Regulating the two barrels to shoot to the same point of impact is time-consuming and requires experience, patience, and skill. The 89B is, like all double rifles, labor intensive. 500 NE, and swore by it, and the only other cartridge I’d consider is the. It fires a 520-grain bullet at 2,150 fps, and is guaranteed to make a believer out of whatever you shoot with it. Originally designed for black powder, it was switched to cordite some time in the 1890s, and later on to modern smokeless. 500 Nitro Express is another ageless wonder. A good one weighs a lot, but most of the weight lies between your hands, so it’s very quick to get on target, and the recoil from the hellish cartridges they chamber is not excessive. Despite that they’ve been around pretty much unchanged since the days of black powder, no one has invented anything quicker. Heym describes the 89B as “a proper British double rifle…made in Germany.” I include it here because PH Buzz Charlton, with whom I hunted in Zimbabwe in 2016, bet his life on one on a regular basis, and that’s good enough for me.ĭouble rifles give you the two fastest aimed shots in all of gundom. 500 Nitro Express Double rifles excel for dangerous game because they give you the two fastest-aimed shots possible. She was kept loaded for the most dire of encounters, but otherwise he used smaller rifles, and Baker claimed that her recoil “ruined him for life” as a shooter. He estimated that in his entire association with her, he fired only 20 shots in anger. Her recoil was so awful that when Baker fired the brute, he was spun around in a complete circle and left with a nosebleed and dizzy spells. She was so heavy that she had to be carried in relays. Velocities ranged from 1,200 fps to 1,500 fps.īaby was a creature of excess. Bullet weights (Baby fired solid lead bullets and explosive lead bullets) are given as anywhere from 2,187 grains to 3,500 grains. However, there’s at least one authority who says she was closer to a three bore. Baby was supposedly a two bore, with a muzzle diameter of 1.326 inches. Gun bearers who had to carry all 22 pounds of Baby called her Jenab al muftah, which is Arabic for “child of a cannon.” We know that Baby’s serial number was 1526, but about the rest of her there is some disagreement. Sir Samuel Baker’s Holland & Holland single shot, “Baby” Sir Samuel Baker, a famous big-game hunter and explorer.

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