416 help

[Ryanelson]

Glad you’re looking at 375HH - it is a great choice. Find a nice win 70 and throw some good glass on it and you are all set.
I shot my first buff with a 404 Jeffery and a 400 grain aframe. Shot my second buff with a 375HH and a 300 grain aframe - same result. Plus I used the 375 for about everything else last trip - kudu, eland, sable, wildebeest, baboons, impala…. It’s a great one gun choice.

All has already been said, Ryanelson, so let us summarize

Muzzle brake. No. Period. Just a few shots without hearing protection, as will inevitably happen sooner or later on the hunt, from a braked .416 Wby will damage - as in destroy - your hearing (and your PH's and tracker's) for life. That is a fact.

.416 Wby
Do you intend to shoot DG at 200 yards? Your PH will not let you.

Do you intend to hunt PG with the .416 Wby. You will not do it for long.

Does energy kill? Well, you can make a point that at the precise systolic point the heart valves are open, the shockwave can travel to the brain, but you can hardly control the cardiac rhythm of your Buffalo. So forget about the shock effect. You may get it at random from the slowest .416 out there and you may not get it from the Wby. Or vice versa.

As long as Weatherby exists, they will offer .416 Wby ammo.

.416 Rem
Great cartridge. Beware the high pressure though. Many a story about .416 Rem Win 70 or Rem 700 with a stuck action in Africa in the early days. I understand that commercial ammo has been discreetly downloaded just a bit to avoid that.

This has become the #2 standard .416 in Africa after the Rigby. Ammo is here to stay.

.416 Rigby
Are you a millionaire? Go with a modern Mauser or Rigby. Best rifle. Best cartridge. Low pressure, and you can load it up to Wby level if you so whish (heck! it is the very case that Roy added a belt to).

Are you of modest means? Find yourself a used CZ550 in .416 Rigby. With just a bit of TLC you can get yourself in a couple hours, or in the hand of a competent smith, the functional equivalent of a genuine Rigby. Remember, Rigby used to build their own rifles on the CZ550 action when the big Mauser magnum was out of production.

The ammo almost disappeared, but luckily Ruger and Hornady together resurrected the caliber. Ammo will be available for the foreseeable future.

.416 Ruger
Same pressure issue as the .416 Rem. Available in a lot less rifles. Ammo availability questionable after the current fashion of "short" calibers.

Unless you are a Ruger-only type of guy, I fail to see the attraction. I personally was turned off by Ruger faking a CRF bolt on their rifles (corrected since), and continuing to fake a bolt-mounted 3 position safety (still the case), but I begrudgingly agree that Ruger are generally solid rifles.

.416 Taylor (necked down .458 Win)
Not a bad idea. But purely a custom rifle and reloader proposition. I would not shy away from a good used Taylor, built by a reliable smith with a decent name, and sold for half or a quarter of its original price.


If I were you, Ryanelson, i would look for:

1) Used Mark V in .416 Wby because this is what you want (they pop up from time to time on Gun Broker and Guns International, and there is not a big market for them so they are generally not very expensive),. Unscrew and throw away the brake.

2) Used CZ550 .416 Rigby.

3) Win 70 .416 Rem.

Example:

View attachment 629573


PS: all of this being said, .416 hits noticeably harder than .375, but it is no stopping caliber. So the real logical progression to a stopper is not so much .375 to .416, but .375 to .458 Lott. Just food for thought...

Yeah I’ve been watching that gun. To many options. So good points made to just find a 375. I have a custom 45-70 with suppressor I would like to take for my other animals. For no other reason than I love the gun!

 

[375Fox]

I’m actually looking at 375’s. Big bore in general are a tough find. I am going to bare foot safaris. I don’t go till June of 26. I just want to get it so I can be very comfortable with whatever gone I take.

Take a look at this article. It has some good information on 375 results.

Thread 'Is Bigger Always Better?'

Dec 7, 2020

I thought this group may enjoy this article I wrote in the latest African Gazette.
A link to that particular issue (of which Divan Labuschagne, one of our great PHs, also took the cover picture):

Let me know your thoughts....

• ndumo HUNTING SAFARIS
• Replies: 36
• Forum: Articles

• 

Here are two really good podcasts as well. They are on apple and Spotify too.

 

[BryceM]

For me the right answer was a .416 Rigby in CZ 550, 1.5x5 scope, quick-detach mounts, and 400gr Barnes TSX handloads at 2400 fps. Low pressure, easy feeding & extraction, tolerable recoil, and big enough for ele, should the occasion arise. I love the nostalgia of the .416 Rigby, and I took the time to learn to shoot it well. It is a different beast that can hurt you if you don’t use good technique, but it isn’t all that bad once you figure it out.

