What is an elephant gun?

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JShirley,

Yeah I guess that's the shizz dizz if'n you want to be an elephant hunter. I've played with a .500 Jeffery quite a little bit. Man oh man it would take some real practice for me to get comfortable with a full power .505 or a .500 Jeff. They make my head hurt and my inner sensitive cry baby child come out expose itself.

The load we use in the .500 Jeff is a 570 gr bullet at 2350 FPS. It will get your attention.

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Here is a write up on the .700NE.

Tallinar,

A 14lb .700 NE would be so light that it would be virtually uncontrollable read below...;)

700 Nitro Express
700 Nitro Express bolt action rifle by Hambrusch Jagdwaffen. The monster rifle is relatively easy to shoot offhand.

The 700 Nitro Express came about when a customer of Holland & Holland wanted to purchase a 600 Nitro Express double rifle, but H&H had sold the "last one". Undaunted, the customer pushed the project ahead and H&H built a 700 N.E. double rifle for him. Currently H&H, Watson Bros. and Searcy Enterprises offer double rifles in 700 N.E. Hambrusch Hunting Weapons of Ferlach, Austria offers a bolt-action repeater in 700 N.E. as well. Standard ballistics indicate a 1000 bullet at 2000 f.p.s. However, there has been some discussion of penetration problems with the cartridge and talk of increasing the bullet weight to 1200 grains while keeping velocity at 2000 f.p.s. to improve penetration. Rifles for this caliber weigh in the 16-20 pound range and only the fittest of men can carry such a burden for 20 miles on an elephant track in the hot African sun.

Information on the the 700 Nitro Express Big Bore Rifle.
A 700 Nitro Express was taken on a recent elephant hunt in Botswana with Safaris Botswana Bound ([email protected]), and the following report was provided by Graeme Pollock.

"The gun was too heavy for the hunter to walk the long distances sometimes required in Elephant hunting…. The first shot on the Elephant was a frontal shot which did not hit the brain and did not knock the Elephant down. The shot was apparently high due to a hang fire. The second shot was lung heart and the elephant again did not go straight down but it did not move much either before going down. The 1000g bullet seems to have not much more noticeable knockdown power than the 500 or 470 NE 500g round."

Similarly, professional hunter Mark Sullivan who has hunted with a 16 pound Watson Brother's 700 Nitro Express, finds it a bit too heavy to get onto charging buffalo as quickly as he would like. When considering the cost of a rifle in 700 Nitro Express, the weight and difficulty of carrying one, and the savage recoil, the performance on game is rather disappointing.


Notes
700 Nitro Express 160.0 gr. Reloader 15 F215 1000 grain Woodleigh solid 2000 f.p.s. Use 1 1/8" hard foam wad between powder and bullet to avoid misfires and hangfires.
 
Sounds like you can go 'too big' in the Elephant Gun category. Too big a gun becomes impractical as a shoulder fired gun that needs to be carried and utilized with efficiency. It also shows that killing elephants relies much more on shot placement than caliber. Once you have a big bore rifle that carries enough energy to penetrate the beast, you only need to hit them where it counts. Pretty much what all big game hunting is like. These Elephant Gun calibers can vary from the mid/high thirties on up to the 700NE, but the lower end diameters should do fine if they are put in the same spot you'd be putting the 700NE. No wonder the forty caliber family have been adopted as the perfect compromise.
 
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My elephant rifle will be a 458 Lott or a 458 WM...I will never hunt one but, just for sake of collection, I want a Dumbo capable rifle in my safe and relatively "on budget".

I know the 375 H&H has taken many elephants but in some countries (H&Hhunter, correct me if I'm wrong) you need a caliber of .400 or more to legally hunt the biggest mammal on earth (If I recall correctly, that was one of the reasons Roy Weatherby developed the .460 our of the 378 Wby), so I want a totally "legal" rifle for the purpose :D:D.

For the 50 BMG, as far as I'm concerned any weapon weighting 10-12 pounds or more and, on top of that, with barrel length well over 30" is not a shoulder fired gun, so I would not call it "rifle" in the strict meaning of the word....more like light artillery!!

