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Enough Gun?

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

In Comments about the .375 H&H cartridge, Fergie asks:

I wonder why the venerable .45-70 isn’t on the table for him?  North American bison are heavyweights too, and .45-70 will handle them with aplomb even at range.  I wouldn’t hesitate if offered a decent shot at that critter – a properly stoked cartridge with a hard cast 500 grain round nose from an elegant 1885 single shot would end the hunt nicely.

I’ve thought about that a lot myself (not owning a rifle chambered in .375 H&H, but owning the aforesaid 1885 High Wall rifle in .45-70 Govt).

I remember looking at the situation back when I was thinking of joining Mr. Free Market and Doc Russia on a South African safari, and basically I was told that the PH wouldn’t let you hunt Cape buffalo with the .45-70 Govt because it’s too underpowered.  I bridled a little at that, and went looking around.

Here’s what the stats say about Buffalo Bore .45-70 Govt “Magnum” offerings:

Mono-Metal Flatnose:  380 gr.  @ 2,075 fps / muzzle energy 3,632 ft-lbs
LBT-LFN:  430 gr. @ 1,925 fps / muzzle energy 3,537 ft-lbs
FMJ-Flatnose:  500 gr.  @ 1,625 fps / muzzle energy 2,931 ft-lbs

Compare that to Buffalo Bore’s own .375 H&H Mag offering, which they call “Supercharged”:

SUPERCHARGED: 300 gr. Barnes TSX @ 2,550 fps / muzzle energy 4,330 ft lbs

Here’s the critical part, though.  Most PHs recommend that the bullet arrives with no less than 3,000 ft-lbs at 100 yards.

At 100 yards, the .375 H&H  Hornady DGS 300gr lands at 3,292 .  The Buffalo Bore .45-70 Govt (or any manufacturer’s, for that matter)?  Anywhere from 2,500 – 2,700 ft-lbs.  Not nearly enough;  those big, heavy ol’ boolets lose velocity too quickly.

More telling is the bullet’s ballistic coefficient (BC) / sectional density (SD) or, for a better definition, penetration power.  (The higher the BC / SD, the better the penetration.)

At about 2,500 fps (which is at about 175 yards), the .375 H&H 300gr bullet has a BC of 480, and its SD is 305 (480/305).

At 1,900 fps (which is at the muzzle), the  .45-70 Govt 300gr bullet  has a BC of 185 and an SD of 204 (185/204).

In other words:  if you were to shoot a Cape buffalo with the hottest-possible .45-70 Govt cartridge, you’d pretty much have to be in halitosis range to get the same result as you’d get with a .375 H&H cartridge at 100-150 yards.

And as Longtime Friend Combat Controller succinctly put it when we were discussing the topic last night:  “If the .45-70 worked in Africa, they’d be using it.  They don’t.”

Yup.  In any safari camp, when you un-case your .375 H&H rifle, the PH will nod in approval.  And especially so when it’s a CZ 550 Safari, a.k.a. the Brno 602.

Quote Of The Day

Elections, QOTD

From Stephen Green:

“The only states that couldn’t seem to count their ballots on time, the only states where the allegedly dead rise to vote, the only states where turnout in places apparently exceeded the number of registered voters, the only states reported by whistleblowers for ignoring their own laws on accepting mail-in ballots, the only states that keep finding substantial numbers of new ballots, the only states with reports of substantial numbers of destroyed or lost ballots, the only states where we see reports of thousands upon thousands of ballots that are marked only for Joe Biden and no other candidates in any other race…
…all of these things are happening only in states where the outcome was ever in doubt.”

Strange, isn’t it?  Also, a reminder to read this, and put it into context.

News Roundup

Bad News

Guaranteed to be non-political, except for the first one.  Also, naked pictures of Giada De Laurentiis at the end.


…and it’s long past time for Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram and  Sean Hannity to go to OAN or NewsMaxTV anyway.  Fuck Fox News, and the Murdoch brothers.


…call me a disbeliever, as Yoakam’s dense adenoidal Southern drawl makes all his lyrics unintelligible, even to Texans.


…not that I want to take the side of a raving pinko like Hanks, but the offended Jamaicans (if they are in fact the offended ones) can just go fuck themselves.


…FFS, that makes me nauseated just looking at it.  Also note that this is McDonalds UK, so Brits too can go fuck themselves every time they talk about “fat Yanks”.


…sounds about right.


…Irony Of The Day:  he’s named Makarov.


…one would have thought that he might have put “parachute” and “my fear of heights” together in his mind before volunteering, but this is the modern generation.


…I would have said “too Left” but whatever.


…in other news, the village’s tourism revenue explodes.

  .
…join me in welcoming the Emirates to the 20th century.


…FFS, if they wanted me to bonk for two solid months, they’d have to pay me more than that.  Unless it was with Giada De Laurentiis.

And oh yes, I’m afraid I lied about Giada’s naked photographs.  That was just marketing.

Here are some substitutes, of another TV chef:

Yeah, you’d bonk Nigella for two months for free.  Most real men would.

