I was just watching a show on TV called "Ready, Aim, Sold" on the Discovery channel that showed a 4 Bore double rifle. The thing looks like a 12 gauge shotgun on steroids. It shoots 1750 gr. bullets (about 1/4 pound of lead). They are huge. Has anybody here seen one in person, or even better, shot one?

__________________
Miss My Buddy crsides!!

I've seen a few over the years.
I think they were all British. Never shot one.

__________________
Regards,
Lee Jarrett

Here's a link to the big gun in action. Watch for the locals near the end of the footage checking out the spent casing.

W.W. Greener 4 Bore Double Rifle In Zimbabwe - YouTube

__________________
I'm with the banned ...

They kill at one end and maim at the other.

Shooting something that should probably be in a mount for a long period of time cannot be healthy.

__________________
The Last Standing Knight

I think there was an article in Guns and Ammo last year about a similar gun. H&H made a recent repro of one used back in the colonial days. They called it Baby!

__________________
US Marine, 16 years+

"Baby" was Sir Samuel Bakers 4bore single shot he used while exploring the head waters of the Nile tributaries. When fired, it would spin him half way around and gave him a reluctance to shoot it. The designation "4 bore" comes from the amount of pure lead balls of the diameter of the bore required to weigh a pound. Ol' Sam used 12 drams of blackpowder in "Baby". Tough dude.

__________________
James L. "Jim" Rhiner

That's the one I was talking about, couldn't remember all the details of the story, and don't have the magazine here. Good story though!

__________________
US Marine, 16 years+

I was at an OGCA show in 83 or 84, a dealer from N.J. had a H&H 4 bore from around 1890 (underlever action), it was like brand new. I knew the man from a prievious double rifle deal and believed him to have good prices; I ask THE question, he responded $80,000.00, like the dumb kid I was I ask if he had ammo.....He looked at me and said "Yes, all you want at $75.00 each" I bought neither.

The Great White Hunter fired his 4 Bore at the elephant.
They both fell down.
According to the laws of the jungle, the first to rise will be declared the winner and the loser's possessions will be shared out among the other witnesses of the event....

__________________
Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

IIRC, Shooters Bible had an article on Baker many years ago. He had cocked both hammers and when he pulled one trigger, the other hammer dropped from the recoil. It shattered the stock, jaw, shoulder, collarbone, etc.

I've seen a diagram somewhere in the dim past of an exploding bullet for the 4 Bores.
Did Baker mention that? I forget.

__________________
Regards,
Lee Jarrett

I developed a flinch just thinking about that recoil

Champlin Firearms in Enid, Oklahoma made one for a customer several years ago. The best I remember the bullet weighted 1250 grains and they turned the cases out of brass on a lathe. The double barrel exposed hammer weighted 34 pounds. $75.00 a shot is what they said. I know who it was made for and his big Company was in bankruptcy at the time.

Must have been made out of something lighter than lead as a lead ball would be a minimum of 1750 grains.
(Maybe it was one of the new "green" bullets and made from bismuth or something...)

__________________
Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

A guy was walking out of NGD in Louisville at the December show. The instant I saw the bore, I realized it was a Quarter Pounder. He wanted big bucks for it (and I wasn't in a buying mood.)

The other time I saw one in Louisville, about 15 years ago...I bought it!

It now resides out in my garage, blocked in by one of my jeeps. IT came with a bunch of stuff, not the least of which being a few pounds of 1" round balls. And better still, a bullet mold. The problem is, it doesn't have a stock, its got a carriage. Its a cannon. And the barrel isn't all that long, maybe 15" or so. I haven't looked at it in a few years now, except to accidently kick it with my foot (the now sore one.)

My wife won't let me shoot it, something about the authorities having a poor sense of humor. I'm pretty sure I could shell the Yankees over in Ohio. I have no idea what the range would be, but I feel pretty sure Paul Brown Stadium is in range!

