Reeder Custom Guns - .470 Capstick

Does anyone know where I can get some proper head stamped .470 Capstick brass? I picked up a rifle in November and I'm trying to put some stuff together.

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I checked there website and it said not producing any til they get a sufficient back order so who knows how long that will be. Thank you though for the suggestion

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see if you really like the cartridge just use 375 H&H brass. Or if you can find any, it is exactly the same cartridge as the 475 Ackley Magnum that was around for years before the Catsdick cartridge copied it.

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is a bit more involved.

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I'll look on amazon, I've never messed with this round before so I know very little about it other than its a .375 blown out.

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Ya'll must not think much of Col. Art Alphin, I've heard a lot stories about how he ripped people off, even a whole town. This rifle I have is an A-Square or B-Round as Ross Seyfried calls them but I do like the damn thing its so ugly its pretty.

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quite a few of the original African cartridges out at about the same time as did a couple of european ammo companies like Kynoch, Mauser, Norma and one or two others. One that I can't remember the name was a yellow box with a picture of a rhino on the front. We carried as much of them as we could in our shop back then as so many guys were going to Africa.. Kase and I took several African cartridges to Africa in the early to mid 90s in custom Ruger #1 rifles and none were A-Square ammo. This included 470 nitro, 500 nitro, 416 Rigby, 404 Jeffery, 500 jeffery, 505 Gibbs and several others. In '94 we went into a gun shop in Kimberley and their ammo racks were well stocked with most of the older African cartridges, some that Kase and I had never seen before. Alphin just jumped on the bandwagon.

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RSR Distributor in Orlando set us up with an import company that brought in a lot of exotic ammo, mostly for African hunting. A good friend and PH named Mark Sullivan was getting people all stirred up about African hunting with his video Black Death and several other videos later. We booked a lot of guys to Africa in the early 90s and we furnished most of the ammo thru our shop and we never carried any A-Square ammo. A lot of the hunters were rich folks that were using double rifles in 470 Nitro, 500 nitro, 450/400, 9.3 X 74, 500 Jeffery, 505 Gibbs, 404 Jeffery and a lot of others. Mark used a 500 Nitro double in his video and that got people wanting them. I had a friend that owned a company that carried every kind of double rifle made. Our PH, John Abraham wanted a double rifle as he was using a bolt gun in 450 Watts Magnum at the time. His wife lauri called me and asked me to find him a good double if I could for around $30,000. I found him a Jeffery's of London double in 475 Jefferys #2 for about that price and we carried the ammo by Kynoch. John used that rifle up to a few years ago.

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to argue with you about it on your forum. Nuff said. Dropped.

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the years and each one despises Peter Hathaway Capstick and most call him Catsdick. The reason for that is contrary to his writings, Capstick was never a PH. He was never a cropping officer. He never was an African guide. He worked in a bar called the Duck Inn. The PHs would come in and tell stories of things that happened on their safaris. Capstick would write them down and then in his book, he sorta implied that he did those things. Plus he flat out stole a lot of J.H. Hunter's stories from his book Hunter and again sorta implied that he did those things. He also "borrowed" things from John Pondoro Taylor's various books and again implied that he did those things. But the main thing he did that turned every true outdoorsman in Africa against him is in his book "A Man Called Lion" he strongly implied that John Pondoro Taylor was gay and diddled little native boys. Now this may be true but there was never a reason to sully the reputation of one of Africa's hunting legends. That would be like someone writing a book back in the 60s saying that John Wayne was gay. That person would be drawn and quartered.

When Art Alphin, who was a drinking buddy of Capstick, came out with the 470 Capstick it was soundly snubbed in Africa. Alphin didn't have a sterling reputation to start with and this didn't help a lot. Plus the cartridge was an exact copy (AKA rip off) of The 475 Ackley Magnum, a cartridge well liked in Africa by many of the older PHs.

So between Alphin naming the cartridge after his drinking buddy and it being sorta a rip off of another well liked cartridge in Africa along with Capstick's soiled reputation in Africa, the cartridge didn't make the top 10 big game cartridges in Africa, not by any stretch.

On my 2nd or 3rd safari to Africa I sat down with 8 or 9 very well known PHs who stopped by our camp. Over dinner and afterwards in the bullshit session around the fire they enlightened me with stories about Catsdick and what they thought of him. I won't go into any of those stories here as some may be stretching the truth a slight bit, but suffice to say, when I got home, my collection of Capstick's books were given to anyone that wanted them.

So these days Capstick is officially Catsdick to many in Africa and also to me.

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