It was actually 1971, in Kenya, and I had access to a Winchester ammunition wholesaler, which more or less guaranteed me a supply of fresh ammunition.

This was one big fellow, about 12 feet high at the shoulder. The other tusk had been recently broken off and the nerve was still festering. He was not in a happy frame of mind. Judging from the teeth, which were in terrible condition, he was very old and probably did not have much longer to live.

At the time, I had been shooting a .458 for about 10 years, since I had my first one built on a high number Springfield action in 1960, or thereabouts. However, the Krieghoff double rifle, with its extra sets of barrels in .375 H&H and 20 gauge 3" Magnum was the one I chose to take with me to Africa.

At the time, I could carry the cased rifle with me on the plane, so there was no danger of it getting lost or misplaced in transit.

xausa,

I corrected the decade guess above. Thanks for the exact year that you were in Kenya with the .458 WIN Krieghoff O/U.
You and the .458 WIN doctored that massive bull elephant properly, relieving his pain and suffering with the proper medicine.
Last gasps of Kenya safari hunting too.
Outstanding.

BTW, I have a Butch Searcy .338 WIN DR that he made from a Ruger Red Label O/U, preserving the 20 Ga barrel set too.
Mine has only the Ruger-style rifle sights on the top barrel, no rib or quarter rib.

I notice what appears to be German Claw mounts on your Krieghoff .458 WIN.
What scope did you have on the rifle for that Kenya Safari in 1971?

Rip ...

quote:

Originally posted by RIP:
xausa,

I corrected the decade guess above. Thanks for the exact year that you were in Kenya with the .458 WIN Krieghoff O/U.
You and the .458 WIN doctored that massive bull elephant properly, relieving his pain and suffering with the proper medicine.
Last gasps of Kenya safari hunting too.
Outstanding.

BTW, I have a Butch Searcy .338 WIN DR that he made from a Ruger Red Label O/U, preserving the 20 Ga barrel set too.
Mine has only the Ruger-style rifle sights on the top barrel, no rib or quarter rib.

I notice what appears to be German Claw mounts on your Krieghoff .458 WIN.
What scope did you have on the rifle for that Kenya Safari in 1971?

Rip ...

I have long been an admirer of xausa's exploits with his .458 O/U,the only elephant that I have took so far was also with an O/U in .458 cal,a BRNO stopper,a very accurate killing machine.

RIP,
very interesting 338 win you got,what load is it regulated for & have you hunted & shot it much?

An additional model of the scopes previously mentioned, a Kollmorgen Bear Cub 2 3/4 power. 26mm tube. The reticle consists of a small circle inside a larger circle with a vertical line from the bottom that goes almost to the bottom of the larger circle. My next learning opportunity will be to photograph through the scopes to show the reticles and the hidden field. The interesting aspect of this scope, a later production Kollmorgen is that it appears to be image rather than reticle movement.

For the MISSION, posting this separately from the previous posting.




A Unertl Hawk 4x. Reticle adjusting for both windage and elevation. Follow-up for this and other scopes to include hidden field and Field of view; upon my getting the technique learned.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill73:
I have long been an admirer of xausa's exploits with his .458 O/U,the only elephant that I have took so far was also with an O/U in .458 cal,a BRNO stopper,a very accurate killing machine.

RIP,
very interesting 338 win you got,what load is it regulated for & have you hunted & shot it much?

Bill73,

I am sure that xausa could tell much more about his .458-caliber double rifles, and more than just one of them,
and more calibers, and more scopes and mounts than we could shake a stick at.
Even in the 1970's scopes could survive on a .458 WIN.

Here is a pet load for my Searcy Red Label .338 WIN.
I do still need to blood it, so many toys, so little time!



More to follow, for THE MISSION.

Rip ...

Ray B,

Thanks for supporting THE MISSION.
I will have to look those museum pieces up in Stroebel.
Onward to page 81.

Here is the cover of the January 1964 GUNS magazine, the first time they dedicated an entire cover to the "Safari Edition."
The double rifle muzzles on top of the lion rug's head, may be seen as symbolic.
They are pointed at the Winchester bean counters for doing away with the original Pre-'64 African,
for housing the .458 WIN in a PUSHFEED rifle!
As if to say, might as well put a feather plume on my pith helmet and go back to shooting a double rifle:



Rip ...

Page 81 is here.