There's even a name plate on the thing, it was made in Arrid-Zone-a. I tried repeatedly to contact the company but never could. All I wanted was to learn about the thing.

__________________
Dick Burg

I looked at one, probably 40 years or more ago, at a Long Island show. It had a broken stock and generally looked like it had spent the last century as a boat anchor. The seller had a book on display that pictured the gun intact and was suggesting this was the actual specimen he was trying to sell. I don't recall the book's title or the author. Anyway, my thought at that time was it might be a potentially feasible restoration or perhaps a partial restoration just to hang on the wall. After the seller told me what the price was, those thoughts were immediately abandoned. Years later, I bought a couple of Cape Guns. They're long gone now, but were equally interesting....and a hell of allot less $$$$ to play with.

Cheers;
Lefty

I thought Baker got ran over on a muddy trail by an enraged elephant...then rose from the mud and fired on the raging beast...at which point the muddy gun recoiled so hard the stock broke...Baker dropped stunned and busted up from the 'hit' the gun gave him..the elephant died...and Baker was carted off to convales for a few months.

Isn't this the way it happened?

Absolutely. He mentions a "half pound" exploding shell he used in elephant hunting. And that his Arab visitors were amazed when looking at his battery of rifles that they could get TWO fingers in the barrel of "Baby". The Arabs named "Baby" "Jenna el Mootfah", which Baker translated as "Son of a Cannon".

__________________
James L. "Jim" Rhiner

I haven't got to that yet, but I wouldn't be surprised. So far, I've only gotten to his " Nile Tributaries in Abyssinia etc." I have at least 2 more in que if not three.

__________________
James L. "Jim" Rhiner

Paging cxm . . .

This is a Greener double four bore. It has damascus barrels so I have never had the chance to shoot it... This gun is so big it is hard to photograph, but hopefully these will give some idea of size.



The Greener is a real cannon, weighing over 30 lb. Here is a pic with a 12ga buck shot shell for scale.



If you look about 40% way down the barrel you will see on the table the gun is leaning against a 12 ga buck shot shell for size comparison.

Unfortunately the old gun is not in great shape, though all the parts are there. I contacted Greener (who is still in business... they say they can restore it ... for a price... I was afraid to ask how much...



Guys much have been tough back then... I can't see hauling this monster around... A 10 ga barrel gauge drops right down the bore of this old gun.



Would anyone have any idea of the value of this old gun?

It is interesting... shame it won't get shot again...

V/r

Chuck

Last Standing Knight, judging what was usually shot with a 4 bore, it may be very healthy to shoot it, depending on the situation. I thought Peter H. Capstick wrote that Baby was a 2 bore.

Wow, Chuck, if THAT gun could talk. Now you know why the wealthy had gun bearers.

__________________
Wayne
Torn & Frayed

Thanks for posting those, Chuck: you da man!

(I'm going to go get out my copy of The Gun and Its Development now, and return to those thrilling days of yesteryear.)

2 Bore... When the 4 Bore's quarter pound of lead just isn't enough???

"The Greener is a real cannon, weighing over 30 lb."

Not another word from anyone about N-frame steel revolvers being too heavy for belt carry.

__________________
I'm with the banned ...

I was doing a search for Greener and came upon this thread. I have a couple of old Greeners one a 4 bore ball gun and I would be interested in exchanging notes and photos with you. The 4 bores are monsters and blackpowder generates more recoil than a nitro load producing similar velocities. I have seen blackpowder loads from 330gr to the "emergency" load of 440gr. Weight is your friend when shooting these old guns.
30lbs is pretty heavy but I have seen 4s at 16lbs also (ouch).

I'll try to find Capstick's book covering Baker. It's here, somewhere.

i knew Peter C. slightly, and he was as drolly humorous in person as in print.

The story of Sir Samuel and Lady (Florence) Baker is one of the great romances of their day. She was Austrian, taken slave by Turks. Sam bought her while disguised as an Arab. He took her on his Nile adventures, eventually freeing and marrying her.

