Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule Deer - Message for Craig Boddington

That Frenchman was very pissed off!

havent talked to him in person but have over the net...he has been prompt answering me on a few questions ive had when i finished this or that book of his....i have no complaints about the man, hope to share a campfire with him one day....unfortunately ive had to turn down two invitations by him so far cause i havent been able to make it work....seems most in the gun/hunting writing circles hold him in high esteem as a good guy aswell....

Now back to Karamojo Bell!

i actually liked the sidelines about Hunter, ive read all his books....alot of Bells are hard to find or expensive....only have one on the shelves....

Getting ammo was no problem, this was the British Emire. One ordered ones ammo from Rigby and told them to deliver it to the wharf in Mombasa. That .318 WR stuff that didn't work well - he had six thousand rounds of it that he couldnt use for anything, which is why he was messing around shooting birds with it.

Bell had trouble with ammo in that it's quality was inconsistant.
He was very disparaging of English commercial ammunition, having had all kinds of failures with it, whereas the army .303 was excelletn stuff and he had no issues at all. The DMW military ammo 7x57 he used in his .275, was likewise excellent.
This seemed to have definately played a part in his firearms selection. he wanted to use the .318 Westey Richards earlier one, but the ammo was faulty. He wanted to conintue using the Mannlicher Schoenauer carbine in 6.5x57, but the Steyr ammo would split at the neck.
Brass commercial hunting ammo was really in its infancy compared with today, and problematic. Bell carried his preference for military ammo over into his firearms in the early days and deliberately settled on the military type rifle for their reliablility, the Lee Enfield in .303 and the Mauser in .275. He had no opportunity to test loads, - he was just stuck with the one military load, and hoped it would shoot well in the rifle.

Later on the ammo situation seems to have improved and he used the .318 Westley Richards more, as well as trying out the .350 Rigby Magnum, and also the .416 Rigby.

Just out of interest, from what I have found he started later with the .275 than what people think, I can't find where he registered anything other than a .303 in Kenya prior to 1906.)

Yep. IIRC he said if the ammo behaved in the tropics for that .256 he wouldn't use much else. Likewise IIRC he said the .318 with heavy bullets was probably the best of the elephant killers. Shots from the .275 once in a while would not kill as intended. No apparent reason other than the bullets path apparently veered inside the elephants skull. He said with the .318s that that particular problem went away completely.

If you don't have Karamojo Safari, then you should try and get it. It is his best one in my opinion.
Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter has a lot about dealing with the native peoples and so forth, it was a collection of articles that he had written for Coutnry Life.
Bell plainly felt it didn't quite get the emphasis right, and with his second book he addressed the lack that I found in the first one - in that their wasn't enough about what the day to day safari life was like. So he wrote 'Karamojo safari' which is about one single safari that he did in (probably) 1906. It may very well have been the first time he used the 7x57, although he does not say it.
I like this book the best, it's pure elephant hunting out in the unexplored African wilds, and I enjoy rereading it every year when I go out red stag hunting, listenining to the red deer roaring at night while I reread my WDM Bell....

Sheridan- a tidbit for you, if you didn't already know. J.A. Hunter was the man who returned the remains of Denys Finch Hatton to Karen Blixen for burial.

ive got Wanderings but so far havent grabbed the others....i keep an eye out for them but so far just havent felt like paying out what most copies go for...

A comparable bullet to the 318 W-R heavy for a .308 cal would have to weigh at least 230 gr. SD of .351. I wonder how feasible it would be to attempt with an '06 what Bell did with 275 and 318 and have success.

The .318 WR load he used would have been a 250 grain solid.

I think if you were using 220 grain solids in .30/06, it would work just fine. But I read somewhere someone was once culling elephant with a Garand and military ammo, and that worked...

But for a .308, others have used SLR's for elephant culling with 7.65 ball, and that would have been 147 or 155 FMJ's.

Never mind...a 318 has a .328 bore. So about like a 220 .308.

Or according to Woodleigh, a .330 bore.

Yeah. I always wanted a .318, but the closest I have got is my 8x57mm which is about the same thing. I load it with 220 grainers and call it good.

What a great thread of comments. Think Mule Deer will relay my original message though?

I shoot heavy cast bullets in 30-06, 225-240gr. Even very soft, they penetrate well beyond what I expected. I haven't shot them at anything, but I would love to. The 240's throw pieces of nose and keep on plowing. When I find them, they are 150gr cylinders. Impact velocity around 1600.

And to add to confusion. Has absolutely nothing to do with this thread. But have been reading the recent bio on Poet Robert W. Service. Didn't know his younger brother, Alexander, was captured with Churchill during the Boer war.

Ok now back to Karamojo !

Ok! Walter Bell retired to Corriemollie with his wife, a small estate in Garvie, Scotland. Very pretty place, they still run it as a bed and breakfast. It was a hunting lodge for a while after his wife Katie died in the 1980's.
Anyway, there is still a rusted steel plate hanging from a post not far from the house, riddled with holes. It appears Mr Bell used to shoot at it from the house.
The property was small as these things go in Scotland, but it straddled a bottleneck in the hills between two much vaster estates on each side.
Walter used to sit on the hill and wait for the great stags to come through during the rut, moving from one property to another, and right where they crossed his land, he used to drop them with his .220 Swift scoped Winchester model 70. Used to piss his neighbours off.

I didn't know that. I know that they wee friends but didn't know that.

Bell himself had his pony shot out from under him and was captured during the Boer war. He escaped that night�.

This is a great thread. When men where men...