Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Help me choosing a second #1 for my 'battery'

I will never hunt anywhere but the North American Continent and it is unlikely I will ever hunt the big bears so for me a 7 x 57 and a 35 whelan would take care of business. If we are talking africa and big bears and I could only pick two, it would be the whelan and a 375.

Amazing that no one has mentioned the #1-S in 45-70. It can be loaded for game from mice to elephant.

As to the 9.3s being a little short for elephant a friend of mine this past spring killed his second elephant on safari with his 9.3x74R Champlis double rifle...and only used one shot.

My "heavy" rifle is a stainless .405 Winchester. With a bore of .411 I can use all the .41 Magnum pistol bullets and besides the 300 grain Hornady bullets I also found a custom bullet maker that makes 350 and 400 grain round nose soft points and solids.

The .375 makes a great all around #1. I hunted with one exclusively for 5 years and used only the Hornady 270 grain spire point bullets at 2670 fps. Meat damage was less than most high velocity medium caliber rounds...

Bob

I'm with Ron T. and possibly Bob. For everything on your list except buffalo, your RSI and a stainless .35 Whelen or .405 Win would do fine. The Whelen is a much more practical choice if you handload, or even if you don't, but the .405 is for many people a sentimental favorite. Stainless is for the Northwest and Alaska, but just as practical in tropics. The weight issue is just one of those factors you have to "weigh"! But one of the things you need to "weigh" is the likelyhood of having to shoot standing up on your own hind legs. THEN that heavy 1S or 1B barrel feels very good. And the tough cover you find many elk and bears in just doesn't allow you to hunker down to shoot. (The rifle will feel much lighter when you have just killed a fine animal with it....).

I like the metric pair mentionned above. 7x57 and 9.3x62 are old and new interests of mine.

liam,

I think you already answered your own question. The 375 comes into play on the big bears and buffs. I would not want to tote around the heavy #1H 375 in the elk territory I've hunted. I would not have felt undergunned with a 7x57 for the limited elk hunting I have done. Put a stout 160 or 175 grain bullet, loaded to potential in a 7x57, into the vitals of any elk, and he will die. However, many here would likely contend there are better elk rifles than the 7x57.

The most obvious answer to bigger African stuff would be the Rigby IMO. For high country elk and so on though, I sure wouldn't want a Safari so a 300 or 338 mag would be a better choice there. Still kind of hefty though. The logical compromise would be the aforementioned 375, but, again, you get into a weighty problem. The problem with many of the #1s is that they're not really handly in terms of their size and weight characteristics. The 1As, however, get around that nicely and the 30-06 should handle 99% of whatever you might ever likely do. That still doesn't address Africa well though. How about the very similar in weight and balance 45-70 1-S? That will throw all the lead you need - though not too much, of course- for Africa. Depending on where and how you hunt elk, you'd have it covered with the 7 and the 45. Alaska could be done with the two. Bears die to 45-70 slugs quite nicely as do moose. The 7 also works just fine on moose with good pellets as it also does on caribou. Perhaps you should really consider two more #1s. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />