Dangerous Game Sidearms pre 1955

[kayak-man]

Just something I was wondering about. Anyone spending their time in the outdoors has a plethora of options for a firearm these days: .44, .41, and .357 Magnum. .45 Colt Ruger-Only loads. .454 Cassul. 10mm Auto.

From what I can tell, the .357 was invented in the 1930's, but the other "heavy-hitters" came around after 1955. I'm just wondering what options someone going to one of the "Dark Places of the world" (Conrad, Heart of Darkness.) would have had for a sidearm.

Yes, .357 would have been around after the '30s, and it is a fantastic cartridge, but I would prefer something a little larger if I found my was not at hand, and a lion charging through the grass.

I'm going to take a wild leap, and guess that the .45 Colt and .44-40 may have been popular choices.

So how about it guys: What pistols where the large bore, heavy hitters of the past? If you could include a rough timeframe of popularity, lets say pre 1900 or 1900-1955, and what your options for chambering were. I'm not looking for the exact ballistics (but I'm not exactly going to complain if you post them), but a brief comparison (i.e. "almost" a .41) would be great.

I'm especially interested in how the original .45 Colt, .44-40 and .45ACP loads compare to the ammo now: I have a feeling that the .45 colt was somewhere between the today's factory ammo and the Ruger-Only loads, but I'd love to hear from the experts.

As always, feel free to post pictures of the guns in question

Thanks,
Chris "the Kayak-Man" Johnson

 

[critter]

I have an old S&W P&R 25-5 in .45 Colt with an 8 3/8" barrel. NOT a good one for CC or for roaming around if weight is a problem.

However, with hard cast SWC's at normal .45 speeds (around 900 fps) it WILL get the job done. I took a whitetail with it at 50 yards and got a complete pass through-shoulder and rib cage. I think that would handle most tasks except maybe the big old bears up north.

 

[KodiakBeer]

I don't think anyone thought of handguns as "dangerous game" sidearms prior to 1955.

There was the Howdah pistol in the 18th and 19th century, but that was for a pretty specific purpose - to shoot a tiger that had the bad form to jump onto the back of an elephant with you.

.

 

[Jorg Nysgerrig]

I think the dangerous game sidearm of the time was a local guide with a rifle. Pretty effective, but hard as hell to find a comfortable holster for.

 

[sixgunner455]

The howdah and the big-bore flintlock horse pistols, then the Colt Walker was the first of the serious small-bore repeaters. Big bullets coming out of those older guns do make a .44 look small.

 

[rcmodel]

.45 Colt and handloaded .44 Spl.

Elmer Keith and a bunch of guys called The .44 Associates had developed the .44 Special to nearly .44 Mag level performance in the 1920's & 30's.
They publicized it extensively with letters in the NRA American Rifleman magazine and word spread quickly.
Even before Al Gore invented the internet.

The Colt New Service in .45 Colt, and the S&W Triple-Lock and later 1950 Target in .44 Special where the Model 29's of the day.

S&W 1950 Target .44 Spl, the gun that made the Model 29 .44 Mag possible.



We must not discount the untold thousands of Colt & S&W 1917 .45 ACP revolvers available then at dirt cheap prices either.

After Remington/Peters developed the .45 Auto-Rim cartridge in 1922, handloaders begin stuffing them with 250 grain .45 Colt bullets and insane by todays standards amounts of powder. Some of those loads would make most of us today pull the trigger with a long string attached to it if we wanted to shoot them!

I think the 44-40 was never extensively handloaded for more power because of the thin bottle-neck case breaking in two, or binding up the cylinder when pushed too hard.

PS: Probably more then a few English gentlemen carried a .445 Webley on India Tiger Hunts too!

rc

 

[rcmodel]

I don't think anyone thought of handguns as "dangerous game" sidearms prior to 1955.

Elmer Keith apparently did.

rc

 

[StrawHat]

And let us not forget the 1911 Pistol. In 45 ACP or 38 Super (introduced in 1929?), the 1911 was and still is a formidable firearm. Head and shoulders above other self loading pistols of the day. I don't like them but they were available and they are respectable.

My choices are the large bore S&W revolvers that were built with a purpose in mind. The 45 ACP, 45 long Colt, and the 44 Special can still do the job in the Dark Places of the World. I have the 45s and as has been reported, a 260 grain lead bullet at 900 fps penetrates.

