The .450 Double Rifle Of Dennis Finch Hatton

[Daniel Cary]

"I had a Farm, in Africa"

 

[rigbymauser]

Great post! What a story about Finch Hatton's rifle!
I have wondered what Redford was carrying in the lion charge scene in the movie. It looks like a Holland & Holland and I think Meryl Streep is shooting a 275 Rigby single square bridge. Looks like the same flat bolt handle that Karomoja Bell liked.
Out of Africa is one of my favorite books and movies and it was probably what pushed me over the edge to book my first safari to Africa in 1987.(I also like Beryl Markham's West with the Night). I did some research on how/why Redford was cast as a British nobleman and why he didn't even attempt an English accent. The producers has some reservations as well until Redford showed up in costume and they started shooting the film. I think he did a good job as a "great white hunter" of that era, but was not a good casting for DFH. It was all about box-office and chemistry with Meryl Streep.
I will take issue with those who didn't like her in the film. Her politics aside, she is brilliant as Karen Blixen. I have watched the movie countless times and noticed something about her performance: she is great with accents and she begins the picture with a fairly heavy Danish accent, but by the end of the movie--and the end of Karen Blixen's time in Kenya--her accent is more English. It's subtle, but probably it's what would have happened to a Danish woman living among mostly British colonists in Kenya for as long as she did.
Klaus-Maria Brandauer (sp) was also great as Bror Blixen.

It was a boxlock actioned double. A Webley longbar to be precise. I have handled Brors .350cal Rigby some years back.

 

[Jfet]

How mutch was the price, sir?

I looked at the tags of many of the rifles in the vault. The prices ranged from the over 100 thousand to mid-20 thousand. This rifle did not have a price tag. I pointed that out to Princess Bride and she immediately and very gently put it back onto the rack.

 

[JPmbogo]

A number of years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I was cruising the "net" looking at fine guns (What else does one do on a rainy Sunday afternoon?) In particular, I happened on the Champlin Gun Vault, and there behold was John Hunter's 500 Boswell listed for 25K! A bit of history here. My first book on African hunter was "Hunter" by John Hunter. I was maybe 10 at the time - been hooked on Africana ever since and have read that book many times over. Granted, it was Sunday. Nevertheless, I called Champlin. Who picks up the phone - none other than JJ Perodeau. I asked if the rifle was still available - answer: "just sold." I told JJ it went too cheap - he agreed, but then it was George Caswell's call. At the 2020 DSC convention, I reminded JJ of our conversation (doubt if he remembered, but I sure as hell did). He said he knew where the rifle was, but of course, I did not ask. Be worth a lot more than 25K today.

 

[double rifle newbie]

Capstick has a great remake of Von Blitzen's auto bio

Capstick’s Death In The Dark Continent was the first safari book i picked up on a whim late in the 90s, long after his passing. Needless to say, I was absolutely hooked, not only on afican safari, but of his love for the double rifle. i have since picked many more Capstick books along with the other famius author/hunters, have been to Namibia myself on safari, and also have picked up two doubles, a 9.3x74r, and a 450 Nitro, both from often poo-poo’d Sabatti. Im looking to book a cape buffalo hunt and drag my 450 along.

 

[JPmbogo]

A number of years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I was cruising the "net" looking at fine guns (What else does one do on a rainy Sunday afternoon?) In particular, I happened on the Champlin Gun Vault, and there behold was John Hunter's 500 Boswell listed for 25K! A bit of history here. My first book on African hunter was "Hunter" by John Hunter. I was maybe 10 at the time - been hooked on Africana ever since and have read that book many times over. Granted, it was Sunday. Nevertheless, I called Champlin. Who picks up the phone - none other than JJ Perodeau. I asked if the rifle was still available - answer: "just sold." I told JJ it went too cheap - he agreed, but then it was George Caswell's call. At the 2020 DSC convention, I reminded JJ of our conversation (doubt if he remembered, but I sure as hell did). He said he knew where the rifle was, but of course, I did not ask. Be worth a lot more than 25K today.

My mistake on the price - it was "only" $18,900 - see attached copy of original listing with photos of rifle. Breaks my heart to this day!