But because they had been intimate prior to marriage, Queen Victoria never received them at Buckingham Palace, although they were popular otherwise. Infamous, too, I guess.

Baker also hunted stags and boar with a knife while on Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. He was a large, powerful man, fond of adventure.

How in the world did you meet Capstick? Baker had a lot of great adventures. Sanderson wrote about a 4 bore Greener smoothbore in Thirteen Years Amoungst the Wild Beasts of India.

I once read a story in American Rifleman about a Maharaja that commissioned a 2 bore. He required 2 gun bearers to carry it and fired it off their shoulders.

__________________
NRA Benefactor

Wouldn't that be like having someone chew your food for you?

__________________
Miss My Buddy crsides!!

I sure get a "KICK" out of shooting this lil 4 Bore! - YouTube

__________________
ASA/NSA 67-71
NRA Benefactor

I believe most Maharaja's did their own shooting but had bearers to load and hand them their gun somewhat like a caddy and beaters to drive the game towards them like this:

I met Peter a couple of times at the SHOT show and also at the NRA Convention. I reviewed some of his books for, "Gun Week", and was pleased to find one of my reviews quoted in the "blurbs" promoting the paperback edition of one.

I sent him a cartoon of two hyenas waiting outside a tent. A sign by the tent read, "The Millers."

One hyena said to the other, "It's Miller Time!"

I thought that would amuse him, and it did. He sent me a very nice response, one of those blue Airmail folding letters with a nice South African stamp, a Protea flower. I still have it, I think, in one of his books.

That was before the sweeping social changes that struck South Africa in the mid-1990's. I just hope they still have those pretty stamps. I used to correspond with a couple of fellows there and with others while researching an article on Ruger .22 pistols that appeared in, "American Handgunner" in the '80's. (Ruger asked me to point out that they DID NOT violate the UN arms ban on South Africa; their guns reached that nation via other means. However, some had racked up astronomical use, as new handguns cost more and weren't always available. But some guns used by Euro clubs had literally exceeded a million rounds!)

Sorry for the Ruger commercial. Anyway, Peter Capstick was hilarious to know, if a bit macabre in his sense of humor. I miss him. I always figured that a mamba or a buffalo or a terrorist would kill him. But he died under a scapel during open heart surgery in one of the best hospitals in Pretoria. Fate works in odd ways when the time comes for Atropos to snip the threads of mortal life.

For those unfamiliar with shikar in the days of British India, these elephant back forays were the the norm. All sorts of game might be "put up."

Jim Corbett took out the Viceroy and his family this way, and he wrote a nice forward to one of Corbett's books.

Hunting maneaters on foot, via careful stalking, always wary of the calls of animals and the direction of the wind, was exceptional, and deemed very dangerous.

Of course, maharajahs and other rich shikar clients seldom used four bore rifles. Most deemed .470 and smaller rifles more than adequate. The .450 was banned in India, lest rebels get Martini .450's and ammo, resulting in such calibers as the .465 and .470 being introduced. The .450/.400 was popular, as was the .375 H&H Magnum. Smaller rifles were naturally also widely used, for deer and the like.

The larger elephantback hunts were carefully orchestrated, one factor being to keep the line of elephants "dressed" so as to avoid anyone getting ahead and in line of fire from other hunters.

Charging tigers sometimes got right into the howdah and killed or mauled hunters. It wasn't as safe as it looked to a casual observer.

Thanks for the great photos!

The above is true but the 4 bores are from a different era than the nitro-cellulose guns. During the the 1870's to 1900 the bore rifles reigned and the 4 bore was king. Certainly the Maharaja's were in possession of some 4 bore rifles and shotguns. The Maharajas had huge amouries. Each year their Secretaries ordered specific guns for their given sire, that were highly embellished. In addition they bought many guns off the racks of the London and Birmingham gun makers with no more thought than picking a dozen donuts. These guns were for use for their guests or underlings. The wealth in India during that time is mind boggling. One Nizam used a diamond the size of a baseball as a paper weight. A Maharaja upset that his fleet of Rolls Royce cars arrived too late to use at a particular event had the cars tops cut off and used them for garbage trucks. The paradox guns made a transition to nitro powders and were used and highly prized by the Indian Royalty well passed 1900.