 

[KodiakBeer]

Elmer Keith apparently did.

Perhaps, but I think his main purpose was hunting. I don't think he'd want to hunt lions in the tall grass with a .44 Special.

 

[threoh8]

If one is to believe George Catlin, then in the employ of Samuel Colt, Colt percussion revolvers were good on bison.

 

[rcmodel]

Perhaps, but I think his main purpose was hunting.

He wrote extensively of carrying big-bore revolvers his whole life while ranching, trapping, packing, and guiding, as protection against bears, and other snarly things.

rc

 

[KodiakBeer]

He wrote extensively of carrying big-bore revolvers his whole life while ranching, trapping, packing, and guiding, as protection against bears, and other snarly things.

I'm glad he never had to test out his theory or he might not have lived to be an old man.

 

[Cosmoline]

I don't think anyone thought of handguns as "dangerous game" sidearms prior to 1955.

I've read a lot of gun and hunting literature from the pre-war period and it reflects this sentiment. Handguns were not even seen as viable hunting tools. Elmer and a few others were experimenting with hot-rodding, but they represented a small minority. Though the .357 was initially tested as a big game gun, it was marketed in the post-war years as a police sidearm. The .44 magnum was really the first mainstream handgun round able to work as a reliable medium or big game hunting cartridge.

If you read gun writers of the 19th and early 20th century, and safari hunters, their debates were over what long arms were best. Most don't even seem to have considered carrying a handgun on hunts. And the available cartridges were pretty lightly loaded, typically with soft lead slugs or slugs with a light jacket. There were big bores, but they were low velocity. High SD, high velocity hardcast slugs were not used in handguns at all to my knowledge.

Handguns served as a gentleman's protection in the bad part of town (a la the British Bulldogs and lemon squeezers), a military sidearm for the officer class, and potentially as a weapon for use on horseback. I think they were somewhat undervalued, though we tend to OVERvalue them today. Mostly because of the pernicious effects of mass media and modern film. And we fixate a lot about what to use against dangerous game, even though in 90% of the world there's a lot LESS dangerous game now than there was in the old days. The really nasty ones, particularly Indian tigers, are almost extinct. There are plenty of brown bear, but they can't hold a candle to the real man eater species (thankfully).

If one is to believe George Catlin, then in the employ of Samuel Colt, Colt percussion revolvers were good on bison

In the early days hunters would ride along with the herds shooting at close range with whatever they had. I've heard accounts of them holding balls in their mouths and spitting them into large bore flintlocks to just blast the buff. I don't know how many were actually used, but a Walker loaded hot would have sufficed. It was quite different from the long range sniping with BPCR's that was the method used as the herds got more scarce and wary.

 

[rcmodel]

I'm glad he never had to test out his theory

Oh, but he did test out his theory several times.

The photos are in his book "Six-Guns", and "Hell I was There", as well as several anecdotal stories like climbing over a dead-fall and having a sleeping bear under it snapping at his heels before he killed it with a single-action.

Keith was a lot of things, but he wasn't a lier.

You should read his books sometime.

rc

 

[rcmodel]

accounts of them holding balls in their mouths and spitting them into large bore flintlocks

And we worry about a little lead poisoning from reloading today??

rc

 

[Vern Humphrey]

The classic in Joseph Conrad's day was the .45 Colt. Blackpowder loads would drive a 250-255 grain bullet to 900 to 1,000 fps. And I can tell you from experience, that will shoot through an elk. It would be the best choice in Africa in that timeframe.

 

[huntsman]

I'll bet the .455 webley saw a lot of dangerous game action

 

[Cosmoline]

I'll bet the .455 webley saw a lot of dangerous game action

You'd think so, but I'm hard pressed to think of a single instance of the weapon being taken on safari or used in hunting African or North American game. I'm sure there was *some* incidental use, of course. TE Lawrence, an exceptional pistol shot, used his sidearm (a Mauser pistol or 1911) to bag ducks for extra meat:

In October 1913 he wrote that when two people came, they had no meat for them so he shot two ducks with a pistol, targeting the head.

http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/history/telawrence.htm

But he was known for doing extraordinary things, and it's likely the casual head-shots on waterfowl was done in part to show off for his guests. If you read safari accounts (many now republished by Safari Press), they're often very detailed about gear but rarely if ever even mention sidearms. And there were huge, long-ranging debates about cartridges and action types even back in the 19th century, but nobody was suggesting the use of a "backup" sidearm for dangerous game in any text I've seen.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Quote:
I'll bet the .455 webley saw a lot of dangerous game action

You'd think so, but I'm hard pressed to think of a single instance of the weapon being taken on safari or used in hunting African or North American game. I'm sure there was *some* incidental use, of course.

