Forrest - when I worked at A-Square in the 90s, I built one for myself. Left handed, so was done on a big Sako action.
The big pinch for it now is there is virtually no one making brass, let alone ammo. The Lott, Gibbs, or Jeffrey would be much wiser choices in terms of component availability. One can open up .460 Wby cases, or shorten .500 A-Square cases (which are also rare as hen's teeth), and you could get along fine in the states. However, in order to really use it for it's purpose you would need to commission a special run of properly headstamped brass to get it into Africa.
It does give a "shove" vs. a cracking/beating the crap out of you recoil impulse. Of course, mine was built using the A-Square stock, so the recoil pad was very large and this spreads the force out over a much larger area - the opposite of a Mosin-Nagant rifle. The description in Any Shot You Want does list it as the most gentle .50 caliber cartridge, and it also mentions the ability to download it for lead projectiles. I would guess that it would be a bit too brisk for use with a Ruger #1, but each person's recoil tolerance is definitely a specific quality to themself. Gregor Wood really busts on the A-Square pattern stock in his book on African rifles, but having used the Coil-Check stock, I can vouch that it worked well/helped distribute the recoil impulse.
One of my basic course buddies changed horses from tanker to SF. We took "Thumper" to the range and he was going to try it out from the bench. Having been to the Q course, and I'm sure, several other boutique schools for marksmanship, he snuggled in behind it as if it was a .308 or .300 Win Mag. I started to say something about he "might want to hold down the fore end", but I didn't want to insult his weapons skill knowledge, him being the ferocious snake eater now. So he touches off the .495 and the thing rocks up and clocks him over the eye with the 1.5-5x20 Leupold Vari-XIII - deep, deep cut. It took a minute to start bleeding. Much to his credit, he did get back in the saddle and fired a second round - this time he held the fore end down. Then he decided he'd had enough and relinquished the bench back to me.
To get used to handling the rifle, I used to shoot cottontails in my in-laws' tree break around the farmhouse in SD. The bunnies would bark the trees and kill them in the winter when food was scarce - nothing like a 570 grain bullet heading downrange in the early morning twilight - substantial flash - then only about 1/2 of the rabbit was discernable. : )
If I missed anything you wanted to know, or fostered additional questions, let me know.
USMA84DAB
