166 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[March 27, 1884. 



to this standard for their rifles, although they do not coine 

 properly under the head of hunting rifles. 



It is true that there are singleloaders and one magazine 

 gun that do not come under the above head; but still from 

 The ammunition the singleloaders use they are all properly 

 long-range rifles, and not properly short-range hunting guns. 

 The one magazine rifle, although adapted to the government 

 cartridge, has still another special one, and with this in use 

 cornea under the proper class of hunting rifles. 



Understand that I do not mean to say but that these rifles 

 may all be used as hunting rifles, and game killed with 

 them; but I do mean to say that the hunter using them has 

 got to be not only a good hunter but a good judge of dis- 

 tance, or he will miss more shots than he hits from shooting 

 over or under from the high curve of the trajectory at short 

 range — a fault not to be" overcome iu a rifle intended for 

 long ranges except by the adoption of some special ammu- 

 nition, with more powder and less lead for the short ranges. 

 Such being the case, the introduction of the 85-285 cart- 

 ridge by the Bullard Arms Company is to be welcomed by 

 all who have .45-caliber rifles chambered for the .45-70405 

 cartridge, for it gives them a hunting rifle as well as one of 

 long range, and one that has power to kill at all reasonable 

 distances with the light ball, as well as one for long shots 

 with its regular cartridge. And on the frontier, where .45- 

 70-405 is the standard cartridge, from the very fact of its 

 being the government standard, ammunition can always be 

 had, even when the special ammunition gives out, as it may 

 on a long march, scout or expedition, and the rifle still be 

 effective. 



A recent change in the government standard to .45-70-500 

 is fast running out the .45-70-405 cartridge at military 

 posts, and therefore still more should the .45-85-285 cart- 

 ridge be welcome, as the new government cartridge is 

 still more emphatically a long-range cartridge than the old 

 one, and the special cartridge therefore more needed. A 

 very mistaken impression seems to prevail that the Winches- 

 ter .45-caliber can be used with the government shell, or use 

 the .45-70-405 cartridge, and in fact, if I remember aright, 1 

 have seen it so advertised by dealers, but not by the Win- 

 chester Arms Company, to do the latter justice; the Win- 

 chester .45 does not use" the government cartridge of any 

 kind, but uses either the .45-60-300 cartridge with straight 

 shell or the .45-75-350 gram cartridge with bottle-necked 

 shell, so this makes two guns of the .45 class of their make. 

 I have tried to adopt the .45-70-405 cartridge to the Win- 

 chester, but found it impossible, as the length of the "carrier 

 block" is not enough to take in the length of this cartridge. 

 Neither will it take the .45-55-405 government carbine cart- 

 ridge, as this is the same length as the .45-70-405, the space 

 in the shell not filled by powder being filled with pasteboard 

 wads. 



The Martin .45 uses the government cartridge .45-70-405, 

 the Kennedy uses the .45-60-300 cartridge, the Burgess did 

 use the .45-70-405 cartridge, but appears to have passed either 

 out of date or under another name, the Hotchkiss and Lee 

 both use the .45-70-405 cartridge, and are of the bolt type of 

 repeater, working with the knob on the side, and not with 

 the lever. 



Passing to the .50-caliber, we still have singleloaders, but 

 all using a proportion of lead to powder of 1 to 8 to I to 5, 

 and then for all properly long-range rifles, and in magazine 

 rifles we have the Bullard and Winchester express — both 

 using the same cartridge.— 50-95-300— and both good guns, the 

 only .50-caliber magazine rifles I know of; the old-fashioned 

 Spencer being .56-caliber and about obsolete. 



Prom an examination of this list of rifles it cannot but be 

 seen that, with the exceptions noted, all are undercharged with 

 powder and have a high trajectory; the ball starting with a 

 slow velocity ; the trajectory must have a high curve to get 

 the ball to the distance desired, and the ball having consider- 

 able weight, and therefore the remaining velocities not dimin- 

 ishing very rapidly, the ranges will be long, a thing good in 

 itself for some purposes, but not what is wanted in a hunt- 

 iug gun. 



In considering this list of guns, no account has been taken 

 of any special home made ammunition, but only of the 

 factory or standard and special ammunition made by the 

 manufacturers for the trade; doubtless there are many"who 

 have already alteretl the proportions of their powder and lead 

 improvement of the shooting of their rifles. 



No mention has been of special guns such as can be had 

 by paying for them; but I have confined myself to those 

 guns found advertised as made for the trade, that any one 

 can find by looking for them. That there are such special 

 guns I am well aware, and can only congratulate those that 

 are able to possess them. 



As said by me in a previous letter, it is a pity that more 

 "qualifications cannot be combined in one gun; but, as that 

 is an impossibility, one has to "pay their money and take 

 their choice" from what are to be had, unless able to have a 

 ■ I gun built. 