"Incidental" is the key. As Elmer Kieth said, the handgun is a weapon of opportunity. It's the gun you always have with you, so there will be times when you have an unexpected opportunity to take game with it.

Finn Aagard wrote of taking frankolin (a grouse-like bird) on the ground with a .455 Webley.

 

[KodiakBeer]

I have no doubt you can kill a bear or a lion with a handgun. It's been done too many times to doubt. I just don't think it's the best choice, and back then it was a much poorer choice than today.

I just read John Henry Patterson's "The Lions of Tsavo" about a week ago. Patterson extolls the virtues of the .303 for lions, both the man-eaters and a number he shot for sport afterwards. Some of those lions took a dozen hits to bring down and he had friends and gun bearers mauled by lions he wounded while he continued to plug away with his .303. Yet, he staunchly defends the .303 as good lion medicine despite the body count around him, and pooh-poohs the old curmudgeons who insist he should buy a .450...

That book is a good read and quite educational. You have to admire Patterson for his courage. But just because he killed some lions with a .303 doesn't make it a good choice for lion hunting in general, and it's an even poorer choice as a stopper when a lion is coming at you.

.

 

[earplug]

AFRICAN RIFLES & CARTRIDGES by Taylor published in 1948
Page 288 The Revolver or Pistol as Auxiliary.

Page 289 "Experience has shown that the plain lead bullets fail badly in penetration on the mighty chest muscles of a lion"

He tells of a failure with a 45 LC with plain lead bullets being used on a Lion. Taylor recommended a jacketed bullet to give maximum penetration.
He used a .455 Webley revolver with jacketed bullets to kill other big cats.

 

[Dr.Rob]

Pretty sure someone at s&w took a world tour trying to kill every animal short of pachyderms with a 357. And for the most part they were successful. They also were the first of their kind; ie handgun hunters.

As a suitable sidearm in that era a Colt New Service in 357 or 45 Colt I think woukd suffice. Plenty of heavy framed Smiths were available in those calibers as well but 45's limitation was balloon case heads. I am not sure when the brass case of 45 Colt was beefed up, but 357 was built for high pressure.

 

[StrawHat]

Dr.Rob Pretty sure someone at s&w took a world tour trying to kill every animal short of pachyderms with a 357. And for the most part they were successful.

I believe that was D.B. Wesson. I know he took all the large game animals on this continent, not sure if he went elsewhere, but he probably did. The 357 was the hot number when it came out in 1935.

 

[wildehond]

I do not think the handgun was even considered in these parts in that roll. It is not even thought of in that sense today. The Game Rangers I know all carry a 375H&H rifle as the smallest firearm. The PH's that take clients out like the 416 Rigby because of the penetration you get.

If you have ever been close to any of the big five or even something like an big hyena you will realise no handgun is going to cut it if that animal decide you are bad news. Maybe a 500 S&W. But then you have to hit where it counts, on an charging animal. If it is a big male lion that 500 S&W will probably not do it. Once they charge it is very hard to stop them.

On smaller cats you might have a chance with something like 44Mag or 454's. IF and that is a big if you see them first. I have no knowledge if big bears obviously but I personally will not trust ANY handgun as protection against something that big and tough. They manage to stand in streams waiting for fish in water where we will never be able to move through! I do not want to tangle with something that can do that.

Just my 2c.

 

[CraigC]

The .44Spl was King before the .44Mag, for at least a good 20yrs prior.

I just don't think it's the best choice, and back then it was a much poorer choice than today.

I believe this thread is about sidearms, not hunting with a handgun as a primary weapon.

I'm glad he never had to test out his theory or he might not have lived to be an old man.

Might wanna do a little reading. Elmer Keith lived the life most of us can only dream of. His famous .44Spl load is just as potent today as it was back then. Very much so. One could harvest a lot of game with a good sixgun and that load and I'm not talking about just deer. Although bigger hammers exist today and are more suitable for large and dangerous game. They are vastly more effective than many folks seem to want to believe.