SHOOTING ELEPHANTS WITH A 7MM When I started out shooting as a boy, there was 30-06 vs the 270 and 30-30 with 7mm Rem Mag as the up and coming fast shooting long distance fancy pants expensive nonsense cartridge that kept all the gun rags in circulation.
Then, as my generation slowly matured into wisdom, the 7mm-08 became beloved by all of us for its low recoil and wide wide range of bullets suitable for a 9 twist rifle.
Then our eyes went south and our surgeries came and went, and what the heck do we go do now? Fact is, we are all old and feeble now and shooting in general is a big disappointment as we suck at it right smartly now.
Answer, collect up the reloading stuff we always wanted, and add in whatever oddball fascinating cartridges and whatever oddball fascinating guns apparently.
My last episodic fascination has been with my favorite cartridge, the 7mm-08 Remington, a simple do anything cartridge that you can feed really really cheap using 7.62 NATO once fired brass and various pulled military powders by the gallon jug.
This gun can fling a wide range of bullets from 100 grain bullets and 110 grain bullets (both are varmint/coyote stuff at well over 3,000 fps). Ditto for 120 grain and 130 grain deer bullets at 2,900-3,000 fps. And 140 grain, 150 grain and 160 grain hunting bullets....
Hunting bullets range up by 10 grain increments all the way up to 175 grains, so we need some of each of those as well.
7mm bullets are still popular worldwide, and still come in varmint to deer to moose/buffalo construction types and in all the various weight ranges. This modern HIGH PRESSURE 7mm-08 rifle is a short action offshoot of the perennially popular 7x57 cartridge that itself has over 130 years of history as the "rifleman's pick" --- picked by the real he man for his wife to use on safari, of course.
Bwana would never never confess to not always using his 375 Rigby Magnum simply because his shoulder was all bruised and sore and his flinch had grown up to be the size of Texas from shooting his Bwana Rifle.So, ring in the modern age -- we got us whole new classes of powder now that can do things that Cordite never dreamed of being able to do.
And new tricks, using barrel coatings and impact dry lubricant coated bullets (like Hexagonal Boron Nitride) that allow the new Reloader 19 powder to make a 22" barrel 7mm-08 into a 7mm Rem Mag using the exact same 160 grain high BC long distance bullets.
And after a while, all this good stuff begins to pile up on you -- finished up good stuff no less. Piled up until you have almost a complete collection of it.
Almost .....
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This is an actual pic of Bell's actual rifle and rounds,courtesy of John Rigby & Co who had bought the gun from Bell's estate along with his larger much less used double bore Bwana rifle.
Kilimanjaro Bell had him a well used 275 Rigby (a British rebuilt 7mm Mauser action) that he used to brain shoot close to a THOUSAND female elephants over the years, shooting them with 175 grain round nosed "solids" (war time military surplus steel jacketed copper clad ammo). These slugs were running along at only 2,100 - 2,200 fps but would still penetrate to a 3 feet depth of elephant skull to drop a cow pachyderm in its tracks from 55-75 yards away. And Bell had used them simply because he needed a really really cheap dependable deep deep penetrating bullet to go get the cow elephant population culling job done for this season just so he could get paid the yearly culling bonus.
Rocky Mountain Reloading (contract scrap-sellers of factory pulled bullets from ATK/Speer/Federal ammo) came up with 250 of the 7mm soft point (very low velocity expanding) version of the Kilimanjaro Bell long heavy round nose format bullet. The price was right, so I bought 250 of them so I could go fill out my 7mm-08 ammo collection.
2,100 to 2,200 fps is VERY VERY slow now-a-days (that spaghetti stranded cordite stuff was nobody's speed demon compared to today's modern powders) and I am making me up a round to mock something that a modern 30-30 lever action could easily better speed-wise these days without even trying very hard.
Still, 2,300 fps is a pretty close modern equivalent, close enough for government work anyway .....
Retro Powder of choice would have to be IMR7383 (at around 41 grains) as that would smell about right.
Cordite stank distinctively when it was fired and so does IMR7383 as they are somewhat similar in composition. Gots to have that authentic Cordite type odor, or it jest wouldn't be real and true Kilimanjaro Bell certified pure quill fake antique stuff .....
https://www.chuckhawks.com/bell_elephants.htmBell recorded all of his kills and shots fired. It was a business to him, not pleasure, and he needed to record expenditures.
He shot exactly 1,011 elephants; about 800 of them were shot with Rigby-made 7x57mm (.275 Rigby) rifles and round nose 173 grain military ammo.
He also shot elephants with a Mannlicher-Schoenauer 6.5x54mm carbine using the long 159 grain FMJ bullets and noted that it was probably the most beautiful rifle he ever had, but gave it up due to faulty ammunition.
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