Gary Reeder
on our first hunt in Africa in '92 we had several PHs
Monday, May 28, 2018, 16:22

in camp, all of them were dangerous game hunters. Kase and I asked them what calibers they liked and what actions and what barrel lengths. One of their favorites was the 416 Rigby and the barrel lengths on all the rifles mentioned were 18 to 20" max. They said if they needed to use the gun to keep a dangerous game animal off the client the range would probably be considerably less than 50 yards so any velocity loss would be minimal. For our second hunt in '93 I built the BRNO in 416 Rigby for Kase and put the 18" barrel on it. One has to look at barrel length with some common sense. If a 24" barrel does 2400 fps at 100 yards with a 400 grain bullet, and around 2000 fps at 40 yards or less, you have to remember very few shots at dangerous game are at 100 yards. Most are at much less than 50 yards, most at 25 yards or less. So that 24" barrel does 2000 fps at 40 yards. And the 18 to 20" barrel does the same at the same range. So you are not losing any velocity at all. You have just been brain washed by all the BS you read in the magazines.