Caveat Emptor

Hunting, The Gun Thing

A couple of people wrote to me over the weekend following last Friday’s post about hunting buffalo, and more specifically about the venerable .375 H&H Magnum cartridge.

I’m going to be about as blunt as I can when it comes to talking about the .375 H&H.  It is, as mentioned earlier, a cartridge designed to kill dangerous game — “dangerous” being roughly defined as “if you don’t kill it, the animal is going to do its best to kill you instead.”

This is not the time to worry about the cost of the ammo, especially as the typical African buff- or Kodiak bear hunt will only see at best a handful of cartridges fired.  Cost is irrelevant compared to having the best stuff you can have, because it’s your life you’re entrusting to it.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but if you’ve just dropped several grand on your outfitter’s fees and (well) over $10,000 on your double .375 H&H rifle, an ammo cost of $100 per box of 20 is even less than a rounding error.  (Remember, a box of twenty should last you two trips, if you do your job.)

However:  this does not mean you shouldn’t be wise to the price of the stuff, either.  Here’s an example, using the much-respected Federal Cape-Shok 300gr solids.  From Graf & Sons (not the cheapest of ammo vendors out there, because of their vast offerings across many cartridge types and sizes), we see this:

Now at first glance that’s an eye-watering amount to spend, but it’s not quite as eye-watering as this:

Now we all know that CTD isn’t anything like cheaper than dirt, the rapacious scumbags, but even so… that’s a hefty premium.

If you wanted to save money in order to practice before setting out (always a good thing when you’re going to be entrusting your life to a single bullet), you can actually do so relatively cheaply with soft-pointed ammo such as this:

Note that the bullet weight (300gr) is the same, so you should get more or less the same grouping as the solids — but always test it.)

Now you know.

Monday Funnies

Funny Stuff

Yeah, Monday.

But before we get to the funny stuff, a little catharsis:

Go ahead:  prove me wrong, I dare ya.

Okay, now we can try to find some funny shit to giggle about.

May as well post some of these before it becomes illegal:

Lastly:

For some beauty, this is someone named Rachel Hard  Hurd Wood:

And one last reminder for the Commies:

…and last week you defrauded us of our vote.

Self-Comfort

Beauty

At one point not long ago, I remember that we had a huge sofa that needed to be carried down the stairs — the only people around to do the job being me and the Son&Heir — and in discovering that I no longer had all the considerable strength I could once have brought to bear, the task was made tolerable only by the fact that the Son&Heir had grown up to be a strong man himself.  It was a sobering moment, and for a while I was quite depressed.  Then I thought about it, and realized that age was starting to have its way with me — I think I was sixty at that point — and trying to replicate feats of strength from my youth was not only pointless, but possibly quite dangerous:   heart attacks among men of my age trying to do heavy lifting are not uncommon.

I could have gone two ways:  hit the gym, manically try to build myself back up, or just accept the situation and realize the reality.  I chose the latter, even though it was quite a blow to my self-esteem to come to terms with this new reality.  No longer could I get into barroom brawls, no longer could I lift or just push heavy objects into place;  my life (and more correctly my body) could no longer tolerate any of that strong-man stuff.

Nowadays everything’s all about “self-esteem” and “self-realization” and self-this and self-that.  Hence the title of this post, which stays away from all the negative implications that have accrued to terms like “self-confidence” (boastful), “self-aware” (self-centered), and instead makes the case for being accepting of oneself and even more so, doing it gracefully.

Age does worse things to women.

While I agree that too much emphasis is placed on a woman’s appearance and especially her weight — and as Loyal Readers know, I lean more towards the “Nigella Lawson”-persuasion than the “Cameron Diaz” type — I think there is a great deal more to be said for women becoming what used to be known as “being comfortable in your own skin”:  coming to terms with who you are, what can be changed by things like diet and exercise, and what can’t be changed because of genetic heritage and advancing age.  It’s not a carte blanche to “letting oneself go” (another old expression) and becoming hideously bloated and sloth-like, but it does presume a more realistic attitude towards one’s appearance and capabilities.

No better example, I think, can be found than in the case of Kelly Brook, the one-time Page Three model.  In her teens and twenties during the late 1990s, she was the very picture of “beauty” (as defined by, well, everyone):

Then came age, and two children, and by 2007 she’d got bigger:

…and into 2018: 

To me, that’s a lovely woman.  In fact, “womanly” is the best way to describe her, and I cannot stress enough how attractive that is to me — how attractive that has always been to me — and I know that I am not alone in this.

Of course, a lot of people went to the Insult Dictionary, calling her “bloated”, a “whale” and all the other unpleasantness, and no doubt it hurt her a great deal.

But at some point, she got a grip on the situation, realized that what was being asked of her — staying with a sylph-like teenager’s body — was not only impossible but ridiculous, and she said so, plainly and quite succinctly.

Nowadays, she seems to have cut back a bit, but she’s still the same womanly size 12 woman she became:

Oh, I could go on (and on, and on, and on…) but I think you all get the point I’m trying to make.