Continuing in the January 1964 GUNS,
a short article features a side bar sort of picture of a Browning FN Mauser .458 WIN.
It is as if to say there is an alternative for the Lost African:



Rip ...

Just to further THE MISSION, a few pics of a small bore companion to the .458 WIN double rifle, a Searcy Red Label .338 WIN:

It now occurs to me that a red dot sight base might be dovetailed into the .338 WIN rear sight base.

Also, the rib of the 20 Ga barrels might support some scope bases to fit a Leupold 2.5X Ultralight scope,
or another red dot/reflex sight of some sort.

I have "Paradox" rifled choke tubes to screw into the shotgun barrels.
A .600 Light Nitro Express double rifle?
So many toys, so little time.

Rip ...

Milking this for all it is worth, for THE MISSION:

With my spectacles on I used to see as well as Ted Williams or Chuck Yeager.
Might not be so anymore.
A scope might help nowadays:





That kind of "regulation" would be nice for an iron-sighted .458 WIN O/U double rifle too.
Adding a scope could make it a nice long-range single-shot with the top barrel, plus a quick second shot if inside of 100 yards.

Rip ...

Ray B's latest, looked up in Stroebel's book of 2008:

KOLLMORGAN BEAR CUB 2.75X
(1956-1959)
Magnification .................... 2.75X
Field of view .................... 42.4 feet at 100 yards
Luminosity ....................... 64
Eye relief ....................... 3.25 to 4.5 inches
Length ....................... 10.375 inches
Weight ....................... 8.0 ounces
Tube diameter .................... 26mm
(Value: $150 - $250)

UNERTL 4X HAWK HUNTING SCOPE
(1950-1980)
Magnification .................... 4X
Field of view .................... 34.0 feet at 100 yards
Luminosity ....................... 64
Eye relief ....................... 4.0 inches
Length ........................... 11.75 inches
Weight ........................... 8.4 ounces
Tube diameter .................... 1.0 inch
(Value: $175 - $350)

Rip ...

Thanks to an AR member, I now have two Unertl Hawks and hold the model in high regard - and the maker for keeping the reticle-movement faith so long.

Stroebel's FoV echoes the table in the Unertl Telescopes booklet from about 1956 but my scopes only give 31 feet at my corrected-vision focus, still pretty good considering the long eye reliefs.

Regarding the safari stories, I love that old Browning FN Mauser - and the 458WM was the ideal elephant number to chamber in that shortish action.

Except for ease of finding ammo in the boonies, I'm not so sure about doubles in this calibre, though - maybe a little long on pressure and short on rim.

Sam,

The .458 WIN cannot do it all, double rifles, etc.
But it certainly does bolt-action rifles best.
It can beat .458 Lott ballistics in a Lott-length action,
and it gets within 50 fps of the Lott 3.6" when the .458 WIN is handicapped by a 3.4" box.

xausa recognized the pressure and lack of a rim being undesirable in a DR.
He created a .458/.375 H&H Flanged and had Krieghoff make him a set of barrels for that too.
It is called the .450 Creighton & Warren": 450 C&W
He has three sets of barrels for that Krieghoff O/U.

According to the article Ethiopia was a nice place in 1964. So how is it 50 years later?

Ray B,

Famines come and famines go.

Rich Elliott used to be "Our Man in Ethiopia":

http://forums.accuratereloadin...161075022#7161075022

Ethiopia seems to be a bit on the exotic side, for those getting bored with everything else ...

Rip ...

Back to the GUNS magazine Classic Issues schtick, finishing up with the January 1964 "Safari Issue":

Two more mentions of the .458 WIN are found.

"Guns for the Game of India ..." By Dr. Jagdish Kumar
"There has been talk of allowing the .450 double and the .458 Winchester Magnum through customs. I would strongly advise anyone going over for a short stay to take along a large caliber like the .458 Winchester in the event he wants to try his luck with the large gaur or Indian bison. The forests where they are hunted are extremely heavy and often of thick teak and bamboo. Bamboo plays havoc with a light, high-velocity bullet. But check with Indian customs before taking over any gun of .450 or .458 caliber."

Sixty year-old laws from empire days died hard in the various locales of India, I reckon.

And finally, from GUNS magazine of January 1964:

Picture is a "stock" image used more than once in GUNS through the years after 1956.
It shows an early production African (1956-1958?) that doesn't have the special "African" rear sight and was before they learned to put two crossbolts through the stock.
They learned!



