Ryanelson
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- Joined
- Aug 21, 2024
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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.
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!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...