.450Nitro Express double rifle

tac foley

...a shooting pal targetting his just-refurbished G. Lewis double rifle prior to leaving for Africa next week.

The bullets hit within two inches of each other, left and right.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yw7rYJWUUE

Best

tac

It wasn't me!

Oh, that does bad things to me... Sure they're not 500gr bullets tac? I know 300-350 cast loads are common for practice fodder, but for hunting, the standard in a .450 would be 500gr softs and solids.

kildare.17hmr

Sweet, whts he going after tac?

tac foley

It wasn't me! wrote: »

Oh, that does bad things to me... Sure they're not 500gr bullets tac? I know 300-350 cast loads are common for practice fodder, but for hunting, the standard in a .450 would be 500gr softs and solids.

He held 'em up in front of my eyeballs and said 'these are just the 300gr bullets'.

That's all I know. We permitted him to shoot just the ten on the range - usually no soft-point ammunition is permitted, but WTH........

tac

tac foley

kildare.17hmr wrote: »

Sweet, whts he going after tac?

Oh, his usual stuff [yawn], Cape Buffalo, that kind of thing. It's way too small for ephalump though - you really need 500-600gr stuff to make a reliable drop on Ol' Dumbo.

So I'm told.

I've never shot anything bigger than a moose, and by j££z, that was big enough at 50m.

tac

rowa

The heavy calibre rifles are suprisingly common in ireland , i know one chap with a .450/400 (.400 jeffrey) and a .375hh, and another with a .416 rigby and a .375hh.
I was looking at a winchester model 70 in .375hh in a shop , it wasn't expensive but there is no game in ireland that warrants such a stopper.

Grizzly 45

Very nice rifle..Compliments too on the great videos of the model trains.;):)

Chesapeake

A.416 rigby for me thanks, easier to manage and just as good if your good enough!

tac foley

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Very nice rifle..Compliments too on the great videos of the model trains.;):)

Glad that you like 'em. As you can see, I don't just waste my hard-earned $$$/£££ on guns, but trains, too.

tac
G1MRA #3641
Ottawa Valley GRS url]www.ovgrs.org[/url

juice1304

Lovely gun, My dream gun would be a nice double rifle. One day.:) I was offered one made in 1918 a while ago 50G's though:P a bit rich for me at the moment.:P

kildare.17hmr

juice1304 wrote: »

Lovely gun, My dream gun would be a nice double rifle. One day.:) I was offered one made in 1918 a while ago 50G's though:P a bit rich for me at the moment.:P

split it with ya, you can have it monday through thursday....

tac foley

A shooting pal of mine, who is a refuse disposal executive [bin man] collects double rifles. He has around forty, I'm informed. GK how he can afford just ONE let alone the huge collection he has acquired over the years. He obviously has hidden depths of funds that I can't comprehend since just one of his 'pairs' belonged to the late Maharajah of Mysore. If pressed he will modestly admit that he picked them up for a snip over £90K, but that they needed some work to bring them back into fully acceptable working order. Holland & Holland, he notes, are doing that.....they might be ready by 2016, he says.

How the other half live, eh?

tac

harmoniums

Tac it appeared that he was shooting at a target under 50 yards away, I understand that big doubles are usually sighted up to 100 yards (or maybe more?) with various flip up rear sights for varying distances.

What distance is considered "a long shot" with big game like this rifle was made for?

also, I rarely see scopes, is that because it's considered better to have a full field of vision in case a very quick second shot is made?

tac foley

harmoniums wrote: »

Tac it appeared that he was shooting at a target under 50 yards away, I understand that big doubles are usually sighted up to 100 yards (or maybe more?) with various flip up rear sights for varying distances.

What distance is considered "a long shot" with big game like this rifle was made for?

also, I rarely see scopes, is that because it's considered better to have a full field of vision in case a very quick second shot is made?

H - We were stood at about 50 yards, which the shooter, an experienced Africa PH shot with over 25 years in-country both guiding and being guode, considered a suitable range to check the regulation of his recently refurbished rifle. Sure, there were leaf sights, but as he told us, most of his buffs, elephants, rhino and lions were taken at ranges of less than 50 yards, some much less.

