Jim Corbett’s the best quality boxlock W.J. Jeffery & Co. .450-400 double rifle, with which he killed so many man-eating tigers for the Indian government (Elmer Keith Estate Coll.).
Jim Corbett described using that .450/400 Jeffrey to slay the Thak Man-Eater at about 6:00pm on November 30, 1938, in “Man-Eaters of Kumaon”:
The tigress was now so close that I could hear the intake of her breath each time before she called, and as she again filled her lungs, I did the same with mine, and we called simultaneously. The effect was startingly instantaneous. Without a second’s hesitation she came tramping and then she stepped right out into the open, and, looking into my face, stopped dead. Owing to the nearness of the tigress, and the fading light, all that I could see of her was her head. My first bullet caught her under the right eye and the second, fired more by accident than with intent, took her in the throat and she came to rest with her nose against the rock. The recoil from the right barrel loosened my hold on the rock and knocked me off the ledge, and the recoil from the left barrel, fired while I was in the air, brought the rifle up in violent contact with my jaw and sent me heels over head right on top of the men and goats. Once again I take my hat off to those four men for, not knowing but what the tigress was going to land on them next, they caught me as I fell and saved me from injury and my rifle from being broken.â€
This was the last man-eater killed by Corbett.
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Elmer Keith died in 1984 and now, thirty years later, the famous writer’s personal firearms collection is finally appearing for sale in James D. Julia’s March 15th, 16th & 17th Firearms Auction.
Not many of us will be able to afford to own any of the highlights of the Keith Collection, but it’s certainly worth looking at the on-line catalog and imagining what you’d do if you won the Irish Sweepstakes in time to bid.
Here are two examples, either of which would be very difficult to top for historical significance and associations.
Hamilton Bowen will build you an unengraved replica (on a Ruger action) of Elmer Keith’s No. 5 .44 Special SA for a mere $4495.00. How high can the original possibly go? Six figures would not surprise me.
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“The most influential custom handgun ever made!” Elmer Keith’s own No. 5 Colt SA in .44 Special built in 1927 as “the last word in sixguns.”
Speaking at the ‘Taken 3’ press conference in Dubai on Monday, the Irish-born star of ‘Schindler’s List’, who once again plays Bryan Mills in the final film of the trilogy, responded to a question about the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last week, which he linked to gun violence in the US.
“There are too many fucking guns out there, especially in America,†said the 62-year-old. “I think the population is, like, 320 million? There are over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it’s a fucking disgrace. Every week now we’re picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools.’â€
Reported by the Washington Post, Neeson added that there is a distinction between the violence of the movies and reality.
He said: “A character like Bryan Mills going out with guns and taking revenge: it’s fantasy. It’s in the movies, you know? I think it can give people a great release from stresses in life and all the rest of it, you know what I mean? It doesn’t mean they’re all going to go out and go, ‘Yeah, let’s get a gun!’â€
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Holier-than-thou Hollywood celebrities have been making millions from portraying armed heroes in movies, then taking public stands in real life in support of gun control, and they’ve gotten away with it. Except this time.
PARA USA, the company that rented the guns used by Neeson in “Taken 3” (2014), his latest action film, has responded to the movie star’s recent anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment remarks by stating publicly that they will no longer be providing the weapons for his cinematic fantasy roles.
KSL-TV (Salt Lake City) has an interesting lost-and-found story going back a long way and involving “the Gun that Won the West.”
Great Basin National Park employees are trying to solve the mystery of an 132-year-old Winchester rifle found in the park.
The rifle was found and recovered by park archaeologists in November, according to the Great Basin National Park Facebook page. The firearm was found leaning against a tree in a remote rocky outcrop. Park officials believe the rifle hadn’t been located sooner because the weathered, cracked wood stock and brown rusted barrel blended into the juniper tree.
The rifle was identified as a model 1873 Winchester repeating rifle because of the distinct engraving on the mechanism of “Model 1873,†according to the national park. The serial number on the firearm corresponds with manufacture and shipping records dating to 1882, held at the Center for the West Cody Firearms Museum in Cody, Wyoming. However, the records don’t indicate who purchased the rifle or where it was shipped to, the national park said.
Between 1873 and 1916, 720,610 model 1873 rifles were manufactured and in 1882 alone, more than 25,000 were made, according to the national park. The rifles sold for around $50 when they were first produced. …
Great Basin National Park officials are researching newspaper archives and family histories to learn more about the rifle they discovered. The rifle was transported to a conservatory so the wood can be stabilized and to prevent further deterioration. When it is returned to the park, it will be displayed as part of the Great Basin National Park 30th birthday celebration and the National Park Service centennial celebration.
OK, the leftist in the White House is disgracing the United States by relaxing the embargo on trade and talking about restoring diplomatic relations with the communist despotism in Cuba.
If the libs get to vacation in the Workers’ Paradise sipping Mojitos, we Republicans ought to get our share of the deal by new trade policies permitting American importers to bring in Russian and Czech guns from Cuba. More Mosin Nagants and SKS-s, along with Czech Mausers and VZ52-s.
If I’d written this list 7 years ago, this entry would have gone to the SKS; but as prices have climbed, the SKS is no longer the darling of the TapCo catalog, it’s simply another $250 C&R rifle. The Mosin-Nagant on the other hand? Well it’s now number 5 on this list, because it’s adored by an entire generation of internet fanboys who are too poor to buy a proper rifle, and can’t appreciate a $100 C&R gun for what it is. “If I put $400 worth of crap on my Mosin, it’s just as good as a Ruger American Rifle!†No, you fedora wearing neckbeard, it isn’t. It’s a $100 C&R rifle that’s fought itself in every major war since WW1 and lost every time. But that’s not good enough, because people need to justify their purchases, so instead of just enjoying it, these spazoids have to pretend that they’ve bought a WW2 sniper rifle while they watch Enemy at the Gates for the 3,299th time in their mother’s basement.