A number of years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I was cruising the "net" looking at fine guns (What else does one do on a rainy Sunday afternoon?) In particular, I happened on the Champlin Gun Vault, and there behold was John Hunter's 500 Boswell listed for 25K! A bit of history here. My first book on African hunter was "Hunter" by John Hunter. I was maybe 10 at the time - been hooked on Africana ever since and have read that book many times over. Granted, it was Sunday. Nevertheless, I called Champlin. Who picks up the phone - none other than JJ Perodeau. I asked if the rifle was still available - answer: "just sold." I told JJ it went too cheap - he agreed, but then it was George Caswell's call. At the 2020 DSC convention, I reminded JJ of our conversation (doubt if he remembered, but I sure as hell did). He said he knew where the rifle was, but of course, I did not ask. Be worth a lot more than 25K today.

 

[Wheels]

A number of years ago, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I was cruising the "net" looking at fine guns (What else does one do on a rainy Sunday afternoon?) In particular, I happened on the Champlin Gun Vault, and there behold was John Hunter's 500 Boswell listed for 25K! A bit of history here. My first book on African hunter was "Hunter" by John Hunter. I was maybe 10 at the time - been hooked on Africana ever since and have read that book many times over. Granted, it was Sunday. Nevertheless, I called Champlin. Who picks up the phone - none other than JJ Perodeau. I asked if the rifle was still available - answer: "just sold." I told JJ it went too cheap - he agreed, but then it was George Caswell's call. At the 2020 DSC convention, I reminded JJ of our conversation (doubt if he remembered, but I sure as hell did). He said he knew where the rifle was, but of course, I did not ask. Be worth a lot more than 25K today.

Hunter by Hunter was my first book on African hunting also. Picked up the book in either Dar or Mombasa. Family was on a roadtrip and I read the book along the way. We spent some time at Ngoro Ngoro Crater on that trip, which Hunter talked about in the book. I was going to be a Great White Hunter. Evidently something else happened along the way.

Thanks for posting info about the rifle. Really cool.

 

[JPmbogo]

CAustin,so the story is true......

https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiC7-GIjK7WAhVCOxQKHZeqDdoQFghLMAQ&url=http://www.holtsauctioneers.com/Gun_Room/December%202009.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGznN5MNxl9q0QIhxyGT9xAGmXijQ

