The old-time London gunmakers had an expression they used when a rifle was finished and ready to be delivered. They did not say it was shipped to the client. Instead, it was “sent home,” like a newly weaned setter or any other addition to the family. The rifles that left the shops of James Woodward or Holland & Holland were living things and recognized as such.
Great hunting rifles are individuals. They have personalities. Some, I am convinced, have souls. Like a man who has led a long and adventurous life, a rifle’s personality is a mix of the skill of the gunmaker’s hands, the places it’s been, and the owners it’s had. Since a fine rifle can last almost indefinitely, it may have outlived four or five hunters, been carried on several continents, or been used for poaching or trophy hunting. It may have traversed the Khyber Pass, strapped to somebody’s back, protecting a caravan. It may have lain in wait by a waterhole in Arizona for an old desert ram, or sat in a machan as a tiger growled.
There is an indefinable something in a rifle that was fashioned by skilled, human hands. For years, I have pondered this question, and wondered exactly what it is that makes a rifle from the Edwardian era more interesting to me than even the best of modern products, produced of exotic alloys on CNC machines. My best guess is that older rifles are made from materials that, in their own way, are alive. Carbon steel is a most wondrous material and can be shaped into almost anything by a skilled man with a file. It also rusts, gets pitted and scratched, yet it can be annealed and hardened, restored and reblued. The same is true of walnut, which blackens with oil and hard use. Walnut can be scratched to a fare-thee-well, and yet be restored to its original glory. A good rifle has more lives than a cat.
You can also tell a lot about a hunter by his rifle, for no piece of hunting equipment is more personal. At its best, the rifle is an extension of the hunter himself and he feels naked without it. There are many examples from history. J. A. Hunter, the famous East African professional, was rarely seen without his .500 Nitro double, riding on his shoulder like a parrot. Jim Corbett, the hunter of man-eating tigers, carried a .275 Rigby the way other men carry a walking stick. Who can imagine David Crockett without Ol’ Betsy, or any mountain man without a Hawken?
These are men of legend, but the legends are incomplete without the rifles. As a teenager, more than half a century ago, I fell under their spell and have never emerged. My mentors on the subject, found in books and magazines, were Jack O’Connor, first and foremost, in Outdoor Life. Then there was Clyde Ormond, an Idaho writer who is almost forgotten today, and Larry Koller. John T. Amber, the editor of Gun Digest, showed me, by publishing a wide-ranging and eclectic selection of articles every year, that every aspect of rifles could be fascinating. Old rifles, new rifles, big ones, little ones—all fascinating, and all part of a grand, captivating, historical picture.
It was Amber who published an article on double rifles by Elmer Keith, and caused me to fall hopelessly and forever in love with his Westley Richards doubles. This was reinforced when I acquired, more or less by accident, John Taylor’s Big Game and Big Game Rifles. That book is exclusively Africa, big doubles, and dangerous game. In addition to reinforcing my double-rifle lust, it introduced me, on paper at least, to the Cape buffalo.
Above all, however, my guiding light on hunting rifles was Jack O’Connor. I read Outdoor Life, joined the Outdoor Life Book Club, and bought all the O’Connor books I could afford. Although my first big-game rifle, acquired secretly at the age of fifteen and smuggled into the house, was a Marlin 336 in .35 Remington, O’Connor turned me into a bolt-action man, and I’ve remained one to this day. In my teens, the idea of owning one of Al Biesen’s custom masterpieces was about as plausible as a date with Kim Novak, but our teenage years consist mostly of dreams anyway. This, however, was a dream I never let go of (a Biesen rifle, not Miss Novak.)
As John Amber unwittingly guided my education, like the fictional Strickland with Kipling’s Kim, I made forays into the world of varmint cartridges, military-match target rifles, benchrest shooting, Schützen rifles, and black-powder single-shots. Lucian Cary’s masterpiece from the 1930s, “The Madman of Gaylord’s Corner,” reprinted in Gun Digest, displayed yet another side of rifles—rifles as science—and really awakened me to the many facets of ballistics. At the age of sixteen, I became a handloader, cobbling together ammunition for my first proper bolt action, a semi-sporterized Enfield P-17.
Through it all, however, big-game hunting—or the possibility, at least—was my real passion, and big-game rifles became my lasting love. Stray as I might, I always returned to them. Although I never thought of it exactly this way, the next fifty years consisted of a never-ending search for the “perfect” hunting rifle.
For me, the perfect rifle must have all the obvious qualities: enough power and range for the job at hand, and sufficient accuracy to make it dependable. It must have everything I need, but not be encumbered with anything I don’t. Beyond the obvious, it should not sacrifice a critical quality, such as reliability, for a slight gain in accuracy that might not be of any real value. It must carry comfortably, in one hand or two, handle like a fine bird gun, and be graceful of line, because that translates into effortless handling. Finally, it must be attractive to the eye—a thing of beauty that is always rewarding to look at.
A man’s hunting rifle is the direct descendant of the knight’s sword of centuries ago—a vital tool of protection and attack, but also a badge that bears his personal seal. In medieval times, such implements were handed down from one generation to the next. Ancestral swords were placed on castle walls alongside shields, blood-stained banners, and trophies of the chase.
