Memories of a Bear Hunter 



Before leaving the East that year I had deter- 

 mined to try the express principle with a long- 

 range Sharps rifle, the finest made, which carried 

 a .44-caliber ball in a shell holding 90 or 100 

 grains of powder, the latter being introduced by 

 means of a reloading tube about thirty inches in 

 length. The ammunition furnished by the Sharps 

 factory carried a 450 and 500 grain solid ball. It 

 is, of course, understood that the gunpowder was 

 black powder. 



British rifle makers have demonstrated the prin- 

 ciple of the express bullet, Henry of Edinburgh 

 having received the greatest credit on account of 

 his exhaustive experiments on living animals. This 

 maker was the inventor of the Henry system of 

 cutting the rifling, which was adopted by the Eng- 

 lish government for the Martini-Henry musket. 



The express system is the combination of a solid 

 bullet with a hole of varying diameter running 

 back from the point of the bullet about three- 

 fourths of the ball's length. The diameter and 

 length of the hole depends in some degree on the 

 caliber and weight of the bullet. Such a bullet, 

 with a heavy charge of powder behind it, giving 

 a muzzle velocity of from 1,750 to 2,000 feet, 

 constitutes an express bullet. A suitably designed 

 ball with this velocity, after penetrating the skin of 



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