 In the singleloaders I would choose a gun whose mechan- 

 ism was such that I could see through the barrel from the rear 

 end, whose breech block was at right angles to, or locked 

 itself firmly against the breech, and then I would have a gun 

 I could vary to suit myself, provided I could find a mechanic 

 with skill enough to chamber it as I wanted for longer car- 

 tridges; but in magazine guns one cannot do this, there are 

 other elements that enter the problem, and the breech frame 

 being a fixture, longer cartridges cannot be fed into it from 

 the magazine than the breech frame and carrier were built 

 for; now the gun should be chambered to receive them; with 

 such chambering done the gun could be used as a single- 

 loader with such special long cartridges, provided there was 

 room enough to extract the shells, and as a magazine gun 

 with its regular ammunition, the shooting qualities with the 

 Tegular ammunition being somewhat impaired, however, 

 from the chamber being deepened. 



For magazine guns, therefore, the only hope of perfect re- 

 sults is to "be found in an appeal to the makers either of the 

 guns or the cartridges; to the gunmakers, if the size of the 

 parts have to be altered to suit longer cartridges, and to the 

 cartridge makers if more powder and less lead can be ob- 

 tained in the same length cartridges, so as not to have to 

 alter the dimensions of the gun. 



That such appeals are not in vain, the production of the 

 .40-90 and the .45-85-285 cartridge will show; the .40-90 

 being an alteration of these makers' .40-60 to take this 

 special cartridge, and the .45-85-285 being a new cartridge 

 adapted by them to their .45-70-405 rifle. Doubtless other 

 appeals to" other makers would be followed by more powder 

 and less lead in their rifles, an end so much to be desired, 

 in my opinion, as 1 have tried to set forth. 



But we now have three powerful guns before us, or I may 



four— the Bullard with its .40-75-225 cartridge, the same 



til the ,40-90-300, the .45-85-285, which will also use the 



.45-70-405, and the .50-95-300 express of either Bullard or 

 Winchester make, and unless one wants a special gun, it 

 seems to me there is not much more to be wished for. 



A great deal has been said about the killing power of the 

 .40 bullet as against the .45, and all against the .40 on 

 account of its smaller area. That it will have less killing 

 power on account of its diminished area is conceded, but 

 not to the extent that is claimed by some. The areas being 

 proportioned to the square of the diameters, these areas will 

 be in the proportion of .200 s to .225*, or 40,000 to 50,625, 

 or the area of the .40-caliber bullet will be a little less than 

 four-fifths of the .45-caliber. 



But other factors enter into the ' 'killing power" besides 

 area of striking surface. The "living force" of the bullet, 

 depending upon the mass and the square of the velocity, 

 comes in also; and, as the velocity has the element of the 

 resistance of the air to contend with, more velocity can be 

 given to the .40 than to the .45-caliber bullet with an ex- 

 penditure of equal force, and the .40-caljber bullet will there- 

 fore have more "living force" provided its mass is the same 

 as that of the .45-caliber. 



Take the .40-90 as compared with the. 50-95, both Bullard; 

 both bullets weigh 300 "grains, and the extra amount of pow- 

 der behind the .50-caliber, wil J not much more than over- 

 come the increased atmospheric resistance that it has to over- 

 come from its increased area of cross section; so that, leaving 

 the express principle out of account, the .40-90 would proba- 

 bly have the greater living force, and the greater penetration 

 also, as the penetration would be inversely as the striking 

 surface, other things being equal. 



Whether more powder behind a .50-caliber 4 bullet is to be 

 desired I leave for some one else to solve. Doubtless for 

 heavy game such would be very desirable, but then we w T ould 

 have a special gun only fit for the large classes of game and 

 one that would be useless on the smaller kinds. 



Though arguing that one all-around gun is as impossible 

 as one all-around boat, or as impracticable as the general 

 run of "general utility tools," still I claim for the .40-90-300 

 magazine gun a greater range of usefulness than for any gun 

 that has yet been made; next to it probably comes the .40- 

 75-225; next the .40-60-260, for all those guns can be used on 

 a wide range of game, while the .45-85 285 and the .50-95- 

 300 are more to be considered as special guns, useful and 

 powerful in their place, but not to be chosen for general 

 work. C. D. 



Fort McKtnney, Wyoming, March 1 , 1884. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



It is, as most sportsmen are aware, possible to combine the 

 advantages of a long range and express rifle in one weapon. 

