Dangerous Game… How shall we identify and describe them? Some identify the “Big Five” of Africa and the Big Bears of Alaska as DG, but surely there are others! What about muskox, bison, wolves, mountain lion, moose and elk… and the North American black bear in particular? It’s apparent from records, plus uncounted incidents, that the black bear is potentially a very dangerous animal not to be taken lightly! As to size, many not only exceed the weight of leopards, but lions as well! 250 lbs might be average for a not yet fully mature young adult male, but many seven to ten year olds have surpassed 500 lbs and others 700 lbs.
< This one was well over 500 lbs with guts out!
Some think that such heavy black bears are toting too much blubber, but I’ve witnessed some heavy bears “move out” from a bait site and in two bounds were hitting about 30 mph. One behemoth that was regularly hitting my primary bear bait site kept all other creatures at bay – nothing else, small, medium or large, came within sight or hunting range. He came at night and left lots of markings that this was his turf, and for no others! But the bait disappeared on a regular basis. He left claw markings on trees that my tall partner (over 6′) couldn’t reach by stretching on tip toes. But, without explanation, he appeared to have left the country. Shortly thereafter, I was at a local gun shop where a large man was telling the shop owner of a very large bruin that was killed by some local hound hunters in the vicinity of my bait setup. I asked a few questions and he said the bear was weighed with guts out at 567 lbs – which means: that bear’s live weight exceeded 600 lbs!
Then, Bill Vaznis’ book: Successful BLACK BEAR Hunting, on page 8, gives the following description of a New Brunswick black bear (my home province): “According to the third edition of The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats, Joseph Allen killed a nightmare of a bruin near Millstream in 1976 after it killed his pet German shepherd. The bear measured seven feet eleven inches from nose to base of tail and tipped the scales dressed at 902 lbs. Its live weight was later estimated to be 1100 pounds!” There’s no mention of how the bear was killed by Mr. Allen, but it’s assumed he used a rifle or shotgun. Millstream is a little more than an hour’s drive from where I was born and grew up.
The point of this is to define and identify dangerous game. Even a cow moose can be very aggressive and dangerous in the protection of a calf… except they seem to know better when a bear is involved! And a bull moose is notorious for attacking anything, and I mean anything, during the rut, even automobiles, transport trucks and trains!
Several years ago, on a major highway north of Superior, a married couple had been driving their motor home all day and decided to pull over for a rest as darkness fell. Sometime before daybreak they were jarred awake by something crashing into their RV. This continued for some time from various angles, while they tried to discern what was ramming them! They attempted to turn on some lights but nothing was working, including the motor! Finally, as daylight started to emerge, the wrecking stopped. With a lot of trepidation, they went outside and could hardly believe the wreckage on their motor home… headlights were missing, dents, scratches, holes and other pieces missing! But the moose tracks all around the vehicle was unmistakable. Finally, a police cruiser stopped and they were rescued!
So, what then is a “dangerous animal”? In my strong opinion, it’s any creature that could kill me! Or you.
Now, as to our question: Are single-shot, big-bore rifles suitable for hunting dangerous game?
<This was my Ruger No.1 in .45-70 LT. As seen here, it weighed a little over 8 lbs, and just over 38 inches in length. It would fire a 500gr Hornady RN at 2200 +fps and a 450gr Swift A-Frame at 2300 +fps. So it wasn’t lacking power for any living creature, including elephant with a solid 450 or 500gr making upwards of 5430 ft-lbs. But the issue is: Would it have been suitable?
The best document I’ve read on this issue was written by Randy D. Smith. In fact, I read it at least twice a few year ago, and, then again recently. In my view, it addresses every possible concern. And, I must add this: His favorite single-shots are Rugers in No.1. Additionally, his favorite among them is a Ruger No.1H TROPICAL in .458 Winchester Magnum, which he uses for multiple North American BG, downloaded to equivalent “hot” .45-70 loads. And he amply describes why he chooses that particular rifle and cartridge. (Pic of mine on the header.)
He does not recommend them for dangerous WOUNDED game if followup in thick bush is involved, especially if hunting solo. But then, he points out the several fallacies involved in putting full trust in a repeating magazine rifle, which I recently addressed as well.
It’s a good read, and I think you’ll not find better anywhere on this subject.
