Hunting
This caliber is generally used for thick-skinned dangerous game such as elephant, rhino, and Cape buffalo. Even among professional ivory hunters of old it is typically treated as an emergency weapon carried by the hunter's gun bearer, reserved for stopping the charge of an enraged, wounded elephant in thick bushes rather than as a day-to-day hunting weapon. Legendary elephant hunter James Sutherland carried a .577. Count Alfred Józef Potocki, Ernest Hemingway, and Stewart Granger also carried .577's.
It is unnecessarily powerful, harsh recoiling, and unwieldy for use against lesser game. For this purpose the old black powder version can be used. It throws a 560-grain bullet at around 1700 ft/s.
Read more about this topic: .577 Nitro Express
Famous quotes containing the word hunting:
“The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and bodies. The poor beasts here are pursued and run down by much greater beasts than themselves; and the true British fox-hunter is most undoubtedly a species appropriated and peculiar to this country, which no other part of the globe produces.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“God prosper long our noble king,
Our liffes and saftyes all!
A woefull hunting once there did
In Chevy Chase befall.”
—Unknown. Chevy Chase (l. 1–4)
“Escape
from the power of the hunting pack,
and to know that wisdom is best
and beauty
sheer holiness.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)