The Greeners in this thread may or may not have been in any Royal armory. Their lack of embellishment would indicate that they were probably not made at the request of any wealthy client but may have been pulled from the racks for them because they were ready to go.

gatsby-

Yeah, I just meant that later, newer rifles prevailed.

I read a book about hunting in India and Nepal with those "bore" guns, it being written in the 1880's.

I'd have to refresh my memory as to the exact types, but I think the author of, "King Solomon's Mines" (Sir Henry Rider Haggard) mentioned some of those guns along with Winchester rifles and Colt .45 revolvers as arming his heroes. He seemed to know guns pretty welll, and had been in South Africa during the Zulu War of 1879. Probably hunted there and based the guns in his famous novel on what he saw in use. The book appeared in 1883.

I believe the smokeless Nitro "Express" rifles appeared in the 1890's and soon replaced the BP "bore" guns in both India and Africa. Patterson had both .303 and .450 rifles while hunting the maneaters of Tsavo about 1898.

As an aside, I wrote a fan fiction story about the grown children of some, "Lost World" characters. The fic was set partly at a Maharajah's palace and on a tiger hunt complicated by a king cobra that disturbed lunch. I enjoyed describing the ritual of the elephantback shikar and the way it furthered the romance between two characters, one a US fighter pilot. The rajah was obviously fabulously wealthy, and poititically influential. This was set in fall, 1944.

But I hadn't read about that rajah with the huge diamond for a paperweight! Thanks for that knowledge. The one in my story did insist on furnishing a fabulous set of emerald and diamond rings to the US pilot when he became engaged to the daughter of Baron and Baroness Challenger. I based his wealth on what I'd read in books by Frank Buck and others who knew some of these potentates. Also recalled some tales in the Jungle Jim comic books of my youth. No doubt, the real rajahs were tremendously rich. I've heard that some made a point of gaining weight, as their subjects were compelled to furnish the rajah with his weight in rubies (or gold, whatever)annually. Nice work if you could get it!

Don't know if any collected S&W's, but they certainly had large armouries.

The Indian royalty were great sportsmen. I sure there was a SW somewhere.

What name did you write under?

I'll PM you.

The 4 bore shotguns like Chuck's were never very common. They were mainly a market hunter's tool used in blinds and boats. Not carried much in the field.

The 4 bore rifles were even less common. They were really more of an evolutionary step in big game rifles as the larger game was encountered by Europeans. You have to remember that VERY few Europeans had been very deep into Africa before the mid 1800's. The Congo was not even established as a Belgian colony till 1890. Those monstrously heavy guns and heavy ammo were not practical for long treks on foot where everything had to be hand carried because the tse-tse killed most beasts of burden.
The 4 bores are really a seldom used approach to the matter. The Black Powder Express rifles came along at about the same time and did an adequate job with far less weight. Baker was one of the first, if not the first, to promote the 577 BPE. It is also known that he had H&H build four 10 bore rifles for his elephant hunting. I think that Baby was not his everyday rifle.
People also realized that the modern bolt guns like mausers would do for the poor man that could not afford the higher grade rifles. John Hunter, as I recall, poached his early elephants with a surplus 8mm Mauser that had a very pitted bore and surplus ball ammo! Being young, dumb, and poor, he just didn't realize it wouldn't work since he was pulling enough dead elephant's teeth to buy fine British doubles in 577 NE.
And then there was Bell, who picked his shots, and killed most of his 1011 elephants with a Rigby 7x57.....