To summerize:
1) The Farquharson falling-block type action is the strongest of any because of that solid block of steel in the breech – the type adopted in the No.1 Rugers. More metal is involved than in the bolt-action type.
2) Because of the above, the largest bores and pressures can easily be handled.
3) Doubles (break action) can’t safely handle the pressure that the falling-block type can, nor the number of shots longterm without issues.
4) Even bolt-actions may begin to develop some weaknesses from “over abuse”.
5) The Rugers have been chambered in several Big Bores, including the formidable .458 Winchester Magnum that with its extra-long “freebore” allows seating of bullets as far as possible depending on their lengths and weights, with about .25″ to .30″ seated in the case. There’s obviously no magazine constraint to COL. That means it can easily match or exceed the ballistics of the Lott – upwards of 6000 +ft-lbs at the muzzle!
But then, as with Smith, others and myself, it’s often useful and easy – for several reasons – to download ballistics to the level of factory .45-70 loads. For example: a 300gr at ~1886 fps, or 400gr at 2000 fps or even 1330 fps. In a Ruger No.1 (or any .45-70), at 2000 fps/3552 ft-lbs, given a well constructed bullet like the 404gr Shock Hammer, or even a 405gr Remington (if you have some) can do the job on anything in N.A. within 150 yards or so. Of course, the 404gr Hammer bullet can also make upwards of 2600 fps/6064 ft-lbs from the muzzle of a 24″ barrelled .458 Win Mag – with some knowhow.
If I could have only one bullet for my Ruger No.1H, it would be the 404gr by Hammer. Started at 2000 fps, at 150 yards it still has around 1780 fps/2814 ft-lbs – plenty for the largest moose at that range. If a big bear might be met, and on agenda, I’d up the MV to around 2400 – 2600 and fear nothing within range.
In practice, if we get’em here in Canada, I’d load ’em to about 2250 fps for bears or lesser game. That will still give over 1800 fps at 250 yards/~3000 ft-lbs, more than enough for anything I’ll hunt from now on to eternity.
In practice, and Smith concurs, using ballistics like that, rarely is a second shot ever needed as we become more conscientious in the use of the first shot. Also, the number of times I’ve fired a second shot at a game animal was rare indeed. We develop a mindset akin to bow hunters and those who use BP. Though, reloading a Ruger No.1 can be relatively “fast” compared to those. And with practice, in keeping a second round “at hand” (different methods for that), one can load a Ruger No.1 by feel and not by sight.
You know the arguments for loading followup rounds: a semi is the fastest, a lever is second, a bolt is third, and a single-shot the slowest. Yet all of it can be, and has been, debated. Some claim they are as fast with a bolt-action in an aimed second shot as a semi, and others claim a lever-action has no advantage over a bolt-action, and so on it goes… Some claims are stunning indeed… until faced with a bull elephant charge, or a grizzly in your face! Emotions play a much larger role in reloading a rifle than most understand. I’ve watched at least one professional fumble his ammo, dropping it on the ground after firing three at, or into a “dugga boy” from a bolt-action repeater. Later he pulled the trigger on an empty chamber as a result of too much emotion in running after the wounded buff. And all that in the presence of his PH and assistants. But he’s still a TV personality!
Then other “stuff” happens: floor plates open (that happened to me on a bear hunt that dumped the load on the ground after bouncing off the lip of the plastic chair I was seated on with a loud “racketty -tak – tak” that would awaken any sound-sleeping bear a mile away!), sights fall off, cross-hairs disappear; then the forbotten JAM!!! That also happened to our “TV personality” – all from an M70 Winchester!
Sooo… it’s true after all is said and done, that the ultimate safety for the hunter of DG, and any entourage, is between his/her ears, not what he’s holding between his hands!
No rifle is perfect. Any can fail – and have! I was unloading my CZ550 in .458 Win Mag at the end of hunting light. There was one in the chamber, and three in the magazine. It was getting dark and I was backup for my partner, Ken. There was also another observer. I pointed the rifle at an embankment a few feet away, and had to move the “safety” forward to release the bolt for opening to extract the one in the chamber. When I thumbed the safety “off” the rifle went “BOOM!” What if…? 