Holt's
Auctioneers of fine modern & antique guns

IN THE GUNROOM​

Collectors are a strange breed. Take John Ormiston. He buys an empty case, and is then obsessed with finding something to fit inside. For years all that case held was promise. “Dear old John,” says Nick. “He’s got it badly.” A good friend since he first ventured into the gun trade, Nick was to play a role in John’s search for something to fill the case for it was a leather rifle case by Lancaster, and it bore the potent initials “D. F-H.”. John was hot on the trail of the Denys Finch-Hatton gun for which it was made. But the chances of finding the legendary big game hunter’s rifle were slim. Finch-Hatton had lost his life on Wednesday, 13th May 1931 when the Gypsy Moth he was piloting to Nairobi plunged to the ground and burst into flames. Was the rifle in the ’plane with him? At the time, Finch-Hatton was scouting for elephant from the air. The money-spinning potential of aeroplanes in Africa had occurred to him in 1928 when, answering an urgent call to outfit a safari for Edward, Prince of Wales, he flew over the Rift Valley for the first time. His reputation as a hunter had spread far and wide, and his reputation as a soldier was sealed when he was awarded a Military Cross in 1916 having faced off his attackers during an ambush in the now overlooked campaign in German East Africa. As a lover, FinchHatton’s reputation went global after Robert Redford played him in Sydney Pollack’s film, Out of Africa. A lushly romantic interpretation of Baroness Karen Blixen’s memoir, it scooped seven Oscars. In real life, Karen Blixen’s husband, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, shared the honours as Africa’s top PH with Finch-Hatton. Sharing became a habit and Bror Blixen took to introducing Finch-Hatton as “my good friend, and my wife’s lover”. Finch-Hatton had left from Karen Blixen’s farm, the farm famously “at the foot of the Ngong Hills…” for that last flight. The lovers quarrelled; she watched him go and tried (in vain) to slash her wrists. Another lover, pregnant by Finch-Hatton at the time of his death, was the racehorse trainer and aviatrix, Beryl Markham. In her own (superior) Africa story, West with the Night, she credited him with intellect and strength, quick intuition and Voltarian humour. “As for charm,” she wrote, “I suspect Denys invented it”. Here was a man for John to identify with; small wonder he wanted to add FinchHatton’s rifle to his collection. “I think I would have liked him,” he says. “FinchHatton was one of the Happy Valley set who knew how to enjoy themselves, real characters.” I spotted John recently riding the Piccadilly Line absorbed in the pages of a Holt’s catalogue and heading for a sale. Many of the lots were like old friends. “The sort of guns I like to collect - classic, best English sporting guns - tend to go round and around,” he says. “There aren’t all that many of them.” Is it the search for December 2009 Page 2 a gun, or its acquisition that most excites John? “The thrill is finding ‘the impossible’ and buying it when you can’t afford it,” he replies. “If somebody gave me £10m and said, ‘make yourself a gun collection’, I (half) wouldn’t want to do it. It would be no more than an investment fund.” John’s collecting bug had attacked early, the nineyear-old plundering antique shops for swords and daggers, unthinkable behaviour in our own milksop era. “In those days people didn’t knife each other,” he points out, lugubrious as Eeyore. The first gun in his collection was a pinfire revolver with which his grandfather, a ship’s captain, had shot a mutineer – “either in the stomach or in the middle of the Atlantic, I’m not sure,” says John. He also remembers “going on the train from York to Bradford when I was at school to buy a double-barrelled percussion muzzle loader that I then used to shoot rabbits - I shot more rabbits with a muzzle loader than I did with a breech loader.” I have seen John shoot, and those bolting bunny exploits served him well. The Africa bug bit early too. “My prep school headmaster lent me a copy of The Man-eaters of Tsavo,” he says, recalling Lieut.-Col. J. H. Patterson’s 1907 tale of two lions in British East Africa who developed a taste for Asian and African railways builders, (135 of them), until the colonel taught them the ultimate lesson with his .303 Lee Enfield. The schoolboy was beguiled, and as an adult John lived the dream. He became the director of Holland & Holland and the founder of both The Scottish Sporting Gazette and The African Sporting Gazette, Africa’s premier hunting magazine. If ever there were a suitable candidate for ownership of the Finch-Hatton rifle, John was that man. But would his quest prove impossible? If not in the Gypsy Moth, perhaps the rifle was one of those impounded by the Kenyan government in the 1970s? Now Nick takes up the story saying, “Unbeknownst to John, at the time when he actually bought the case, the gun was already in England.” As part of Karen Dixon’s estate, it had been left to Jock Dawson, another famous PH who transformed himself into a respected conservationist after Kenya banned hunting in 1977, and headed the Rhino Rescue Trust in the Rift Valley. Precisely when John was in his reverie about the empty gun case, Nick was in Kenya with Dawson who died in 2004, aged 84. Dawson’s son brought the elusive gun to England, and it found its way to a Holt’s valuation day at Powderham Castle in Devon. Minus its signature case, and with no clue to its provenance, the gun was a Charles Lancaster .450 double rifle in poor condition. “It was consigned with a suggested reserve of £1,000-1,500,” says Nick. “I rang Dave Perkins who used to own Charles Lancaster and told him the serial number. Dave Boy was fabulous. One of the old-school East End boys, all selftaught gunsmiths. And he told me who the rifle was made for. Then I started to research, and next thing I knew we’d increased the estimate to £3,000. We had everybody after it, the world….” The impossible had been run to ground. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the lot described in Holt’s catalogue,” says John, and he measured the compartment for the barrels inside his case. “It matched the barrels.” Auction day dawned; how fast would the estimate be exceeded? “But I had never before been to an auction where I was so determined to buy a lot,” John recalls, voicing the rising thrill of obsession. December 2009 Page 3 “My head normally rules my heart; not this time. Once the price went over £20,000, I was battling it out with a telephone bidder. In a muck sweat, I eventually got the rifle for £27,000”. John slid the rifle into the case. Like Cinderella’s glass slipper, “it fitted perfectly – even the mark where the sights had rubbed the lid’s baize lining aligned exactly.” The Holland & Holland Shooting Grounds was the backdrop when the rifle’s new owner first fired his acquisition. “I used the original Eley Kinoch .450 3¼ ammunition, and it grouped perfectly at 56yds, with a shot from each barrel ¼inch apart.” John’s imagination immediately took flight. “I wanted to take the rifle to Africa to follow in Finch-Hatton’s footsteps,” he says. Four trips later, with Zimbabwe and Botswana standing in for Kenya, John is jubilant. “The rifle has shot buffalo, elephant, eland - even warthog, its condition and accuracy making it the perfect companion for anyone wanting to shoot dangerous game. And because no other rifle belonging to Denys Finch-Hatton is known, this one is a piece of Africa’s history.” Elizabeth Walton