I’m not sure what Caleb means by “lost every time.” The Russkies did win WWII, after all, even if it was despite, not because, of using the Mosin-Nagant. I do agree with him that Mosins are ugly, clunky, not terribly accurate rifles with characteristically bad trigger pulls, which bring to mind hordes of sub-human totalitarian slaves making human wave attacks into Nazi machine-gun fire during some of the ugliest moments of human history. In my own view, not even incredibly cheap (corrosive) ammo makes the idea of owning one seem rewarding.
Caleb is right about the Luger, too. The Luger is a cool-looking pistol, but one which is persnikety as all get-out about its ammo, and will jam or even stovepipe rounds at the drop of a hat. One could forgive that problem and just stock up on super-hot 9mm Parabellum cartridges, but insane dealer/collectors have successfully cornered the Pistole 08 market and these old (and usually beat up) pistols are now being offered at the kinds of prices which ought to get you a used car. Lugers are just not worth the money, by an order of magnitude.
Bibeau was using a Model 1894 Winchester .30-30 lever-action carbine, with a tubular magazine holding six rounds (in addition to a round in the chamber). Retired Mountie Kevin Vickers took from his desk the RCMP standard sidearm: a Smith & Wesson Model 5946 9mm semiauto, almost certainly with a 15-round magazine (plus one in the chamber).
Vickers had Bibeau decidedly outgunned. Vickers could fire 16 shots as rapidly as he could press the trigger. Bibeau had only some portion of seven rounds left, and needed to work the lever to eject the spent cartridge case and chamber a new round before he could get off another shot.
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Mike McDaniel doesn’t like the Double-Action semiautos designed for the police market (and I agree).
[M]ost police officers [today] are not gun guys and girls. Many officers shoot their issued handguns only when necessary for qualifications–commonly only once a year–and clean their weapons far less often. Many police officers don’t own personal weapons, and many don’t carry any handgun off duty. Skill with handguns, and particularly revolvers requires constant and serious practice. Most police officers aren’t willing to do that.
Police executives were scared to death of the pistols available in the 70s, which were primarily the Colt 1911 and Browning Hi-Power, both single action pistols correctly carried “cocked and locked.†The sight of those cocked hammers sent shivers up their spine and made their knees weak, so manufacturers developed double action mechanisms so that they functioned more or less like revolvers, except they didn’t. After the first, vague, long and heavy double action trigger pull, the second and subsequent shots have a short, light pull, generally making the impact points of at least the first two shots far apart indeed.
Col. Jeff Cooper called double action pistols “an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem.†And so they were.
But Kevin Vickers clearly had fired that Smith & Wesson at a range many times in police practice sessions. He was familiar with his weapon and proved quite capable of shooting it accurately at a man-sized target.
In every gun shop these days, older classic guns seem to have vanished like the buffalo, but the racks are full of modern black rifles and… Mosin Nagants.
The Mosin Nagant used to be (deservedly) despised as a strong contender for worst 20th century bolt-action military long-arm, fighting it out for the title with the Japanese Arisaka and Italy’s Mannlicher Carcarno.
The Mosin’s recent astounding rise in popularity has nothing to do with accuracy, beauty, or quality of workmanship or design. The Mosin has been snapped up by countless American shooters specifically because, by today’s standards, these old boat anchors are spectacularly cheap. I still could not see the point of owning one of them until, earlier today, I came across this amusing article by “Major Pandemic” which noted that not only are the rifles cheap, surplus ammo is incredibly cheap as well.
Part of the attraction of the cold war Mosin Nagants is that they are excellent rifles for the typical $70-$100 street price, but the even bigger draw is that the ammo, which is comparable ballistically to the .308 or 30-06, can easily be had for a stunningly low $.25 a round. At this point in time there is no other large centerfire rifle that is this inexpensive to shoot.
When you first get your hands on a Mosin, you’re just thrilled that you’ve found a powerful centerfire rifle that only set you back around $100. Then you’ll dance until you got a leg cramp after buying an entire SPAM can of 400 rounds for only another $100. Honestly, in that initial ownership period, you really don’t care how it shoots, when it was made, or by which European factory. You’re just thrilled that it goes bang each time you pull the trigger.
Once you get over the initial fun factor, you’ll probably start looking at upgrades for the rifle. Upgrading a Mosin Nagant is an amazingly fun project that nets a gun that can hunt any North American large game easily out to 300 yards and beyond.
But, here comes the funny part: Great, that Mosin is cheap to shoot, but it also kicks like a mule and groups horribly at a 100 yards. So, naturally, Major Pandemic turns to the question of improving the good old Mosin. The old Russian sights are rudimentary (and most of the people who fool around with guns these days are getting on in years and have weak eyes), so the Major gets himself mounts and a scope.
Getting bashed in the shoulder induces flinching, so a better, sniper-style, gunstock is in order.
Then, something has to be done about the absolutely terrible trigger-pull. $100 worth of Timney trigger is the answer.
Finally, if you want the old war horse to shoot accurately, you’ll need to re-crown that ancient barrel.
And there you have it, a mere $1047.98 later, that hundred-dollar clunker performs like a thousand-dollar-ish new rifle, but you do get to use that cheap surplus ammo.
Or, alternatively, I would say, you could just buy a Lee Loader and reload .30-06 rounds, and buy a decent rifle.
