, John Rigby & Co., James Purdey, Jeffery, Westley Richards, Joseph Lang, Charles Lancaster, George Gibbs, Hollis & Son, John Wilkes, Thomas Bland, William Evans, Daniel Fraser, Scott, and Boss; followed by Belgian firms, including Dumoulin, Mahillon, and Francotte, which supplied many fine doubles for use in the former Belgian Congo. Good doubles have also been produced in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and the USA, although this last country has a short experience in this field compared with Europe.

Personally I have used the .500/.465 Nitro Holland & Holland Royal, the .475 No. 2 Nitro by Joseph Lang, and the big .577 Nitro by Hollis & Son, all of them fitted with automatic ejectors. Occasionally I have employed guns in .450 Nitro, .470 Nitro, and .500 Nitro, which I borrowed from friends. all of these have been most satisfactory.

In general, the most popular caliber among those who carry traditional British double rifles is the .470 Nitro, but that is not because of particularly outstanding ballistics-everything from the .450 Nitro to the .476 Nitro is more or less the same from the practical point of view. When the smokeless Nitro cartridges first made their way to Africa with the introduction of the .450 Nitro by John Rigby, most of the famous British gunsmiths started producing "proprietary" cartridges that were available only from them. During the first decade of the 190Os, Joseph Lang developed the .470 Nitro, but, unlike other firms, he never claimed sole rights or exclusivity to it. The cartridge was therefore available to anyone who wanted to manufacture rifles in this caliber. Many gunmakers took advantage of this and made rifles in this caliber-among them John Rigby, who manufactured most of his heavy doubles in .470.

Many of the old ivory hunters employed double rifles. Banks, Pearson, Norton, Sutherland, Rushby, Buckley, Grogan, Pickering, the Craven brothers, and Anderson all used the .577 Nitro. Other hunters preferred lighter calibers. John A. Hunter used the .475 No. 2 Nitro and the .500 Nitro; Guespart, the .475 No. 2 Nitro; and Wackernie, the .500 Nitro. Most of these hunters also used a bolt-action rifle in open country. Pearson had a .375 H&H Magnum; Norton had a .404 Jeffrey; Sutherland, Grogan, Anderson, and Rushby each used a .318 Westley Richards; and the Craven brothers preferred the .303 Lee-Metford. John A. Hunter used a .416 Rigby for lion hunting and a .505 for elephant control. Guespart also used a 9.3x62 Mauser, and Wackernie used a .404 Jeffery.

I would like to make a confession: With all honesty, I must say that, after fifty-three years as a professional hunter in Africa, first looking for ivory and later conducting safaris, I do not care anymore if I have a double or a bolt-action rifle in my hands. That's because I believe only in the first shot, and I always try very carefully to put that first bullet in the right place. If that is not possible because of thick brush or other reasons, I simply do not shoot. I wait for a better chance, which sooner or later may come. It is simply a question of remaining calm and patient.

One last recommendation to those who are considering buying a double rifle: A large-bore double should always have the traditional side-by-side barrels, as over/under rifles are more difficult to reload because they have to be opened much wider to clear the lower chamber. This loss of time can be significant when every second counts.

Copyright Sports Afield, Inc. Sep 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

--------------------
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.

Post Extras