The only mention of the .458 WIN in that conventional advisory:
"Every so often I have white hunters come into the store. Most of the professional hunters use some sort of heavy double rifle for big game, and most of them use the time-honored .470. In the last few years there has been considerable interest in the .458 magazine rifle. One important consideration is the price, since the magazine rifles cost about one half as much as a good used double rifle."
That's all?
Yep that's all.
I gotta get some .458 WIN deer loads loaded.
Then on to GUNS SPECIAL SAFARI ISSUE January 1965,
with "Winchester's Man in Africa" Dave Ommanney holding the pushfeed .458 WIN over a dead lion, on the cover of the publication.
Nice advertising there, finally, color photograph on the cover.
Sales will pick up now,
now that all 1,226 of the "Old Africans" have come and gone.
Bean counters.

Rip ...

7 50 caliber bullets to put down a "young bull buffalo". What cartridge was used to push those 50s? which of the 7 hit somewhere besides the rear leg?

quote:

Originally posted by Ray B:
7 50 caliber bullets to put down a "young bull buffalo". What cartridge was used to push those 50s? which of the 7 hit somewhere besides the rear leg?

Ray B,

So you need the other two pages of that article, eh?
Well, here they are, even if they don't say much more than that the visiting hunter would be well served by a .30-06 and a .375 H&H.

It turns out that member xausa visited the gun vaults of L. J. Bull and brought a boatload of original Oberndorf Sporting Mausers back to the USA.
That was circa 1975, in Nairobi.
Elephant hunting in Kenya was closed by then, and the ban on Kenyan Safari in general was coming soon after that.
The Mau Mau were never truly put down.

Resuming the schtick, the 1965 "Special safari Issue of GUNS was "covered" on page 53 of this thread.
First the cover, seen below.
Continue on page 54 of this thread for the Bert Klineburger article "Tembo!" and the article "My Favorite Plinker -- A .458!" by R.A. Steindler.

I don't think I got around to "Trophies Aplenty in the South African Gamefield" (finally, an article with no exclamation mark at the end of the title)
by Louis Weyers.
Therein is a charming trophy photo of the author,
posing with his "Old African" .458 WIN and a fine, big-bossed buffalo.
To be added, for THE MISSION.

quote:

Originally posted by RIP:
To the .458 Win. deniers, this guy would be no saint.
They would probably say he was a prostitute for Winchester:





The early Post-'63 pushfeed M70 .458 Win. still had the "African" rear sight, on a 22" barrel.

GUNS magazine way-back "Classic Issues" (1955-1968) can be found online at:

https://gunsmagazine.com/class...s-magazine-editions/


Rip ...

This precocious young man had a scope on his .458 WIN in 1963.
Maybe one of those 7/8"-tubed ones in a G&H or whatnot side-mount?
Maybe even reticle movement only?
It is a pity the picture is of such low resolution.

Rip ...

The rest of the article is fun to look at for the prices of safari services circa 1965, in the various countries.
Compare to the 1965 MSRP for the pushfeed .458 WIN "New African" as priced in (GUN DIGEST):

"Winchester 70 African ... 458 Win. Mag. caliber 3-shot, V-notch rear sight, 22" non-floating heavyweight bbl., 1 in 14 twist, 42-1/2" over-all, rubber recoil pad (13-5/8" x 1-3/8" x 2-3/8" x 1-3/4" at Monte Carlo), 8-1/2 lbs. ............................. $310.00"

Rip ...

The ultimate recommendation for the .458 WIN comes from Uncle John, Oom Jannie, John Riley Buhmiller, who invented the 460 Weatherby before Ed Weatherby,
and a raft of other wildcats that others re-invented after his lead.
He tested many guns on many 3 to 6 month safaris over a couple of decades starting in the 1950's.
If a .458 WIN was good enough for him, what else can be said against it?
It would take a sell-out like Democratic Senator Corey "Spartacus" Booger to think up something negative on the .458 WIN to pontificate about.



The source of the quote follows.
If John Buhmiller killed 40 per cent of his game with the .458 WIN, and he used dozens of other wildcat and standard chamberings,
then he likely used the .458 WIN more than any other rifle on his safaris.

Rip ...

Rip ...

What were Buhmiller throats like?

More great reading! I really miss the old African geographical names like Tanganyika and Bechuanaland ... and the cultural offshoots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiTHv_gl3wo