The First Environmentalists & the .50 BMG

The First Environmentalists & the .50 BMG

There's a strong tendency in environmentalist circles to imagine the Indians as the first environmentalists, living in harmony with nature. It isn't true. The Indians of what is now the U.S. didn't get a chance to destroy their environment (except for the really big herbivores that disappeared about the same time the Indians arrived), because they lived at a very, very low technology level, and there weren't many of them here.

I used to joke that I wasn't quite sure what the civilian need for rifles chambered in .50 BMG was--"in case blue whales come back on land?" For that reason, I find this item over at Snowflakes in Hell about how the Makah tribe hunts whales with a .50 BMG rifle quite amusing. It turns out that this wasn't a casual decision:

The Tribe was interested in substituting the traditional killing lance for a large calbier rifle both to eliminate a prolonged pursuit and because the use of the killing lance would be considered inhumane by modern standards. The Tribe contracted a veterinarian with a background in ballistics and together investigated the performance of several high caliber firearms including the Winchester.458 Magnum, the Weatherby .460 Magnum, the .50BMG, and the .577 A-Square Tyrannosaur. The Tribe found that all of these weapons to be adequate, but the .50BMG and .577 A-Square Tyrannosaur to be the most potent combination. The .577 A-Square Tyrannosaur was selected for the 1999 hunt since it was a substantially lighter rifle (14 pounds versus 20 pounds for a .50BMG) and because it had a 3-round capacity (one cartridge in the chamber, two cartridges in the magazine) compared to the single-shot .50BMG caliber configurations which were tested.

What in the world is a ".577 A-Square Tyrannosaur" cartridge? Has someone been watching Jurassic Park too many times?

Terry Wieland’s On Ammo

The .577 Tyrannosaur: A-Square’s Behemoth Fills A Need. Sort Of.

The .577 Tyrannosaur is not one of the classic nitro-express cartridges. In fact, designed in 1993, it is barely a dozen years old. It was created by Art Alphin, then-owner of A-Square, at the specific request of some of his Zimbabwean professional-hunter friends.

Although only a few score Tyrannosaur rifles have been made in that time, the cartridge is worthy of attention for several reasons:

First, it delivers power like very few others and, second, it does so at a fraction the price of anything else in its class. Finally, it offers rifle-lovers of reasonable means the opportunity to play with one of the most interesting of all bullet diameters - the .577.

The original .577 Nitro Express is a rimmed cartridge that has been around for more than a century. One can still buy a .577 double rifle from H&H or Rigby, but it will cost big bucks, and used .577s also command a premium price. This is a problem for the PH of modest means whose work involves elephants, because the .577 NE is an elephant cartridge par excellence, renowned for its penetration and knockdown power.

As Art tells it, he was approached in 1993 by two Zimbabwe PHs who had experienced serious problems with elephants while armed with .458 Winchesters. They wanted something bigger - much bigger. Could Art build his Hannibal dangerous-game rifle in .577 or even .600 NE?

UPDATE: A reader tells me:

I saw your post on rifle calibers for whale hunting, which reminded me of contemporary TV footage that showed the Makah tribe pursuing and finally killing a 30' grey whale in May of 1999.

Googling the event now showed the media coverage evidently had been cleaned up for posterity, the gruesome spectacle I remember showed a power boat running alongside, several 'braves' firing AK-47 style rifles into the whale, apparently over 300 [!] rounds of 7.62 x 39 were pumped into the whale's right side, while the power boat on the left had the harpoonist and the gunner with the .50 calibre rifle who finally finished the animal off.

Since none of 'whalers' had done this before, they did not realize the whale would sink when it died. When the .50 calibre gunner shot and killed it, it began to sink.

A fishing trawler was standing off, either fishing or watching this marine circus, he came in and used his derrick and a big net to prevent the dead whale from sinking.

The whale was towed to the beach and partially butchered, the tribe's people did not like the taste of the meat, and the rest of the dead whale and guts [quite a lot of it] were left on the beach.

The US government agents who financed and encouraged this, had to clean up the beach and haul the carcass of the dead whale out to sea and let it sink in deep water.

Our tax dollars at work!

The September 9, 2007 Seattle Times confirms that there was a rifle hunt in 1999 by the Makah tribe of a gray whale.