Rifle Options - 375H&H / 416 Rigby

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I'd never even heard of this before.
Thanks @Hoss Delgado and @Kawshik Rahman.
I'll stick with my 375H&H.

The 9.5X57 was the proprietary cartridge for the Mannlicher Schoenauer M1910 model built by Osterr Waffenfabriken Ges, Steyr, and later Steyr - Werke AG. It was known to the British trade as the .375 Nitro Express Rimless, or .375RNE, though the cordite load was generally lighter in cartridges listed as .375 RNE than in those of 9.5x57. Eley (Kynoch), DWM (Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken), and other manufacturers made both during the 'interwars' period of the 1920s - 30s.

The Mannlicher Schoenauer proprietary cartridges of 6.5x54 (M1903), 9x56 (M1905), 8x56 (M1908), 9,5x57 (M1910) with DWM numbers:

Eley drawing of cartridge:
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The cartridge was preceded by a rimmed .375 Nitro Express and has roots with Westley Richards, who claimed to have designed it:
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@Alistair yeh what did you get in the end???
 
@Alistair How did you get on? Did you manage to pick up that Winchester?

Hi njc, all.

I did indeed get the Winchester, today in fact!

Bit of a hold up on getting the certificate back, but it arrived saturday and I went shopping today.

She's a beauty. 2010 production, great nick, can't have fired more than 100rounds total. Feeding (at least with my dummy rounds) seems pretty slick and the trigger is also surprisingly good.

I'm now just waiting on some dies to arrive then I can make up some ammo and have a go!

There's a running boar comp next saturday, so if I can find some time to zero before hand, 20 rounds on moving targets seems a pretty good intro to the big (medium) bore club!

On a slightly less pleasing note the certificate has come back with a few additional, frankly draconian conditions which were not discussed during the telephone interview. Mostly a requirement for non-expanding ammo only for range use and also no mention of practice or competition, only zeroing.

When one considers that we discussed in depth and they duly accepted running boar competitions and load development as reasons why I should have a UK ammo allowance, this is... puzzling to me. No matter, a discussion to have with the fuzz monday and hopefully something I can get resolved by the weekend.

They also threw on an extra 60 rounds to the allowance we agreed for no apparent reason, but I don't think I'll complain too loudly about that one...
 
Great news re. the rifle. I'd really hoped you'd get it in time because it looked to be a great deal. Quite often these big bores don't get fired much, so a used gun often isn't all that used!

Re. the ammunition conditions, they could be falling back on the old section 5 expanding missiles rule. But as far as I'm aware those rules no longer apply as they were recently changed? It used to be that expanding missiles (expanding bullets in simple English!) were only allowed to be granted for humane killing of live quarry. From looking at my FAC that no longer applies as I have a range only rifle on there and there's no longer any mention of it (I just went and read it before I posted this). Therefore as far as I can tell there is no legal definition of an expanding bullet any more. I use jacketed hollow points which my local shop happily sell me for my range gun! So how have they worded that exactly? PM me if you like and we can compare notes. For now just load cheap FMJ and be done with it, it'll beat down a pig target just as well as a soft point and you're not off hunting right now anyway?

Over the last twelve years I've learned to play the game by the book. I can't say I get everything I want but in general my force are pretty reasonable with me (UK stupid rules aside for readers in other countries!). That's one of the main reasons I pushed for live quarry on my .416 - once field use is established you can generally go ahead with a great deal more freedom, even more so in the past than now. I've got 200 rounds on my Rigby slot, deer and AOLQ so I legally have to have expanding bullets, no land restrictions. That's about as free as a gun owner can get around here!
 
Great news re. the rifle. I'd really hoped you'd get it in time because it looked to be a great deal. Quite often these big bores don't get fired much, so a used gun often isn't all that used!

Re. the ammunition conditions, they could be falling back on the old section 5 expanding missiles rule.!

Thanks, I am very pleased with the rifle, it'sexctly with advertised and a fair chunk less than a new one, so no compliants there at all.

Regarding the conditions, Yes, I think this is what they've done and yes, I could possibly live with it, but why should I? It's silly, doesn't allow me to do what they've granted the rifle for me to do, and it'll make life difficult, so I'll ask for it to be changed.

To be honest, I'm struggling a little to find 'target' bullets for .375 anyway, whereas Gamekings, Accubond or TSX can be had in the local shop. I think it's defintely worth a chat, as it's so patently ridiculous and I'll see what they say.

