Class II: Entry Level Stoppers
Once smokeless powder had been developed, the British discovered that it allowed what had previously been good deer cartridges to replace the fearsome eight and four gauge rifles that had heretofore been the adventuring sportsman’s choice de rigeuer. It was John Rigby & Co. that just about defined what an “elephant rifle” ought to be when, in 1898, they brought out the .450 NE. Its standard of .45 caliber, near 500-gr. bullet and muzzle energy of around 5,000 ft. lbs. quickly proved to be just what was needed when the hunt “went South” and a really unhappy beast had to be dealt with. The British stiff upper lip could really be put to the test when a wounded lion, elephant or buffalo decided to take out his displeasure on his tormenter and on the native staff. Good frontal area, heavy bullets and sufficient velocity to provide the time-honored two-and-a-half tons of energy effectively define Class II. It is a remarkably large class. We can say that it overlaps Class I because, in plain energy levels, it runs from 4,000-ft. lbs. to 5,500-ft lbs. As before, this is deceiving. The increase in frontal area from the .375 to .411 allows an increase in what John Taylor called Knock-Out value that makes Class II rifles a much better choice when a charge has to be stopped.
Class II would have been much smaller if the only things that mattered were ballistics and performance. The .450 NE was so effective and so popular that it would have likely remained the choice for single shot and double rifles to this day. However, around the turn of the XX Century the British were faced with revolt in both India and the Sudan. Since the rebels were arming themselves with stolen 577/450 Martini-Henry’s, the Foreign Office decided to ban the use of all .458 caliber rifles in those areas with the intent of cutting off the rebels’ supply of ammunition. Whether or not this ploy was effective in its intent is unknown but it was effective in greatly enlarging the sportsman’s choice of dangerous game calibers.
Under the quaint British proprietary system, Kynoch loaded all ammunition but only distributed a given caliber to “authorized” dealers. That way, if you were absolutely taken with the looks and performance of the .475 NE, you had to be outfitted by Westley Richards because that company had the exclusive use of the cartridge. All the major rifle makers in Britain brought out their own replacements for the .450 NE. None was particularly more or less powerful than any other. Today, the only factor to consider in choosing a caliber for a new double rifle is ammunition availability. While it is possible to obtain components for most of the rimmed Class II cartridges, the .470 NE is the easiest to feed. This is because, unlike most of the others, it was released to the general gun-building trade when it was first designed. It was probably the most popular of the group at the time and since Federal began providing factory ammunition for it in 1989, it remains so today.
Many hunters love and admire double rifles and they have a long-standing reputation as the thing to have in your hands when aroused, aggressive animals are likely to come at you from very close range. Unfortunately, they are and always have been expensive. An impoverished, young aristocrat shipping out to an African regiment, a German farmer looking for a new life in the highlands of Tanganyika or a colonial official wanting to equip the Game and Wildlife Department would find such arms prohibitively costly. Instead, such individuals would be far more likely to turn to a solid “magazine” rifle built on the renowned Mauser action. The gunmakers were as glad to provide such weapons as they are today and the ammunition designers have spend the last hundred years happily coming up with different answers to the same basic question. How do you most effectively fit Class II performance into a rifle the average hunter can afford?
The .450/400 doesn’t really measure up to the .450 NE when the chips are down, but it did so well that when the time came to build the first Class II on a Mauser action, it was the lower level of performance that set the standard. The .404 Jeffery, in the hands of hunters and of hundreds of game scouts over the decades, has probably accounted for more large animals than any other caliber. It might have even accounted for more than all the other calibers. It did so with what we might consider anemic ballistics, but it worked. It worked all through the first half of the XX Century and it still, with improved velocity, works today.
To match the 5,000 ft. lb. standard of the .450 NE and to compete with the .404, John Rigby and Sons brought out their famous .416 and Westley Richards their effective, but odd-looking .425. In both of these cartridges, as well as the more modern .416 Remington and a host of wildcats, a 400-gr. bullet approximately the same size as the .404’s is driven at 2400 fps and yields two and a half tons of impact. This obviously results in considerable recoil, as well, but when 1,600 lbs. of angry pot roast decides to put you out of his misery you are unlikely to complain . . . or even notice. The prospect of being gored, eaten or smashed has a tendency to wonderfully focus the mind.
The .416 twins, Rigby and Remington, provide the hunter with everything he or she needs in the way of power. And if, by chance, you are one of that group who enjoys the rifle and its history as much as the activity of hunting, who can’t help but order a gin and tonic at the bar of the Victoria Falls Hotel, or who wonders why in the world the good old pith helmet ever went out of style, few chamberings match the panache, the nostalgia, the sheer style of the Rigby. Its overall length of 3.75” takes a true magnum action and that adds to the expense of the rifle. However, even though that huge case was originally designed to avoid failure due to high temperatures in the African heat with Cordite powder, its sheer size and weight gives confidence to the hunter and certainly impresses the ballistically unsophisticated friend. “Geez, what is that thing, an elephant gun?” It assuredly is, and many other things, besides. Remington matched the performance of the Rigby when they slightly modified George Hoffman’s design for a .375 H&H necked up to .416. It may not look as grand and it certainly doesn’t have the history or the literary connections of the older cartridge, but by the red gods it surely works. In many ways, the .416 Remington can be considered the most practical Dangerous Game caliber available today. It fits into a normal .375 length action, can be formed out of .375 H&H brass, uses bullets available from most of the major bullet makers and can put a stop to any problem you are likely to run into very quickly. There may be some animal it isn’t big enough for, but that animal either doesn’t live on our planet or went extinct sixty million years ago.
Periodically, there is an attempt made to bring back the .425 Westley Richards. Sometimes referred to as the Poor Man’s Magnum, it has the seemingly useful characteristic of both fitting into a standard length bolt action and using a standard .470” bolt face. This would seem to make it ideal for the hunter who wants to hunt Africa but wants to spend his money on the safari rather than the rifle. Unfortunately, the rebated rim turns out to be trouble. Westley Richards, in their magnificently crafted rifles, solved the problem of unreliable feed by developing a very clever set of clips that fit into the rails of the action and force the cartridge up into the bolt face every time. Unfortunately, Westley Richards rifles are British Best and very expensive. When others have tried to simply rebarrel a Mauser 98 action into a .425 the results have been disastrous. Tack driving accuracy in a Dangerous Game Rifle simply isn’t necessary. The heart of a Cape buffalo is as big as a man’s head, for Heaven’s sake. Reliability, on the other hand, is everything. Just as in combat, a rifle used on game that can hunt back must work every shot of every trip. Too many hunters and game scouts have been laid to rest when their sub-standard .425’s failed to feed. Either get a genuine Westley Richards or try some other caliber.
