I finally decided to take the plunge and am booked for an elephant hunt this summer. Although I've hunted in Africa quite a bit, I've never done elephant. I decided to take my 450 Dakota but am undecided as to which solid to use. The rifle will shoot just about any solid very well and so accuracy is not an issue. I have some 500 grain GS solids on order (if they ever get here!). I am tempted to use the 550 grain Woodleighs. I get exceptionally good groups and it seems that they should penetrate well (I download them to about 2300 fps). Does anyone have experience with these solids on elephant? Do they deform and deviate? What about the other solids available-Speer AGS, Trophy Bonded, Barnes, or GS? I want something that will penetrate well and straight on both brain and body shots. I've shot a number of buffalo with solids but it seems to me that elephant might be a different matter altogether.

I used GS Custom solids with the meplat on both my jumbo last year.
It is a 540gr bullet @ 2180-2200fps from my 500NE.
The performance was more than satisfactory, bullets went straight thru at that velocity and left decided wound channels.
They are worth the wait.

John,

My first shot at an elephant was broadside with a Woodleigh 750 grain solid from a 585 nyati at 2250 fps. It did not exit.

The second shot was with a TCCI monolithic solid (TCCI used to make the solids for A-Square). Third and fourth (finishers) were also TCCI. One of the TCCI's exited (top of the shoulder down through the chest and out the bottom).

The TCCI's have a little ridge around them like the Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer had, and cut nice holes. The Woodleigh did not make a very nice hole, for whatever that's worth.

Then I had a tracker shoot a .475 GS custom FN solid 500 grains into the elephant shoulder at 2350 fps. That bullet went nearly 7 feet and was found in front of the hind quarter.

All of the bullets we found were undeformed.

Personally, my preference is as follows:

1. GS Custom FN
2. Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer (if available)
3. TCCI (1-800-535-AMMO)
4. Woodleigh
5. Barnes

I noticed some quality problems with Barnes. The canneulre is in a different place on each bullet. It is very irritating because I have to set the seating die for each and every bullet.

I have only shot 1 elephant and used a 470 NE with Trophy Bonded Solids. The elephant went down with 2 shots to the heart lung area. I also added a couple insurance shots to the spine. To my knowledge none of the bullets exited the elephant, but I did not measure for penetration. None of the bullets deformed at all.

BigB

I have only used Woodleigh solids, but Johan Calitz tells me the GS Custom is the best he has used on elephant and thats good enough for me as I suspect he has shot nearly as many elephants as most PHs living today short of Tony Sanchez...and most of johans elephant in the last 4 0r 5 years have been shot with GS solids I think....I suspect Butch Searcy has used them if Johan has.....

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

Gentlemen - where do you rate the Hornady in all this and why?

Regards

Mads

The Hornady is a very suitable solid, at least the old ones were, and proved themselves in the African game depts..

The new Hornady solid marked "uncapcilated" maybe that incapsulated, oh well whatever, are unproven and I would suspect as the are very new, that no-one really knows how well they work...

Why do these companies fix thangs that ain't broke??

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

If you are one of the guys who want to eat what they shoot try this elephant stew

Elephant Stew

1 Elephant
2 rabbits (opt.)
brown gravy
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Cut elephant into baite size pieces. This will take about two months. Add enough brown gravy to cover. Cook over a Kerosene fire for about 4 weeks at 240 �. This serves 3,000 people. If more are expected, add 2 rabbits, but do this only if necessary as most people do not like to find hare in their stew.

I appreciate the feedback. As it turns out, my elephant hunt will be with Johann Calitz and I will be talking to him when he is here for SCI. I'll ask him about the GS solids. I must say that I do have reservations about these. On Gerard's website he shows solids that have deformed when fired into sand, more deformation with higher velocities. I always thought this was anathema with solids. I am, however, not beyond being educated. He's probably shot more elephants than I've seen. If he says they're good I'll use 'em. Hell's bells, maybe the elephant will think he's being shot with a 577 when it was only a 45 caliber!

JohnDL,
The GS solid is actually an expanding solid of sorts, what it does is spread like an ice cream cones cone so to speak...It does not seem to retard penitration and it does penitrate deeply and stright and will kill Buffalo very well indeed, and internal damage is more than other solids...

500 grs used it on an elephant and got complete penitration of an elephants head with a larger than normal exit hole....

Johan has been useing the bullet for quit a long time he really liked it the last time I talked to him about it. He is the person to ask about its use on Elephant..He be de man in todays Africa. Good choice of hunter.

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

Actually I got penetration of an elephant's shoulder and nearly 7 feet of total penetration with a GS Custom FN solid at 2350 fps. There was NO deformation. I understand from Gerard that the GS solids will deform at higher velocities (such as 416 weatherby or 378 weatherby), but at standard velocities (2350) I have seen no deformation.

I have to agree with 500 grs. I have never gotten expansion on anything with them, but I have limited experence with them so far but I'm getting awfully good reports on some I supplied to some PH's that they are using on Buffalo...Everybody that uses them is a groupie after that, so that sez sumpen aboot'em..

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

If the nose expands a little, would this not shift the center of gravity forward and work to keep the FN on a straight line forward course? I think so. They are devastating solids, in my limited experience, which I am hoping to expand, with these expanding solids.

I can tell you that the 380 grain FN .416 bullet at 2509 fps MV killed a cape buffalo with one shot through both shoulders, heart and lungs, and exited the offside.

The same load, during the one-shot check of zero, passed through two umbrella thorn trees over a foot in diameter (16" first, then 12") at the trunk, 25 yards apart, in a laser straight line, and kept on going across Botswana ... I wonder how many trees it would take to stop one of those? A Trophy Bonded Bear Claw soft point factory load was stopped by the first tree trunk (16" diameter), for comparison. They are good softs, and maybe the TBSH solid would work almost as well as the GS FN. Umbrella thorn trees are pretty tough.

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Happiness is a warm double and a bloody spear, but a 375 or a 416 will do just fine!
RAB

In medicine there is a saying "If you want to learn something new, read the old literature". Jose Pardall was an elephant hunter in what is now Mozambique for about 30 years. He wrote a book Elephant Hunting in Portughese East Africa recounting his experiences. This was republished in Safari Press in English in 1990. He describes having difficulty after WWII getting ammo. He fashioned solids out of soft copper and they apparently worked well. The pictures of these in his book don't look a whole lot different than the GS solids. They seem to have mushroomed a bit more, but he was pleased with the result.

My concern about the GS solids was based on theoretical concerns rather than on practical experience(heck, I ordered them 4 months ago and haven't gotten them yet!). Tissue and bone are irregular. If a solid can deform and does so in the animal irregularly, then it would seem to me that the bullet may be inclined to veer off course. Apparently this doesn't happen often. If I ever get the solids I'll try to test them in media and compare them to others, just for the hell of it.

My first test of old Gerards FN bullets went like this..."Lets see if that Africaner is full of it and shoot this wadcutter in my magazine stack box!!"...It went through all the magazines about 15" of dry mags, now thats hard on bullets, through my corral cross tie ( slightly rotten but not much), through my barn and all petitions out the other side through a 55 gal. full trash can drum and hit dirt in the pasture skipped twice and was last noted headed for Twin Falls Idaho...I hid for two hours with a horse tied out back in the event that I killed somebody...I will never shoot a solid around here again. I caught hell from the war dept. over the barn.

I'm no longer allowed to have any thing explosive or sharp...

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

I may be full of it, but aren't the GS FN Solids fairly inexpensive as compared to the other solids? They seem like a great value even with the airmail.