My 7 1/4 lbs Vanguard, (add to that the scope and the bipod) is already in my upper limit carryability comfort zone.....

Conventional wisdom stated that a reliable elephant gun should be a minimum of .400 cal firing a 400 gr bullet of solid patch construction @ a minimum of 4,000 Ftlbs of ME.

Well....a 375 H&H definitely qualify as ME goes.....just a hair under caliber though......do they make 400 gr. .375 bullets?? You can get 350 gr. for sure.....
 
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380 gr is the heaviest commercially .375 bullet I know of.

And yes in Kenya and several other British protectorates a .400 cal was the minimum cal to hunt thick skinned DG.
 
...you need a caliber of .400 or more to legally hunt the biggest mammal on earth...
I couldn't disagree more. There is no known forty caliber rifle that is at all adequate to hunt the Blue Whale, nor do I think it is legal to take one unless you did it out in international waters and kept it all hush-hush. I would suggest a handful of cannon fired harpoons, each deck-mounted to their respective whalers. I suspect it'd take a few ships for sure to do the job, but once you got it 'field dressed', it'd make for one heck of a BBQ! Steaks the size of a man, ribs the size of a boat!

:neener:
 
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If you've ever bee charged by a blue whale in thickest Jesse bush of the Zambezi Valley you'd know that you should just say no to drugs!;)
 
Anything H&H Hunter picks up is an Elephant gun...

That's why them elephants mostly leave me alone. They know when they're out matched!;)
 
Mr. Bell used his 275 Rigby successfully..........one of my shooting friends has been to Africa 13 times, and taken elephant on 5 trips - he uses a 416 Remington mag; his PH typically had either a 458 mag bolt or one of the Nitros in a double
 
Mr. Bell used his 275 Rigby successfully..........

The most repeated statements on this forum..

1) Bell killed thousands of elephants with a 275 Rigby (or 7mm Mauser)

2) The largest Grizzly bear as been killed with a .22


...true but that doesn't make them ideal choices....:D:eek:
 
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Bring it on Shamu!
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Someone asked me 'why do you have an elephant gun?' (Meaning my .375 H&H) and I said... "Ever see Tremors?"

I have no real GOOD reason to own one, other than I wanted one, and last year one became available at a reasonable price. But hey, if a rhino ever gets loose in my part of the 'burbs, I'll be ready.
 
In your mind what qualifies as an elephant gun?

It depends. I see a distinction between the question "what gun should be used for elephant in modern hunting" and "what is an 'elephant gun'"

Because they may not be the same firearm. An "elephant gun" is usually thought of as a very large double barreled mega-bore black powder rifle or the subsequent and only slightly smaller nitro express double rifles. More modern bolt actions may well be the better "gun for elephant" these days, but most people would not look at one and say "that's an elephant gun."
 
Yep, mini revolvers are very under-rated. :D

But, but, H&H, how about Bwana Bell?

I call my 375 HnH my elephant gun but that is just because its the only rifle I own that could be leagely used on the bigs.

I call my 7mm rem mag a "cannon", but that don't mean it is. :D In Texas, it's overkill, but I've yet to be charged by a rogue elephant in Calhoun County. If I could afford an elephant hunt, I would have no problem affording an elephant rifle, though.
 
The four bore will not reliably penetrate on a frontal brain shot. It does have some serious cool factor however.:cool:

The S&W 500 is a good choice for what?
 
I think Art summed up the idea of the 500 S&W in the elephant feild...

I wish I could justify a bigger more elephant capable rifle than the 375 HnH but so far I just don't need one. I mean the 375 has worked great on the 3 animals I have taken with it. This little mule deer buck was giving me the stink eye at under 20 yards, he went down with one head shot. Really, didn't have to track him an inch. Two weeks later I used it on a doe hunt and after a nice neck shot I was able to take her head off with a small pocket knife. And that coyote should have known from the size of the bore that he was in real trouble. He didn't make it. If I'd had a 458 lott I imagine it would have been even worse. Or better depending on how you look at it.
 
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