__________________
Regards,
Lee Jarrett

Lee-

Hunter began with a 7mm M-95 Mauser brought back from the Boer War by a relative and a 10 ga. Purdey given him by his father. He started by shooting lions for their hides, a dangerous business. When he could afford better rifles, he liked .500's for elephant and other big game, although he used a variety of arms.

Did you see the TV series about 1958 that had an actor named Rex Reason playng Hunter? I think it was called, "White Hunter." One of my favorite shows as a kid. I'd already read the real John Hunter's books.

Don't remember the TV show.

I'm fairly sure it was Hunter who began with an 8mm for his elephants, but I read his books decades ago. He wrote at least 3, but only Hunter is well known.

I know for a fact he swore by the 577NE, not a 500.

__________________
Regards,
Lee Jarrett

This thread puts to my mind a book that I read years ago called "Flamingo Feather", by an Afrikans author named, van Der Post, I believe.
Good book, about post war Africa, hunting, and revolution...

4 bores are rare and not usually a primary weapon although some did use them as such. An expedition to Africa would have contained a battery of guns a 4 bore may have been one of them to be used in "sticky" situations along with a variety of smaller weapons. Stanley carried a 4bore in the 1870's an kept it with him even after losing most of his bearers. Sir Gerald Burrard used an 8 bore Holland rifle and Lord Wolverton used an 8 bore paradox in Africa in the 1890's. I know Holland and Holland sold 4 bore rifles up to and past 1900. Baker used a 7dram 577 bpe a stout load and still needing a gun weighing in at 13lbs. He also continued to carry and recommend a 4 bore with 12 drams of powder if elephant were to be encountered.
I would think the 4 bore configured as a shotgun would have still been useful to a market hunter even after 1900.

You would have to have an entourage just to carry the ammo!!

__________________
Miss My Buddy crsides!!

I read it, too, and some of his other books.

Col. Laurens van der Post was a famous author and a friend of Prince Charles. Although of Dutch (Afrikaans) origin, he was also a master writer in English.

He also wrote an African cookbook, not limited to South African styles. During WW II, he was an advisor to Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopa, fighting the italians.

Eventually, he became a POW of the Japanese and wrote a book based on that experience.

One of his books was made into a watered down PC movie version that's still worth watching, "A Story Like the Wind" or a sequel.

"Flamingo Feather" mentioned a fictional tribe, I think. It was a good book. I liked the older man having a Boer War Mauser 7mm.

Many libraries have his books, and Interlibrary Loan may be able to find a copy of, "Flamingo Feather", which appeared in the early 1950's, I think. I was still in elementary school when i first read it, so the time fits. Good book.

This is digging up an old thread I know; I came across this thread and found the history lesson as interesting as the guns.

There is much discussion on the 4 bore here; on another forum I frequent there is a 2 bore double build that the gunsmith, Colin Stolzer, is documenting in video. I've been following this build for many months, the rifle is due to be completed next month once the regulation is complete. It seems that many that repied to this thread would be interested in this project:

2 Bore Jones Underlever SxS "The Double Deuce"

Cheers,
San

__________________
Beware the man with one gun...

Thanks, San. I have no desire to shoot a 2 or 4 bore, but am interested in seeing it done. More interested in the rifles used by the early explorers and those used throughout the British Colonial period.

I have books by the hunters of that day, and Taylor's, "African Rifles and Cartridges", the std. reference on such things. Ruark's African-based novels also told which guns the author saw used in 1950's Kenya.

Several Sir Samuel Baker books are free on Kindle from Amazon.

Ed

A 4-bore, at 1.052", is substantially larger than 20mm, ubiquitously referred to as "cannon" in WWII guns. One could argue definitions, but I think the 4-bore qualifies as a cannon.

Also note that 4-bores were generally not shot with round balls, but rather conical bullets weighing a little more than 4 ounces.

TS, I don't have any interest in shooting something that has this kind of recoil energy even though I do enjoy the larger rifles. The video diary that Colin put together for this rifle is interesting no matter which caliber.

Cheers,
Sam

__________________
Beware the man with one gun...