Karamojo Bell and his Small Bores – Stubborn Resolve or Logical Choice?

Before his name became associated with the .275 Rigby, Bell bought, used, sold, and traded a plethora of rifles and calibres. He went through an early period of trial and error that shaped his views on hunting as well as the rifle and calibre combinations most capable of filling his needs. These early days primed his quest for a reliable and easy shooting arm that would perform as expected when matched with the available ammo.

Born in 1880, Bell’s formative years occurred during a period of heightened change in arms development. The patent houses were in a flurry of activity, and many of the lockup and extraction mechanisms that we enjoy today were established during this period before WW1.  Black powder was being phased out, and advances in primers and smokeless propellants made ignition and burn rates more reliable.  Even so, powders were still evolving, and their stability varied across the broad range of temperatures where firearms were being used. Cartridges developed in the temperate areas of Europe were being tested by explorers, hunters, and military regiments in much hotter zones near the equator, often resulting in heightened pressures.

One Shot

When age 16 and after much persuasion, Bell convinced his guardians to outfit him for East Africa in 1897 where, by sheer pluck, he talked his way into a paid position as hunter for a survey crew on the Kenya-Uganda rail line. He’d left Edinburgh with an elegant Fraser falling block .303 that performed beautifully in the moderate temperatures of Scotland.  His cartridges were filled with nitro-glycerin based smokeless powder commonly known as cordite, that when combined with the precise chambering in the Frazer, led to extraction issues in the heat of the equatorial sun.  Once fired, he often had to ram the spent hull from the chamber with a rod before a second shot could be made. This certainly made him aware of his imposed limitations and helped ignite his inclination toward one shot kills.

After continuous extraction issues he traded the Fraser .303 for a less refined gun, but one he thought would extract more reliably in the heat: a single shot Winchester .450 that used a long-tapered case filled with black powder. The transaction included a stash of hollow-point copper bullets which, on the surface, appeared to be a fair deal. This combination worked well enough on lighter plains game, although he soon found that selective shot placement was critical on heavier boned animals. The shortcomings of those soft-core bullets eventually came to a head with an event he describes as his first true run-in with a lion.

Bullet Construction

Bell took on his first lion just months before the Man Eaters of Tsavo effectively halted construction of the railway in 1897. He took a head shot from 30 yards when, instead of dropping, it turned tail and headed into cover. He hoisted himself into a tree for a look, while at the same moment the big cat lunged forward, missed his dangling feet, and put chase to his companion.  He immediately dropped down and took the lion on the shoulder as it turned to grab his friend. That shoulder shot should have been the coup de grâce, but instead the lion made cover once again. Bell later found that his first bullet entered below the left eye and shattered the lower jaw, while the second broke apart on the front shoulder without penetration. He finished the lion with a third round at very close range, which all told heightened his attention on bullet construction and its importance for penetration. He went back to a .303 soon after this incident, but in a magazine rifle with nickel-jacketed 215gr. solid bullets.

Jump forward a year and Bell was in the opposite extreme facing the cold as a market hunter for the Klondike gold rush. He’d acquired another falling block from Fraser while on route to Dawson City, although this time in .360 calibre without concerns for heat affecting pressures.

He spent the winter on snowshoes harvesting moose and caribou, while methodically relying on one-shot kills to stretch a stash of 160 rounds through the winter. His partner was making 25-day return trips on dogsled to market the meat but didn’t return for the last run and swindled Bell of the entire poke.  Left with few options, 18-year-old Bell hawked the rifle for cash and headed south to Calgary, where he joined the Canadian Mounted Rifles and soon embarked for South Africa and the Boer war.

Bell amassed a small pool of savings from his stint in the army, and from this outfitted his kit for hunting in Uganda. He truncated his initial selection of rifles in 1902 to those with a military pedigree. He’d come to recognize that military arms and loads were being scrutinized for their dependability under prolonged and hard use, and their development advanced by the deep pockets of nations.  He surmised that military calibres were more consistent and less expensive than those designed primarily for hunting and favoured them heavily over the next 10 years.

The battery for this first well-organized expedition into Uganda included two 10-shot Lee Enfield sporterized 303s. They had shortened barrels with pistol grips and cost £8 each. In true Bell fashion his initial hunt on elephant left an impression. He came upon several bulls in the mud and, following spurious advice of an acquaintance, carefully placed shots in the upper dome portion of their heads looking for brain shots. He was surprised to see very little response to the noise or bullet placement, so he also shot one behind the shoulder. That bull reacted to the body shot with cries and groans, and even though it was anchored the others fled immediately.

