What did the PHs on your safari use for stopper or back up rifles? Or if you're a PH what rifles do you use for said work?

This particular PH uses a left hand Weatherby actioned .500 Jeffery built by Sabi Rifles in Nelspruit South Africa. The rifle weighs in at about 13 lbs fully loaded (3+1) and is fitted with mercury tube recoil arrestor, 19 inch barrel, shallow vee rearsight and a red fibre optic foresight.

Mine carried a well worn pre64 Winchester Model 70 in .458 Winchester caliber.

PH's whose rifle choice I know:

Rich Tabor - 470NE
Buzz Charlton - 416 Rigby, 450NE
Terri LaBatt - 458 Lott
Peter Wood - 458 Lott
Allan Shearing - 458wm, 416 Rem
Roger Whittall, now retired - 465/500NE
Butch Coaton - 458wm
Terry Fenn - 458wm
(? having a brain cramp ?) - 450 Ackley
Ivan Carter - 450NE

When my brain cramp is finished I'll edit and provide the name of the very nice and fine PH who shoots the Ackley.

JPK

John Sharp:
post-64 (push feed) customized Model 70 458 WM
1920s vintage John Rigby double 470NE

jorge

Florent Matthieu - .470 Heym
.458 Winchester before that

John du Plooy - .458 Winchester

Interesting to note that the 458wm has seven entries vs. twelve for all other cartridges combined. The 470NE has three entries and the 450NE and 458 Lott each have two count that maybe as three because the Ackley can shoot the wm and Lott ammo too.

Wile the 458wm may be pissed on here in the US, it clearly earns the respect it deserves where it counts, in the hands of PH's. Long live the 458wm!

JPK

I use a .450 Rigby Rimless on a Vektor double square bridge magnum Mauser tye action, weighing 10lbs fully loaded, 22 inch barrel. (Build by Gerrie Coetzee in Bloemfontein.)
My other 2 "big bores", that I have used occationally, or let clients use, are both M98 Mauser actioned custom rifles by Gerrie Coetzee, in calibers 9,3x64 and .404 Jefferey.

Is the 458 popular because it is good, or because it is widely available? After all 30-30's are probably still the most popular deer rifles.

Ronnie Blackbeard- FN 98 in 458Win he bought new in 1959.
Hilton Nichols- Rem 1917 in 450 Ackley and a Belgian 470.
Phillip Reed- Brno in 450 Ackley.
Gordon Cundill- 500NE double.

SOS

The .458 is reliable and affordable. Most PH's aren't rolling in the dough, so double rifles are pricey for most.

IF we looked at rifle sales over the passt 15 years, I doubt that the venerable 30-30 would be at the top of the sales list anymore. Who's buying lever action rifles for hunting these days? Not as popular as it once was.

Three PHs I have hunted with used 416 Remington.

One was a re-barreled Weatherby Mk V action in a McMillan stock with a single, fixed express sight.

One was a stock appearing Rem. 700 with a single, fixed express sight.

One was a virtually stock Rem 700.

405wcf

I know many PHs and for the most part they carry stock .375s, 416's and 458's, factory stuff that ammo is easy to come by and much is left in camp by hunters...Some few carry double rifles and most of those were gifts from clients or were picked up when these old guns were cheap and ammo was not available..It is not a particularly lucrative business and many are just leaking out a living doing what they love. To many of them a rifle is nothing more than a necessary tool, but a few are gun nuts, and that usually adds to their success as a PH in that they have that in common with their clients...

Probably the best source of information on this subject is Safari Rifles by Boddington..He did a good study on the subject, with the better PHs in the safari industry.

While most of the PHs out there are excellent in their job, keep in mind that all PHs are not gun or caliber experts, and they may carry any manor of rifle or caliber. Some of these guys are excellent hunters and some are not and a gun is only a tool to them, and they may or may not be good shots or hunters. A lot depends on the country they are in and what is involved in getting a license.

The PH I hunted with had a push feed M70 in .416 Rem and another rifle in .458 Win, although I can't remember what model that one was in. Funny story, thinking about how PH's aren't gun nuts. We were stalking buff one day when all of a sudden the PH turned around and looked like he had seen a ghost. I asked what was wrong and he pointed to the floor plate of his rifle, or at the empty hole where the floor plate should have been. The screw holding it in had come out and the floor plate had fallen out. Why none of us noticed, I don't know, but we found the floor plate just a few steps back, but we couldn't find the screw. He used his 458 from then on. Gun parts are hard to come by in Zim, so I sent him some replacement screws when I got back to the states.
Test

Pushfeed Rem's & Win's..............weird, I thought them never worked on a DGR!

I too find it interesting in the number of 458's used. Easy to find ammo aside, they must "just plain work"!

The smoothness of a Model 70 PF in .458 is like an IQ test.
The more expert your opinion, the more likely a lower score.

JW

Two well-known PH's who used push-feed M70's in .458 for at least part of their careers were Finn Aagaard and Harry Selby.

Of the PHs I hunted with - one had a push-feed M70 458, one had a Mauser 458, another had a Brno 458 and one used a 375 Flanged double (leopard hunt).

Con Van Wyk Krieghoff 500NE

The 458wm now posts 14 of 37 total "entries", for 38% of all "entries". All others account for 23 with the 458Lott/450Ackley accounting for 5, same with the 416Rem. The 470NE has four, the 450NE two and so does the 500NE, all others one each.

Another interesting note is that double rifles account for ten of the 37 entries, or 27%.

Using the Taylor era definition of a big bore, .458" and better, 30 of the 37 entries, or 81%, are big bores while six are "large medium bores", as Taylor called them, and one is a medium bore.