Scopes are pretty much useless on a short-range double rifle in this genre. If you can't see a rhino at 20 yards, then perhaps you should take up another, less-fatal, element of shooting. I've never seen an African double rifle with a scope, though, but I'm really not the one to ax, being as at home with one of these guns as a frog is with a trumpet. I dare say they DO use them, but I've not seen one. OTOH, I've seen double rifles of somewhat smaller calibre in use in Germany for boar, but they were usually about 1 - 4 magnification only. Your point about having good all-round line of sight, therefore, is a good one, and must be true. Being focussed on the buff to your front, and missing momma buff coming at you from the side because your eye is peering down a tin tube, is not the time to discover that you really should have left that scope at home.

Anyhow, I just thought that you guys would like to see it - over here in yUK, shooting guns that cost five times more than any of my cars is a rare privilege, as is shooting a pile of ammunition, paid for by somebody else, at eu10 a shot.

Best

tac

323

Thanks for the upload
Dream rifle, maybe some day

Birthday recently, got a copy of Dangerous Game Rifles by Terry Wieland, begins with the .450 NE and refers to it as "The cartridge that changed everything",... It rendered obsolete every big game cartridge then in use for dangerous animals

Grizzly 45

tac foley wrote: »

A shooting pal of mine, who is a refuse disposal executive [bin man] collects double rifles. He has around forty, I'm informed. GK how he can afford just ONE let alone the huge collection he has acquired over the years. He obviously has hidden depths of funds that I can't comprehend since just one of his 'pairs' belonged to the late Maharajah of Mysore. If pressed he will modestly admit that he picked them up for a snip over £90K, but that they needed some work to bring them back into fully acceptable working order. Holland & Holland, he notes, are doing that.....they might be ready by 2016, he says.

How the other half live, eh?

tac

Bloody Hell!! Can I get a job as a bin man in whatever council or company he work s in???:eek::eek::D

mrbrianj

I remember reading a while back in (iirc) shooting digest that one of their contributors had a big game cal rifle with the condition on the licence that it could not be discharged in this juristriction!!!

There was mention of an appeal regarding this condition, but I don't get the magazine on a regular basis so never heard anything else.

Vegeta

Beautiful piece, I shudder at the cost or owning one and going abroad to use it. My poor wallet is shaking in my pocket reading this stuff.

tac foley

Well, the gun cost around £65k a few years back, which is a pretty ho-hum price for a fine piece like this one plainly is. The refurb was around £15K, he said.

Ammunition is made right here in the UK by David Little and his company KynamCo. It's around £6 a shot, I'm told - reloads are not permitted in RSA, so you HAVE to shoot factory ammunition.

Needless to say, playing with the big boys and their toys needs money in piles - some have it, and others, like me, just watch them spend it.

As for shooting it here in UK, our range, like every other range in the UK, has government-imposed ilimitations on velocity and muzzle energy. In our case this is because we are one of only three civilian gallery ranges in the entire country. We cannot, for instance, fire factory .338LM ammunition. The .450NE is right on the 5,000 ft lbs limit for m/e, but nowhere near the 3500 fps m/v.

We can shoot up to .75 calibre on our ranges, with numerous limitations on either muzzle energy or muzzle velocity as well as jacketed and soft-point ammunition, but I'm reminded that you really don't want to hear about what WE get up to over here.

Suffice it to say that we are just as envious of you as you may be of us - we can each do things that are unlawful or even illegal in the other country.

tac

rowa

mrbrianj wrote: »

I remember reading a while back in (iirc) shooting digest that one of their contributors had a big game cal rifle with the condition on the licence that it could not be discharged in this juristriction!!!

There was mention of an appeal regarding this condition, but I don't get the magazine on a regular basis so never heard anything else.

There was an element of payback in that condition , the gentleman in question having the audacity to take the pistol case to court previously.

tac foley

All very odd, this concept of 'payback', vendettas and private or public deals with regard to the LAW on firearms ownership. It's as though each district is a different country with its own version of the laws that depend on the whim of the police officer in charge.

tac