The exact wording is "...may be zeroed with NON EXPANDING ammunition in GB on ranges suitable for that class of firearm...". So fine to get a rough zero with the wrong bullet, but not strictly useful for load development, practice or zeroing, or for assessing drops, with the correct, expanding bullet that I'd hunt with. In short, marginally better than nothing, but not what was discussed on the interview for the calibre.
 
That is very frustrating. It's how things often used to work before the rules were changed to be more sensible.

If they won't change, the only sensible suggestion I can come up with is Woodleigh Hydro solids. Non expanding but designed to shock quarry like an expanding bullet does. That would fit your needs without them having any say in the matter. They're expensive though - it really would be nice if you could load it with Speer or Sierra softs and shoot until your heart's content without spending a fortune. Some forces are just plain difficult!
 
and another update.

Just had a chat with the FLO again and the certificate will be amended for expanding ammo and also load development plus practice, so think I'm good here.

Apparently that's the default wording they use and it simply hasn't been updated to reflect expanding ammo coming off section 5.

Got to wait for a new re-printed cert, but happy for me to crack on in the interim, so no harm done.

Al.
 
That's great news! Time to buy a load of cheap soft point bullets and get some loads made up. Brownells have 200gr flat nose for £33.50 per box, that's not bad. Given the choice I wouldn't be plinking at targets with posh ones that's for sure!
 
That's great news! Time to buy a load of cheap soft point bullets and get some loads made up. Brownells have 200gr flat nose for £33.50 per box, that's not bad. Given the choice I wouldn't be plinking at targets with posh ones that's for sure!

Indeed. I've already ordered the 300gr Gameking bullets, £38.50 a box at McAvoy guns, so they'll do for plinking.

I've got 300gr TSX on order as well as my hunting load, so some load development to do with those in due course.

Exciting times. If only my dies would arrive...
 
Congrats on the rifle and certificate revision.

I have and shoot both the .375 H&H as well as the .416 Rigby. My Rigby is a great cast bullet rifle, 350 RCBS ahead of 30 grains of TrailBoss for plinking loads.

All the best!
 
Congrats on the rifle and certificate revision.

I have and shoot both the .375 H&H as well as the .416 Rigby. My Rigby is a great cast bullet rifle, 350 RCBS ahead of 30 grains of TrailBoss for plinking loads.

All the best!

That's the mould I've just got for mine. Do you bother to gas check the bullets with that little powder behind it? And how hard is your alloy?

Sorry for all the questions, I've just jumped on an opportunity to get a good load for mine without having to work on it!
 
That's the mould I've just got for mine. Do you bother to gas check the bullets with that little powder behind it? And how hard is your alloy?

Sorry for all the questions, I've just jumped on an opportunity to get a good load for mine without having to work on it!
Yes, I do install the gas checks. I use wheel weights, sometimes water dropped, sometimes air cooled. This is plenty hard and remains ductile, about the equivalent of #2 alloy.

I plan to hunt with the above mentioned load this year, I have access to deer and wild pigs.
 
We don't have lead wheel weights here sadly, they're all zinc! But I do have a big crate of printer's type which I believe will do as good or a better job. Usually I mix pure roofing lead with old pewter tankards. That alloy doesn't seem to lead too badly but I've not tried to fire it fast yet.

I have the same things to hunt here. Mainly deer and a few pigs now and again. I think a slow cast Rigby load will work just fine for that.
 
Linotype is getting rare in the states. Mixing it with pure lead should increase ductility and keep it plenty hard. I have some monotype, but that stuff is hard as woodpecker lips.
 
Sure, no problem. This was the first trial run for this course I think, but I think it went pretty well and they're planning to continue offering them every year for the foreseeable.

The course is run by a chap who is ex-Game Warden from Zimbabwe. I think he was doing that full time around 20 years ago, but has maintained connections in the country and the industry. As such, the course is based loosely around the training and testing that the current wardens undergo, with a few tweaks to better suit the recreational hunter, as opposed to a PH type role.

The course itself is run down in Cornwall and lasts 2 days. It's a fairly even split between general rifle skills and practical shooting with the drills and skill set fairly heavily biased towards a mauser type bolt gun (although a few guys quite happily adapted a lot of it to double rifles and I muddled through with my Tikka, despite not being able to top load). Attendance was 12 on the first day, 9 on the second.