 This is very successfully done in a rifle which is made here 

 principally for South "Africa, by Messrs. Henry, Turner, 

 Tolly, and others. It is a .45-caliber, with 28-inch barrel, 

 and of about 8 or 9 pounds weight, taking the usual musket 

 shell and 80 to 90 grains of powder, and has a spiral of one 

 turn in 22 inches, the usual military rifle twist. It shoots 

 both express 270-grain hollow and 480-grain solid bullets 

 well, and the same cartridge can be used with either bullet 

 as occasion requires. If the shells are loaded with powder 

 and wad only, either kind of bullet can be inserted as re- 

 quired. The sights are the usual standard and one or two 



leaves for 150, 200 and 250 yards for the express bullet, and 

 a long leaf with slide graduated from 200 to 800 or 900 yards 

 for the long-range bullet. Either sight can be used independ- 

 ently of the other, and they do not interfere with each 

 other; the standard sight of course is used for short ranges 

 with the heavy bullet. The express sights are placed in rear 

 of the long-range one, and as the latter lies flush with the 

 rib or barrel of the rifle when not in use, it is not in the way. 

 For Indian shooting, rifles are hardly ever sighted to over 

 250 yards, as it is generally considered unsportsmanlike to 

 try long shots, and they are rarely attempted except by novi- 

 ces, or on very special occasions. The rough sketch will 

 give an idea of the sight. Bengal Sefot. 



London, Eng. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



May I rise to explain? I will. In your issue of March 

 13, "D. M. B." alludes to me; and although the allusion is 

 complimentary, flattering even, it will be apt to give a wrong 

 impression of at least one old swamp loafer of the seventh 

 distillation. 



He says: "Every true sportsman must admire the picture 

 of our old friend 'Nessmuk,' clinging with fond tenacity to 

 the use of the old muzzleloader that has served him so long 

 and well." 



It is true. In my declining years I have gone back to my 

 first love— the single-barreled, hair-triggered, muzzleloader. 

 and it has served mc "long and well." But do not infer that 

 I have clung with blind prejudice to any such weapon 

 throughout my best days in the woods. Very far from it. 

 On the contrary, I was among the first to take up and test 

 the breechloader from its first advent. 1 started in with a 

 Sharps carbine. I got it in Rochester, and I thought it about 

 as sportsmanlike a weapon as an ordinary spade. There was 

 no hang, handle or nicety about it. They talked about 

 "balance." A crowbar will balance— if you take it at the 

 middle. Estimating the graded sights, I concluded the 

 makers had allowed for 100 feet drop in 100 rods, which 

 turned out to be the case. Only, it wouldn't drop two suc- 

 cessive bullets within ten feet of each other. With my 

 muzzleloading Billinghurst I could hit a 30-inch ring all day 

 at that distance. 



I traded the Sharps to a fellow who was going to Kansas, 

 and my next venture was a Maynard. This was more like 

 a rifle," but there were insuperable objections to it, The 

 barrel was too abort, the sights too near each other, the back 

 sight "blurred" in dark woods, and it needed a donkey with 

 a "short-tug harness to pull it off. I took it to a gun shop, 

 had these faults remedied as far as possible, loaned my faith- 



ful old double barrel to a friend, and adopted the Maynard 

 for the season. The first two days I hunted with it I lost 

 three deer that I would have been dead sure of with the 

 double barrel. At the end of the season, on a fair estimate, 

 I had lost one-half of the deer I ought, to have scored. I did 

 not care for the loss. They were welcome to go. It was the 

 vexation and disappointment. I sent the Maynard out West, 

 and tried a Ballard, then a Spencer, and eventually a busi- 

 ness Sharps and a Winchester; also a Remington. Now, I 

 will admit that the last three named are wicked, murderous 

 weapons. For the plainsman and the mountain hunter, the 

 business Sharps is sufficiently destructive, while for black 

 bear and deer in a wooded country, the improved Winches- 

 ter ought to satisfy the most greedy maker of "bags" and 

 "scores." But it doesn't. Not a number of Forest ako 

 Stream comes to hand in which I do not find well-written 

 articles on the best, i. e. , the most destructive, hunting rifle. 

 The diverse notions advanced are a trifle amusing. One 

 wants a .40-90-500 repeater; "D. M. B." wants a .45-115 to 

 120-350 cartridge, while "Manhattan" finds 25 grains of 

 powder in the Winchester "heavy enough for moose, caribou 

 and bear." The fun of it is, to a simple backwoodsman, 

 that these articles are written by the very sportsmen who are 

 most eager for efficient game laws and the enforcement 

 thereof—the men who most bitterly deplore the rapidity with 

 which our best game is being slaughtered. 



Gentlemen, you are right. Demand creates supply. Keep 

 up ihe demand for a "perfect hunting rifle" — one that, while 

 not too big for a squirrel, will stop a 1,200-pound grizzly in 

 his rabid charge, and with a "trajectory" so flat that it will 

 not be at all necessary to make any allowance on sights from 

 forty yards to four hundred. The rapid increase of panthers, 

 grizzlies and other "dangerous" animals demand that the 

 coming rifle shall possess the ultimate possibilities of slaugh- 

 ter. Let us have the perfect rifle by all means. 



