Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Killing versus stopping

Let me add my thanks for that comment, Phil! I would like to quote you on that, if I may?

I am no hands-on expert on stopping a charging bear/elephant/lion, by any means, but I've been compiling extensive notes from a number of men who are, for the past couple of years. This is for a writing project that may or may not come off... because of my experience and research in the area of use of deadly force in law enforcement (which does NOT equate to UDF against quadrupeds much larger than our species!) I have been intensely curious about the parallels between those sorts of encounters and the hunting variety. I've discussed it with a few established hunting writers, and they seem to think it's a worthy subject. Many of the terms are common to both arenas: stopping power, adrenalized condition, etc, etc. I continue to gather information, and we shall see, in the long term, what I can come up with and whether it has any value to the average Joe. But in the short term I've come to appreciate some points that more or less amount to a consensus. These points come mostly from African PH's--and a few hunters who've been in the thick of it quite a bit--and I hope to add the insights of some of our North American fellows as well.

One of the things that is common to all the PH's I've interviewed is that they view a stopping rifle as a very different thing than a hunting rifle. A stopping rifle has be able to finish the job with a high degree of finality, right now. Most of them think a .375 is plenty of rifle for hunting any game, any of the Big Five. But they clearly all prefer something bigger for stopping an adrenalized, wounded, enraged beast bent on tearing you to bits or stomping you into a puddle of strawberry jelly. A stopping rifle is typically deployed at close range, so as to increase the precise shot placement necessary to the task.

Another thing these chaps have in common is that none of them, as in 0%, ever wished they had a smaller gun and less ammunition when facing an aggressive dangerous game animal. (This observation carries over to law enforcement encounters as well, for what that is worth!) I can confirm from my limited exposure to hunting Cape buffalo in thick mopane brush that my .375 H&H seemed awfully small and inadequate at times, and I wondered if I had made a mistake by not buying that .416 rifle instead of the .375! This was particularly true when we had two buffalo bulls gallop by us a scant 4 yards off our right flank closely followed by an irate black rhino. At that point I doubt a bazooka would have felt adequate! But as it turned out the .375 was more than adequate for the hunting and killing of my bull.

My own PH on my sole African buff hunt has faced down, by his accounts, more DG charges than I care to say, although I believe his tally is accurate. I'll leave him to substantiate that claim in his own book, which should be coming out in the next year or two. His experiences have led him to believe that bore size and power are very relevant in a stopping rifle, especially when you're knocking heads with the big stuff: elephant, rhino, hippo, and buff. His stopping rifle is a 470 Rigby double, and before he got that one his stopping rifle was a 450/400, as I recall. He believes that a double is the best option because stopping a charge requires shooting only when the animal is very close, and no bolt rifle can be worked fast enough to get a second shot at that close range whereas as the double will do so, if just barely. He admits that he has needed the second shot less than a handful of times in his career, though.

Another highly respected PH, who was my second choice to hunt with, also prefers a rifle of greater than .400 caliber, but his preference is for a magazine rifle rather than a double. His reasons for preferring the bolt gun are again highly subjective and personal. Yet another PH, a young man I came to like very much in the brief time I spent with him on my safari, carries a .375 H&H bolt rifle and feels very confident in it. But I have to note that he is the only PH I've talked to who doesn't prefer a .400+ caliber stopping rifle, and more than a couple have expressed fondness for bore sizes upwards of half an inch.

I would echo Mule Deer's recommendation of Craig Boddington's Safari Rifles I and II. These are excellent books, written by a fellow who's done more African dangerous game hunting than many PH's. His observations carry a lot of weight, in my view. Another excellent book is Terry Wieland's Dangerous Game Rifles. Phil Shoemaker has written enough good magazine articles on his rifles to make me believe he could write one heckuva book on stopping rifles for big Alaskan brown bears, and maybe if we goad him enough he might actually put that book together for us. And I really wish John Barsness would get busy and do more African hunting so he can get around to writing that authoritative African Rifle book we all know that's in him, but if he keeps wasting time hunting Montana pheasants and ducks and whatnot, that's not likely to come to pass, so apparently more goading is in order...