Here's a 2004 listing for the rifle in question:

 

[gizmo]

Capstick’s Death In The Dark Continent was the first safari book i picked up on a whim late in the 90s, long after his passing. Needless to say, I was absolutely hooked, not only on afican safari, but of his love for the double rifle. i have since picked many more Capstick books along with the other famius author/hunters, have been to Namibia myself on safari, and also have picked up two doubles, a 9.3x74r, and a 450 Nitro, both from often poo-poo’d Sabatti. Im looking to book a cape buffalo hunt and drag my 450 along.

I love sabattis. I have several. Great guns.

 

[double rifle newbie]

I love sabattis. I have several. Great guns.

mine shoot great! they are both regulated like a dream.

 

[gizmo]

mine shoot great! they are both regulated like a dream.

Yes sir they are very good and reliable guns. There was a screw up with the first group that was sent to Cabela's. It was Cabela's fault and Sabatti got a bad wrap for it. I love mine, I also have FAIR's which is part of the Italian Firearms Group as well. All top notch stuff!!!

 

[Paul G]

CAustin,so the story is true......

https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiC7-GIjK7WAhVCOxQKHZeqDdoQFghLMAQ&url=http://www.holtsauctioneers.com/Gun_Room/December%202009.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGznN5MNxl9q0QIhxyGT9xAGmXijQ

