Gary Reeder
most of our 405 based cartridges were developed in the
Tuesday, April 21, 2020, 12:48

Contender. That would have been in the early 90s so the guns would have been mid to late 80s vintage, serial number 287,000 or somewhere in that serial number range.I was talking a lot to Lee Jurras back in those days and he had his Howdah TCs out in the late 70s and he told me to keep my heavy recoiling calibers to 270,000 or newer.

TC made the 45-70 barrels for the Contender in the early 80s if I remember right. Also the 416 GNR and 450 GNR were developed in the Contender for use in Africa in 1992 and 1993 and they have considerably more recoil than the 45-70. The development of them would have been in '90 or '91.

Back then Kase, Colleen and I would take 3 rifle cases full of guns. No limit back then. I would take a double rifle case and put 6 or 7 handguns in it, plus an Auto Mag or two. No firearm permits required. Back then we had the 416 GNR, 450 GNR, 378 GNR and 338 GNR and used the fields of Africa and Australia for our field testing. I took an Australian Water Buffalo in '94 with the 450 GNR and had no problems. And these were pre-muzzle brake days. On some I had them Mag-Na-Ported but no muzzle brake. I think KDF was the first to come out with muzzle brakes but they were for large caliber rifles. We didn't start building our own brakes until around '95 or '96.

When we developed a new cartridge we ran the loads up until it locked up the gun or opened it on recoil and I don't remember having any drastic problems with the contenders of the day that weren't man made. All of the animals below were taken in '92 and '93 in Africa, plus an Australian Water Buffalo in '94 and a couple of exotics at Tellico Junction in '88 or '89. The big hog was taken with a TC in the serial number range of 270,000 and taken with a Contender in 500 Nitro.