Temps in the 40's F and raining all week here. Might as well do this:
In a question about collector's value for the
GUNS & AMMO ACTION SERIES 1983 Volume 1, Number 1, BIG BORE RIFLES 0-8227-2335-2: Copyright 1983 by Petersen Publishing Company
The legendary wordsmith and professional hunter Phil Shoemaker had this to say:
Originally Posted by 458Win
I have seen them advertised for $250 but don’t know if they ever got that. It is a very interesting edition as it was Edited and primarily written by Jack Lott and he describes his infamous dustup with a Cape buffalo that tossed him. In it he credits Wally Johnson , using Jack’s 458 Win, for saving his life. He also admits that he gut shot the buffalo and that the 458 Win worked perfectly! In the second edition, that came out a few years later, Jack was promoting his 458 Lott wildcat and wrote a completely different story ! And years later, in an article published by Wolfe Pub, Jack blamed the 458 Win !
Bravo for that literary gem written as succinctly as if from Ernest Hemingway.
Mozambique, September 18, 1959, along the south bank of the Revui River: A day that will live in infamy.
That 1983 version does indeed have the greatest elaboration of the story about Jack Lott's 1959 adventures with the .458 Winchester Magnum. An abbreviated version of the truth appeared in THE AMERICAN RIFLEMAN, January 1972. It was the last two paragraphs of Jack Lott's article "Why Magazine Big-Bore Rifles are Best" under a subheading: "Injury not always avoidable."
A four-paragraph version of the story also appeared in the 1984, 10th Edition, HANDLOADER'S DIGEST. The end of that passage says "... In two weeks I was back on safari -- limping and a bit shaky, but otherwise functional -- with a great interest in rifle power." Yet Jack Lott hunted Africa again with the .458 WinMag and a .375 H&H each time, in 1962 (Malawi), and 1963 (Zimbabwe).
It should be mentioned that lack of "rifle power" was not the problem with the .458 Winchester Magnum. The 500-grain .458 WM solid that Jack fired as his second shot, before being butted and tossed by the buffalo, was driven too powerfully by the .458 WM factory load. MV was so high that the steel-jacketed RN FMJ "solid" deformed into a "knoblike mushroom" that "deflected into the paunch" after it "had struck centrally on the shoulder." Jack's first bullet, 510-gr factory soft ended up there too ... "mangled itself into a shapeless blob in the water-logged stomach grass."
Jack gut-shot the buffalo twice, the second time by no fault of his own, just poor bullet construction, state of the art in commercial ammo of the day. But if you shoot a buffalo twice in the gut, for whatever reason, he is going to be mad.
Ron aka "Rip" for Riflecrank Internationale Permanente NRA Life Benefactor and Beneficiary .458 Winchester Magnum, Magnanimous in Victory THE WALKING DEAD does so remind me of Democrap voters. Donkeypox.