Holt's
Auctioneers of fine modern & antique guns

IN THE GUNROOM​

Collectors are a strange breed. Take John Ormiston. He buys an empty case, and is then obsessed with finding something to fit inside. For years all that case held was promise. “Dear old John,” says Nick. “He’s got it badly.” A good friend since he first ventured into the gun trade, Nick was to play a role in John’s search for something to fill the case for it was a leather rifle case by Lancaster, and it bore the potent initials “D. F-H.”. John was hot on the trail of the Denys Finch-Hatton gun for which it was made. But the chances of finding the legendary big game hunter’s rifle were slim. Finch-Hatton had lost his life on Wednesday, 13th May 1931 when the Gypsy Moth he was piloting to Nairobi plunged to the ground and burst into flames. Was the rifle in the ’plane with him? At the time, Finch-Hatton was scouting for elephant from the air. The money-spinning potential of aeroplanes in Africa had occurred to him in 1928 when, answering an urgent call to outfit a safari for Edward, Prince of Wales, he flew over the Rift Valley for the first time. His reputation as a hunter had spread far and wide, and his reputation as a soldier was sealed when he was awarded a Military Cross in 1916 having faced off his attackers during an ambush in the now overlooked campaign in German East Africa. As a lover, FinchHatton’s reputation went global after Robert Redford played him in Sydney Pollack’s film, Out of Africa. A lushly romantic interpretation of Baroness Karen Blixen’s memoir, it scooped seven Oscars. In real life, Karen Blixen’s husband, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, shared the honours as Africa’s top PH with Finch-Hatton. Sharing became a habit and Bror Blixen took to introducing Finch-Hatton as “my good friend, and my wife’s lover”. Finch-Hatton had left from Karen Blixen’s farm, the farm famously “at the foot of the Ngong Hills…” for that last flight. The lovers quarrelled; she watched him go and tried (in vain) to slash her wrists. Another lover, pregnant by Finch-Hatton at the time of his death, was the racehorse trainer and aviatrix, Beryl Markham. In her own (superior) Africa story, West with the Night, she credited him with intellect and strength, quick intuition and Voltarian humour. “As for charm,” she wrote, “I suspect Denys invented it”. Here was a man for John to identify with; small wonder he wanted to add FinchHatton’s rifle to his collection. “I think I would have liked him,” he says. “FinchHatton was one of the Happy Valley set who knew how to enjoy themselves, real characters.” I spotted John recently riding the Piccadilly Line absorbed in the pages of a Holt’s catalogue and heading for a sale. Many of the lots were like old friends. “The sort of guns I like to collect - classic, best English sporting guns - tend to go round and around,” he says. “There aren’t all that many of them.” Is it the search for December 2009 Page 2 a gun, or its acquisition that most excites John? “The thrill is finding ‘the impossible’ and buying it when you can’t afford it,” he replies. “If somebody gave me £10m and said, ‘make yourself a gun collection’, I (half) wouldn’t want to do it. It would be no more than an investment fund.” John’s collecting bug had attacked early, the nineyear-old plundering antique shops for swords and daggers, unthinkable behaviour in our own milksop era. “In those days people didn’t knife each other,” he points out, lugubrious as Eeyore. The first gun in his collection was a pinfire revolver with which his grandfather, a ship’s captain, had shot a mutineer – “either in the stomach or in the middle of the Atlantic, I’m not sure,” says John. He also remembers “going on the train from York to Bradford when I was at school to buy a double-barrelled percussion muzzle loader that I then used to shoot rabbits - I shot more rabbits with a muzzle loader than I did with a breech loader.” I have seen John shoot, and those bolting bunny exploits served him well. The Africa bug bit early too. “My prep school headmaster lent me a copy of The Man-eaters of Tsavo,” he says, recalling Lieut.-Col. J. H. Patterson’s 1907 tale of two lions in British East Africa who developed a taste for Asian and African railways builders, (135 of them), until the colonel taught them the ultimate lesson with his .303 Lee Enfield. The schoolboy was beguiled, and as an adult John lived the dream. He became the director of Holland & Holland and the founder of both The Scottish Sporting Gazette and The African Sporting Gazette, Africa’s premier hunting magazine. If ever there were a suitable candidate for ownership of the Finch-Hatton rifle, John was that man. But would his quest prove impossible? If not in the Gypsy Moth, perhaps the rifle was one of those impounded by the Kenyan government in the 1970s? Now Nick takes up the story saying, “Unbeknownst to John, at the time when he actually bought the case, the gun was already in England.” As part of Karen Dixon’s estate, it had been left to Jock Dawson, another famous PH who transformed himself into a respected conservationist after Kenya banned hunting in 1977, and headed the Rhino Rescue Trust in the Rift Valley. Precisely when John was in his reverie about the empty gun case, Nick was in Kenya with Dawson who died in 2004, aged 84. Dawson’s son brought the elusive gun to England, and it found its way to a Holt’s valuation day at Powderham Castle in Devon. Minus its signature case, and with no clue to its provenance, the gun was a Charles Lancaster .450 double rifle in poor condition. “It was consigned with a suggested reserve of £1,000-1,500,” says Nick. “I rang Dave Perkins who used to own Charles Lancaster and told him the serial number. Dave Boy was fabulous. One of the old-school East End boys, all selftaught gunsmiths. And he told me who the rifle was made for. Then I started to research, and next thing I knew we’d increased the estimate to £3,000. We had everybody after it, the world….” The impossible had been run to ground. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the lot described in Holt’s catalogue,” says John, and he measured the compartment for the barrels inside his case. “It matched the barrels.” Auction day dawned; how fast would the estimate be exceeded? “But I had never before been to an auction where I was so determined to buy a lot,” John recalls, voicing the rising thrill of obsession. December 2009 Page 3 “My head normally rules my heart; not this time. Once the price went over £20,000, I was battling it out with a telephone bidder. In a muck sweat, I eventually got the rifle for £27,000”. John slid the rifle into the case. Like Cinderella’s glass slipper, “it fitted perfectly – even the mark where the sights had rubbed the lid’s baize lining aligned exactly.” The Holland & Holland Shooting Grounds was the backdrop when the rifle’s new owner first fired his acquisition. “I used the original Eley Kinoch .450 3¼ ammunition, and it grouped perfectly at 56yds, with a shot from each barrel ¼inch apart.” John’s imagination immediately took flight. “I wanted to take the rifle to Africa to follow in Finch-Hatton’s footsteps,” he says. Four trips later, with Zimbabwe and Botswana standing in for Kenya, John is jubilant. “The rifle has shot buffalo, elephant, eland - even warthog, its condition and accuracy making it the perfect companion for anyone wanting to shoot dangerous game. And because no other rifle belonging to Denys Finch-Hatton is known, this one is a piece of Africa’s history.” Elizabeth Walton

I ended up buying a double at Holts also owned by Charles Bulpett who was friends with Hatten, Bor and Karen. he was on the safari and worked for McMillan. If you ever decide to sell this let me know.

