American Hunting Rifles: Safari 550 Dangerous Game Rifle in 505 Gibbs

[Buff-Buster]

Beautiful rifle Matt!

 

[gizmo]

Awesome rifle Matt, it oughta put a whooping on old mbogo.

 

[matt85]

Matt nice rifle, glad you finally got a good 505 Did you provide the 550 action? or was it provided by the builder?

AHR provides the actions for their rifles. i believe they have a deal with CZ to supply them with magnum actions.

thanks for the kind words all, here are some pictures:

buffalo taken with AHR 505 Gibbs


570gr .505" Swift A-frames i pushed at 2300fps (recovered from that buffalo)



note: recovered bullet weight was 503gr and 509gr

-matt

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Very nice buff!

 

[gizmo]

Awesome buff Matt!!!!!!

 

[Witold Krzyżanowski]

Excellent buff Mat. Congrats.
Witold

 

[adgunner]

Very nice Buff, Congrats!

 

[larry4831]

That's a nice buff, I'm going to have to do that one day

 

[enysse]

Very beautiful rifle and excellent cape buffalo.

 

[colorado]

Beautiful rifle Matt! Wayne does wonderful work. So happy for you.

 

[zephyr]

Congrats on the Buff and your new rifle....
With the lead weight in the stock how does the gun balance?

 

[matt85]

the rifle has excellent balance with the center balance point being the magazine. this makes the rifle very comfortable to shoot heavy loads from.

-matt

 

[zephyr]

11#s is a great weight, I've been working up loads for a friend that has a drop dead gorgeous Bollinger in 500j, but the thing weighs in a 9.5#s with scope.... it is not that fun to shoot. Been working on 500NE power loads to keep it's recoil more reasonable. I must say that looking at the end of that gun with it's 1/2" plus hole is very appealing to say the least.

 

[zephyr]

Did you post a hunt report

 

[matt85]

11#s is a great weight, I've been working up loads for a friend that has a drop dead gorgeous Bollinger in 500j, but the thing weighs in a 9.5#s with scope.... it is not that fun to shoot. Been working on 500NE power loads to keep it's recoil more reasonable. I must say that looking at the end of that gun with it's 1/2" plus hole is very appealing to say the least.

9.5 pounds is much too light for any of the 500s! i think 10.5 pounds might be fine for a 500 NE but the 500 Jeffery and 505 Gibbs need to be 11+ pounds. as said before, i load my Gibbs to 2300fps with a 570gr bullet and from the 11 pound 4 ounce AHR the recoil is on the border of being too much. any lighter and practicing with my rifle would become unpleasant and i wouldn't enjoy my the rifle.

ive never done a hunting report on any of my hunts. for some reason i have a hard time describing my hunts... im better at talking about guns.

-matt

 

[zephyr]

Sooo, what kind of first impression does 6500+lbs of energy make on a Cape Buff?

 

[matt85]

well it was a "tree shoulder lung" shot at around 50 yards. the 2" tree was being rude and got in the A-frames way so it blew it in half. after killing the tree the bullet proceeded to smash the right shoulder then made its way threw the lungs and settled on the opposite side of the animal. the buffalo ran roughly 75 yards (cant remember) before laying down and bellowing. once we came up to the animal is was still bellowing so i put one in the spine and it proceeded to try (and fail) to get up only to get another bullet in the spine (tough bastard) which put it down. my PH had me put one more in the chest to be sure it would stay dead and then it was picture time.

i thought about having the tree mounted as well but settled on a picture.


-matt

 

[stug]

Impressive performance!

 

[ActionBob]

Matt you should definitely have mounted that tree!

Very impressive performance on the part of the bullet.

You may have mentioned it already, but what are you doing with the buff? Shoulder, euro? Are you keeping any hide for leather work?

 

[spike.t]

its a nice rifle @matt85 you just need to shorten the barrel to 22inch max and take it to 10lbs tops and it will be very nice....