Determined to learn why his initial shots hadn’t worked, Bell borrowed a large saw and with his team, opened the scull vertically for a rudimentary post-mortem. This exposed the brain far lower down and to the rear of where he’d assumed, and roughly 3 to 4 times the size of a human brain by comparison.  He made sketches of the brain within the surrounding head, and calculated shooting angles that would take a bullet to the mark from any position around the skull. He soon put this knowledge to the test and at the next opportunity dropped a bull with a single brain shot from the side. He again noted that the bulls nearby were not particularly alarmed, and this provided the origins of his tactical approach for shooting two or more elephants from a group at the same encounter.

Recoil and Accuracy

Before Daniel Frazer’s untimely death in December of 1901, Bell spent time with him regulating the barrels of big bore doubles at the bench. He found the recoil unpleasant and readily acknowledged that this left a lasting impression. His groups would spread apart through a day of shooting, while in contrast Frazer’s would tightened up as the barrels were regulated. Bell recognized early on that recoil affects people differently and the negative influence it had on his own accuracy.

The Uganda Battery

His initial time in the Unyaro area of Uganda in 1902 was a financial success. He took 63 bull elephants averaging 53lbs/tusk, which then enabled him to outfit his first safari into the Karamojo region of North East Uganda. He again took a .303, but added his first bespoke .275 Rigby Mauser, as well as a .450/400 double rifle suggesting he remained open minded about big bore doubles even after his experience on the bench.

John Rigby & Co. began collaborating with Paul Mauser in 1897 and soon released the .275 Rigby on the Mauser 98 action. The .275 Rigby as many will recognize is also known as the 7x57mm or 7mm. It has a bullet diameter of .285”, but Rigby took a different approach using the distance between the lands (.275”) to rebadge the round in a brilliant marketing strategy that appeals to many anglophiles to this day.

The Mauser action and 7x57mm rimless cartridge were first designed by Paul Mauser in 1891, and widely sold as a military arm where it earned an early reputation. The case shape was designed to feed and extract reliably in extreme field conditions from both bolt action rifles and automatic machine guns. The common barrel twist rate was quite high at 1 in 8.7”, which enabled the 7x57mm (.275) to stabilize its long and relatively heavy 173gr. jacketed military bullet. It moved these along at 2300fps, and Bell concluded this moderate pace was associated with enabling these long bullets to penetrate deeply while holding their course without deformation.

Over the next seven years and four safaris into the Karamojo, Bell gained a graduate degree in the practical application of dispatching game. He favoured three calibres with each coming from strong military roots while fed a steady diet of solid bullets. It’s no surprise the .303 remained on his list with its 215 gr. solids. The .275 Rigby also gained a spot, and through time excelled to account for 75% of his lifetime harvest of elephant. He favoured the reliability of German DWM cartridges with 173gr. round-nose solids. The .275 burned more efficient Ballistite smokeless powder compared to the cordite in the .303s, which gave the former greater performance. Third, and perhaps used more than the other two for harvesting camp meat, was a .256 Gibbs Mannlicher with long-nosed 156 gr. solids.  Later on, Bell also obtained a light-framed .256 Mannlicher-Shoenauer that had been refined by Frazer, which he suggested had a “snaky feel” that made it a “pleasure to handle” at just over five pounds.

Bell preferred light guns that he could carry all day long and for months on end, literally. He estimated that he walked 70,000 miles pursuing game! He also valued a short bolt-throw and accredited this feature as being critical for rapid shots under pressure in close proximity. When encountering a group of elephants, he often took the first two or three within yards of each other, but then pursued the rest at a brisk run, and often for miles. He suggests this base approach favoured a rifle that was both light and shouldered quickly, with shots often taken from the side and behind at an oblique angle. He carried 35 rounds on his belt daily and submitted that large bore ammo with heavier arms simply weighed more for the same desired one-shot kills.

Up Close in Tall Grass

Rather than heading back to town for the rainy season in 1902, Bell established a camp on a hill that enabled him to frequently glass for bulls in the tall grass below. The low-lying ground was wet with deep water-filled holes that resembled puddles, and occasionally swallowed him “to the armpits” while stalking bulls in the tall grass. Bell and crew would follow the tunnels carved by elephants as they fed through the swamp, which made tracking easy but the going slow. He gave high praise to the Mauser action in these situations, as the Rigby would cycle reliably even when coated in the silt gleaned from blades of tall grass where the elephants had pushed through. In contrast, he criticized a double in these situations where this grit could prevent the action from locking up due to the fine tolerances at the breech face when closed.

The tall grass was well above head level, and Bell came to rely on a system of shooting while perched on the shoulders of his gun-bearer. They’d move in close while hidden by cover, and his tall gun bearer Manzema would stand erect with Bell up top for an unobstructed shot. Light recoil helped them both retain balance, and stocks with a short length of pull improved Bell’s range of motion and mount for off-angle presentations. Once a bull or two dropped, he’d run to the fallen animal and climb onto its back to gain more height for additional opportunities. Pursuing elephant in the tall grass and getting in close to multiple bulls became his base tactic and, in my mind at least, textbook Bell.