 

[450 Fuller]

"Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter" by Bell describe the early days (1911) of African hunting, and the difficulties encountered. That a Rigby .275 along with an Enfield .303 were used with marked success speaks volumes about conditions and elephant of the period. This same early 20th Century period saw development of the 375 H&H cartridge, along with the 350 and 416 Rigby-the latter two having proprietary effective thick metal-cased solids by Kynoch-as described by John Taylor.

James Mellon later effectively compares cartridges and rifles in his "African Hunter" work. John Taylor in his series, and based on personal experience, is pointed in his preference for silent doubles-at least as it pertains to ejectors. Bror Blixen effectively illustrates the hearing of a large massive-tusked bull being stalked by the Prince of Wales in the 30s-who upon hearing a stick cracked underfoot-disappears at great speed.

Sara Wheeler -author of the DFH biography and most Brits- were not impressed with the Out of Africa casting of Finch Hatton with an American accent. His Eton classmates would probably be in complete agreement. Wheeler was an Oxford scholar, attending the same college as had Finch Hatton much earlier.

Quotations accurately attributed to George Orwell are ripe for our uncertain time, both in the US and Britain. He along with Plato, rightly agree that honest citizens need to watch politics and politicians
most carefully. It was Orwell who actually is responsible for " We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would do us harm...or some such...

Socialism is the equal sharing of misery-Churchill, Prime Minister
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance

 

[Wheels]

Sara Wheeler -author of the DFH biography and most Brits- were not impressed with the Out of Africa casting of Finch Hatton with an American accent. His Eton classmates would probably be in complete agreement. Wheeler was an Oxford scholar, attending the same college as had Finch Hatton much earlier.

Always thought Daniel Day Lewis would have played a great DFH in Out of Africa.

 

[baxterb]

Always thought Daniel Day Lewis would have played a great DFH in Out of Africa.

I always thought Redford did a disservice to DFH because in fact it wasn’t his good looks, but intelligence, quiet charm, and wit that won over Karen Blixen. DFH was balder than I am, had really bad teeth, and was aloof as hell.

Had Lewis played him I think he would have capitalized on this and not covered it up. In my way of thinking, an intellectual or emotional bond between people who were not especially great looking is far more interesting than a physical one - but alas…Hollywood.

the only other person I think could have got into DFHs head would’ve been Gary Oldman. He would need to lose 30lbs, but he is as chameleon, just like Lewis.

 

[Wheels]

I always thought Redford did a disservice to DFH because in fact it wasn’t his good looks, but intelligence, quiet charm, and wit that won over Karen Blixen. DFH was balder than I am, had really bad teeth, and was aloof as hell.

Had Lewis played him I think he would have capitalized on this and not covered it up. In my way of thinking, an intellectual or emotional bond between people who were not especially great looking is far more interesting than a physical one - but alas…Hollywood.

the only other person I think could have got into DFHs head would’ve been Gary Oldman. He would need to lose 30lbs, but he is as chameleon, just like Lewis.

If they wanted Lewis to look like DFH he could have had a shaved head. The movie going public probably demands a good looking couple. At least that's what Hollywood in the 80's would say.

Oldman would probably be good. I didn't think of him. Part reason for Lewis is a similar body type to DFH.

 

[450 Fuller]

When I am reminded of my State Department service and our embassy in Nairobi that was almost
bombed out, I think of the two Patterson maneless lions sitting in the Chicago Field Museum a long way from British East Africa.
I am also reminded of George Jacobsen a State Dept hunter who wrote the African cartridge and bullet comparisons based on his own experiences. I still have his 50-yr old article somewhere.
He compares original Barnes and Kynoch bullet performance in solids and soft nose various loadings, with earlier Nosler products. Cartridges and rifles included the 300 H&H, 333 Jeffrey, 350 and 416 Rigby, 404 Jeffrey, 470 NE and 450, 500 NE and actual results with photographs of recovered bullets in African game.

Africa remains a vivid continent explored and hunted by Ruark, Hunter, Bell, Selous,Samuel Baker,
Selby, Hemingway, Finch Hatton, Maydon, Mellon, Taylor and a host of other explorer-hunters
who have left their mark.

Africa has changed while it has remained timeless.