Anything so intensely personal is bound to cause arguments, and everyone who has ever killed a big-game animal has firm opinions on rifles. Many of us, like knights of old, learned from fathers, uncles, and grandfathers. Such is the cult of family in America that, if we heard it from Granddad, it must be God’s own truth. Unfortunately, the majority of fathers and grandfathers, no matter how well-meaning, often know little or nothing beyond what they heard from their forebears. My old and dear friend, Michael McIntosh, who was, until his death in 2010, the acknowledged expert among American writers on the subject of double shotguns, retained throughout his life a bias against Damascus barrels that bordered on obsession. In the face of all evidence—the testimony of English barrelmakers, European proof houses, and American gunsmiths—Michael railed in print against Damascus as mortally dangerous. His father had drummed this into him, and he was never able to let go of it.
In thirty years in the business of gun writing, I have found that it is unwise, when confronted with such hand-me-down knowledge, to state bluntly that the father in question was wrong, or that his advice was pure hogwash. It’s also largely pointless. These firm opinions, right or wrong, are the cause of countless arguments (and not a few fistfights) in which facts are discounted or ignored entirely.
All of this is leading up to a mammoth disclaimer: The hunting rifles included in the pages that follow are, in my opinion, very close to perfect for their intended purposes. This is based on fifty years of reading, shooting, trial, and error. Lots of error. Of having custom rifles made from scratch, of existing rifles altered and modified; of experiencing one disappointment after another, only to find exactly what I was looking for, when least expected, sitting forlornly on a dusty gun rack somewhere. Like great horses that come out of nowhere to win the Derby, winners are where you find them. Bloodlines can be an indication, but that’s where it ends.
Earlier, I tried to explain what a perfect hunting rifle consists of, but those are just technical aspects: power, accuracy, reliability, and so on. Any rifle can have all of the above, and still fall short. Great hunting rifles, like great racehorses, have spirit and heart. You can feel it when you pick them up. It’s agility and fluidity of motion as if, like Pinocchio, they were touched with a wand and given a life of their own.
If this is too esoteric, then you may be one of those poor souls who has not yet been imbued with a love—a real, serious, hopeless love—for fine hunting rifles. But then, since you’re holding this book, I suspect you are already one of the Brotherhood of the Afflicted.
* * *
This being a book about rifles for hunting big game, a note is in order as to what, exactly, constitutes hunting. As I write this, there is a fashion for so-called “sniping” of game animals at impossible ranges, using equipment worthy of the space program. Based on everything I have read and been taught, this is unequivocally unethical. It’s not illegal, and I’m not saying it should be. There are too many laws and restrictions as it is, most of them written by non- or even anti-hunters.
That does not change the fundamental tenet of ethical, fair-chase hunting, which is that any game animal deserves the utmost respect. Integral to that respect is doing everything you can to ensure a quick and painless death, insofar as that is possible. That means getting yourself to within a reasonable range where a mortal shot is as certain as you can make it. If forced to name a distance beyond which the vast majority of hunters should never attempt a shot, I would say 350 yards, and even that is probably overly generous.
The other trend in modern hunting, especially for white-tailed deer, which is the most popular big-game animal in North America, is shooting from stands, sometimes over feeders or food plots. In this case, ranges are rarely more than one hundred yards, although the odd longer shot occasionally presents itself. For this type of shooting, almost any rifle will do, provided it has enough power and accuracy. You could use a fourteen-pound benchrest rifle if you wanted to.
To me, big-game hunting involves a lot of walking, climbing, and carrying—or at least, the possibility thereof. The most traditional way of hunting in North America is what the English call “stalking” and we call “still hunting.” The word “still” is derived from stealth, and that is exactly what it is: stealing through forest and glen, as silently as possible, moving slowly, pausing often, being always ready to take a quick shot at a bounding deer, or settle in for a longer shot if it presents itself. This kind of hunting demands the classic stalking or woods rifle.
Then there is wilderness mountain hunting. This could be backpacking or horseback, with ranges from very short to quite long. Hunting on the plains, for pronghorns for example, you might cruise in a vehicle but carry out the final stalk on foot. Such a stalk often turns into a long-distance game of cat-and-mouse that stretches into hours, with miles of crawling and walking.
In some parts of the East, where the woods are thick, deer hunting is often done by driving or pushing deer with dogs. Hunters set up along a deer trail and hope an animal happens along, but they walk to get there and, with luck, walking back they’ll be dragging a fat buck. Again, a job for a stalking or woods rifle.
In Alaska, hunting brown bears, the cover may be impossibly thick, or you might get a long shot across a tidal flat. In Africa, chasing elephant or Cape buffalo, ranges are sure to be relatively short or, in the case of a charge, measured in feet. The dangerous-game rifle, for use in such circumstances, is as specialized a hunting rifle as you are likely to find. Its specific requirements are not unlike those of a woods rifle for deer, but it’s much more powerful and brings with it a whole different set of problems.
In these pages, you will find deer rifles, mountain rifles, and antelope rifles; there is one rifle that was India’s favorite for tigers, and another tailor-made for chamois in the Austrian Alps. Some will have riflescopes, some not; in age, they range from one made circa 1878 to the most recent, put together in the 1980s. We do not claim that these are the only great hunting rifles ever made. Far from it. But they are representative, and the one quality they all share is that indefinable something that sets a gilt-edged hunting rifle apart from a mere firearm.
Also, these are specific rifles, not representatives of a class or particular make. We don’t say “the Savage 99 was a great hunting rifle,” we say “this Savage 99 E, a .250-3000 made in 1922, is a great hunting rifle.” Many 99s were good and some were not so good, but only a few were great. That, really, is the point of this book: Like the hunters who use them, great hunting rifles are individuals.
Terry Wieland
Fenton, Missouri
November 1, 2017