NE8SMCK. 

 Wellsboro, Pa., March 17. 



The rifle columns of your journal have for some weeks 

 past contained a series of most interesting papers relative to 

 the choice of a hunting rifle, and while the majority advance 

 the merits of existing calibers, but a few have advocated a 

 change in proportions of powder to lead, and only one an 

 innovation, a ,28-caliber. This correspondent, "Peabody 

 Martini," after a series of experiments, has determined that 

 for all small game the .28 is superior to the .32 or .88. This 

 is indeed a long step in advance, and present calibers with 

 ammunition as now furnished must yield to the coming rifle 

 for all game smaller than deer. In behalf of the large num- 

 ber of rifle enthusiasts, whose leisure is too limited to permit 

 a lengthy trip, and who, in the suburbs of cities, can enjoy 

 a few hours sport with small calibers, allow me to appeal 

 to manufacturers concerning the popular ,22-caliber. The 

 ammunition as now supplied is most unsatisfactory, if very 

 cheap, and a great deal more pleasure could be had if the 

 powder charge was increased, the ball hardened, and made 

 to fit a central fire, bottle shell containing fifteen grains pow- 

 der or more, the balls swaged. The long .22 now contains 

 but 7 grains, and the shorter ones from 3 to 5 grains. With 

 present ammunition the gallery ranges are from 30 to 50 feet, 

 and even then a full score is the exception because of the 

 faulty method of making the balls of a less diameter that 

 part of their length which is sealed in the shells. Were they 

 seated as they should be and hardened, and an increased 

 powder charge in a larger shell, bottle-shaped, the accuracy 

 would be much improved, and the interest in that sport much 

 greater. In my opinion the English sparrow is the legiti- 

 mate target for this caliber where game is unknown, if they 

 are half as much a nuisance elsewhere as in New Orleans. 



G. H., M.D. 



New Orleans. March 20, 1884. 



THE PERFORMANCE OF SHOTGUNS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I have read with interest the various opinions by different 

 writers in your journal on the subject of guns. I will give 

 you mine for what it is worth. I commenced to shoot long 

 before breechloading shotguns were known, and was very 

 well content with the old muzzleloader, having owned two 

 excellent ones before the war, and came into possession of a 

 very superior one just after the war. I shall never forget the 

 contempt with which I viewed the first breechloader 1 saw — 

 about fifteen years ago. The next time I saw one was an 

 altered Greener, of which I will speak hereafter. From 

 year to year I became more familiar with them, and finally 

 bought one of an American manufacture, and still shoot it 

 at birds. After careful experiment and observation in the 

 field, I became satisfied that, for bird shooting, they were 

 quite as good as the muzzleloaders, while the superior con- 

 venience and safety of them was too apparent to question. 

 I for a long time doubted, however, their capacity to cope 

 with the muzzleloader in buckshot shooting; but am now 

 satisfied on that point. My first experience with them in 

 buckshot caused me to condemn them, utterly. I had 

 hunted deer for many years — killed a good many— and had 

 never missed a single deer up to the time of the trial I made 

 with the breechloader. The first three deer 1 shot at with 

 my breechloader I missed, and they were, all within easy 

 ranee. I laid it aside and went back to the muzzleloader— 

 a 10-pound, 10-bore Greener— and every one I shot at I killed 

 until the fourth. This one I made a clean miss on, and so 

 with the fifth. The next time I went deer hunting I took 

 the Greener before mentioned that had been altered 

 from a muzzle to a breechloader. I killed four deer 

 straight with it, all at good fair distances. I then began 

 to think that there was more in the man than in the gun. 

 So 1 took my discarded breechloader and tried it with both 

 the muzzleloading and breechloading Greeners— both of 

 which 1 knew to be good buck guns— and found that it made 

 as good a target as either of them. I have not tried it on deer 

 since the target practice, but last fall I went with a party of 

 gentlemen, most of whom had breechloaders, some muzzle- 

 loaders. We made an extra fine hunt, and the number of 

 misses turned out fewer on the breechloader side than on the 

 muzzleloader. I scored a clean miss with my muzzleloader. 

 After the hunt we did some target practice, and the breech- 

 loaders showed up superior. I am now fully persuaded that 

 the breechloader is the equal of the muzzleloader in all kinds 

 of shooting, and that it is pure prejudice in any man who 

 holds up for the superiority of the latter over the former in 

 any kind of shooting. 1 had it (the prejudice) as bad as a 

 man could have it. I first divested myself of it by actual 

 experiment in bird shooting, but clung to it for some time on 

 the buckshot. Now I am convinced that there is not the 

 slightest appreciable difference in that. I feel sure that the 

 trouble arose in my case— and, no doubt, this is what is the 

 matter in other cases— from overloadingthe breechloader. Too 



