Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles .416 Taylor Project

I live around brown bears. As if to prove that point, 20 minutes before I sat down to type this, one ran down a street 75 yards from my house in a fairly crowded residential neighborhood. The potential for running into brown bears colors just about every outdoor activity I engage in around here for much of the year; Hiking, picnics, berry picking, deer hunting, backpacking, stream fishing, and so on. I've been fortunate to have many exciting encounters with these intelligent animals and never tire of seeing them. Problems with them are rare but serious when they occur. It's a very good plan to be ready to fight every time you go in the woods in Southeast Alaska's brown bear country. I've carried various rifles around here for nearly 20 years including the .375 H&H, 9.3x62, .45-70, and .444 Marlin. I've killed various brown bears with the .375 and 9.3. Experience hiking, hunting, and getting charged by brown bears has shown me that I like plenty of power in a light yet shootable rifle. The ability to shoot rapidly can be very important. My 9.5lb .375 is a proven killer but after a bout with tennis elbow from carrying it one handed around the action for mile after mile I no longer enjoy hiking it from sea level to 3000 feet or other all day ventures such as hiking or fishing. The 7.5lb 9.3x62 is just right for weight and kills things just as well as the .375. If forced to pick one rifle, it would have to be the 9.3 because it gives .375 performance in an '06 sized gun with greater capacity than the H&H.

But two things made me think a bigger rifle might be in order. First of all, I'm a rifle loony. I enjoy figuring out exactly what rifle and chambering would work for a need and then making it happen. Secondly, I've long wanted something .4+ in a bolt action just to have more smash at close range. I think about the worst bear to run into would be a huge old boar feeling predatory, guarding a food cache or nursing some injury. Studying Alaska history and talking with folks who've experienced these fellows indicates they are the worst ones to run into. They're big and strong, and they've had enough fights and injuries in life to feel pretty capable.

I tried a .458 once with full snuff 500 grainers. Recoil was there for sure. I would not plink with one! The worst thing to me however was the recoil was just to much for me to shoot the gun with as rapid a rate a fire as I would like. After reading up on Africa hunting history the ballistics of the .450/400 and .404 Jeffrey seemed to be exactly what I was looking for; plenty of power and low enough recoil for fast follow-ups. Problem was, neither of these could be easily made up in a fairly light weatherproof rifle. I decided on the .416 Taylor. .416 splits the difference between the .450/400's .405 and the .404's .423 diameters. .416 bullets are widely available, and .458 brass from which to form cases is available consistently.

But enough rationalizing, lets get to the project. Last year a scored a suitable donor here, a Model 70 5 digit classic stainless in 7mm mag. The original plan was to have Pac Nor rebarrel it since they do great work and were the only barrel maker who agreed to make up a suitably light contour barrel. Then they went and burned down. My favorite rebore guy, Jesse at JES said he doesn't do .416s. I ended up handing the job to Dan Pedersen of Classic Barrel and Gun Works. After some measurements, Dan confirmed there was enough meat in the barrel at my specified 20.5" length for the .416 rebore so I sent him the rifle in February with the assurance it would be done in early May. Dan called the first week of May, told me the rifle was done, and that he would be shipping it the following day. When I offered payment he said to just throw a check or MO in the mail once I got the gun.

The rifle failed to arrive when promised. After three calls in as many weeks, each with an assurance that the rifle would be sent the next day I grew increasingly grumpy. Shame on me for not looking at this before, but a google search revealed I was not the first person Dan has failed to ship a rifle to in a timely manner. My calls began to go unanswered, and Dan doesn't email. Then one day in June I found his website was gone. Gone as in there was no longer a website at that address any longer. Now you could say I was becoming more concerned and aggravated. I made a report to Prescott PD in order to have things documented. The patrol officer assigned to my complaint was very polite and competent but was also unable to track Dan down that day. I threw down my open-source internet skills and found a phone number for a woman who was most likely Dan's wife. I left a voicemail, waited a day with no response and then began texting her. She admitted Dan was her husband and said she knew of my rifle waiting to be shipped while mentioning unspecified troubles. I politely reminded her such was none of my business, but that the rifle certainly was so send it to me now. The rifle arrived a few days later. I sent the check and advised Prescott PD that same day.

The first thing I noticed was the cartridge stamping on the barrel. It's a total slob job:



Maybe an apprentice did the work? The muzzle was also colored brown from the heat of cutting or crowning and there were marks on the barrel from where it was chucked in a lathe. These were no signboards for good craftsmanship within so I broke out the Teslong for a look inside. There was some encouraging looking stuff in there and some truly concerning stuff:



By now as you can imagine I was feeling really "good" about this project. But one thing I learned upon getting the borescope is that I have a couple rifles that are proven, consistent shooters which come to find out have some horrific looking bores. So I pressed on. But no kidding, this thing was so bad it would snarl and grab bits of patches. I spent an evening with Kroil and JB bore paste smoothing things out until a patch would survive a trip down the bore. Then I took to fitting a NECG banded front sight



The best way I've found to do this is to mount an old hunk of barrel or suitable piece of dowel in a vise, coat it with valve grinding compound, and then work it on the barrel/dowel equally by focusing pressure on the four points of the compass alternately. The water soluble compound is preferred because it allows easy, frequent checks on the progress of your work


More to follow................