<This is a different time and location, but the same rifle that went “BOOM” when the safety was pushed “off”! The problem was the set trigger that when adjusted to remove the “set” feature, according to book instructions, made the rifle vunerable to fire when the safety was pushed off. It had never previously malfunctioned. So, with additional “work” I insured that would never happen again… but who knows? NEVER PUT FULL TRUST IN ANY “SAFETY”, NO MATTER ITS MAKE OR MODEL!
A lightweight Big Bore sporting rifle (.40-cal to .577-cal) is an anomaly! That means at least two obvious and serious faults if ballistic potential is also the goal:
1) Physical abuse of the shooter.
2) Weakness in the structure of the rifle.
3) Period.
There’s simply NO WAY to make such a rifle comfortable to shoot, and there’s NO WAY that such a rifle can be as strong as it needs to be if shot regularly in the long haul at its full potential!
And there is some ambivalence and hypocrisy in the industry. As more demand (lust?) has developed for light rifles, so has complaints over recoil. The result? Smaller bores and sleeker bullets that are purported to do the same jobs that were formerly assigned to even .30-06’s, 300 magnums, etc. Now, I’m reading on the Internet things like: “Which has the most recoil, the .243 Win or .260 Rem?”. And this is common, and growing! And the market provides (and often is dominated by) what shooters and hunters seem to think is adequate or even “best”. And, in my view, it’s the result of an overindulgent generation who “want their cake and eat it too”! They want the “biggest and best” with bragging rights but without the pain!
But in life, pain is unavoidable! And I’m not necessarily speaking only of physical pain. There is pain from loss: of a job, of abilities (as we age), of a family member or loved ones, of respect that we may have enjoyed at other times and circumstances. There are aspects of pain that’s healthy and for our good to keep us from living undiciplined and ungrateful lives, or becoming narcissists!
<I had full confidence in using the single-shot Ruger No 1 in .45-70 LR when hunting the bruin that did this to the blind. That bear was a brute, mean, ruthless and crafty. He came in behind the green chair, unheard, when I was seated in it. The bush that hid him was about ten feet from the chair, and I was alone. When I stood to take the pic, he chrashed through the brush as though it wasn’t there. And that was calculated to frighten me! He did the same act the week prior when I had a partner beside me! A week later, I did get a shot on him but he was on the move. In a followup the following day I found where he’d spent the night watching his back trail. There was matted down grass with a patch of blood about a foot wide. My friend, Ken, followed pin pricks of blood through thick briars on hands and knees while I stood guard with my 1895 Marlin in .45-70. The spoor petered out in thick tangles that made further progress impossible. All evidence suggested that he survived.
So learning to shoot a Big Bore in a single-shot might move us out of “our comfort zone”, but so what? There are a lot of things in life that “make us uncomfortable”: getting a degree or three, raising children, overcoming a disability (I lost sight in my right eye at age six, and I became somewhat shy of other kids and meeting new people. I worried over meeting a beautiful gal that would love and accept me, or becoming a public figure, playing sports, etc. All of that was overcome despite the physical loss – and, actually, it helped develop me into a stronger, somewhat fearless person, by the grace of God.)
Taking on the challenge of a single-shot Ruger No.1 in a Big Bore, such as a 450/400, 404, etc, might very well be good for an otherwise awkward or somewhat shy person if they’re not a cripple or have a debilatating disease: a) It’s a fresh challenge, b) Learning something new about ballistics can raise their confidence, c) It disciplines mind and body, d) It opens up new possibilities, etc.
Why is it that current culture believes that when “I’m not comfortable with that”, it should be rejected as bad or unhealthy – as in a request, a change from the familiar, or any other challenge to present circumstances or thinking?
One challenge overcome or defeated trains us to face others, and so on.
Walking alone in the bush with a single-shot rifle was the experience of many who conquered their fears and developed “The New World”.
At the age of 86, I’m facing challenges that nobody wrote a book on “How to face life at age 86″… neither did they when I was 6, having just lost an eye. And nobody is going to feel sorry for you/us! So let’s get up, get dressed and go on with living… Life is tough sometimes, for everybody. So, lets grow up and stop complaining over “small stuff”!
Say, is there a growing pandemic of “every man for his own interests and not those of others”? (2 Timothy 3: 1 – 5)
Til the next…
Shalom
BOB MITCHELL
Lovin' The Big Bang 