22 of the 37 entries, or just shy of 60%, use .458" bullets.

JPK

On my first two safaris my PH's both carried a .416. On my hunt last September my PH also had a .416 but would pull out his .577 depending on what were following.

Good! I will let anyone who cares to use a pushfeed rifle..

I personally will never use one for dangerous game again! I have seen them fail every year both for PHs and for clients..and the worst thing about them is they will fail at the worst possible time it seems.....I was chasing buffalo and while ejecting a spent round and loading a new one, it fell out and I snapped it on a bull at very close range, fortunatly a good PH saved my bacon with his double.

I understand a control round can fail, I know a double rifle can fail, mostly because of user failure, bad handloads, etc. it seems, but it is made my man and anything mechanical can fail...

I have never had a "tweeked" control feed rifle fail me..therefore I will continue to use them...

BTW, Finn Aagard and Harry Selby both used mostly control feed guns, and they understood the CFR was the better of the two...Harry used a pushfeed for a short time out of necessity, after he had shot the barrel completely out of his pre 64 Win. Finn had a pushfeed that he liked but he had some Mausers and pre 64s also and preferred them. I have had many a good conversation with them both.

I have no problem with a pushfeed for hunting non dangerous game or varmints..they work just fine..I just like the right tool for the job at hand.

Actually Harry Selby bought the push-feed .458 after he shot the barrel out of his .416 Rigby, a Rigby rifle. He sent the Rigby back to England to be rebarreled and by the time the .416 finally came back, he liked the .458 so much he kept using it. Or at least that is the story that Joe Coogan has told me, more than once. Joe worked as a PH for Harry for many years, and knows him very well. He just saw Harry last year.

Of course part of the deal was that Harry could get a realy good chunk of money for the .416, and did, from a former safari client. I got to shoot it a few years ago, and afterward put together a CZ that pretty much matched it. One of the things about Selby's rifle that is rather surprising is that it's built on a standard--not magnum--98 Mauser action, which is supposed to be real no-no. But it has been working fine for thousands of rounds.

I knew Finn fairly well, and in fact have shot all his African back-up rifles. He very much preferred his old .375 M70 above everything, but had nothing against his push-feed M70 either--though from what he said, it was definitely 3rd in line behind his .375 and his Westley Richards .458.

But I'm not arguing about push vs. controlled, just making some observations.

For what it is worth. Warren Page used an early (1950 +/-) Rem 721 as the basis for his .375 Weatherby and eventually had it rebarreled 2 or 3 times. It NEVER failed him. Read his 1969 article about it. Ross Seifried used a Rem 700 .416 for years. Both are push feed. Ross thinks it is much ado about nothing.

Both guys have/had a great amount of experience.

It's obviously much ado about nothing. Why do you think that every military rifle designed since 1903 has been push feed? I have shot High Power with both Model 70 PF and CRF, with M1 Garand (semiauto push feed), and with AR15 (semiauto push feed). In tens of thousands of rounds, I have NEVER had a failure to feed. The only failure to extract I have had was when my non-shooting hand covered the ejection port on an AR15.

In hunting I once had a failure to extract a 30-06 case in an M98 CRF action. The case stayed stuck in the chamber. Hot load? Another time an old Mannlicher with excess headspace caused a case separation, the front part stying in the rifle. Subsequently I had to fire form all my cases for this rifle. No fault of the action in either case. I think that if things are even remotely within tolerance, it does not matter if you use PF or CRF.

You are spot on, once Shelby got the 458 push feed he never went back to the 426 Rigby which was built on a Millitary Mauser action.

The debate "push feed VS controlled round feed" is much to do about nothing IMHO

Derick Van Staden .450-400 3" double
John Oosthuizen Echols 458 Lott 505 Gibbs
Gaven Hume 470 NE double

The only thing I will argue on this thread is that Harry Selby did, in fact, go back to using a CFR, and did so as quickly as he could. I believe he told me that personally, but wouldn't swear to it..Finn Aagard also favored, I believe, a Rigby Mauser in .458. and he had both a CFR and pushfeed in 458 and a 375 Win pre 64 and I have shot the Mauser custom rifle.

Most PHs use a rifle that is not costly and ammo is available unless they have been presented with one from a client..Also most prefer a CFR, and most prefer the Mauser or pre-64..At least the ones I know do...

I suspect the 375 and 458 are the most popular PH calibers. Always have been I suspect, as a matter of availability and easy to come by ammo...

I know a few who are into guns a bit more than others such as Pierre van Tonder, He has a 500 Jeffey's, 416 Rem Ruger 77 camp gun, and an old 375 20 inch factory original pre 64 Win and this is his favorite.
Richard Lemer uses a 458 Imp.; Hatari a 505 as I recall; Johan calitz a Searcy .470; Barry Van Heerden uses a .470 his dad gave him and his brother uses a 416 Rem 700; His dad used a .470 also, the father purchased a number of double rifles when they could be had for a song..George Hoffman mostly used the 416 Hoffman CFR and a Rem 700 in same, but had a number of rifles...I know a lot of PHs these days that use doubles, I think they feel it helps business and adds to the ombiance of being a PH, and some were gifts from satisfied customers.

Bottom line is PHs just like thier clients use and assortment of rifles and I don't see that being a PH automatically makes one an expert on big bore rifles as I know many PHs that are not particularly gun nutty, but are good hunters and I know PHs that are not particularly good shots but they too are good hunters..

I know many gun scribes that are experts on big bore rifles and a well known gun scribe is probably the best source of information to the new hunter or even the gun nut...It is their business to know these things and the magazines are your best source of information...PHs are supposed to be good hunters and most all of them are that.

Just my opine! No saying I'm right but I believe I am...:)