On the general skills side of things we covered off safe misfire drill for a Safari type situation (ie how to cycle the bolt safely with a round which may cook off when you don't have the time to wait the customary 30 seconds), general considerations for safe but rapid deployment of the rifle, ammo storage and it's influence on actually topping up the mag, kit, what the 'accepted' procedure for a warden or PH in a charge type situation would be (mostly so as a client you know what to expect and how to act so as not to get in the way), safe ways to carry a rifle in field conditions such as underloading etc, a few drills to familiarise yourself with the rifle under pressure such as timed loading and blindfolded manipulation, stuff like that.

The shooting side of things basically aimed to practise the training items under field conditions and was entriely done under a degree of time pressure. We covered static target shooting in field positions, which also included stuff like a hang-fire situation with snap caps, deploying the rifle from a sling and making ready under time stress, reloading against the clock, fire and movement type stuff. Basically all the things you may need to do in the course of general hunting, and potentially need to do sharpish under stress if you end up injuring an animal and needing a fast follow up, especially for DG species.

An example stage, and one I particularly enjoyed was to start with 3 rounds loaded, 2 live, 1 snap (mag loaded by the RO so you didn't know when in the sequence it comes). On the command you have 10 seconds to shoot 3 targets at 25, 20, 15m, but you also have to perform the misfire drill when the snap cap fails to fire, and load an additional round into the rifle to complete the stage. The target had a 2" bull, and then a 5" and 10" roundel for lower scoring hits. Was certainly interesting to see which of the guys with the big bores had a bit of a flinch on that one as well...

We also practised some moving target stuff, so procedure for a charging lion, anchoring shots on the rear end of a hippo type target (running away from the shooter) and all the usual stuff like aim points and drills for a charging buff. We also did a few practice runs on the lion target where you start with an unloaded rifle and have 4 seconds to move a couple meters to the firing point, load 3 rounds, cycle the bolt and assume a kneeling position before it charges, at which point you have roughly 3-4 seconds to get 2 shots off into the kill zone before it 'gets' you (I would have been eaten twice on this round, to my shame).

The Buffalo was probably my favourite round. You start standing with 3 rounds loaded, 2 live over the top of a snap cap. You get 5 seconds to shoot into the heart area at roughly 50m and then on report the buffalo charges you and again you have roughly 2-3 seconds to put the second live round into the head kill zone. The timer then stops once the shooter has taken two shots and cycled the bolt to load the snap cap.

On the whole, I can't directly comment on how applicable the drills would be to a safari or DG hunt, having not done one, but the chap seemed to know his stuff and I had a good time. There were also a few bits and pieces I hadn't really considered as a UK stalker, some good practice for varous drills and even really mundance stuff like how to rapidly cycle the bolt that you wouldn't ordinarily practice for stalking. The 4 or 5 attendees who had done some African hunting before, both DG and PG seemed happy enough with the instruction as well, so I guess it is at least a little applicable for the real thing.

Plus the shooting aspects were good fun and I hadn't used one of the 'charge box' systems before, so shooting targets coming either towards you or directly away from the shooter was novel.
What does the misfire drill entail in this context?
 
What does the misfire drill entail in this context?
So what most would consider a 'normal' misfire drill would be to keep the rifle shouldered, pointing downrange and wait s period of time in case of delayed ignition.

That's safe, but not if a wounded dg animal wants to kill you. This version involved holding the rifle to your side with the right hand on the pistol grip, reaching over the top with the left and flicking up and back the bolt to eject the dud round without lining up your body or your fingers directly behind the bolt body or handle.

It's a way to prevent driving the bolt back into your hand or into your stomach if it does happen to go off whilst out of battery.

Not something I'd done before. But it makes a degree of sense if you really really need the rifle back in action this very second.

Not an issue with a double of course and with modern ammo rare anyway. But considering the course was adapted from a game warden situation, I guess dodgy ammo might be more of a concern in rural parts of Africa.
 
No problem.

On an unrelated note, your profile pic. Classic F3? Or classic formula Ford? Or really, really classic F1, I guess?
 
It’s a 1966 Elfin Type 100 Monocoque (Elfin Mono ). It’s an Australian F2 car (actually built to AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL FORMULA 1.5 litre rules) - so technically ANF1.5 -but it ran in the USA as a Formula B car ( 1600 cc formula) even though it has a Mk16 Cosworth 1500 cc engine. My father was part of it’s build team and he & I brought it back to Australia about 10 years ago and did a full skins of refresh - it’s better than new now! I’ve run it a couple of times at the Australian F1 Grand Prix weekend in the historic demo runs. Even had Emmanuel Pirro been in my mirrors in an ex Bruce McLaren Cooper for 5 laps on one occasion!
 

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