Maybe it isn’t a “stopper” but that’s what the PH is there for. Besides, some might argue it penetrates better than a .450 or .470 NE on eles with good solids anyhow. Academic……. Mostly. Nothing wrong with a .375 either.

Don’t use a brake. They suck for everyone and everything except the trigger guy.

I grew up on Weatherbys. I used to love Weatherbys. I can see zero, and I mean ZERO reason to own a .416 Weatherby. They change a big nasty shove into a big, sharp, violent slap. I’d rather shoot the .416 Rigby than a .340 Weatherby every single day of the week. Forget the .378 and the .416, and for sure the .460.

Shot placement is 90% of the equation. All else being equal, go with that, whatever that means to you. Buffalo seem to get either one bullet or six.

I have done one DG hunt. Two critters. One buff and one ele. Other than at the range, I fired my rifle 2 times on that hunt. There was no guarantee that was how it was going to go, but it was pretty gratifying when it worked out that way.

I have some stupid nostalgic desire to hunt a buff or ele (or both) with a proper double, but that’s an itch for some future time.

 

[DLSJR]

Ryanelson, you kind of remind me of my son.

I was taking him on his 2nd African hunt in 2019, but first for buffalo . He wanted a .458 Lott, because he’d read so much about how great it is. I told him I’d buy him a .375 H&H as it’d be plenty good for buffalo and really is the only rifle he’d ever need for hunting in Africa. He insisted that he wanted something bigger and more powerful, so I told him to buy whatever he wanted. He responded that he wanted me to get him the rifle he wanted, not what I thought he should have. I told him if I was buying the rifle, it was going to be a Model 70 in .375, period. He relented and found out just how good a .375 H&H is for buffalo. He’s now shot 3 buffalo on two different hunts with me and the only change he wants to make is installing a Brown Precision fiberglass stock like I have on my rifles, as they significantly soften felt recoil. He never talks about wanting a bigger rifle for Africa. He realizes the .375 is the only rifle he needs for Africa.

Ryan, I’ve hunted with a .375 H&H, .416 Hoffman (basically same as the Remington), .458 Winchester & 470 NE. I’ve shot buffalo with all of them. I got rid of the .458 & 470 and nowadays do all my dangerous game hunting with the .375 & .416. They’re simply more comfortable to carry, shoot and they kill stuff every bit as dead as bigger cartridges.

If the sh*t hits the fan and it becomes a gunfight, my PH shoots a .450 Ackley and that IS a freaking cannon, driving a 500 grain bullet over 2,600. At that point, what I’m shooting doesn’t matter whether it’s .375 or way bigger. So, like my son I’ve developed a strong fondness for the .375 H&H. It was the only rifle I took on my last safari. Next time I hunt buffalo, it’s almost certain my .375 is what I’ll be carrying, despite my love for my .416.

You need the rifle you can shoot best. You might want something bigger, but you’ll never truly need bigger.

 

[krish]

Yeah I’ve been watching that gun. To many options. So good points made to just find a 375. I have a custom 45-70 with suppressor I would like to take for my other animals. For no other reason than I love the gun!

I have CZ 550 375 H&H magnum I can sell. Interested let me know. Got 416 cz 550 rigby and few others. For you right now 375 is a very good starter African rifle. I am sure after your trip of Buffelo hunt you will be looking for more.
Good luck.
Krish

 

[rookhawk]

My next trip to Africa I want to take a Cape buffalo. I really want the weatherby with brake but that isn’t looking good. Ruger makes a 416 that looks good in the guide or Hawkeye. Would like some input. Don’t kill me or make it to complicated. I arrived at the 416 weatherby from someone I trusted.

The 416 Rigby is the grandad on which all good stories really are based. If you read Pondoro Taylor’s book or know of the life of Harry Selby, this caliber really produced great results for the three quarters of the 20th century. Then, not so much.

What happened? In the need for speed, the loadings for the 416 Rigby continued to increase and as a result, PHs started noticing that clean kills weren’t as prevalent as they remembered. This has been noted by many authors and PHs in the modern era, particularly on smaller dangerous game like lions where the bullets tend to zip through rather than deplete a lot of their energy into the animal.

How does one get the magic back? Classic bullets reproducing the original ICI/Kynoch 1926 loads will produce the results.

How does any of this matter to your question? A 416 weatherby is literally amplifying an already known problem with the 416 Rigby. Just pouring on more “speed kills” to a relatively small diameter bullet.

