AI says:
is the caliber 500 jeffery known for feeding issues?
Yes. The
.500 Jeffery has a reputation for being more demanding to feed reliably than many other dangerous-game cartridges, especially when chambered in a Mauser 98–type action. That doesn't mean a properly built .500 Jeffery is unreliable; rather, getting it to feed perfectly requires more careful magazine and feed-rail work.
The underlying issue is its unusual geometry. The .500 Jeffery is an enormous, relatively short, fat cartridge—roughly
0.620" at the case body/base, with a rebated rim of about
0.575". That combination creates several challenges:
- Very large case diameter: A standard Mauser magazine wasn't designed around cartridges this wide. Magazine box dimensions, follower shape, feed rails, and feed-ramp geometry all become critical.
- Rebated rim: The bolt face is smaller than the case body. During feeding, the cartridge has to rise into exactly the right position for the extractor and bolt face to capture the rim reliably.
- Short/fat proportions: The cartridge doesn't have the long, relatively slender shape of something like a .375 H&H or .416 Rigby, which tends to guide itself toward the chamber more readily.
- Limited magazine capacity: Typically you're dealing with only 2–3 cartridges in the magazine, and small changes in cartridge stack geometry can substantially change feeding behavior.
- Bullet profile matters: A rifle that feeds round-nose solids perfectly may behave differently with a broad-meplat flat-point solid or certain softpoints.
This is particularly relevant because the
original .500 Jeffery was essentially an adaptation of the German 12.7×70mm Schuler, intended to put .500-class performance into a Mauser 98 action. It accomplished that, but at the cost of considerably more complicated feeding geometry than cartridges such as the .416 Rigby.
If you're considering a particular .500 Jeffery rifle, I'd pay unusually close attention to feeding. I'd want to cycle
the actual ammunition/bullet shapes I intended to hunt with, slowly and rapidly, from every magazine position. A .500 Jeffery that feeds 50–100 consecutive rounds without hesitation is a very different proposition from one that occasionally noses into the feed ramp or loses control of the case head.
Interestingly, this is one reason the
.500 A-Square and .505 Gibbs can be attractive alternatives—their case designs avoid some of the .500 Jeffery's peculiarities, although they bring their own action-size requirements.