If you’re on a budget, I’d recommend a better quality rifle than a weatherby in a better caliber than the weatherby. Specifically, a used Cz550 or a custom AHR built on that action in 416 Rigby. You’ll get mauser claw extraction, an extended magazine for another round, significantly less recoil than the weatherby idea, and it will be a marketable rifle if you ever decide to upgrade or divest yourself of it later on.

If you think you need more power than a 416 Rigby, the solution isn’t going to a faster 416, it would be to increase the bullet diameter going for a 458 Lott, 470NE, or 500NE. This would be applicable if you were a dyed in the wool elephant and hippo hunter that needs the extra stopping power. For buffalo, a 416 Rigby with moderate velocity loads and swift A-frames is an excellent choice. Another option that is devastating with even less energy and recoil is the 404 Jeffery which flourishes in the use case you’re trying to accomplish.

Note that I omitted 416 Ruger and 416 Remington from the options, they merely simulate 416 Rigby in a harder to find caliber in-country, all while being found in actions that are less durable than a CZ or mauser.

 

[krish]

The 416 Rigby is the grandad on which all good stories really are based. If you read Pondoro Taylor’s book or know of the life of Harry Selby, this caliber really produced great results for the three quarters of the 20th century. Then, not so much.

What happened? In the need for speed, the loadings for the 416 Rigby continued to increase and as a result, PHs started noticing that clean kills weren’t as prevalent as they remembered. This has been noted by many authors and PHs in the modern era, particularly on smaller dangerous game like lions where the bullets tend to zip through rather than deplete a lot of their energy into the animal.

How does one get the magic back? Classic bullets reproducing the original ICI/Kynoch 1926 loads will produce the results.

How does any of this matter to your question? A 416 weatherby is literally amplifying an already known problem with the 416 Rigby. Just pouring on more “speed kills” to a relatively small diameter bullet.

If you’re on a budget, I’d recommend a better quality rifle than a weatherby in a better caliber than the weatherby. Specifically, a used Cz550 or a custom AHR built on that action in 416 Rigby. You’ll get mauser claw extraction, an extended magazine for another round, significantly less recoil than the weatherby idea, and it will be a marketable rifle if you ever decide to upgrade or divest yourself of it later on.

If you think you need more power than a 416 Rigby, the solution isn’t going to a faster 416, it would be to increase the bullet diameter going for a 458 Lott, 470NE, or 500NE. This would be applicable if you were a dyed in the wool elephant and hippo hunter that needs the extra stopping power. For buffalo, a 416 Rigby with moderate velocity loads and swift A-frames is an excellent choice. Another option that is devastating with even less energy and recoil is the 404 Jeffery which flourishes in the use case you’re trying to accomplish.

Note that I omitted 416 Ruger and 416 Remington from the options, they merely simulate 416 Rigby in a harder to find caliber in-country, all while being found in actions that are less durable than a CZ or mauser.

Only difference for the starter is the price assuming all these calibers are of same brand and model like CZ 550 ot Mauser. As the caliber goes up price goes up. But 375 h&h is like a stable horse. All round caliber. Like 30/06 is to usa the 375h&h is to Africa.

 

[uplander01]

You’ve been given some sound advice, I understand why you’re asking the question. It’s important to use information to draw your own conclusions. It’s not hard to shoot a 416 if you put some time into it at the range, shooting off sticks. I’ve used both 375 and 416’s, I love both diameters and they will both do the job. If I could only have one rifle —-for everything, it would be a 375. If I could have two, they would be a good 300 and a 416.

 

[uplander01]

The member bwaybuilder has a great AHR 375 for sale in classifieds,…fair price and all you’d ever need, proper rifle.

 

[Neophyte]

“.416 Taylor (necked down .458 Win)
Not a bad idea. But purely a custom rifle and reloader proposition. I would not shy away from a good used Taylor, built by a reliable smith with a decent name, and sold for half or a quarter of its original price.”

This!
I’m thinking really hard about converting my .338 Win Mag, Winchester, Model 70, CRF, left hand bolt, into a .416 Taylor.

The only reason I’m even considering this is because I have a 6.5 Creedmoor for varmints and a .375 Ruger for one gun to hunt the world.

 

[Bandera]

One of the advantages to a rifle with a muzzle is that said rifle can be fitted with a suppressor. On our trip last year all of the rifles for rent had suppressors mounted on them. Even the .375 H&H was wearing a can.
On my trip next year for Buffalo I am taking a 375 Ruger African (left handed). I just did my paper work for a Hybrid 46 suppressor.
I may still take my Ruger No.1 450-400, but the 375 is definitely going. As others have said it is a very versatile caliber.

 

[BeeMaa]

@Ryanelson - You should send a DM to @krish. I think he has more DG rifles NIB than anyone. Plus he’s a great guy to do business with.